Sammy Herald Pipes As Paid

Dear Dr. Bones,

¡Happy Cathedral Murder Day, Señor Doctor! Eight hundred and twenty-two years, and the button is still hot.

Speaking of which,

Bring on the noise By Boston Herald Editorial Staff Thursday, December 29, 2011 Casino gambling is perhaps the ultimate hot button issue (...) Democracy is a messy business. But messy isn’t necessarily bad. And it beats rule by the few and the loud.

So. It is Specuvestment-Trumps-Democracy time again at Louisedayhicksville.

The editorial slaves over to the The LDHV Herald can not, naturally, injure their Funders’ cause by expressin’ the basic point like that, so instead we get "bring on the noise" an’ "the vote wasn’t bindin’" an’ "rather meaningless" an’ "squeaky wheels." Allow me to praise the latter insight particularly, reflecting strictly to myself how melodious the squeakin’s of Vox Pop sound to wingnut ear when they emerges from funder-compliant wads of Tee Putty.

As for ¿What Next?, Dollerica would not be Dollerica if ‘Mister’ Kraft an’ the Freelord of Wynn just threw in their hand at once. No doubt Bigmanaged Democracy is still only gettin’ started. The _Herald_ angels reveal themselves as but "small people," I fear, when they suggest that their freelordships should just meet with those "annoyed and ... sensitive selectmen" alone. Alone in a dark alley, it sounds like.

The Sammy Scabs fresh out of J-school an’ their circumambient frathouse babes obviously don’t have much idea how the Ebenezer Scrooges of Dollerica bigmanage. But then, neither does the Chairman of the Annoyed and Sensitive, who used a MacL@@han-Tube interview to suggest, by ostentatious and preëmptive refusal, that maybe if the gamester corporations were to make him a Krafty Wynner too.

Most important of all, it looks as if journalistic Louisedayhicksville has broken with the whole Norman Rockwell picture-postcard tradition. That old-fashioned New Iceland town meeting is no longer a treasured heirloom, little Sammy Scab has unmasked it for us as "rule by the few and the loud."

Now of course there is probably something to that: I betcha Increase Mather was pretty good at shouting othervolks down when they required downshouting. Practice every neosabbath morning for fifty or sixty years must have been marvelous preparation to be not only prescriptively Good and Great but also *¡LOUD!*.

Happy days.

_¿Bist du Zycher?_

Dear Dr. Bones,

A casual look at this latest Kiddie-Conner wannabe had me primed to go off about how the DFPj, Dark Forces of Pajamatarianism, scarcely need him, unless, of course, Her-Son-the-Millionaire [1] has decided to throw in the moneybag -- the one with ‘PJM’ stenciled on it in fiat currency by the white hand of Freelady Simon Pajama herself. Or so I have been told.

Be that as it ain’t, what we have here, I presume , is basically a literary question. Or ‘neoliterary’ for those who prefer an eleven-foot pole. Pontificatin’ at selfservative kiddies about the quack profession exclusively is not a product for which the demand is infinite, though perhaps pious supplysiders should not attend to so low an’ almost heretical a consideration.

But I have reconsidered, and would now maintain that Freelord Zycher is not only a different barrel of fish from Master $onn¥, but a species of fish better adapted to the kiddiecon market. The key to it is rather well hidden, however, so I did not at once perceive that the whole scribble revolves around the first sentences of the third paragraphette above the freelordly bottomline, namely,

Recent research from the Pacific Research Institute examined the likely effects of these CER implications for R&D investment in new and improved pharmaceuticals and devices and equipment. Using (_sic_) data from the National Science Foundation and other sources, R&D investment would be reduced by about $10 billion per year over the period 2014 through 2025, or about 10-12 percent.

Despite that (really heroically) dangled participle, I fear that his freelordship scribbles Americanoe prose against the grain in a way that Wally Wombschool an’ Cindy from Wasilla will find too off-puttin’ to make it all the way down to the paydirt, rememberin’ at every step of their descent that CER signifies "comparative effective review" an’ has nothin’ at all to do with the Quest for the Higgs Boson. An’ even if they do arrive, an’ sorta remember what his freelordship is natterin’ on an’ on ’bout, the kiddies might easily miss that _fabula de se narratur_.

In a way, the freelordly boo-boo (as I consider it) is just that business you can find in all the for-dummies booklets about avoiding the passive voice. ’Tis a fun case, though, this one, because only if one wanted to rub in the dangle with salt would one take the active formulation to be *Obamacare uses NSF data to reduce R&D investement. Actually, the issue here is not so much who is to be the grammatical subject as who is to be semantic topic. His freelordship leaves out the Prince of Denmark, as it were. Abandoning any attempt to echo the freelordly word choices, I think what it comes to (or should have) is more or less "¡Listen up, kiddies! If we don’t get rid of Obamacare, you will wake up some mornin’ soon to find that your prospects of gettin’ (or just stayin’) rich through specuvestment in the shares of secret-sector medical corporations have been reduced drastically." [2]

Even if Master Wally an’ Mizz Cindy don’t have a lot of spare _sh’qálîm_ lyin’ around in the crevices of their potatoe couches to specuvest just at the moment, as I would guess they probably do not, they should not be left out of such a sentence altogether.

Only at this point, Dr. Bones, did I ask the pet G@@Gle to track down _M. le Baron de Zycher_ a little, and what she came back with shocks me His freelordship ...

... is associated with Benjamin Zycher Economics Associates, Inc. and holds several roles such as President and President. and is located in Agoura Hills, CA.[3]

Well, I suppose one need not necessarily be shocked, for "economic associates" is a shingle that any weasel can hang out. One can still only guess what the weasels actually *do* with their unquality time. It would be outrageous, though, if my instinctive guess was correct an’ his freelordship mostly specuvests with other volks’ money. In that case, it would be inexcusable to elide Master Wally an’ Mizz Cindy an’ all other brokees, present an’ future, actual an’ potential, out of the R&D investment reduction picture.

If, however, BZEA be only yet another whight-wing Tank of Thought, possibly the Madhatter Institute reproducin’ Herself by fission like an amœba, I suppose it would be permissible to discuss medical sector R&D investment reduction in a completely impersonal way. In that case, however, publishin’ ones ideoresearches at Pajama Junction NJ is inappropriate borderin’ on dotty. I mean, ¿Why not Carr and Driver?

Meanwhile, back in the freelordly scribble, notice what comes immediately after the passage I have swiped already:

Based upon the scholarly literature on the benefits of medical innovation, this reduction in the advance of medical technology would impose an expected loss of about 5 million life-years annually, with a conservative economic value of $500 billion, an amount substantially greater than the entire U.S. market for pharmaceuticals and devices and equipment.

I get the impression from that that _M. le baron de Zycher_ does not associate much with the base an’ vile of his freelordship’s own Party. Wally an’ Cindy will probably assume that anybooby who cannot go a hundred words without brandishin’ "scholarly literature" at ’em must be some kind of Lieberal Demoncrat in disguise.

Quight a lot of bad (IMHO) whightist agitprop makes this mistake of supposin’ that Wally an’ Cindy either like bein’ clobbered over their dittopans with footnotes an’ all the Persian apparatus of Tert. Ed. or at least profoundly respect those Kiddiemasters who so clobber. As you know, my own theory is that your typical selfservative kiddie hated School when she had to attend it, an’ to this day still hates anythin’ that very strongly reminds her of that previous condition of serfitude. Any discussion carried on the way _M. le baron_ carries on this one can therefore only be counterproductive for Party an’ AEIdeology, though to be sure it is highly likely to be nothin’ at all, because few kiddicons will get past, say, "... a rigorous evaluation of the impact of different options ..." [3] before switchin’ channels in hopes of somethin’ a little punchier.

Happy days.
--JHM

__
[1] His freelordship’s d.b.a. was, as I recall, "Paul Hsieh," but I don’t think the pet g@@gle arrested quight the whight suspect over here. "A zillion monkeys" somehow lacks that solemn gravity an’ austere sobriety one has come to rever in the Daughters of Virtue & Sons of Wisdom, LLC.

In line with the main argument above, notice that the minions of Simon Pajama do not regard either their old medico or their new pseudo as worthy of mention under the rubric of http://pjmedia.com/columnists/ . I tentatively infer that in YaleoDra™a (Pat. Pend.) there exists a sort of class distinction between Action Persons (_actionis personæ_, members of the neonobility an’ superior neogentry) an’ mere no-’count trailer-trash also-rans like P. X. Hsieh or Benjamin, Freelord Zycher.

(( To digress about the Gang of Fifteen, I am only 50% satisfied with the Simon-Pajamatan discriminations: happy, that is, to see that Don Ricardito de Fernández y Podhòretz qualifies as an Upper, displeased that Th. X. Blumer, the Voice of Greater Cincinnati Pettybiz, did not make the august freelordly cut. As you know, these are my two pet favourite pajamaclads, of far greater interest than the rest of the pack. ))

=
[2] As you see, I deploy a passive verb myself, so obviously I do not condemn a whole Voice mindlessly out of hand. In fact, passivity often helps one get the topic whight by throwing the appropriate noun phrase to the beginning of the clause.

(( "Passivity often helps," by the way, might be sent off to the Active Only Society for an advisory opinion. ))

=
[3] His freelordship is not the only one vernacular-challenged, looks like. in Chicagoland when I was young, rôles were always ‘played’ and never ‘held’. I suppose it is more material than grammatical, though delicious on any terms, to find a Party neocomrade no more than "associated with" a wracket named after precisely himself. Though I suppose it may have been Benjy’s Daddy who founded BZEA. But then again, BZEA may have been founded three months ago, for it appears the _M. le baron_ is no longer with the Madhatterites. At any rate, here is a second _Almanach Neogothique_ in which his freelordship has not the honour to figure.

=
[4] Paragraphette 3, _ad fin._

A Neorural Ride

Dear Dr. Bones,


Mr. Cobbett (dba ‘Porcupine’) would be the ideal fan of ‘Mittens’ Romney, King of Flipflop, if he is really the same guy I knew in the 1790’s as the whightist of whight-guard Federalists. He never gave a Jacobin an even break, Big Pete Porcupine didn’t - not before becomin’ a Jake himself. [1]

Be that as it no doubt ain’t, not raisin’ "revenues just for the fun of it" is only the start of the Triumph of the Quill Porcky’s account of what Mittens did-- or wanted to do--with the swag that he was obliged to steal from the taxpayers is better still:

[He] just sent the dollar amount to the town. He said it was silly for the [S]tate to set up artificial little accounts, and that towns knew what they needed to spend money on - maybe they had a big need in a school, but not for a road project. The town would decide for itself. The towns (and unions) went bananas. The cops were sure the schools would steal ’their money’, the schools were sure the seniors were out to get them, and so on. Some town fathers didn’t want to have to make decisions like that. So the [S]tate quickly drew up a budget reinstating the cubicle walls and redundant accounting, and everybody hugged their chains and whined about how mean the [S]tate was.

