The New Hampshire Gazette, Friday, September 27, 2019 — Page 1
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The New Hampshire Gazette, Friday, September 27, 2019 — Page 1 Vol. CCLXIV, No. 1 The New Hampshire Gazette Grab Me! September 27, 2019 The Nation’s Oldest Newspaper™ • Editor: Steven Fowle • Founded 1756 by Daniel Fowle PO Box 756, Portsmouth, NH 03802 • [email protected] • www.nhgazette.com I’m Free! The Fortnightly Rant Counting On a Stable Genius y now, most Americans are at Anyone bothering to watch this least somewhat inured to seeing mundane event could easily have Bthe business of state conducted with thought, “this is how our govern- all the dignity of a child’s sidewalk ment is supposed to function.” At lemonade stand. Given the trap- best they’d be half-right. Nearly a pings available to the world’s most thousand days into the Trump Era, powerful office, of course, the spe- a yearning for tedium is a sign of cific elements are a little bit grander good mental health. Just beneath the than the usual card table and hand- seamless decorum of the September scrawled signage. For example, the 20th press conference, though, is a Potentate of the Potomac routinely conglomerated mess of tangled in- addresses broadcast journalists from terests as convoluted and malign as the lawn of the White House, with one of His Excellency’s off-the-cuff Marine One idling in the back- word salads. ground. The big Sikorsky serves sev- Soon hundreds of those troops, eral purposes. The sight of it conveys whom we all profess to love so dear- an image of might and authority, ly, will be packing their duffel bags impressing authoritarian rubes; it for Saudi Arabia. At first glance converts fossil fuel into air pollution it seems an unlikely ally: 830,000 to ramp up climate chaos; and the square miles of sand, run as an ab- noise of its engines makes it harder solute monarchy since 1932 when for the public to hear his incoherent, Abdulaziz ibn Abdul Rahman Al rambling lies. Meanwhile, his Press Saud consolidated the territory Secretary sits in her office, polishing he’d conquered during thirty years her résumé while knocking down of desert warfare. His decisive vic- $180,000 a year. tory had come on March 19, 1929 In marked contrast, a press con- when the camel-mounted cavalry According to the New York Times, but Saudi Arabia is…special. within South Vietnam, particularly ference held one week ago today of Ikhwan rebels fell to his machine the BND memo “said that Saudi ri- The Saudis are special because of in the populated areas.” was curiously reminiscent of how guns at Sabilla. Back in the days of valry with Iran for supremacy in the their oil, of course, though that’s less In 1950—long before General the government used to operate. It the military draft, at least, it would Middle East, as well as Saudi depen- important to us than it once was. Vo Nguyen Giap sparked West- took place indoors, in a quiet Pen- have been seen as a hard duty sta- dency on the United States, were the They’re still the biggest customers moreland’s shocked indignation— tagon briefing room, where two tion. The hot, dry climate cries out main drivers of Saudi foreign policy.” for our most important industrial Harry Truman had sent a group of deeply serious men stood behind for cold beer; but consumption of The very next day, the German sector: weapons and other assorted American advisors to Vietnam to a podium: Marine General Joseph alcohol is punished with the lash. government rebuked the BND for military equipment. The oil refinery supervise the use of $10 million in Dunford, the Chairman of the Joint A second glance is no more reas- having been so undiplomatical- at Abqaiq, for example, was protect- U.S. military equipment. It took 14 Chiefs of Staff, his drab green and suring. King Salman bin Abdulaziz ly blunt. That it was, but time has ed by Patriot missiles. years of gradual escalation before a khaki service uniform sporting a Saud was already suffering from shown it was accurate and prescient, Well, the missiles were on-site, in couple of destroyers in the Gulf of total of sixteen silver stars sparkling Alzheimers-related dementia when too. Since he took over, MBS has a protective capacity, and, presum- Tonkin accidentally triggered a war on his shoulders and collar, a gen- he ascended to the throne nearly five made it clear he’s ready to fight Iran ably, in operational condition. No that killed three million Vietnamese erous helping of fruit salad across years ago. His son, Crown Prince to the death—of the last starving doubt the Secretary of Defense, as and 58,000 Americans. his chest; and his boss, Secretary of Mohammad bin Salman, known as child in Yemen. the manufacturer’s former lobbyist, Things move faster these days, Defense Mark Esper, sharply-suit- MBS, actually runs the Kingdom; MBS doesn’t just deal out death can provide a plausible explanation and Donald Trump is no Lyndon ed, as befits a former top lobbyist for but that’s cold comfort