Daniels 2012: Who's Selling Rope To Whom?

GREETINGS from the Land of the Doughnut Burger, which, in case you've been living under a rock, is the Taste Sensation That's Sweeping the Indiana State Fair, and God Knows It Needs Sweeping. That's David Letterman's line, and if I recall correctly, the Indiana State Fair was what inspired it in the first place. Here's the recipe:

1. Find a cow which died of something.

2. Grind up all the parts no one would eat if they were recognizable.

3. Form into patties. Fry if there's time.

4. Serve, replacing the traditional bun with Krispy Kreme™ doughnuts, which, so far as I can tell, are just like real doughnuts, except in place of a doughnut fryer they use Petrie dishes.

Fellow connoisseurs of the Signs of the Apocalypse will recognize this as just another false positive, like American Idol, ice cream for dogs, and kudzu; what appears promising at first turns out to be neither Providential nor demonic, in the cosmic sense at least, but merely another example of how you can't possibly imagine what lows somebody out there will sink to to make a nickel. It turns out that there's a family in Corydon--Indiana's first state capital, which has been trying to make the rest of the state pay for moving it ever since--which spends its non-carny hours dreaming this shit up, then test-marketing it all over the South, where, if anyone with a triple-digit IQ likes the stuff they scrap it and start over. Doughnut Burger tested well in Florida, they say. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the prosecution rests.

There's a relative selling deep-fried butter two stalls--the term is fortuitous--down.

Now, I live in Indiana, so if I actually cared what other people eat I'd've blown my brains out years ago. The key piece of information here is that these people make their living thinking up ever more stupid-sounding shit for people to eat, and that a big portion of the income-generating potential is that it's guaranteed to get prominent space on all local news venues. (The Racist Beacon elicited "diner" responses; one Prairie gourmand noted that "the sweetness of the doughnut and the saltiness of the meat" equalled culinary triumph.)

Which brings us to Mitch Daniels, a man who has simultaneously pretended to celebrate the sham-folkway of fried abomination on a bun as Authentically Hoosier and pretended to spend tax money out of concern for our collective health. Okay, first it brings us to that same local media, which yesterday treated Daniels' appearance on FOX News Sunday as a sort of combination Mellencamp ticket announcement and Rupert from Survivor sighting, which is to say they treated it like news that Rob Reiner was in town, or that KISS was playing the Fair, or the remains of Jack Nicholson were going to be propped up at the start of the 500 holding a green flag. Which is to say, just combine the artificial smile/grimace of the average beauty queen fourth-runner-up with the Jaycee hucksterism of the second largest car dealer in a small town, and you're in the ballpark. Channel 8, though, also brought on Jim "The Dean (Broder) of Local Political Reporters" Shella to "analyze" Daniels' comments, and he concluded that The Brain was actually trying to gain leverage "to effect the changes he wants to bring to Indiana". This is local Republican-speak for "elect a Republican majority in the House", and thereby grease the skids under the rug Daniels needs to yank from under state expenditures in order to preserve his so-called Budget Surplus for 2012; meaning either that The Dean of Local Political Reporters is the one guy in the state who hasn't caught on to Daniels Presidential campaign, or he's the one guy who thinks it can still be finessed past voters who remember how Daniels was promising not to run as recently as November 2008.

Anyway, just for the record, let's note that we are now at the "I have no plans to visit Iowa or New Hampshire, as I'm focusing on the challenges facing Indiana" portion of the Daniels Kabuki, emphasis mine, and that the Randian Hoodoo--as well as the devout Christianity he suddenly discovered just after his "benign neglect of social issues" comment in his last big non-campaign, non-Presidential interview threatened to scuttle him before he left the cossets of Coytown Bay--is morphing into full-on Teabaggerism. Mitch got some attention among the non-Hoosier press for calling deficit spending "literal child abuse", but for me the real treat was this 'un:

"I truly believe for the first time in my life, our nation in facing challenges that threaten the survival of America as we know it."

Princeton '71, ladies and gentlemen. Georgetown Law.

The "child abuse" business was--wait for it--in response to a question about social programs. Funny, ain't it, how the future is always served by, say, $44 billion (in 1997 dollars) worth of B-2 bombers with nowhere to go, and eleven $4.5 billion each (construction cost, 2000 dollars) with three $9 billion (2009 dollars, exclusive of development costs) Ford class improvements on the way? The Future'll greet us as liberators, I suppose, provided we live that long, which we won't if Mitch Daniels gets his hands on national healthcare and Social Security.