Before he went altzheimers altogether, old Ebb Scrooge behaved just like that with the Bad Poor of Dickensville. If it were entirely up to his freelordship, they would get nothing at all, which they richly deserved, but since there are social conventions to be observed if one wants the lower orders admitted close enough to be able to behold and envy, his freelordship would scatter a few guineas amongst the urchins and bootblacks and chimmneysweeps and whatnot, deriving the true OnePercenterly pleasure from their greedy scrambles.

Unfortunately for Mittens, around here the Legislature is answerable, sort of, to the lower orders as well as to the Natural Masters, and so the Brave New Order could not last. Comrade Frank of KA has written a whole book about what the *intermittent* application of Scrooge-Romney-Porcupine managerial techniques leads to. It is called The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Govern. The title may be a little unfair, because our holy Homeland™ has been so long corrupted by liberalism and democracy that their freelordships’ hired-hand pols can never manage to get through Phase Zero of their Thousand Millennium Plan , which phase, very properly, consists of clearin’ the ground [3] an’ evictin’ shiftless tenants, &c. &c. So naturally a hostile like the fiend Frank has no trouble taking cheapshots.

Speaking of whightist Plans, perhaps that should be "Scrooge-Romney-Porcupine-Ryan managerial techniques," for the Smirk of Janesville has notoriously proposed to treat geezers as Uncle Ebb treated street A-rabs. As Mittens (I presume) treated Chelsea or Fall River. From their freelordships’ point of view, to do anythin’ different would not be proper plannin’ at all. OF COURSE, the competent bigmanager starts with budgetin’, and, wherever Charity begins, budgetin’ can only begin at home. Mittens must therefore, all selfishness apart, think about Mittens first, not about urchins or slums or invalids, an’ especially about exactly how many guineas his freelordship has on hand to throw at the mob. [3] That is not quight what whightists understand by "supply-side economics" but it is not far off either.

Now every rule needs a good probative exception. In this case I nominate "If you have to ask in advance what it will cost, you cannot afford it." Individual onepercenterly Scrooges an’ Porcucobbets an’ Romneys an’ siblin’s Koch (&c. &c.) do indeed act like that a lot of the time, inspirin’ awe in the breasts of us fiscal humble. Indeed, the guinea-tossin’ _shtyk_ itself is designed to *look* like spur-of-the-moment, unbudgeted largesse. Well, ever Class has its Class idiots, I daresay, but a kindly Providence has arranged that OnePercenters who really take no thought for tomorrow will find themselves demoted to the Murrayan Underclass (Pat. Pend.) by the day after. ¡An’ serves ’em whight!

So then, "If you have to ask ..." applies only to their freelordships in their personal capacity as consumers. When their Crew is out Wreckin’ in an official or public way, there is no exceptionalism. Or rather, the words of the exception turn up deployed differently: "We cannot afford it, so ¡don’t even ask!"

As usual, it is all even more complicated then that, really. A book could be written about when it pleases, an’ when it displeases, our Natural Masters to be asked. The first Freelord Scrooge hated being asked on the street, obviously; the freelordly guinea toss was a sort of unilateral-preëmptive way of avoiding solicitation from the undeserving. Yet had Oxbridge had come to ScroogeBank with a proposal for "Ebenezer College," her emissaries would have been civilly received, at least, and maybe even gratified more or less as original- intented.

Poor Gov. Mittens actually obtained his "Willardmitt College," sort of, in the form of ‘Romneycare’. Unfortunately only his freelordship’s political enemies get a kick out of rememberin’ exactly who this Willardmitt person was. By Century XXIII or so, it will all be OK, no worse embarrassment to his freelordship’s scions than, say, a Lady Margaret Professorship of Divinity is to the Beaufort clan, but meanwhile . . . .

Meanwhile, it is probably rather important that nobody exactly asked for ‘Romneycare’. My impression, perhaps mistaken, is that Governor Mittens gave us RC largely to show off, to prove that he was the biggest Big Manager of them all, the alone wheeler-dealer an’ olympics-saver who could pull such a trick off, gettin’ quacks an’ shysters an’ insurance corporation freelords an’ even the Demoncrat General Court (¡!) to pull together.

I notice that this is all "supply side" again, though in yet a third distinct sense, the sense in which all my own scribbles are supply-side phænomena, much more fun for me to write than for anybody else to read.

At this point the Muses and you, Dr. Bones, have two General Theories of Mittens before you on the table, Dr. Bones, my own as just expounded and that of Peter, Freelord Porcucobbett, who evidently takes--would like to be able to take--His Excellency for a sort of first draft of the Janesville ’, a voice cryin’ in the wilderness "¡Start by decidin’ how much you’re gonna spend! And then, for porcupine’s sake, ¡¡STICK TO IT!!"

Probably neither of these has ever been present to Mittens himself as a conscious thumbrule, though obviously his freelordship does fancy himself as Big Manager and is also extremely unlikely to reject Porcunomics (let us call it) if there be no more to it than puttin’ everybody in Uncle Sam’s household on a fixed an’ inflexible allowance.

Perhaps we had better have a slice from the horse’s own anatomy. Unveilin’ his RC schemes , Gov. Mittens proclaimed

With the small percentage of uninsured in Massachusetts, we are in a unique position to give all of our citizens quality health insurance. This will not be a government-mandated universal coverage program or a plan that requires new taxes. It will be a market-based reform focused on the creation of affordable insurance plans.

Well. Neither McTrickledown nor Freelord Porcucobbett can make much hay out of that. There is no sign of bloc-grantin’ as panacea. and, as to bigmanagerial showin’ off, his freelordship perversely goes out of the way to suggest how easy, rather than how difficult, the "unique position" of our MA ought to make his proposed trick.

Back to the mother lode (now that I found it, presumably the whightists will pick Don Neutrino de Geewhiz and it will be pretty much useless). ¿How about 12 April 2006, a day that shall live in infamy at Rio Limbaugh?

Former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson commended Governor Romney for signing what Thompson termed “groundbreaking legislation to provide health coverage to all Massachusetts families. Massachusetts is showing us a better way, one I hope policy makers in Statehouses and Congress will follow to build a healthier and stronger America,” said Thompson, a former Republican governor of Wisconsin.

¡Oops! ¡Not the whight passage at all! What I meant to swipe was

An achievement like this comes around once in a generation, and it proves that government can work when people of both parties reach across the aisle for the common good. Today, Massachusetts is leading the way with health insurance for everyone, without a government takeover and without raising taxes. (...) This would not have been possible without the courageous work of Senate President Travaglini, Speaker DiMasi, providers, insurers, consumer groups and all the other industry stakeholders who recognized an opportunity to do something historic.

That’s more like it. His Excellency did not lay undue stress on who it was that knocked all those heads of an industry stakeholder together until ‘Romneycare’ was realized, yet ’tis clear enough what is goin’ on, I think.

Again, no hint of bloc-grantin’.

Freelord Porcucobbett may object, however, with a certain degree of fairembalance, that in one way Gov. Mittens really did make it easy for himself: this is nothing particularly to do with the Commonwealth’s "unique posirion," but rather with the fact that the RC scheme faintly smells of Ponzi to the sensitive political nostril. In particular, that "without raising taxes" is distinctly a case of whistling as one passes the graveyard. Governor Patrick, and most other loyal supporters of ‘Romneycare’, talk nowadays as if making RC financially viable had been specifically discussed and then by agreement postponed to some future rainy day. Whereas I strongly suspect that not talking about it at all was _sine quâ non_.

To refine my own theory in that light, I put it to you, sir, that Mittens must especially fancy himself as a personnel bigmanager rather than as a CFO. . His freelordship got all the ‘stakeholders’ to agree, which is miracle enough in itself and does not require a fool-proof perpetual endowment as well.

Republicanines bein’ what they are--norquisted, that is, into so many pretzels--to say "without raising taxes" was required absolutely of an Otherparty freelord settin’ out to become POTUS. Accordin’ly, Mittens said it. And perhaps we may leave it at that.

Happy days.
--JHM

___
[1] His freelordship solicits bein’ taken notice of like this, it seems to me, for that "obedient servant" bologna on the freelordly bottomline can only go with the Cobbett _shtyk_.

=

[2] ’Tis s a little *more* than fair, though, that Frank did not shudder-quote either ‘conservatives’ or ‘govern’. "Almost superhuman restraint," I calls it.

=

[3] The student may insert her own joke at this point about extemporaneous $10,000 specuvestments.

Everybody in the Tank for Lizzie

Dear Dr. Bones,

Well entanked are the mainstream Blue Blazers, that is, who piously account St. Elisabeth of Warrenbuffet ‘strong’ with the particular cerulæan species of strength which their Blueships just happen to like best themselves. One might uncharitably, but not, I think, inaccurately, speak of the ’GBH gentry’s _Kraft-durch-Geistesfundament_ approach to ungrounded collective self-esteem.

H*rv*rd has much to answer for, but that is another story. At the moment we may prescind from root causes and go mostly for the pragmatic capillaries, meaning the "Karl an’ Lizzie Show," another product from roughly the same wunnerful volks who gave us Harry an’ Louise. As you know, I have my doubts about _le ouarrenbuffetisme en Amérique_, yet Her Beatitude undoubtedly is well-advised to overlook poor Sen. Fratboy and go straight for rich Karl, Firstlord Rove. I mean, ¿Why fool around? Take out Edgar Bergen, and the New McCarthyism will instantly become a used-truck joke rather than a menace.

His firstlordship is no contemptible opponent, however. Comrade Charley, who most likely has not been on the MBTA in thirteen years going on thirty, speaks of "preposterous Rovery." Not very respectful, is that, of his firstlordship’s exalted rank an’ station. [1] More important, however, is that jesting Charley may underestimate the freelordly grasp of political strategy and operations [2] and tactics.

