So much for Mayan prophecies.   None of my dance partners raised the matter even past the midnight advent of the winter solstice. Some of them probably are Mayan. One woman nearly stumbled off the raised dance floor at Dallas Nite Club when she saw me approach and smiled, but she’s just the latest of her sex to discombobulate in my presence. Off the dance floor, many men scowled and pulled their women closer. Must’ve been the cadet gray linen jacket and ‘80s abstract-pattern necktie that caused all the fuss.   Since the world failed to end, we’re still confronted with …
Austin Dispatches	No. 159	Dec. 25, 2012

On Dec. 17, the Electoral College assented to returning President Obama to another term.[1] The last formal obstacle to power overcome, Obama and his administration can resume dispossessing Americans, particularly whites, from our country.[2]

Already businesses have turned tail and made noises about working with the Obama administration. Translation: joining him to screw Americans in exchange for a lesser share of the loot.[3] As part of this revitalized corporatism, Texas’ largest business lobbying group advocates higher fees on citizens’ cars and water meters to pay for infrastructure to lure more business to the state.[4]

The same time in history when my family was living paycheck to paycheck, sweating the bills  at the end of the month, Obama was getting stoned in prep school. The considerable pot resin must still be clogging his synapses.[5] He still thinks like a privileged stoner, when he’s not trapped seeing politics through a racial prism.  He could’ve had an easier time pushing through ObamaCare – first tested in Massachusetts by then-Gov. Mitt Romney – if its supporters had insinuated it’s a way to kill off Boomers instead of whites.[6]

Mittens’ record or views on other big issues were also too close to Obama’s for the former to represent a significant difference on policy.[7] Moreover, the GOP establishment was and is terrified of making explicit the implicit, and stronger, differences of race, religion and social background between the two candidates.[8] As a result, the Republicans fought an election on terms framed by the Democrats and lost,[9] and Obama’s supporters unleashed a fusillade of racially tinged gloating in their media outlets.[10] Not that the GOP has been a particularly reliable vehicle for the interests of regular Americans. At least with the Obama administration there’s no delusion of that.

That, plus the GOP’s backhanding of all but its country club and Trotskyite factions,[11] contributed to a strong showing by the Libertarian Party all along the ballot.[12] In a shocking election-year development, the Chronicle editorial board actually endorsed a couple of Libertarian candidates for office, after years of sneering at them. The Chronicle being the Chronicle, I immediately suspected the candidates of lacking sufficient libertarian rigor.[13] Unfortunately, such a showing will only feed complacency at all levels of the party and perpetuate the party’s unresolved problems, erupting at the Portland convention, that kept it from an even stronger showing. Presidential nominee Gary Johnson ran the sort of campaign run to please the editorial staff at Reason, instead of, say, the American people.[14] Imagine what the LP could’ve achieved with its old ideological substance.

In congressional results, a record 20 women will serve in the U.S. Senate. Given women’s difficulty at getting along with each other, their actual record of achievement outside a narrow range of occupations, and the country’s deteriorating circumstances that coincide with women’s increasing participation in politics and civics, perhaps the Senate’s sex ratio isn’t the laudable phenomenon its cheerleaders claim.[15]

The Dark Centennial

In a way, the election results and related political and financial news are the logical, perhaps inevitable conclusion to events of 100 years ago. Unacknowledged elsewhere, this year’s presidential election marks the beginning of a two-year centenary of the institutions, changes or circumstances that cumulatively have crippled our country, our prosperity, and our posterity to the present day. The 1912 presidential election was a tight four-way contest between four statists.[16] Americans were the clear losers, forced to endure statists’ constitutional amendments establishing, respectively, an income tax and the election of U.S. senators by popular vote instead of by state legislatures, thereby weakening the federal balance;[17] the creation of the Federal Reserve System, which has wiped almost all of the dollar’s purchasing power in between numerous recessions and depressions; and the onset of World War I, which weakened Western civilization, some say fatally, created problems around the world we’re still trying to solve, and to which the American power elite eagerly joined later as a capstone of its national socialist agenda.[18] Our ancestors who wanted to numb themselves to these assaults couldn’t even do that easily, because in the same period statists curtailed or outlawed personal use of opiates or alcohol.[19]

Bevo and Butt-Heads

Pointy headed bloviator Robert Jensen received predictable outrage after penning a predictably sneering anti-American anti-Thanksgiving piece in time for the “white-supremacist holiday.” [20] No, that refers to the preference of body parts on the fowl we killed, cooked and ate. Somebody else already complained about that.[21] They both were probably in a hungry snit  from their meager vegetarian diets when they editorialized.

Now, I’ve been quite critical of my journalism professors, but they compare favorably to Jensen in that even during the Culture Wars they concentrated more on teaching me how to do my job and less on spouting their pinko palaver and Marxoid mumbo-jumbo  – comparatively.

