Does John Boehner Attend Cosplay Conventions As Emperor Palpatine?

Yesterday, before South Dakota bloggers gained status as journalists, many viewed bloggers as people who behaved the way John Clayton does in this ESPN Sports Center advertisement:

Politicians, of course, are far more serious individuals. They serve on select committees, create laws, and determine the course the nation will take. Unless, of course, one happens to be a Republican House member who advises Speaker John Boehner how to proceed on the debt ceiling. Then one can be a member of the Jedi Council:

One example of where the fissure line is: A letter calling on leadership to use the CR to defund Obamacare authored by Representative Mark Meadows split the “Jedi Council,” a secretive group of top conservatives helping Boehner sketch a debt-ceiling strategy. Jim Jordan and Steve Scalise signed the letter, while Paul Ryan, Tom Price, and Jeb Hensarling did not.

The group is as secretive as any collection of pop culture enthusiasts who take their obsession one step too far:

The House’s Jedi Council is unusually secretive. No aides are permitted to attend their meetings. At their June 13 meeting, they decided not to give interviews about the group, amid concerns that doing so could interfere with delicate negotiations, after which they did not provide any assistance for this article. Ryan’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the topic at all. In its first two years, almost no one knew the group existed, and nobody could identify anything it had done. In the last Congress, both Hensarling and Price were part of the House leadership team, and Jordan was RSC chairman; their formal positions of power may have helped obscure any coordination among them. 

The lawmaker Jedi wannabes also seem to have a fondness for cosplay:

If the fact that the five lawmakers named their group after a piece of Star Wars trivia doesn’t convince you they are nerds, you may be interested to learn that they once posed for a photograph wielding toy lightsabers.

I seriously wish this were a joke, but the fact that people setting our nation's policy are taking their lead from movie characters who were ultimately defeated and had their beloved Republic turned into an evil empire is somehow disconcerting, especially since some Jedi Council members hastened the Republic's demise by ignoring the central issues facing the Republic. I won't go into the comparisons between corporate cronyism and the Commerce Guild.

Granted, Obi Wan and Yoda went into exile and were able to assist rebels who ultimately defeated Palpatine and Darth Vader. Unfortunately, I don't see any congressperson with Obi Wan's wisdom. Vader would likely observe, "The Force is weak in these ones." As for one of them approaching the level of Yoda, I believe the real Jedi master would say, "Like Yoda none of you are."

As a blogger who has a real job and doesn't live in his Mom's basement, I have only one thing to say the lawmakers who seem to have confused fiction with reality: Grow up, do your jobs, and leave the cosplay to those who know they're doing.

The Problem That Treating Grammar As A Science May Soon Cause Me

The Oklahoma legislature is considering a bill that will prevent a student "in any public school or institution" from being "penalized in any way because the student may subscribe to a particular position on scientific theories."

I'm sure the intent of the bill is to allow students to express religious beliefs in science class. If some Oklahoma young'un wants to contend that the earth is only 6,000 years old, the biology teacher who is discussing evolution cannot penalize the student.

I'm not sure if Gus Blackwell, the bill's author has thought through the ramifications of the bill's language. Since some contend that grammar is science, that same Oklahoma young'un could turn in poorly written papers because grammar is a scientific theory with which she or he disagrees. The young'un may even try to use French sentence structure and Spanish vocabulary in an English class.

Of course, one could always contend that Yoda provided the only way to communicate. Overreach the problem frequently is.

When Pop Culture And World Finance Meet

I don't know enough about world economics to even think about commenting seriously.  Blogging, of course, means one frequently comments with insufficient information. The world seems fixated on Greece, Italy, and Spain.  This BBC article illustrates that the Barclay's situation may cause Britain major economic woes:

The chairman resigns to save the CEO. The CEO makes a public threat to drag the central bank into the mire. And the previous government. And the Treasury.

Next morning, the CEO resigns and the chairman re-installs himself to "oversee transition". The police, who said they could not prosecute, now say they might.

You have just seen the British establishment operating at a level of panic and indecision on a par with the Norway disaster in 1940. And it is not over.

These are people whose job is to speak to each other on a daily basis. But trust is shattered at the very top of the financial system.

Consider this: Barclays is the biggest lender to small and medium-sized businesses in Britain.

Right now its regional offices will be making decisions that can kill or cure the companies that form the backbone of the UK economy.

I suppose the first thing that should have come to my mind is Lehman Brothers or one of the big American banks that helped begin the Great Recession.  Something about that last paragraph, however, reminded me about this exchange from Star Wars: A New Hope, the original Star Wars movie.

Governor Tarkin: The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I have just received word from Coruscant that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away forever.

General Tagge: But that's impossible! How will the Emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy? 

Governor Tarkin: The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.

Fear? Got that all over the world.
Regional leaders in charge of the empire? Got that.
What's left?

This Just Had To Be Shared

The subtitles are very useful.