With this we arrive at our _droitisme du jour_, which, like a great deal of what appears on the op-ed pages of _The Wall Street Jingo_, is thoroughly Rovan in its substance, an’ likely Rove-inspired, in the sense of bein’ a demonstrable consequenc of his firstlordship’s Master Plan

POLITICAL DIARY DECEMBER 10, 2011 Scott Brown’s Strategy The Massachusetts senator faces a tough re-election challenge from Elizabeth Warren. By ALLYSIA FINLEY This week Senate Republicans blocked President Obama’s nomination of former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Only two Republicans broke ranks -- Olympia Snowe of Maine and Scott Brown of Massachusetts -- and both senators are up for re-election next year. Ms. Snowe should win handily if she isn’t toppled by a primary challenger. Mr. Brown’s re-election prospects, by contrast, are shakier. Two new polls show the GOP freshman trailing Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor who helped establish the CFPB and is expected to be the Democratic nominee. The University of Massachusetts-Amherst gives Ms. Warren a four-point lead and a University of Massachusetts-Lowell/Boston Herald poll has her up by seven points. Three months ago, most polls showed Mr. Brown slightly ahead. The senator’s approval rating has also fallen by eight points to 45%, though his favorables are still in positive territory and exceed Ms. Warren’s. While the poll results may be disconcerting for Mr. Brown and Senate Republicans, they’re not unexpected. Ms. Warren’s campaign has spent $1.5 million on an ad that portrays her as a defender of the middle class. And the League of Conservation Voters has dumped $2 million on spots that tar Mr. Brown as a Washington insider. The real surprise is that Mr. Brown still leads Ms. Warren, 53-37, with independents. Because Republicans constitute less than 15% of the Massachusetts electorate, Mr. Brown will probably have to win more than two-thirds of the independent vote and probably pick up some Democrats as well. [3] Mr. Brown might feel the need to bolster his credentials as an independent thinker by voting with Democrats on some issues. These occasional defections may irritate Republicans, but they’d do well to ask themselves if they’d rather have a Scott Brown in that seat who votes with them 90% of the time -- or an Elizabeth Warren.

Her freeladyship does not spell out that the notorious ratfinkess Snowe of ME did not actually vote for Comrade Cordray’s confirmation, she only barked ‘Present’. It is a little surprising to me, by the way, that Senator Fratboy did not do the same. Charley-on-the-Great Blue Hill could claim with some plausibility that Fratboy’s handlers an’ Funders must be gettin’ really scared.

I draw your attention to her freeladyship’s "real surprise ... that Mr. Brown still leads Ms. Warren." I incline to think that is disingenuous, but would like your opinion since my own is wobbly. Of course one presumes that no Jingo seriously believes that money cannot buy elections, and equally it will be a problem for Freedame Finley that the money she speaks of has been spent by the forces of unwhighteousness, who presumably ought not to be able to pull off a trick ideally reserved to the Jingo Class.

The neocomradology hereabouts gets complicated, however: naturally the WSJ freedame does not trouble us with any utterly irrelevant information about how much has been spent in the path of Fratboy’s reëlection. Pretty plainly the _Jingo_ consumer is bein’ solicited to wallow briefly in selfpity that $3,500,000.00 can have been deployed on behalf of manifest unwhighteousness. The wallowin’ is easier if one tosses in a little _suggestio falsi_ to the effect that poor Fratboy has hardly anythin’ to spend except maybe a small mark-up on those baseball bats over to his e-store. [4]





___
[1] The ’GBH gentry are in much the same pickle, rank-and-stationwise, as were the Airstrip One Republicans of 1641-1660. Always in danger, I mean, of inadvertently giving their own tenants and clients unfortunate notions along Col. Rainsborough’s lines.

With Her Beatitude, to be sure, anything of the rabble-rousing "poorest she that is in Massachusetts " sort would indeed be an inadvertance, for of course most of our poor [s]he’s cannot afford to specuvest in anything classier than lottery tickets. (Plus now maybe slot machines: "¡Thank you, Governor Paddy!") To offer them "consumer protection" againt "Wall Street" is not merely the proverbial refrigerators for Esquimaux, it is velvet gloves and carpet slippers for quadruple amputees. So to speak.

=

[2] ¿Would you happen to know, O Bones, exactly what this "operational level" that with-it violence pros always stick in between the strategy and the their tactics nowadays actually amounts to? I am happy enough to pick it up like a jackdaw and throw it at anybooby who seems to need thrown at, but I would not positively object to knowing what I am doing.

=

[3] The Party neocomradess estimates her ideobuddies in MA at fifteen percent, which is probably optimistic fudge to some extent. Until proved otherwise, therefore, I shall continue to subtract four points and speak of ‘ElevenPercenters’, opposed, naturally, to us fiends of "The Eighty-Nine Percent."

=

[4] Ye Olde Fratboy Paraphernalia Shoppe is a scribbleworthy topic in itself. Indeed, I am thinking of an epic poem . . . .

Meanwhile, and confined to prose, I guess that the Funders of Fratboy insisted that Master Scott have a storefront lest the "small people" fail to take him seriously, solicitationwise. They don’t need their smallies to actually buy anythin’, they only (as I conjecture) want’em to feel at home on the website

On the other hand, if you would kindly click here , Dr. Bones, you may discover exactly what mark-up the Fratboy Funders have decided on. Not to give away the ending and spoil your own fun and your mouse’s, I shall say no more here than that they could in theory rake in a significant number of _sh'qálîm_. ASSUMIN’, that is, that any significant number of Fratboy groupies crave to possess a "personally autographed" whight wingbat.

(( It would be fun to think of gear that Her Beatitude might countermarket with -- granny glasses, or, if clubs be trumps, a rolling pin , or ¿how about . . . ?

(( ¡Alas!, there will be nothing of the sort. Her Beatitude is out for a rather more upmarket market niche, a better slice of smallies who want their steak so bad they can dispense with the sizzle. ))

Knows from Newswhere : "Patrick Administration Erased Romney Era Emails"

Dear Dr. Bones,

Naturally, the _Globe_ of Gotham lost this keyboard’s custom when it gated their community recently. Anybooby can see that that is the way we are headed, yet there is no need to rush unseemly into the Brave New Decline.

Anyway, an out-of-commonwealth perspective remains available gratis from the Whight Guard volks over to here . That crew manage to make the Baní Sulzberger look like locals most of the times, so profound is their internal emigration, but that doesn’t matter, I suppose, when the guardists are only reprintin’ stuff fetched from Manhattan. As follows:

According to the _Boston Globe_, the Deval Patrick administration inadvertently erased thousands of Romney Administration emails. "That includes at least four of Romney’s top Cabinet officials. Thirty days after they left office, their e-mails were automatically purged from the state’s central computers, wiping out records of decisions on an array of sensitive topics, from health care to raising state revenues. Romney Cabinet secretaries said in interviews that they were never told by administration or state technology officials that they needed to take any steps to protect their e-mails. "No one came over to me and said, ’Do this, do this, do this, do this,’’’ said Tim Murphy, who as secretary of Health and Human Services helped formulate the state’s landmark health care law. "I just turned my computer off and went home. That’s the end of it.’’ There goes that line of attack by the Democrats. For it was they who did the erasing.

Neocomrade R. X. Eno, Freelord Redmass in the peerage of Foxcuckooland, is author of the twistatorial frame here. His freelordship has evidently not much acquaintance with Comp. Sci., for of course if "automatically purged" be accurate, the true perps must be the installers and configurators of the programme, who, in the case at hand, must be the agents of Republicanines if not themselves Party neocomrades.

His freelordship elegantly, an’ quight unanswerably, says not a word about those amazin’ hard disk drives that automatically bought and disconnected themselves, and then rode off into the sunset with ‘Mittens’. Freelord Redmass must know about them, for the very same _Globe_ scribble [1] informs us that

[A]ides in Romney’s executive office also took the unusual step of buying individual desktop computer hard drives and taking them home, removing a large volume of material relating to Romney’s deliberations. That was not done by executive office aides for Swift and Cellucci (...) Reuters [2] news agency reported this week that breaking an office computer lease by using the individual hard drives cost state taxpayers $100,000 . . . .

Especially worth hushin' up, from the Whight Guard perspective, is that second bit, which reflects rather poorly, I venture to think, on ‘Mittens’ as exponent of Big Management an' heroic Cutter of Costs. Plus there may be a Rulalaw angle, sorta. [3] Though I guess it is not technically illegal to break leases as long as you buy up the fragments afterwards. _Dixit_ Powell, Esq.

The _Gotham Globe_ goes on about it at remarkable length, "Number of Words: 2218 / Number of Unwrapped lines: 148 / Number of characters (non-space): 11552." All worth wading through, if only to meet the deliciously surnamed Brian McNiff at about word 1,425.

Happy days.

__
[1] One can sneak into The Fishwrap on a Hill if some confederate in the beleaguered garrison throws one a link from the inside.

(( In some ways, the New Dark Ages promise to be remarkably like the old ones. Complete with treacherous ‘confederates’ like McTrickledown, who am no ideobuddy to Freelord Redmass an’ the Whight Guard.

(( Admittedly, in any age it would be difficult to cite a document for the parts of it that are convenient in the path of one’s Party an’ Her AEIdeology without lettin’ the ill-disposed know where to go to look for less convenient aspects. Aspects to use against. I presume hostiles were supposed to stop when they see there is a link, or maybe when they click and verify that there is another end to it that looks tolerably plausible .

(( As Mr. Burke said to Lord Bowlingalone, "¿Who now reads _Globe_ articles? ¿Who ever read them thru?" ))

=

[2] ¿Reuters? Ah, so. ¡Why this is _Globalisierung_, nor are we out of it, we who now get our Beacon Hill news not merely from NY but from UK!

=

[3] http://j.mp/sQu66a .

Charity does NOT begin at brown

Dear Dr. Bones,

Now *here* is a fun Vision for you, sir: Don Neutrino accompanyin’ Lady Bountiful as she makes her rounds of (specifically) the (Brown) Bad Poor.

Lady B., though, would probably object to the size of the proposed Gingrichian retainer at the outset, an’ the negotiations would get no farther. If that obstacle were surmounted, there would be the continuin’ levels of Gingrichocentric overhead an’ egohead ever after.

I expect Bounty will prefer to spend of her own unassisted, rather than take to politics in a sieve captained by Master Newt [1] an’ with course steered by Don Rubenito from the stables of Simon Pajama.

No great loss, for Party-of-Grant Jumblies wouldn’t want to make the voyage in any case. ¿Why should they travel, who are already here? [2]

To flat-out change the subject, my recent listening to, study of, whightist radio in Greater Boston has given me a fresh insight into the Republicanine Dittopan [3] , as follows: the kiddiecons’ favorite Exmas charity is, by several landslides, the USO. Or rather, a variety of USO spin- or rip-offs of the kiddies’ own, conducted by (I presume) more politically reliable moneythrowers. Allow me to disrecommend, for example, this crew, though admittedly the pet g@@gle just had an encounter with ’em, an’ they do not, as far as I know, advertise on the Three Weird Sisters. [4]

I ask you, Bones, ¿what better cause can ScroogeBank, an’ Warbucks Defense Widgets, an’ maybe even a few non-corporate citizens of exceptional Vi®tue an’ Wisdo™, find to throw a little money at for self-ostentation purposes than ‘warrors’ an’ ‘heroes’? The Brown Poor simply aren’t in the same league, object-of-charitywise. [5]

For consider the public Exmas givin’ quandry of Ebenezer XIV or Oliver VIIII or Firstlord Murdoch or the Koch Siblin’s: "¿How. oh ¿how?," wonders the kiddiecons’ Uncle Ebb to himself,"Can WE ever be absolutely sure that OUR generous, if WE don’t say so OURSELVES, benefactions will not fall into unwhighteous hands, dirty hands of Bad Poors who pull the lever for Lieberalism an’ for Demonocracy?"