Unfortunately, the Jensens seem to predominate academia these days, and not just at UT.[22] The Nov. 12 Daily Texan confirmed what most of us suspected: The UT faculty’s campaign donations lean toward Obama.[23] Perhaps relatedly, the Nov. 19 Daily Texas reports the university is sanctioning occult practices against one of its football rivals, Texas Christian University.[24] Academia is atwitter over one of UT’s professors concluding homosexuals make bad parents, ostensibly over methodology, but really because it challenges the hive’s established views on the matter.[25] Similar hyperventilating has been going on over a UT-associated study favorable to fracking, for similar reasons.[26]

Some assistant journalism prof at the University of Houston deplores people expressing their opinions online as part of his doctoral dissertation – thereby revealing himself as not committed to freedom of expression. “In fact, he says, this new era of participatory journalism has brought hateful language to a level not seen since the Civil War.” Naturally, there’s no acknowledgement from him that perhaps matters are serious enough to inspire ordinary people to express themselves in blunt fashion, rather than deferring to this tut-tutting academic hack.[27]

Austin Death Watch

The Chronicalistas are back to grumbling about big businesses picking up big checks from governments, which is inevitable with the big government programs they favor. In other words, corporate schmoozers are still getting rich, and the Chronicalistas have learned nothing from their mistakes.[28]

The Chronicle is also grumbling about the impending independent commission to redistrict City Council seats after voters upset the power elite, including the Chronicle, by supporting geographic representation at the ballot.[29] A North Austin civic activist I met at a neighborhood association Christmas dinner on the 7^th thinks at minimum municipal affairs will get input from parts of town besides Downtown, the University District and West Austin. If the right people do this right, we can strip the power elite of its power and change public policy for the better.[30]

The City Council is shocked – shocked! – to discover the city, not the contractor, is on the hook for $60 million in overruns – not the $15 million reported last issue.[31] Were the councilors filing their nails when they should’ve been scrutinizing the documents?

The City also issued a cease-and-desist order against a new social networking app for finding rides in town on the grounds that the app users pay drivers and therefore violate the city’s taxi regulations.[32] Or to translate it into real talk, government bureaucrats are trying to quash a private, decentralized alternative to municipal transit systems and the local government-sanctioned taxi cartel, regardless of how much praise the Chronicle heaps upon the app.[33]

In good news, as of Oct. 10 hardly anyone in town had complied with a new rule about licensing and registration of short-term rental properties, on the eve of the Austin City Limits Music Festival.[34] This forced the Council to reconsider the ordinance’s details, but not scrapping it altogether.[35]

A municipal court judge has issued a warrant for a judge on the state’s criminal appeals court for an unpaid speeding ticket. Throw the book at him![36] Austin traffic fatalities are up from last year.[37]

Cheapo Discs, which I patronized for almost the full length of its 15-year run, closed Christmas Eve.[38]

The Chronicle forgot to fulminate against guns, hunting and carnivorousness in a perky feature on a hunting school for women in its Nov. 30 issue.[39]

Business Roundup

Troubled behemoth Dell paid impeached ex-President Bill Clinton a six-figure sum to wax optimistic in ‘90s fashion about the future at its Dec. 12 trade show.[40] However, the vile white trash’s  bitch wife  survived a concussion, so his optimism was no more accurate than any other utterance from his mouth.[41]

Speaking of the Clintons, a new study confirms what the public at large already knows: People who eat retail organic food turn into self-righteous assholes.[42] Still, the more these assholes spend on their high-priced yuppie chow, the less kale they have to promote their mush headed political notions.[43]

The Texas Department of Transportation announced Nov. 15 that starting next summer, it’ll spend $800 million and four years to improve the mixmaster in Dallas, where Interstates 30 and 35E meet, with a design from hot shot architect Santiago Calatrava. But even TxDOT officials say that things will be a mess for a while.[44]

Corporate raider Saul Steinberg died.[45] The grasping New York ethnic  nearly dismantled Disney, one of the missed should’ve beens of the ‘80s.[46] Instead, Disney survived to become a leading purveyor of deviance under a veneer of children's entertainment.[47]

Anti-virus software founder John McAfee is back in the States, after a dramatic escape from Belize, where authorities want to question him about the death of his neighbor.[48] I’ve heard of a killer app, but this is ridiculous.[49] Good thing his surname isn’t Norton – he’d’ve crashed in the jungle from all the bugs.[50]

A well-spoken UT law student has started a projected to distribute computerized blueprints for guns that can be manufactured with desktop 3D printers. Defense Distributed must overcome early technical challenges. Meanwhile, the usual sorts are hysterical about this new development.[51]

Neighborhood News

The young stood in line to enter a Swedish clothing chain store at its grand opening Nov. 17.[52] The Business Journal reports Whole Foods has pushed back the opening of its new store at The Domain until fall 2013.[53]

In mid-November, developers broke ground on a Holiday Inn at Highway 183 and Braker Lane.[54] A pizzeria, a spa, and an electronic cigarette vendor have opened in the neighborhood.[55] A e-commerce company has relocated to new offices at The Domain at Stonecreek II, near the Duval Road-MoPac Expressway intersection.[56] Nearby, a new office park has opened, financed by Chinese money: The Lo Mein. Rumors abound that the park is already in trouble, but that’s the way the fortune cookie crumbles.

The Texas Advanced Computing Center plans for its on-site supercomputer, Stampede (6,000 servers) to begin formal production for “open science” research next month.[57]

Mid-December, the landlord had the walkway, stairwell, patio, and balcony railings and the fences repainted black.[58] The last week in November workers tore up the sidewalk at Gracy Farms Lane and Hobby Horse Court, probably just to inconvenience people.

Media Indigest

NOTES