President Newt to Re-Right History - Every Week!

Although he's not quite there yet, Newt Gingrich has a presidentially grandiose plan for History. Like most of his Republican peers, Newt wants to go back to the past. In his case, of course, he wants to take American society and its government back to 1802, even before there was a Nevada to caucus.

More personally, however, he only wants to return to his glory days of the early 70's academia when he was a Mash teacher--a semi-pro, in fact--lecturing on Geography-based History at the College of West Georgia and Map Repair. There his most daring course as a Wolfie, “Mason and Dixon Were Not Straight Enough” was famously, and wrongly, criticized by Liberals and West Virginians.

Candidate Newt is faced with the difficult task of feverishly rewriting rewritten history on the fly, mostly in the pearly teeth of his supporter Sarah Palin's literate revisionismitis.

Unlike Sarah, Newt is an acknowledged expert in such things and knows how to re it right.

For example, in the undiscipline of Middle Eastern Geography, as evidenced by his Biblical History From 1517 course. Newt is truly unparalleled. It is narrowly believed that he, alone among candidates, has endorsed this Blog's sage use of Proximania in lieu of the histrionically inaccurate term “Palestine” and Firstians for always-there Israelis and Laterians for the non-existent Palestinians.

There is likely zero truth to the disappointing rumor that Newt advocates this Blog's own One Again Proximania Solution, to be implemented by Crazy-Gluing individual Firstian and Laterian Proximates together (at their shoulder-to-shoulder) into a single united Proximate. This geographically inspired effort would render Proximate punches fully self-inflicted and not very hard, ultimately leading to happy fist-bumping and an alphabet someone can actually read.

All this erudition aside, as President, Newt would bring more to the bully lectern than any president since Bill Clinton's Oval Office tutoring. For President Newt and America, his Geographical History on-line course would be enlightening and efficient, doubling, perfectly, as a foreign policy.

With the help of modern technology—Google Earth from an iPad, thrown onto a whiteboard via an LCD projector--and a Sharpie, Newt could redraw borders willy-nilly, as he expertly remembers them or wishes them to be.

The syllabus for the first semester of 2013, released yesterday to Miami voters, indicates that new borders for Cuba are the first lesson.

And those hangmen beardy stick figures? They are just Newt's doodling.

Mississippi Welcomes Drill Babies(tm) Ashore

The festive days of Gray History (or We Were Number Two) Month are so over for Haley Barbour, Governor and Historian-in-Chief of Mississippi.

Northern Mississippi more under water than a BoA mortgage, even though Tennessee's Governor and Nashville get all the ink.  Haley has had to ask TBO to send Socialist relief money, but only as much as the Feds would have if they only had a fair and Capitalist flat income tax.  And please don't call it "relief", it sounds lilke welfare or food stamps, although Haley will quietly take the latter.

Haley is plain desperate for something upbeat.

The news may have given Haley the break he deserves.  BP brand Drill Babies will soon be washing ashore along the gulf coast.

Now, most of you don't know exactly what a Drill Baby is.  This is hardly surprising since a Drill Baby is borrowed from an old design very familiar to Haley and his nostalgic supporters:  The no-longer available Tar Baby.

(No longer available means don't be bugging Amazon.com about it.  But you can buy Uncle Remus' stories for you Kindle there, but keep that to yourself.)

You'd think that you'd have a hell of a time having a decent Gray History Month without Tar Babies or lawn Jockeys, but the Grinch known as Political Correctness dampens even the most sacred celebrations.  Tar Babies were Americana dolls, as much in demand all across the deep South as knotable hemp rope or midnight white pillow cases.

Tar Babies were made of thick black tar--left over from feathering--and delicately perfumed with turpentine. Most were cheerily dressed like well-treated slaves.  These were not your American Girl(tm) dolls, mind you, but they were inexpensive and hard as could be to give up.  They were also one quick way to a fox fur coat.  Or at least an ascot.  But that is another story and one that can not be repeated here (see above).

You can imagine Haley's big eyes getting teary at the mere mention of his boyhood favorite d... action figures.  Haley's website leaked plans for Tar Baby Beach Blanket Fortnight in late May...

And quicker than a Loop Current could grease a near-sighted barracuda off Ft. Lauderdale, Haley's site went quite on Tar Babies.

Seems that he received a three AM ring from the Dude-of-Staff  of the leading Presidential candidate.  After a funny anecdote about jet skiing on the second floor of a house in Ripley, Tippah County, Haley got to speak to his very own political cousin, The Alice of The Tea Party of Wonderland (TP), and former BP employee-in-law, Sarah Palin.