Now to give exclusively to Heroic Warriors is not *absolutely* safe, but I betcha it sure beats whatever comes second. [6]

Indeed, Dr. Bones, perhaps we should reconsider our recent decision to abolish the traditional category of "good poor" and reinstate it with "persons of (State) violence, current or former" as (for now, at least) sole occuopants of the pigeonhole. Reconfigured like that, the category would mystify a Brit Victorian accustomed to the real thing--¡fancy Tommy Atkins crowding out the widows and orphans!--but I daresay not many Brit Vicks will be writing to the Times of Murdoch to protest in the year of religionism 1433-2012-5772.

Happy days.
--JHM

__
[1] In Spanshlingo, _el tritón_. In the dielect of Rio Limbaugh, at least. Madrid and Buenos Aires, I dunno about for sure.

=
[2] "¿Why must they travel, who are NOT here?" is no doubt the key question about crimmigrants an’ criminaliens , but I’m in a Buckley Minor (or Plutarchus-of-Chæronea mood and prefer not to crudely talk about my own announced subject before everybooby is thoroughly bored with what I do talk about instead.

=
[3] The RK9 DP is identical with the late Perfesser Kirk’s "conservative mind."

=
[4] For those of them at Rio Limbaugh (or Shanghai or Bangalore), Princess Goneril is WTKK-FM 96.9, and Princess Regan (no relation to Ronald XL) is WRKO AM 680, while poor Cinderella must content herself with Party Neocomrade (seventh grade) J. X. Katz, an’ fifty thousand watts at twelve hundred wingocycles of modified amplitude. Plus also the Witch Doctor of Democracy. Mizz Cindy used to call herself "Rush Radio 1200" but then suddenly that stopped. Puppy love amongst the kiddiecons no doubt has its quarrels.

=
[5] With rare individual exceptions. Brownies of the male persuasion who enlist as violence pros presumably qualify for free cellphones (or whatever bennies) on the same terms an’ conditions as those who look more like _bonâ fide_ Americanoe rifletoters.

=
[6] Almost certainly what comes second is dread diseases. And the reason is plain: Uncle Ebb an’ Daddy Ollie _y Tio Ruperto_ are nearly as likely to die of them personally as are _señores las indocumentadas y los indocumentados_ or those with that involuuntary servitude problem in their pre-1865 background. Legally, the American Cancer Society is a charity, but from the psychological standpoint of a TopPercenter, to fund heroic tumorfighters, in moderation, is no doubt much more like a prudent an’ thoroughly selfocentric specuvestment. Even if all the Pasteurs an’ Schweitzers an’ Salks an’ Cricks an’ Watsons voted Demoncrat to a man, that deplorable exxentricity would hardly matter, because there are very few of them.

Furthermore, if the lucky number does come up before Uncle Ebb ‘passes’, almost certainly succesful tumorfightin’ will be so expensive in most cases that nonpercenters need not apply. Best of all, probably, from the Ebenezeroid or Oliverite perspective, will be all the wheelin’ an’ dealin’ an’ specuvestin’ in stocks an’ shares of new secret-sector business corporations specializin’ in Big Cancer. The Bad Poor will have no better chance of gettin’ rich off the Great Tumor Boom of 2023 than of getting healed by the wunnerdrugs.

But Galen knows best.

Blimp Unready for Prime Time Twelve Ways

Dear Dr. Bones,

The usual liberal complaint against the conservative opposition to higher income taxes is greed and the better-offs’ self-serving reluctance to pay their “fair share.” But while perhaps true in some instances, I don’t think that is an accurate writ against most of those in that now demonized $200,000 and above categories who resent forking over more. Rather, here are a random 12 complaints that I hear from those who become furious about preposed higher income tax rates:

and then we get the Twelve Tables of the Blimp, on the margins of which I shall now doodle a few graffiti of my own.



(1a) ¿Why any ‘bite’ at all? Our Betters have given us, for example, Rear-Colonel V. D. Hanson-Blimp himself, an’ the late Mr. Jobs, an’ Einstein, an’ Spinoza, an’, in short, the whole Whight Civilisation of the Western Race. To ask them to pay taxes on top of whole millennia of unilateral and preëmptive benefaction would be like interceptin’ St. Nick at the chimney to collect an exit fee.

=
(2a) This one appears to be Freelord Blimp slightly misundertandin’ the Hooverville barkin’ points, or at least runnin’ a number of them together injudiciously, plus tossin’ in rather to much of his freelordship’s favorite subject, "My big-farming near neighbor" &c. &c. Anyway, several different _respondeo_s are called for:

(2a-A) His freelordship is tryin’ to help Ebenezer XIV Scrooge an’ Oliver VIII Warbucks dodge so-called ‘progressive’ taxation, a IWP, "improper & wicked project," _Federalist X_, which antecedently *presumes* the Blessings of Inequality a couple of orders of magnitude more notably than it does anything to lessen them in practice.

(2a-B) His freelordship, bein’ a _konsequent_ inegalitarian, as no doubt befits a violence pro, real or wannabe, observes that inside the ranks of the freelordly Class there are many mansions, not all of them affordable by everybooby Classy. This is certainly the case, as a matter of fact, but how it is supposed to work towards proppin’ down the taxes of all Hoovervillains generally beats me. It looks, though, like a sound argument for havin’ six dozen different tax rates rather than only half a dozen, when one goes in for impropriety an’ wickedness.

(2a-C) Taxation of the Classy won’t--cannot possibly--rase enough money to pay for ALL the improper wickednesses that we fiends have resolved to perpetrate. This one, at least, must have been on the barkin’ points actually handed to Col. Blimp to work from. Since all the TopPercenters’ scabs bark like that, counterpoints have been prepared by keyboards more gifted than this one with things like Nobel Prizes in Economics. So ¡let Blimp go argue with Comrade Kruggie about it over here ! [1]

=

(3a) Most of what gets swiped in taxation goes whight to the Bad Poor. Here is the heart of it, I suppose, as opposed to the dittopan, whose location is discussed in note [1] to (2a-C).

Or one of the hearts, rather. What I mean by thinking at once of ‘heart’ is that this is Blimp’s best bet for appealin’ to his own hormone-baser Party base an’ vile. "Another’s tears are water," says the Russian proverb, very soundly: it is difficult to imagine a Blimp workin’ Wally Wombschool an’ Cynthia Wasillatensis up into a phrenzy ’bout taxation simply as takin’: *their* hearts won’t be broken if Ebenezer XIV cannot afford quite so many yachts an’ polo ponies next year. No, Dr. Bones, when you really wanna get the couch potatoes up off their potatoe couches an’ ready to stick a pitchfork in the enemies of the Classy, the thing to do is fib to ’em a little about how the loot is distributed once it has been snatched. "Auntie Zeituni" over in Southie, for example. Or like "foreign aid," which certainly deserves to be shudder-quoted once the whightists get through barkin’.

(( This disjunction works both ways: Ebenezer XIV an’ Oliver VIII an’ probably Blimp, in his freelordship’s private capacity, do not actually much mind if bad-poor old Auntie is happy whether in Boston or in Botswana. They only want to keep their "Bush tax cuts" plus . . . plus then maybe ask for a little more economic justice still after they get that coonskin firmly nailed down an’ the Confidence Fairy has once again been sighted at Rio Limbaugh. Only that an’ nothin’ more. Not anythin' more at the moment, thank you, but call again in the mornin' . . . . ))

=
(4a) Point IV *seems* to mean, murkily, that Blimp supposes the Wicked State can always borrow (or perhaps simply print) whatever loot it requires, so ¿Why must it rob the Classy too?

This is a very important question for serious mammonologists, but because Blimp is even farther off than the Muses and thou and I from bein’ any sort of political œconomist, I will punt this one for now, hoping to get back to it some day when I get to set the stage and enunciate The Points.

=
(5a) Though ‘efficiency’ sounds very grown-up and mammonological, and therefore also better passed over by the likes of me for the reason just given, this is maybe not entirely the case. Master Wally an’ Mizz Cindy cherish, I believe, certain lay-sheep notions of efficiency to which whightist agitproppers like Blimp can appeal, even if Mr. Ricardo would not give such stuff the time of day, not to speak of more recent practitioners. ¿How about "¡WE could sure spend that money better than Auntie Zeituni ever could!"

That is gross confusion, no doubt, a positive Confoundation of Kingdoms. But you are to reflect, Dr. Bones, that even on a good day with a strong wind empowering one’s generators, and even after more than two centuries of economics as a psocial scientism, one has to watch oneself like a hawk watching a Blimp to avoid letting moralism break in at least a little when one ventures a reflection like "X could spend the money better than Y could." That form of words does not, obviously, mean the same thing to a hedge-fund specuvestor or to a Bane Capitalist that it means to the Otherparty base an’ vile, but to suppose that even the Freelords of Finance understand ‘efficiency’ in a strictly amoral (_wertlos_) fashion is naïve.

=
(6a) Blimp is quight whight to reveal that the betterness of our Betters is not to be judged by salaries alone. Very odd, though, that his freelordship cannot bring himself to mention anythin’ in particular by name that matters more, like ‘wealth’ or ‘Power’.

=
(7a) ¡Tusk, tusk -- to sink to the level of mere Psychobabble! Hoovervillainy really *has* rotted the poor man’s dittopan.

Well, the only thing to do with "So-an’-so makes me sick" is throw it back at once like a grenade: his freelordship ought now to have some insight into how the "Occupy Televisionland" kiddies feel on discovering that nothing whatsoever is really and truly "beyond the dreams of Avarice."

=
(8a) This is certainly one of the best barkin’ points available to her who scabs for ScroogeBank an’ Warbucks Defense Widget Inc.

Blimp passes over it so rapidly that I suspect his freelordship agrees with me that this is rather too precious a pearl to cast before pajamaclads. Though all kiddie selfservatives are children, at best, when they reflect, yet there is no way of either Blimp or myself guessing their chronological ages in a market-research way, so as to know, that is, which cohorts to pander to and how.

=
(9a) This point is not so good, though next only to Point Two (I think) in frequency of gettin’ barked elsewhere.

One trouble with secret-sector Charity is that it "begins at home" and rarely falls far from the tree. When the literal gates go up around their freelordships’ gated communites, when the barbed wire, an’ the Rotweilers, an’ the mine fields, an’ the counterstormtroopers are finally set in place, no apple is likely to roll down to the Bad Poor out in the wilderness under any circumstances.