indeed. wholesale; he’s ready for retail, too. of how a swarm of armed drones Johnson anguishing over the dis- Raytheon. They announced that, in In late 2015 Germany’s One year ago next Wednesday Jamal was able to sneak past them and traction from his Great Society. response to a request from the Saudi Bundesnachrichtendienst [BND], Kashoggi, a columnist for the Wash- halve Saudi oil production. Trump is more likely looking for a government, “the president has ap- its foreign intelligence service, is- ington Post, walked into the Saudi For inspiration, he might turn to distraction from his own impending proved the deployment of U.S. forc- sued a brief memo warning that the embassy in Istanbul. Seeking doc- General William Westmoreland’s impeachment. Any normal mind es” to the desert kingdom, adding then-current “cautious diplomat- uments for his impending wedding, statement of February 1, 1968: “The would recoil from the thought of the that their mission would be “defen- ic stance of senior members of the he was murdered and dismembered enemy very deceitfully has taken U.S. getting involved in a shooting sive in nature and primarily focused Saudi royal family will be replaced on orders from MBS. Nations often advantage of the Tet truce in order war with Iran. One can only hope on air and missile defense.” by an impulsive intervention policy.” must deal with unsavory characters, to create maximum consternation that his does, too. The Alleged News® Clown-to-Clown Diplomacy his paragraph may seem a bit A New, Somewhat Unseemly Ground Rule bigger than to produce it.” ature of every time and place. Confession First; tedious, but we feel it’s our job Since the impeachment process is According to Wikipedia, this “The problem is that they will also Impeachment Afterwards toT get certain essential facts into the likely to make the 980 days since concept “became especially popu- produce a cataclysmic, frightening, Nancy Pelosi, the Blue Queen, hath record: The fourth impeachment the inauguration seem tranquil in lar after a picture of a presentation leviathanic, galactic Shit Mountain. spoken the magic word—finally. It of a U.S. President began when the retrospect, we need to shed an inhi- by Brandolini at XP2014 on May “The proportion between the two, turns out that all the House Speaker President of Ukraine—a former bition—we’re not walking into this 30, 2014, was posted on Twitter. catastrophically in favor of shit, is ever needed to begin an impeach- comedian who, by playing a school- gun fight armed with a plastic spork. Brandolini was inspired by reading such that normally typewriters are ment inquiry of the President [Such teacher who became the President Certain parties involved in our Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast given to people who are supposed to As He Is] was a televised confession of Ukraine in a TV sitcom, actually government are relying heavily on a and Slow right before watching an write something good. from the suspect himself, corrobo- became the President of Ukraine— form of political malpractice which, Italian political talk show with jour- “The reason is very simple: even if rated by similar footage featuring his answered his telephone on July to be accurately reported upon, re- nalist Marco Travaglio and former our monkeys wrote the great work own lawyer. 25th and spoke for half an hour quires the use of its proper name: Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of every time and place, the time There was a time when such an with a serially-bankrupt deadbeat asymmetrical bullshit. attacking each other. A similar con- needed to discard all the other works acknowledgement of guilt would draft-dodger who, despite having Under normal circumstances we cept, the ‘mountain of shit theory,’ would be infamous. have made impeachment a mere lost most or all of some $413 million would shun the use of such inelegant was formulated by the Italian blog- “This is the basis of what I call formality: that was before Frank he inherited without paying the tax- language. Is anything even remotely ger Uriel Fanelli in 2010….” ‘The Shit Mountain Theory.’ It says, Luntz taught Newt Gingrich how es due, was hired to play a successful normal these days? We rest our case. Intrigued, we looked up Fanelli. essentially, that an idiot can produce to pervert language so as to demon- businessman on TV until a termi- The principle of bullshit asymme- He wrote [as translated by Google]: more shit than you can shovel.” ize opponents and bamboozle the nally-amoral political party was un- try was first formulated by Alberto “…a hundred million monkeys Fanelli’s original essay on the rubes; before Nixon-enabler Rog- able to prevent him from becoming Brandolini, an Italian programmer, who hit keys at random on a hun- topic can be found, in Italian, at er Ailes built for Rupert Murdoch its nominee for the Presidency of in January, 2013, as follows, “The dred million typewriters for a hun- https://nientestronzate.wordpress.