Now we know he’s a douchebag. He’s a smart douchebag, but he doesn’t get it at some deep level inaccessible to the rest of us. He’s been slouching toward douchebaggery for a while, but with the Secretary Stunt, he’s finally arrived.

In case you missed this, Buffett famously bitched a while ago that his secretary pays a higher marginal tax rate than he does. Then he pimped her out to Obama for the State of the Union address. She sat next to Michelle Antoinette, like a Muppet, was used as a prop.

The question that I was asking when I saw her sitting there with the hand of the Democrat Party up her butt, was, how much is her salary?

Either she’s in the 1% or Warren Buffett is a cheap bastard. And this is the poster child for class warfare?

A couple of days later, other people started asking how much does Warren Buffett pay his secretary, and Warren the Wonderful declared such impertinence out of bounds.

This completes Buffett’s transformation into the Gollum of Omaha. Ok, maybe that’s too harsh. He’s Obama’s Little Bitch, at least. That’s completely accurate.

Warren Buffett and Mitt Romney have this in common: when asked pertinent questions about their wealth and how that squares with their ambitions to rule the rest of us, they’re flummoxed. Buffett recently got asked why he didn’t donate more to the US Treasury and he was as nonplussed as Romney when he got asked about hiding his tax returns.

People crawled up Romney’s ass and asked what kind of incompetent campaign staff does he have that he was caught flat-footed on such an obvious issue. Perhaps we should also ask Warren Buffett’s secretary why she didn’t prep her boss.

Buffett and Romney live in a world of privilege that the rest of us imagine but don’t imagine correctly. They responded to those questions about their wealth without help from their minions because their minions were afraid to help them. They were on their own, for the first time in a long time. And they fucked up. Like real human beings.

Buffett and Romney have worked hard, worked smart and have been lucky. The lucky factor is why so many people resent the ultra-rich. Refusing to work hard, much less work smart, is why I resent the poor.

Anyhow, here’s why Warren Buffett is a douchebag, in bullet points:

• He started this. He’s the one who complained for political gain that his secretary pays a higher marginal federal income tax rate than he does.
• He threw retirees and other middle class investors under the bus. Buffett was arguing that you should pay as much on capital gains as on ordinary income. He’s too much of a douchebag to admit it, but what he was saying is, If you’ve spent a lifetime working and saving and investing, the government should swoop in and tax you in your old age like you’re still in the workforce.
• Buffett refused to donate ANYTHING to the Treasury when asked about it. If anyone can afford it, he can. He said he’d do it if everyone else would, a condition he knows won’t be fulfilled. When caught unguarded with a plebian question about his wealth, Warren ain’t that smart. Like Romney.
• I promise you, his secretary is in the 1%. Buffett is such an arrogant asshole that he thought nobody would dare to ask how much she gets paid. He put her out there as the exemplar of the working poor. Now he is scared shitless that we’re going to find out that she makes half a million a year.

Anyhow, hero takes a fall.

Nice job, Warren. You’re about to take a Joe Paterno fall. Die or shut up. I don’t care which.

for me it was this:

I call on every State to require that all students stay in high school until  they graduate or turn eighteen.

I doubt Bill Clinton ever tried to get Hillary in a threesome with Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers or Monica Lewinsky.

Newt’s now getting painted as sleazy for asking. Newt is sleazy for taking money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Newt’s actually kind of honorable, compared to Clinton. Newt at least gave his wife a heads-up.

I’m not saying Newt’s ex-wife is lying. Just that she’s a crazy cunt.

In a country where liberal dogma is that anything goes sexually between “consenting adults” why is this even a news story, especially now?

Because most Americans, especially evangelicals, are a lot more creeped out by the idea of “open marriage” than they are by traditional cheating. There’s nothing Newt can say. If he appeals to “consenting adults” he makes it worse. If he says he regrets it, that opens him up to even more salacious questions.

It’s not fair, but I hope this sinks him. Let’s get on with the Romney vs Not-Romney referendum. If Newt really cared about a conservative getting the Republican nomination, he’d already have withdrawn and thrown his support to Santorum.

Not because he’s not a good human being. I have no personal knowledge whether he is a good human being or not, though I suspect he is. He’s a joke because he said something politically incorrect, no, worse–he dared, as a politician, to make a philosophical argument in public. And the yahoos of the gay, leftist, feminist brigades hooted him down because they didn’t really want to argue with him. They recognized, didn’t admit, they couldn’t compete.