Most Conners of Kiddies do not mind this patchiness (so to euphemize), though when they essay to defend it directly, old-fangle _caritas_ tends to go supply-side an’ turn out have more to do with the True Freedumb® of Freedame Bountiful than with the requirements of the needy.

(( It occurs to me that devout dilbertarians must find our good Rear-Colonel unsatisfactory when it comes to promotin’ the True Freedumb® ideoproduct, one which they specially affect. Still,. there are three Points to go . . . . ))

=
(10a) Well, ‘technocracy’ can pass for Freedumb™-related, I suppose. ¡ScroogeBank an’ WDW certainly don’t want any stinkin’ ‘experts’ pushin’ ’em around!

But I fear Blimp is not really all that interested in it from a tip-of-the-classberg perspective such as Ebenezer XIV or Oliver VIII naturally take. It sounds to me as if his freelordship is mostly rehearsin’ some Faculty Club pet peeves of his own here, quite a number of notches down the Great Chain of Bein’ from his paymasters. Doubtless it drives Blimp up the stratosphere whenever somebody like St. Elizabeth of Warrenbuffet starts talking as if she could do his freelordship’s tertiary-academic job better than he does it, if only she could spare a weekend or two to learn some Grief an’ Laffin’ like Blimp knows. Is alleged to know.

I’d be a little annoyed, too, by that, but since there is no danger whatever of this replacement actually happening, what is at stake here is not his freelordship’s True Freedumb™, only more like his _amour propre_.

=
(11a) This is merely Point III reworded a little, yet another moan that what the Wicked State steals as taxation from the Classy goes chiefly to the Bad Poor. [2]

=
(12a) The Bad Poor are not doing badly at all on the material side, not if contrasted with "coal-dusted Dickensian London" or (let me add) the condition of most Lesser Breeds Without even today, out there beyond us pale in the Native-ridden boondocks of the world..

Nothin’ whatever to do with ™rue F®eedumb whatever has that empirical circumstance to do, though since nobooby is likely to deny it, it achieves not much for the Inegalitarian Argument to adduce it.

Actually, Dr. Jones, it looks to me as if his freelordship took off his intellectual pajamas, as it were, in the last few Points an’ went back to bed while his fingers kept on keystrokin’.

***
Presumably Blimp is anglin’ for an invitation to debate St. Elizabeth of H*rv*rdy, her of the "intellectual foundations" of Occupy Televisionland.

Well, I would not complain if that were to happen. Her Beatitude happens to be a good guy, an’ his freelordship a (formerly) high-class whightist scab, but happenstance is about all that is. So ’twould be _par congressus_ all ’round. Which is NOT to say, however, that it would be worth watching.

Happy days.
--JHM


___
[1] Considered as a rhetorical or ‘agitpropitational’ technique, of course, those who scab for the Classy in writin’ cannot posibly bark this one too often, so his freelordship is rather to be commended than otherwise for includin’ it. Even if it does tend to make his freelordship look like the possessor of dittopan that resembles a post-tornado junkyard.

NEVERTHELESS, I think Wally Wombschool an’ Cindy from Wasilla might have had their faith bolstered with a 13,409th repetition of the counterfactual without all the higgledy-pigglediness borrowed from his freelordship’s neighbor’s barn. She who sets up to vouchafe _urbi et orbi_ Fourteen Points (like St. Woodrow), or Ten (like Father Zeus), or Twelve (thus Blimp, splittin’ the difference between these distinguished Predecessors), ought to arrange them a little to suggest a little hierarchy. "First things first" is not the only acceptable rule, but there certainly ought to be some rule.

And ¡ESPECIALLY! there ought to be some kind of hierarchy in a list of points to be barked out in support of Lady Hierarchia Herself by some stout _Defensor Inequitalitatis_.

Now to put "But the Wicked State can never loot *enough* from the Daughters of Virtue & Sons of Wisdom, L.L.C. " first logically, if not necessarily literally, would be very reasonable, physical impossibility being about as conclusive an argument as exists. Since, however, it is so extremely conclusive that it rather tends to make whatever else one orates look otiose, probably it would work best as bottomline. In which case it is ten places out of order _chez Blimp_, over an’ above bein’ squirreled away amidst the higs an’ the pigs of Point II like Achilles hiding himself amongst the women.

=
[2] It’s well worth a whightwinger moanin’ about from the rhetorical or agitpropper perspective, I allow, but at the moment we are trying to discuss his freelordship’s matter rather than either his personal neostyle or the Platonic Form of Persuasion.

Dereliction of Blurbin'

Dear Dr. Bones,

¿Who would do Mil. Sci. best, by the neocriterious an’ weekly-shiftin’ standards of Foxcuckooland, if not a news-commentary humorist?

¡Yet even a stopped clock is whight twice a day!

The McTime, by the way, is now [11/27/2011 04:49]. Put that in the memorandumb your prepare about this portentous phænomenon please, of a wingnutette that actually gets off the runway a little, accuracywise. It has nothing to do with the case, I know, but I want it around in the waiting room to keep poor Ambassador Huntsman company.

His freelordship of UT, too, has nothin’ to do with the fact that Secretary MacNamara’s War was presided over by none other than . . .

.... Hmmm. Is that "!Wait, wait, don’t tell me!" I hear you thinking, sir?

Well, there is no urgent need for *me* to disclose Ms. Clio’s punchline. You and I can talk instead about the latest degeneration of the pajamaclads, offerin’ us what *purports* to be NCH, news-commentary humor, but is really only an advertisement for somebooby’s book.

Neocomrade Rear-Colonel (as he now is-- as we all are on Monday mornin’s forty years after the game) H. R. McBooby

Should you want some more recent O. B., Big LEW says "currently a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution."

¡Small world, that his freelordship should prove a Hoovervillain! For here was I, naturally expecting the pet g@@gle to report that our latest Macnam-basher graduated from the _Voyènnaya Akadémiya imieni M. V. Frûnze_. Or thereabouts. ¡What a disappointment to encounter a conventional rake’s progress from Valley Forge to West Point to Galvez Mall 94305!

Dr. Gen Petrolæus (‘David’ to George XLIII) can go back to Princeton, but it looks as if poor unpostgraduated McBooby will have to do that fadin’ away _shtyk_ in the bright sunwhight of CA. Rather a challenge, that may be.

=
You might make a separate memorandumb for LEW’s own file: at the end here we get

McMaster was passed over for promotion to brigadier general twice in a row, in 2006 and 2007. As one of "the most celebrated soldier (_sic_) of the Iraq War", this decision was controversial among the public. "The reasoning was possibly his tendency to speak out against the status quo, although it is always for the benefit of the mission and his soldiers."

That seems to me to raise certain fairembalancement questions. To sound rather as if a certain H. R. McBooby wrote it, even. (It would be fun, by the way, to know exactly what teacup that controversy-riven ‘public’ foregathers in.)

As is notorious, your typical Officers Club violence pro acts always for the beneifit chiefly of Number One. DMS, Douglas MacArthur Syndrome, I believe they call this form of brain fever. And, if we may trust our humorist’s account of all these things (a very dubious business, but let’s go along with the gaga) Big Doug an’ little Herbie do broadcast on much the same self-wavelength: "Had Johnson actually listened to the advice of his generals — essentially that *war is war and must be fought to win* — the outcome would certainly have changed."

A native speaker would have written "the oucome would have been different" of course, but the general idea is clear enough.

It is kinda funny-peculiar that our humorist does not realize that he is blurbin’ his ideobuddy’s wannabe potboiler in a way that makes it unnecessary for it to be read at all. One the one hand, decent political adults do not doubt that noble Godzilla *could* have trampled down evil Bambi, had we been prepared to deploy "force without stint or limit." We do not need to be told that, and we account it a thoroughly kiddie notion that that is what should have happened. To make SECWAR readable about by grown-ups would require at least of modicum of sympathy with all those whiz-kid calculations about bigmanagerial cost-effectiveness that his freelordship of MacNamara brought over with him from the Ford Motor Company. Gagster Orr here gives the impression that Rear-Col. McBooby is not interested in that brand of eye glaze at all. Impressions given out by whightists are far from reliable, but when one cares as little about Mil. Sci. and Mil. Hist. as I do, it is not worth $10.68 at Amazon to check out exactly how bad this joke is.

Meanwhile, back at Rio Limbaugh, the selfservative kiddies already know their own notions through an’ through. "OF COURSE we shoulda just nuked ’the Ho Chi Minh out of ’em," barks Wally Wombschool. Hence there is no reason to expect Master Wally to wanna read all about it any more than the Muses or you or I do.

Happy days.
--JHM

___

"across the havoc of classwar, a great general"

Dear Dr. Bones,

_M. le Baron de ‘Spengler’_ is an old semi-acquaintance, one of the few virtual Hongkonghites one knows well enough to recognize again. Exactlty what Virtual Hongkonghia may has to do with the A.R.E., Arab Republic of Egypt, is an interesting, perhaps even an alarming, question. [0]

Whatever else may be goin’ on here, certainly there is lots an’ lots of whight-wing internationalism. I think--let’s start with nomenclature, ¿shall we?--we should call spenglerisin’ something like W.W.I. rather than plain old vanilla ‘globalism’, a term that always makes me think first (1) of little Tommy Wobble with the big moustache and then (2) start fingering my revolver, or whatever that is in my pocket. Ninety-nine percent of Homeland™ whightists think Tommy is one of us, a Lieberal Demoncrat of some sort, which by it self is a splendid tribute to the efficacy of wombschoolin’ an’ freedumbin’ down. Tommy *did* have certain advantage in Life denied to Wally Wingnut an’ Cindy from Wasilla, like GGP and that whole service of sterling flatware removed from his digestive tract shortly after birth, but . . . .

I digress. The thing is, ‘globalism’ comes with lots of neobaggage attached to it, whereas ‘internationalism’ lost all its suitcases and carpetbags years ago: "¿Who now reads Thomas Woodrow Wilson?" We can now start over whight from scratch with ‘internationalism’. At first, no doubt, we will have to insist on the neoreactionary (Spengleroid) complexion of the ideoproduct almost every time it is alluded to, but eventually the epithet will drop away. This is what happened with the former "political economy," for instance: the dismalness did not get less political as it darkened, on the contrary, it got so totally political that there was nothing left for the P-word to mark a boundary with.

Bein’ a furriner, _M. le Baron_ can say certain things that would still give offense in the mouth of a Homeland™ic, like for example that real fun title of his freelordship’s, "Lootin’ the Egyptian Currency: Democracy in Action."

Out on Hongkonghia, you understand, lootin’ an’ democracy not only have about the same low prestige, but are in serious danger of not bein’ distinguished at all. [2] [3]

Happy days.
--JHM

__
[0] Every worrier retains the freedumb to worry about possible e-Hongkonghian designs on Rio Limbaugh FL, say, or on Pajama Junction NJ. Myself, I say "¿Who cares?" Should Foo Man ‘Spengler’ manage to buy all their real estate out from under the yocals, maybe those holes will stop lookin’ like the parts of the junk yard that failed to congeal into an airliner when Hurricane Crawford hit back in 2008."