The Alice had stayed up late working with BP to refine (pun intended) her message on BP's great new, if unintentional, oil gusher, which gusher just so happened to be south of Haley's state.  She and BP had gotten wind (and ugh) of Haley's Tar Baby Fortnight plans and had something better to suggest.

The Alice had invested much political capital in BP's Drill-Baby-Drill ad campaign and she hoped to capitalize on the highly ranked brand identity (falling somewhere between E-Trade and Lindsay) and "what the heck is a Fortnight, Hilly?"

"It's 'Haley, Madam Alice'"

"And what's a 'Haley', Hilly?"

Still.  Notwithstanding the source, Haley went with the idea.

Everyone relax and enjoy a jolt of the new BP brand Deep Gulf Crystal Meth(ane).  Or the Mississippi State drink, Bottled Second Floor Tap Water.  Late May in Mississippi will be Welcome The Drill Babies(tm) Ashore Fortnight. There will be Petrol-Black-Tie fancy dress balls, backyard cookouts perfectly contained under giant BP-donated domes, gaily... uh, straight-ribboned gray uniforms and of course thousands of Drill Babies at $45.00 a pop and available now on Amazon.com or at participating BP stations for the small version.  The Alice-sized doll will be $10,000 a plate and will not be ashore for another week or so.

Drill Babies are pretty much water-safe, so feel free to use them in your neighbor's pool.  And forget fireworks, because Drill Babies burn like hell.

Best of all the "ashore" part?  That's in Alabama.

Arizona: Constitution Not Welcome Here, Either

Apologies in advance:  It's the Constitution and some history again.

Not even a little interested?

Arizona so agrees with you.

So does The Scaley Supreme Court, as it is known on this Blog.  Readers of Empty Glass Full (or Scaley's own My Glass Full Yours Just Wrong) have gained, as a result, a special insight into our Supreme Court's take on the US Constitution.

The basic logic of Scaley's definitive Originalistic Constitutional interpretaion is this:  If it wasn't there for the thinking when the Founding Fathers were originally do the thinking in 1787, it isn't covered by the Constitution, or, in the case of the famously dubbed The Top Ten Amendments of 1789.  The 14th Amendment, important in the Arizona discussion, would only apply to stuff around in 1866, 1868 at the latest.

The easy part first:  There was no Arizona in 1787 or 1789.  The United States didn't even own the property then, and didn't even know there was anything worth buying beyond the Mississippi.  Therefore, the original Constitution and The Bill of Rights can not apply directly to Arizona.

Bad as that may sound, it acutally is wonderful news, since there were only a few dozen Mexicans and Indians living thereabouts and this is all about giving them no rights at all.

So what about Arizona by 1866?  Deceptively good question.

In 1848, the US had made a friendly deal with Mexico in which the US got the norther half of Mexico and Mexico got to keep what was left of its army, its capital and a warehouse full of tequilla.  In 1853, the US bought another sliver of Mexico, including Tuscon, Yuma and half the Gila River, and referred to that little purchase as the Territory of Arizona. They picked the a name by joining two Indian words meaning "Last Little Water Before LA".

The final shape of Arizona was set when it developed multiple-personality disorder.  It became two territories during the Civil War (or the War to Promote Gray History Month, depending on your governor), one organized by the Union in 1863 without slaves and the other claimed by the Confederates beginning in 1861 with as many slaves as you could get to grow cotton in the desert.  The Confederacy gave up its claim to Arizona along with its claim to the beautiful city of Richmond, all those valuable slaves and everything else in 1865.

At the time the Fourteenth Amendment was submitted for adoption in 1866, Arizona was a mere territory, putting off statehood until three years after Barry Goldwater was born, probably unnaturally, in 1909.  This being so, the Framers of the 14th Amendment knew about Arizona, vaguely if at all, as a territory but not a real state.

Under the Scaley view, the 14th Amendment can not apply to the State of Arizona, since there was no more a State of Arizona than a Prius, an iPad or a Wonder Bra when the amendment was kicked around and put down in writing.  Don't even try to suggest that the amendment applies just because Arizona The Territory did exist in 1868.  Assuming, arguendo (as Scaley might himself write in the Latin of the cross), that were true, just try and find a Territory named Arizona today.  Go on and good luck.  There isn't one.

Thus, neither the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, nor the 14th Amendment apply to the State of Arizona.  Arizona can do what it damned will pleases.  The State of Arizona could, if it wanted to, outlaw anybody doing anything, including pastry asthmatics swinging clubs at the sand or tall black guys shooting hoops indoors, but it would like to stick to stopping, frisking and, generally, outlawing the beyond-tan walking the streets or riding to off-the-books day jobs in crowded pick-ups.

For now.