I could clean Santorum’s clock in a debate about this stuff, arguing the gay side. And I don’t even care about these gay family issues. The people who do care have become so self-righteous and shrill that they don’t bother to think about it anymore. They’re into shouting down opponents, not out-arguing them.

The Ivy League anti-hate yahoos who hate Santorum know that they’re not in his league, no matter how much they owe in student loans.

Buncha’ Ivy League faggots.

Oh, saying faggot is offensive? But faggots trying to get everyone to say “santorum”  as the word for the mix of lube and feces that comes out of a faggot’s butt after a happy ending isn’t offensive?

Seriously, gay people, I know a lot of you, love some of you, and I’m fucking sick of you.

Every one of the others has beclowned themselves, irredeemably, especially that sack of shit Newt Gingrich. Newt should have that always appended to his name: Newt Gingrich, B.S., SoS.

Here’s what you say to anyone still charmed by the eye of Newt: What he did with Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac isn’t just wrong, it’s repulsive. It’s John Edwards repulsive. Barney Frank gay pimping and housing pimping repulsive. If you can’t give up your thrall to Newt, then shut up about Democrats who cling desperately to their Obama. Newt is the Gollum of the Republicans. If you, as a conservative, still support Newt, you are what’s wrong with this country. You’re cheering for a sports team, not acting like an intelligent citizen.

I’m starting to realize that having too many good arguments is a handicap. You just need one devastating argument, on any issue. Focus on that, ignore the rest. With liberals who are not scared about the deficits, I just say, Do you speak Excel? Are you completely innumerate? Of course, they don’t speak Excel and they are completely innumerate, so it shuts them up.

I could talk a lot more about Newt’s horrible behavior this year, but screw it. If you don’t get that Newt’s a cocksucker from the above, the rest won’t convince you. I hope Newt comes home and blacks your eye, you stupid bitch who just won’t listen.

Conservative and libertarian ideologues hate Mitt. Mostly because they think that character is all about agreeing with them. Let’s get clear: From everything we know, Mitt has character and competence. Everyone, even the Romney haters, would be surprised to find out if it comes out that he’s betrayed his family.  Romney’s started, run and fixed big organizations.

Mitt has fuckbursts.

I have a friend at work who is all calm cool and collected most of the time, but when he gets frustrated, every sentence has some form of the word fuck in it more than any other word.

When Mitt gets set back on his heels and surprised, his bursts of fucking honesty are, every time I’ve seen them, great. He talks about Envy like he’s got an Ayn Rand book at his bedside. He talks about firing people who need to be fired. He defends capitalism, and does it in ways that indicate he gets it. Unguarded Mitt rocks.

No, Mitt ain’t going to stop the crackup of the USA. Nobody can. But he’ll delay it a little and then figure out what next to do.

Competence and organizational expertise in a framework where you have to get people to voluntarily agree with you aren’t value-free virtues. It takes character and it takes a lot of other things. Things Obama obviously lacks. Mitt is not a horrible weasel. Look at his life.

We could do better than Mitt Romney. Uh, no, we can’t.

That’s one of Newt Gingrich’s biggest tropes.

Fuck Newt. He’s a charming liar and a hypocrite and a leech and an intellectual dilettante on the world that works while he lives in the world of leeches.

He takes millions from the GSAs. And claims it was to wag his finger at them. At the tune of $30K/hour. I wish my finger worked so well.

Newt Gingrich. Obama, but uglier. Barack, Gingrich but dumber.

No, she’s deeply stupid. She can barely read. And she reads whatever is put in front of her.

Not very well. So, what happened, who was on her staff, that people ever thought this airhead ever had thoughts?

I can tell you one thing: that staffer has moved on.

Let’s do roll call:

• Michelle Bachmann. Came out against HPV vaccinations, signed on to the Jenny McCarthy crazy train.
• Herman Cain. I supported him through the sexual harrassment allegations up till the last one. His wife didn’t know what he was doing on that one. Baba Wawa got Cain to say that he thinks he’s qualified to be Secretary of Defense. He’s obviously just another egomaniac wannabe. Seriously, fuck you Herman. You are the worst disappointment of this disappointing pack. You’re a jackass, and you made me hope we didn’t have just another jackass in the race, so I really hate you. You don’t understand “right of return” and you think you should head the government agency that should most understand what’s going on in not-our-country-istan? Take your ego, shove it up your ass, and tell your wife next time you’re paying some bitch’s bills. You SUCK.  There are singular important facts that trump everything else. YOU DIDN’T TELL YOUR WIFE YOU WERE PAYING THAT BITCH MONEY. It doesn’t matter whether you fucked that bitch, YOU DIDN’T TELL YOUR WIFE. You’re worse than Bill Clinton. The Clintons never pretended that they didn’t wink wink nudge nudge. HermanCainIsAHorribleHumanBeing. Someone should register that domain before I do. Seriously, Herman, you douchebag, if you’re not getting laid by that bitch what the hell are you doing with her? I’m asking on behalf of your wife. You pretend asshole.
• Ron Paul. He’s a nice guy. Better than that, he’s inflexibly principled. I love the people in Ron Paul’s district for re-electing him time after time, more than I love Ron Paul. He has the moral luxury of not being in charge of much. At his level, he pushes people in the right direction. Were he suddenly in charge of everything, catastrophe.
• Rick Santorum. What can you say about this pack of also-rans when Santorum is the most intellectually serious of them? He’s not that serious. But he’s better than they are.  No, he can’t get elected, but at least he’s not embarrassing himself.
• Newt. He’s a whore. The money that he made taking it up the butt from Freddie Mac should have cooked him. There’s no excuse, no justification, no way to atone for that. All it proves is that conservatives should shut the fuck up about how liberals justified Clinton’s sins. Newt is way worse. If you’re a conservative supporting Newt, you’re a whore-monger.
• Mitt. Until this week, when Mitt first felt threatened by the ABR (Anybody But Romney) brigade, he seemed to be the adult in the room. His pissiness at the first sign his castle might not be impregnable tells us that he is not the adult in the room. He’s a mud-wrestling little bitch like the rest of them.
• Gary Johnson. I’d hit that. Too bad nobody else will.

Paul Ryan refused to run. Chris Christie refused to run. Every Republican who’s not a joke refused to run this year. What are they thinking?

I don’t like him anymore and I really can’t stand his Michelle Antoinette wife.

Nobody wants to say out loud they don’t like rich black people. I’ll say it.

I don’t give a flying shit that they’re black or not. They’re privileged, pretty political insiders who have played the system using race politics and being willing pawns to climb to the top.

The Obamas suck.

This doesn’t mean I’m a crackpot. A crackpot is someone who manipulates all small talk and social occasions into opportunities to practice their crackpottery.

A crackpot notion is just an opinion or practice you are fervent about that makes perfectly nice people blink in surprise when you present it to them. They feel nonplussed and usually try to humor you.

The difference between a crackpot notion and being a crackpot is the difference between an opinion and an identity. For example:

My mother is a full-blown terminal crackpot. She believes in any and all quackery: reflexology, homeopathy, putting tapwater in jars and wrapping mylar colored filters around it to create medicines based on color. She even had a machine, perhaps still has it, that she puts a Polaroid picture of someone into one side of it and an aspirin in the other side of it, and that cures a headache. She also would put a photo and laxative in it to try to punish neighborhood teenagers. She is interested in nothing but her crackpottery.

No matter what you serve for dinner, something will make her nauseuous, allergic or the beets will have a bad aura. If your kid has the sniffles, she’ll yank out her homeopathic Materia Medica and start interrogating you about your kid’s left nostril snot texture so she can decide whether to dose your brat with heparus sulphurus or malleus maleficarum.  And yes, whether there’s more snot in the left or right nostril is a diagnostic indication. She always carries her travel kit of 200 different vials of sugar pills labeled with hocus pocus homeopathic names.

There is no chance that any interaction you have with my mother will not end up with you dumped into her crackpotty.

Now that we’re clear that I am not my mother, here’s my crackpot notion:

Resolved: The Christmas gift-giving tradition is pernicious and should be abandoned. Christmas gifts are bad for you, emotionally, ethically, societally and economically. Whether ’tis better to give or receive–these are distinctions without a difference when it comes to Christmas gifts. It all sucks. So just stop. Every Christmas gift you give or receive diminishes you as a human being, corrupts your children into little stuff-vampires, worsens your relationships with everyone and distorts the economy.

As crackpot notions go, this one isn’t that far outside the pale, since 90% of men agree with me, secretly, silently, cravenly.

I will be elaborating on this crackpot notion in a series of posts where I will try to avoid the F-word and the C-word and the S-word and all the other words that are now known by their Sesame Street names. This will be Print-friendly.