=

[1] Approximately. Round numbers good enough for "Occupy Televisionland" ought to be good enough for us. I mean, ¿what are we, sir, stinking elitists?

=

[2] All whight-wing internationalists (Spengleroids) must, I think, be taken to be Lootless Cosmopolitans until the contrary has been safely demonstrated beyond doubt. Even then, perhaps one should find a different L-word for it when they do it. ‘Lucky’ comes to mind at once, but of course that would be the mind of the present keyboard that it comes to, rather than the dittopan of a Spengleroid. Their freelordships (at least the Homeland™ic ones) do not much care bein’ called ‘Lucky. Or for that matter ‘Ace’ or ‘Slim’ or anythin’ else that might suggest their freelordships specuvest an’ investulate in plebeian poker rather than in financial instruments not understanded of the smallpeople.

=

[3] Bein’, as I said, a furriner, his freelordship very genteelly abstains from takin’ any cheap shots at the _Heimatland G*ttes_. ¿What homebrew pajamaclad could scribble words like

[T]he Egyptian mob wants to help itself to the contents of armored cars, considering that the Egyptian press and blogs have reported for months that the country’s leaders are stealing rice, diesel oil, propane, and other commodities whose distribution is controlled by state companies. If everyone is stealing, why shouldn’t the man in the street get his share, too?

without instantly pointin’ out that all this is but a pale imitation an’ rip-off of the "Occupy Televisionland" show an’ of the Ponzi Security Administration?

One would have to be blind, of course, not to notice that his freelordship is agitproppin’ to make the holy Homeland™ more like his own e-Hongkonghia, tryin’. I mean, to disabuse Master Wally an’ Mizz Cindy of the pernicious notion that lingers in their dittopans, even despite all wombschoolin’ an’ despite countless daily séances with Party Neocomrade Dr. R. H. Limbaugh, that Democracy is somehow not quite as bad as lootin’. Unlike most of his freelordship’s Yank counterparts, _M. le baron de ‘Spengler’_ knows better than to yank too hard at the beginnin’ of the course of therapy. "Softly, softly, catchee monkey" -- when Wally an’ Cindy finally *do* see the whight an’ become consciously antidemocratic as well as illiberal, they are to suppose that they figured everythin´ whighteous out for themselves.

That arrangement is much more satisfactory from the agitation-and-propaganda viewpoint because if Master Wally were to say "I read about Hate-Democracy-First in Freddy von Hayek" an’ then Mizz Cindy echoes "‘Spengler’ told me about HD1 last year as an unexpected Exmas present," the HDF meme is much less likely to go pandemic. At Rio Limbaugh an’ Pajama Junction, "not invented here" (frankly admitted, that is, for of course hardly anything actually *was* invented ‘here’) is almost certain to stop an ideoproduct dead in its tracks. Though I am far from understanding the psychology of this sales resistance in full, I assume that wombschooled Wally ferociously dislikes findin’ himself painted into a corner where somebooby else--a particular Party neocomrade whose name is remembered an’ might be mentioned, though naturally it will not be--has every whight to bark "¡I told you so!"

Most of the amateur Conners of Kiddies over to Pajama Junction seem to have a sort of colourblind thumb when it comes to agitproppin’ for whighteousness. They are so ungood at meme diffusion that one laughs from them. Here we have a far-fetched freelordship who evidently understands how to do it whight, which make him more of a danger, I suppose, but also much more instructive. Better recreation as well.

As St. Winnie of the Dardanelles well said on a similar occasion: We have a very daring and skillful opponent against us, and, may I say across the havoc of war, a great general."

’Tis no accident, though, that when the _padjama du jour_ turns out to be competent for once, it should be a freelordship of whom one has actually heard before.

I fear the World’s Greatest YaleoDrama™ist is himself black of thumb when it comes to runnin’ a farm team for the Foxcuckooland Foghorns. The best of Squire Simon-Pajama’s particular neofriends an’ _protégés_, goodvolks who exist as whightist agitproppers only thanks to PJM, are undoubtly the sub-Cincinnatian Th. X. Blumer an’ Don Ricardito de Fernández y Podhòretz. This, however, is a very restricted an’ specialized sort of ‘best’ in at least two respects: (1) though McTrickledown likes them well enough, they are rather like the music of the late Herr von Dvorak in that McTD likes them much better than any general consensus can reasonably be expected to endorse.

And (2), their attraction is mostly their socio-economico-factional exemplariness. The gruesome twosome do not, in fact, agitprop particularly well, they are certainly not to be mentioned with _M le baron de ‘Spengler’_ in the same breath as technicians, but they do, in McTD’s judgment, cast a great deal of whight on who the Daughters of Virtue & Sons of Wisdon, LLC, are, an’ on where’ these freevolks are comin’ from.

Naturally Freelord ‘Spengler’ comes from too far away for a neocomradologist of central North America to take much professional interest. In the improbable event that e-Hongkonghia diagnoses Egypt whight an’ prescribes treatment that cures the patient, that would be great for Egyptians (maybe), but ought to raise scarcely a ripple in these parts. ¡Fancy Master Wally, that stout detester of "¡I told you so!", reactin’ to the advice that he an’ Mizz Cindy should take the same Murti-Bing® pills that worked for towelhead _falláhín_! I mean, "¿How unwhighteous would THAT be?

The Muses and thou, O Bones, and I would get a kick out of reflecting, safe up here in our Poison Ivory Tower, that ‘Spengler’ would have more than earned his _nom de guerre_. ¿What could be more illustrative of an _Untergang des Abendlandes_ than for the heathen Chinee (release 4.1) to solve Egypt without either quack or patient passin’ through the Western Sieve at any point? If a world that can get better without any assistance from Wunnerful US does not constitute D*CL*N*, that _verbum innominabile inter quondam Christojudæanos_, I cannot imagine what would.

But I betcha Wally an’ Cindy would shrug it off, if they noticed it at all. Like global warmin’, DCLN would not be actually happenin’, ¡not at Hooverville or Rio Limbaugh/Port Ste. Lucie! After all, ¿Hath not Karl, Firstlord an' Kiddiemaster Rove, vouchsafed that

That is not the way the world really works anymore. WE are an Empire now, and when WE act, WE create OUR OWN reality. And while you’re studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- WE will act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. WE are history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what WE do. (( &c. &c.))

?

"Left to just study," I expect Cairo and Kowloon would "judiciously" play hooky for all they are worth, but that will not be a neoreality inside the confines of the Holy Rovan Empire of the Whightwing Nation, where "not invented here" has at last become *absolutely* identical with ‘nonexistent’.

But Oswald knows best.

Introducing FlipflopCare

Dear Dr. Bones,

One had thought ’Romneycare’ a word of mere abuse hurled from the general direction of Louisedayhicksville, but no, not at all, for here

‘Dumper’ scam bleed$ us dry Dodgers jump on, off insurance, costing Mass. taxpayers millions By Frank Quaratiello Friday, November 25, 2011 (...) A gaping loophole in state insurance rules that lets freeloaders pick up coverage to pay for expensive surgeries — and then dump it once they’re treated — has cost taxpayers as much as $37 million a year, according to a study that warns the same wrinkle in Obamacare could add a staggering $2 billion a year to the deficit-wracked [F]ederal budget. Exploiting a state provision that forces insurers to cover patients with pre-existing medical conditions, thousands of so-called “jumpers and dumpers” are buying plans just before major operations and procedures, and then chucking their coverage and passing those costs onto residents who play by the rules, according to a study by Suffolk University’s Beacon Hill Institute obtained by the Herald. (...)

come some ’conservative’ ’intellectual’ señoritos to explain that Governor Mittens has in fact erected a remarkable bureaucratic monument to his own best an’ most spiritual neoqualities, recognized as such even by his freelordship’s political adversaries. This grand mischievement is rather as if the late General Bonaparte had left France with a coastline carved in the shape of his own Imperial mug.

So let us resolve, Dr. Bones, henceforth always to refer to ... ¡ta-Da! ... FLIPFLOPCARE , not merely because anybooby can flip in and then flop out of it as her portfolio manager may think best, but especially in honor of the Venerable Framer.

That said, it looks as if the V. F. should be reminded about it himself, because once you really understand how FFC works, you see that any resemblance to the evil new Fedguv programme mandatewise is entirely imaginary. I don’t suppose Mittens could actually get such a grown-up distinction across to, say, His Texcellency or Mr. Nine Guy or Don Neutrino de Gingrich, in front of cameras an’ commentators’ an’ (maybe) a few hundred thousand Party nutbats from sea to whinin’ sea--with stupidity, the Stupid Party itself contends in vain, after all--but his freelordship certainly ought to try.

That said, let’s shoot the messenger a little, ¿shall we? Party Neocomrade (eighth grade) F. X. Quaratiello is, I take it, local talent at LDHville, still lookin’ for a way to break out into the whight lights of the big city. Some kind ideobuddy should, I think, advice the laddie to omit footnotes like "according to a study by Suffolk University’s Beacon Hill Institute obtained by the _Herald_."

True, if I were to hand you a copy of my employing corporation’s next press release and pester you to print it, it would not be inaccurate, technically, to say "obtained by Dr. Bones" after the fact. But I put it to you, sir, that such language involves a genuine and significant _suggestio falsi_ as to which party took the active, and which the passive-aggressive rôle, in the humanoid event. Were you to report it the PNC-8 FXQ way, your empoying corporation’s poor customers are like to fantasize that you burgled McTrickledown’s apartment at the Watergate Arms in the early hours of the morning in order to do your ‘obtaining’. I appreciate that you couldn’t possibly call a press release of this type "a press release," but there is no need for you or the PNC-8 FXQ mechanism to call your sources anything at all, not even ‘sources’.

I would not go so far as to suggest that the _Herald_ of LDHV must explain exactly who pays for the BHI of SU (an’ why) every single time that muchesteemed [1] Tank-a’-Thought is mentioned. ("¿Who *is* Chuck Rounds?." inquired the late Miss Rand of St. Petersburg and Planet Dilbert, as she rose from the crypt just after nightfall. "Why, ¡he sounds like the name of a crumby restaurant!") To mandate _expressio veri_ ‘proäctively’ would be an outrageous assault on the Great Wall of Jeffersonian Separation of Market and State, even I admit that, yet silence is not proäction or proäctivity or proäctivism or proä . . . .

Well, what it comes to with the PNC-8 FXQ mechanism at the end of the day is simply _Si tacuisses, diurnalisticus mansisses_.

That said, we may move on to suspect that the PNC-8 FXQ mechanism (and/or its employin’ Corporation) decided to rewrite the BHI-SU press release they obtained somehow rather than pass it along to the LDHV kiddiecons verbatim. At any rate, that is what one infers when an intellectually respectable organ writes up a story from Major Leaker with only parts of it punctuated as direct quotation. ¡The rest of it had damnwell BETTER be accurate paraphrase!

(( DIGRESSION. The student should note that inaccuracy of paraphrase can be of various sorts, and especially that it need not be the result of willful an’ malignant twistification in the path of Party an’ Ideology. Maybe Master Cliff- simply did not understand the original from which he was scribblin’ his employin’ Corporation’s -Notes™. This happens all the time, it seems to me, and in fact one can see it happening several times daily, as follows: read through any article and then recur to the headers and especially the subheaders at the top of it. Master Cliff- , dba headline editor of The Herald of Louisedayhicksville or whatever fishwrap you like, often tries to summarize the fish as he wraps ’em, and nearly as often (as it seems to McPessimist) causes one to doubt his readin’ comprehension skills. There are ten doubts of that type for every one about Master Cliff-´s ability to keep his, or his employin’ Corporation’s, factious hormones in check. [2] ))

That said, I wish you, sir, as ever,

Happy days (through affordable health care).
--JHM

___
[1] mnogouvazhàyemiy

=

[2] In the case at hand, there is nothing to tax Master Cliff- with apart from one sill¥ ¢urrency symbo£. If that juve sort of clownin’ annoys you, though, the thing to do is stay away from LDHV altogether. Brats *will* be brats, I fear, and if one tries to reform ’em, one only winds up establishing one’s own need to review King Canute’s famous object lesson on the topic.

¡It’s Turkey Day in the Morning!

Dear Dr. Bones,

" Thank Lord Mammon HE has got / Louisedayhicksville and we" . . . not so much.

Meanwhile, back in the stable, I wonder what hormones it triggers in Howard Lewis, Freelord Carr in the peerage of Foxcuckooland, to have a whole string of frathouse fillies not just swoonin’ over the freelordly prose style, as naturally a frathouse filly would, but actually presumin’ to imitate it, a procedure that might well be called ‘uppity’,were we discussing a different whightist stereotype.

Lemme see, the Funders of Fratboy, dba _The Boston Humbug_ , have engaged at least the followin’ Party neocomradesses

(1) Braceras, J. C.
(2) Chabot, H. X.
(3) Eagan, M. X. (Tonta to ‘Deuce’ Braude),
(4) McConville, Ch. X. (¡a lovely surname, ’specially that second syllàble!),
(5) Robichaud, H. X.

This list required no more effort of the present keyboard than to remember my pet favorite whight-wing squalk show (96.9 FM 0700-1000 weekdays) and scan the first page of search results _chez_ Humbug for St. Elisabeth of H*rv*rdy, _regina et martyr_. [1]

"Chris Cassidy," it appears, is of the other sexual persuasion. ¿Wasn’t Life less unfair back in the old days when one could always tell correctly without mounting an investigation?

As I vaguely recall there is yet another _Herald_she-angel with some Canuck-soundin’ name not unlike ‘Robichaud’, enough like it to have made me wonder for a microsecond if the humbuggers could be importin’ ’em in quantity to get a lower price.

There are so many that I presume they cannot possibly all have WON the Ideological Swimsuit Competition; the Fratboy Funders must have selected a least a few second-placers.

Gobble, gobble.
--JHM



___
[1] Notice that PNC-5 Robichaud at e-_loc. cit._ has thought of the _‘regina’ shtyk_ for her ownneoself, even if she looks no farther afield than Mrs.Windsor-Saxe-Coburg-Gotha over on Airstrip One.

BTW, I betcha wombschoolin’ an’ freedowndumbin’ are not havin’ any good effect on the Ratzingerites’ catechism classes. Though to be fairembalanced, one should say that back before the Great Decerebration, junior Papishes probably needed not much more idea of "St. Elizabeth of Hungary" beyond that She must have played for the whight or home team.

Not really hard to guess, that one. Not nearly as hard as finding a likely for-instance of the S-word tip-off pointin’ off in an unwhighteous direction, like maybe "St. John's wort." Or finding a neo-Roman nowadays who has her Don Bosco down cold, despite havin’ attended a wombschool named for somebooby other than Donnie boy herself.

_Hinweise auf eine Pfefferspraysphilosophie_[0]

Dear Dr. Bones,

Non-violent protesters brutally pepper-sprayed at UC Davis Bob_Neer | Sat, Nov 19, 2011 9:33 PM EST Hat tip NYT, which reports calls for the resignation of the university’s chancellor (NB: Harvard President Drew Faust, who has Occupy protesters of her own). (( &c. &c. ))

You know... This goes back to, officers thinking that their so-called non-violent means of control (pepper spray, rubber bullets, etc) can be used with impunity since no one is (USUALLY) permanently hurt (of course, tell that poor girl at the Red Sox (?) rally that – oh wait, they can’t). Not only do we need to stand up for the 99% and all that that entails, but we need a SERIOUS discussion about security vs liberty and the brutality that is using these so-called less violent crowd control devices of theirs. Because if they keep sending people to the hospital in critical condition, they’re gonna get their toys taken away from them. lynne @ Sun 20 Nov 1:54 AM

As I started to say in the title, sir, _Notes towards a Philosophy of Pepper Spray_ (seven volumes, boxed, suitable for throwing) would go a long way towards putting some "intellectual foundations" [1] under the grand Occupy Televisionland entertainment of Fall 2011.

I could write three or four tomes myself, and if I did, I would certainly devote a chapter to the exact differences between (1a) Kampus Kops and (1b) the real McCoy. There would be a long historical excursus, naturally, on Century XIX in the coalfields of Appalachia and 1968 in the Y*rd of H*rv*rd, as well as 316 slightly less pertinent instances of secret-sector enforcements of Law and Order. [2]

Vaguely parallel to that idle and pedantic distinction would run another, between (2a) ("mere") YooTube clips and (2b) professional MacL@@han-Murdochware, the latter being characterized above all, as I analyze, by distinctly non-random production values. Especially by knowing more or less when to stop, as amateur iconodules never seem to: I betcha _In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister_ was intended precisely to distinguish between the master *craftsman* and the still-wet-behind-the-awl journeyman or slapdash dilettante aristos.

As to the immediate occasion of the present pepperfoolery, suffice it to say that here we have Amateur Hour all ’round. Presumably most of the patients or victims shown may pass for "real students," though as we shall be not-writing a work of philosophy, that, too, will not be assumed uncritically. Of course I understand that the dignity of Philosophy must be preserved by excluding such sheer whight-winged nutbattism as supposing the whole _m’gillâ_ to have been concocted on the grounds of St. Elizabeth of Warrenbuffet’s in-stately home for campaign purposes, the orange gunk being furniture polish or the like. [3]

Happy days.
--JHM

___
[0]

Pfefferspray ist ein Reizstoff, der gegen Menschen und andere Säugetiere wirkt. Mit dem Begriff ist meist ein Reizstoffsprühgerät mitsamt dem enthaltenem Wirkstoff _Oleoresin Capsicum_ gemeint. Es wird in der Regel als Distanzwaffe verwendet. Insbesondere in den USA und Kanada dient es als Bärenabwehrmittel.

Hmmm. ¿How if our picturesque institutions were to sic she-bears [IV Lib. Reg. II:23ff.] instead of pseudocops on troublesome kiddies?

(( The pet g@@gle took a long time to find it, so let me put on record that it is _DAS Pfefferspray_, neuter gender. ))

=

[1] "Pardon my Drool." Or rather, more exactly, the drool of Her Beatitude, which it would be pleasant, though not probable, to think was swiped from the late Mr. Thòreau of Concord: "If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

=

[2] Taxpayer-funded tertiary educationalism in CA should make for some especially jolly litigation. Those are not "real policemen" who appear in these video representations, but, oddly enough, they are public-sector hired hands nonetheless.

"¿Pseudomorphosis, anybody?"

=

[3] I hear you objecting already, Dr. Bones, that the Lizzieards would not advance, but probably rather retard, the Apotheosis of Her Beatitude by such a fakery. Whight you are, it seems to me, but I am not at all sure it seems that way to the Lizzieards themselves. Being Faculty Lounge Lizzieards mostly, or courtiers over to the Palace of Public Television, their perspective on political sociology and psychology can diverge widely from that of the earthbound.

As I said, though, you are quight whight to expect that at least 98.6% of Fratboy voters, actual or potential, will take one glance an’ side with the pseudocops. No, there I go again, that’s ’rong too: most likely very few Republicanines will ever see it.

That last, by the way, is a definite prediction about the future made by McChicken: should the Funders of Fratboy decide to make a big deal of it, then I shall thoroughly deserve to be gloated at. So make a memorandumb of it and we shall see.

Mention of the PPT allows me to extend the above parallelism a little, as follows

(1a) Kampus Kops (H*rv*rd) (2a) YooTube artists
(1b) municipal crimefighters (2b) NewsCorp
(1c) Kampus Kops (UC Davis) (2c) WGBH

Exactly what to call the third row I have yet to decide: ‘semireal’ is dubious ontologically, and furthermore sounds to my ear as if it has been imported from the Rovan Empire . I suppose most people would settle for ‘semipro[fessional]’, but there are so many philosophical problems about ‘professionalism’ even unprefixed that a whole eighth volume might become necessary. Take a look at the pigeonholes above and let me know how you would label them generically.

"Means well but needs work"

Dear Dr. Bones,

By MWBNW, I refer to the spoofery of ‘johnd’ over on Mont Bleu:

For What It’s Worth: The Occupy Movement mark-bail | Sat, Nov 12, 2011 10:32 AM EST (...) comparisons between the Occupy Movement and the Tea Party (...)

Building on the thread-starter... (...) In the interest of something like intellectual discipline, I wonder if Mark and Deborah would agree that Occupy Everything is at least inspired by, if not rooted in, the Arab Spring movement that began in December 2010 in Tunesia. I think we are seeing a world-wide recognition and push-back against the class warfare that moneyed interests have been fighting against the rest of us for decades. In my view, it began in the Middle East — a region, not coincidentally, where the role of US multi-national corporations is particularly unsavory. The dilemma of Arab Spring has always been that while America (and our public figures) must support the clear commitment to freedom and democracy that it embodies, its targets are oppressive governments and regimes that American government and private industry have kept in power for decades. In my view, this dilemma has now come home. Occupy Everything speaks to and for the 99%. Our government does not. (...) That dissonance is inconsistent with a free republic, and if our political system has any life left, we in the 99% will change that dissonance. somervilletom @ Sat 12 Nov 11:33 AM

Maybe the Arab Spring took its lead from the Tea Party. I know ideology will force many to dismiss this idea but it is possible. johnd @ Sat 12 Nov 10:49 PM

(A) Recognizing, that one has to start somewhere ... why, even Miss Even and Mr. Newton was merely fiddlin’ with an apple one day, when ¡lightning struck! ..., and

(B) Cognizant that anybooby with a natural flair for the Crimson Art would instantly snatch up "means well, but needs work" and take a run at the New Cerberus, that A-Spring Occupation Putty that bestrides the whole world like a miasma.

A "Murdochian miasma" one might say with sound intellectual foundation (sp?) in depth or at depth: if one digs down deep enough at any point on the Johndeweyplatz in the Taxarrears subdivision of Rio Limbaugh, one hits a TV cable. McBard was whight again: "One touch of MacL@@han" makes lots an' lots of antecedently unrelated-lookin’ volks "kin." Or look like kin, anyway. or like people with kin in the game.

No. The puzzle (I presume) for Social Scientism is not that a passionate urge to see oneself performing on The T@@B exists in the first place, that, I take it, is sufficiently accounted for by the _peccatum originale_ hypothesis of Dr. Gloomygus of Hippo University in Neotunisia. The great problem is rather that the level of this selfnarcissism should fluctuate so wildly. For years an’ years, ever since the Silent Majoruty finally shut up, the tubewaves were abandoned to the (almost) exclusive discretion of Neocomrade Dr. R. H. Limbaugh "highly trained broadcast specialists." Whereas lately we have had "Open Line Fryday" (twenty-four)-seven. Not much steak, mayble, but lots and lots of sizzle.

¿What hath Fox wrought? And furthermore, an' *especially*, ¿How did Fox wreak it?

These, in this keyboard's view, are the Great Mysteries of Life just at present

Comrade Poster hypothesises that those who harp on the A-String have taken their music lessons from the Tee Putty. Literally that seems to me out of the question, the mental universe of Seemighties and Muzzies having long been consciously and deliberately hostile to all influences perceived by them as emanating from the Whight Civilisation of the Western Race, also known as "Wunnerful US." The late Prof. Hourani, for example, wrote a big book called _Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1789-1939_ . His title suggests that that all hope for successful contamination/enrichment of the Natives had been abandoned as long ago as Anno Religionismi 1358-1939-5699. That date, though itself flagrantly Eurocentric, nevertheless does sound about whight, though naturally one could argue that there was much less hope earlier than one particular author makes out, or that miracles remained possible much nearer our own times, even if they have not actually happened.

To travel as a fellow with Comrade Poster would require one to think *really* dimly of the Arab/Seemighty Mind. Unless oneself a complete wad, who could seriously think the Tee Putty tripe an' baloney better worth borrowing than the French Revolution (which is pretty much what Hourani understands by the Hell word)? The proposal is about as plausible as it would be to regard Colonel al-Násir as the proximate cause of Students for a Democratic Socient, and thus ideological grandfather to that Hate-’68 Movement fated in due course to star I. X. Kristol an' N. X. Podhòretz. One can say that the thing is chronologically possible, but, that said, ¿what?

However I can be more cheerful about Comrade Poster if we give up the strict _literaliter_, picturing vast hordes of Natives avidly following NewsCorp in quest of pointers on the technique of soggin’ in the street. Looking at the correlation of farces more figuratively, or perhaps simply from a greater distance that allows a wider perspective, I believe his conjecture collapses into my own. It seems intelligible enough, that is, to say "Murdoch dunnit" as shorthand for "None of this would have been happening--no Zucchini People, no A-Springers, no Tee Putty--had Television never been."

It is close to tautology, maybe too close for comfort, to announce that there is a sort of family resemblance among all MacL@@hanoid techniques of agitation and propaganda. It is also distressingly like unto the Gigaguru's own pet drool about mediums replacing messages.

At this point, I worry a little about possibly falling into Comrade Poster's sandtrap, the one labelled "ideology will force many to dismiss this idea." [1] It is extremely repugnant to me that everything Vox Pop. or the AstroTurf™baggers do on, by and for TV looks a lot like everything else done on, by and for TV, but of course it might be so no matter how much it displeases.

Happy days.
--JHM


___
[1] As Heraclitus says, one can never fall twice into the same sandtrap.

I must admit that I am sneaking in a second santrap here. Citizen Poster, who is not really a comrade, I fear, was just pointin' out that most mainstream Blue Blazers think highly of the A-rab Spring; of the T-putty Sog, not so much.

That implicit analysis is true enough to be getting on with, but when Poster himself gets on with it to Blazerdom rejectin' "Maybe the Arab Spring took its lead from the Tea Party" on that account, I believe he is engaged in defensive flimflam designed to distract attention from the fact that there is really nothin' much to be said for his parallelism beyond the bare chronological possibility of it, as noted above. Or, if perchance there is more, he does not mention it. And I, at any rate, cannot guess it unassisted.

I could, to be sure, dig a sort of counter-sandtrap and claim that the citizen talks this way mostly because it pleases him to suppose that all good things are--MUST be--consequences of the AEIdeology in theory, of the Party of Big Management in practice.

In fact, it is not easy to think of any sort or condition of Lesser Breeds Without who attentively mark what America's Otherparty does, or what Heritagitarians an' Catoholics an' Hoovervillains of Palo Alto (&c. &c.) preach that the Otherparty should do, and then attempt emulation at home. Leave out the Torycomrades on Airstrip One an' their counterparts in former Brit colonies of the whight-wing Anglophoney type, and you will find, I think, hardy anybooby at all. There is lots of flat-out reaction in the world, and lots of ‘neoliberalism’ as well, but very little of it has been exported from G*d’s Country.

Otherpartisans are vaguely aware of this themselves, or act as if they were. It might be worth some credentialled social scientizer’s time and trouble to try to establish quantitatively whether Party neocomrades more frequently (A) bark that they could not care less what foreigners think, or (B) fatuously flatter themselves, along the present lines, that everybody overseas is lookin' ever towards the Party of Grant & Hoover.

My guess is that contempt is much more common than the softer sentimentality, for it is hard to get away from "¡No More Mr. Nice Guy!" amongst the neocomrades. Still, a guess is only a guess, and a generalization may be idiotic. It would be nice to really KNOW.

Meanwhile, one can be quite certain that Citizen Poster himself is no run-of-the-mill Republicanine. Were he that, he would simply never have heard of the Great Blue Hill, let alone be diggin' his little sandtraps on the slopes.

I clave, thou clavest, she . . .

Dear Dr. Bones,

¡No craven is Klaving! It claves, ever steadfast, to . . . .

Well, there is a puzzle for the student of Neocomradology: ¿To what, exactly, does our _señorito du jour_ clave?

It assures us itself -- as a bottomline, no less -- that Klavingesque ‘values’ are more important than other volks’ ‘necks’. [0]

Such assurance is needless in the particular cases of the Muses and thee and me, naturally. We had the number of Master Narcissus Dexter well before there were any sellphones to put it into: "Narky loves Narky; that is, I am I." [1] So did Mrs. Trollope in the 1830’s, to whom, as you know, I prefer to appeal to when out to address specifically Yank self-infatuation.

Now whenever a whight-wing nutbat starts goin’ on ’bout ‘values’, the first thing to do, obviously, is re-read the fine print on Terms & Conditions, verifying carefully wherein this week’s standards an’ neocriteria differ from last week’s, whether she (the nutbat) has put her weasels to work on the wordin’, tryin’ to get that five bucks a month for the ScroogeBank suckercard by crook, Capt. Hook havin’ failed his employin’ Corporation deplorably.

By my lights, the best approach to "Klaving v. Cain" is whight up the middle through the lobby of ScroogeBank. I mean, ¿What do the TopPercenters who actually matter, fundin’wise, expect from their small people, from a Don Andresito Claving Patxama? ¿from a Mr. Nine Guy? ‘Values’ is indeed the pertinent word.

Uncle Ebenezer has long since disinherited me an’ changed the locks on the vault, of course, but I believe I had enough experience of his firstlordship before we quarreled to reconstruct how the Class of neogeezers think. It seems to be quite impossible that Uncle Ebb takes Mr. Nine Guy the least bit seriously, neither expectin’ nor desirin’ that Don Ermanigildo de’ Neri should become the POTUS of us all. The merest side-show is Mr. Nine Guy, a sort of Harold Stassen writ large an’ bold an’ colorblind-letter. Uncle Ebb is gung-ho for ‘Mittens’ Romney, of course. Everybooby knows that, posibly includin’ even Don Andresito. [2]

What I am undecided about is whether Uncle Ebb--an’ Daddy Warbucks _y Tio Ruperto_ an’ the whole Unionthugbasher League Club --are responsible for givin’ us Mr. Nine Guy, whether his godfathership be a deliberate ploy by the G.O.P. Geniuses® on the _panem et circenses_ paradigm, or no more than a funny thing that happened on Mittens’ March to the Forum .

(( DIGRESSION _ad homunculum. Though clearly "small people," Don Andresito is not utterly negligible. It barked somethin’ ’bout "allowing your opponents to hold you to their absurd re-creation of your standards," a thing which does indeed happen to whight-wing nutbats with some frequency. However it fails to point out that religionism is usually involved on such cases, with Lieberals an’ Demoncrats presuming to tell the kiddiecons, or even the freelordly Conners of Kiddies, what ‘true’ Christojudæanity would entail, usually Uncle Ebb givin’ all his R.O.I. to the Bad Poor an’ goin’ off to missionize at the cow-crazed Hindoo &c. &c -- pluperfect tripe and pepperoni..

(( True, in many specifically Christian models, the former-Christojudæan product line really did include that fun exuberance _credo quia absurdum_. That, however, was long ago. And in another country. And ¡fancy keeping a straight face while calling upon the neokiddies, or upon anybooby at all, to live down to Tertullianus of Carthage! ))

Happy days.
--JHM

___
[0] Yes, of course I agree that those shudder-quotes LOOK silly. Looks, however, are not everything.

Reflect, sir, and I believe you must agree that the Neck of Arminius is quite as figurative an’ neorhetorical in the path of Party & AEIdeology, as are the señoritoly Values.

===

[1] As you see, the Big Nine figured out _el clavanismo_ several centuries ago and reported Their preliminary research respults to Dr. Shakespeare.

BTW, ¿have Ms. Clio and the Sisters thought of suing a certain Person of Pizza for infringement of copywhight or trademark or patent or whatever? And then there is the _Bahá’iyya_ . . . .

===

[2] I picture Don Andresito, in that garret that appertains to it _quâ_ ‘conservative’ ‘intellectual’, pacin’ back an’ forth with gritted teeth, resolvin’ every second even more resolutely that its own Values must not be influenced in the slightest by the practical politics of its paymasters’ Party. This performance, though, will be much more worth attending to once Mittens is in like Flynn .