"utter irrelevance" ossia Louise amongst the Gnostics

Dear Dr. Bones,

¿What, in your opinion, sir, is going on here:

Gotta tell you all. I am heartbroken. Waiting for the day a majority of my neighbors realize how much they have been 'dumbed-down'. So few understand the English language meaning of the words they echo, therefore the effects of reducing Government spending on Education and Infrastructure. One might excuse those in denial because they are enjoying the 'status quo'. But now, too many under-educated/mis-informed are shouting rhetoric they themselves cannot explain. So many express catch-phrases in utter irrelevance [0], that discussions melt into sound-bites from movies. There are a few who appeal for us to wake up. So I am hopeful. What does Rick Perry, Rick Scott or Scott Walker actually do for the MAJORITY of their (_sic_) citizens? With manufacturing moved to Asia, many leave the State or now work in retail. Others, remain unemployed. Lower earnings means fewer consumers. Fewer consumers slows down the economy. The millionaires travel to their new factories and ignore the plight until they get some other incentive to 'toss us a bone' (re-invest) at guaranteed profit margins. Will we resume thinking of ourselves as Americans, proudly building our country, or as selfish, greedy gamblers supporting the advancement of another nation which offers cheap labor to same business that left our neighbors unemployed? SLAVERY RE-EMERGES!

(A) Is Mr. Poster heartlessly--"thank you, Governor"--makin' fun of the kiddiecons, pretendin' not to understand that about the last thought to drift across the ditto-infested brainpan is "How if I myself have been dumbed down?"

Naturally the more Wally Wombschool OUGHT to think that, the less likely that he ever will. Wombscholarship an’ freedumbin’ down reinforce themselves positively.

Alternatively, (B) has St. Elizabeth of Warrenbuffet found a propagandist of genius who can actually market Her stuff [1] to virtual proles and _Herald_ groupies?

Well, maybe neither. My best guess why so heretical a scribble earned eighteen thumbs up over in Louisedayhicksville is (C) that the kiddies found two hundred and nine (209) words done up as a single paragraph impossibly challengin’, an’ just skimmed it. By accident, more or less [2], most of the jackdaws picked up the same gaud, the one about all of Mr. Poster's neighbors suddenly waking up an' realizing that Poster has been whight all along. Master Wally already feels a lot like that, an' so does Cindy from Wasilla. Feelin' a lot like that is among the common _sequellæ_ of gettin' clobbered over the head with a bag full of AstroTurf™.

Not much insight is required to work out that our old pal Narcissus Dexter is pullin’ most of the strings here. Exactly WHAT it is that Master Narky has been whight from the start about an' everybody else asleep to does not much matter compared to the fact Narky, at least, never let up his dragon watch with unenchanted eye for even a nanosecond. No doubt the _señorito_ is happy that some of the neighbors are finally wakin’ up, but I betcha he would not be pleased if they never do clearly realize that Narky D. attained unto whighteousness before they did. They also selfservice, no doubt, whose Party cards have six or seven digits in the serial number, but ¡let them be humble vis-à-vis their manifest Betters! Like for example Don Narcissito del Derecho.

Happy days.
--JHM
___
[0] If Mr. Poster is taken for a spoofster, then "utter irrelevance" fits whight in that all that jazz is formally a comment on a piece about the electoral fortunes of Willardmitt, second Freelord Romney in the peerage of Wingnut City -- to which it is utterly irrelevant. Self-referentially irrelevant, too, which seems to me rather a nifty trick.

*

[1] A strict critic might wish me to identify it as Professor Krugman's stuff, or even poor Barry's stimulus Peruna, rather than St. Elizabeth's. The difference is immaterial for purposes of the present analysis, for the kiddiecons would blanch an' barf at the sight of all the above, were they to recognize them.

*

[2] If you like my Hypothesis (B), sir, or even if you merely suppose that Mr. Poster is *some* kind of skilled rhetor and agitpropper, though not necessarily the Lieberal Demoncrat kind, then you might support your view by noting that the gaud in question is conveniently placed at the beginning. You might go on to notice "SLAVERY RE-EMERGES" at the far end of the _shtyk_ and conjecture that the Wally-Cindy-Narky Dexter neoreadin’ of the thing is likely to be -- was original-intented to be -- that what the neighborhood ought to wake up to (but is not news to the all-vigilant Sir Walter Wombschool-Mitty) is that somehow they have been, or are about to be, reduced to some worse-than-Hayekian serfdom.

That will serve nicely as a Tee Putty repository, it seems to me, and if Mr. Poster himself fills it up with a different ideoproduct, well, it is in the nature of repositories that they can stand pretty well anything, fillingwise. St. Elizabeth could fill this one up with "¡Let them wake up and see what the banksters are doing to them!" Comrade Frank once filled it up with Kansas.

Probably the whole business came out from under the overcoat of Valentinus , not merely chronologically, but in the sense that any other version that vouchsafed in _The Gospel of Truth_ is bound to be less comprehensive.

Little Tommy Wobble Does A Funny

¡A moment of silence, please!

The Voice from the Moustache hath an Announcement to make:

In my next life, I want to be a member of the “base” — any base. They seem to have so much more fun and influence.

Happy days.

Krug Loves Lizzy

Dear Dr. Bones,

_¡Feliz paleosábado, Don Elihú!_

We draw our Sabbath Morning text from the Book of the prophetess Nitsy :

Elizabeth Warren, the financial reformer who is now running for the United States Senate in Massachusetts, recently made some eloquent remarks to this effect that are, rightly, getting a lot of attention. “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody,” she declared, pointing out that the rich can only get rich thanks to the “social contract” that provides a decent, functioning society in which they can prosper.

Before picking on the gruesome twosome, we ought to put it on the record that that "social contract" grue annoys all the Whight People. For instance, it annoys the ‘conservative’ ‘intellectual’ Don Ricardito de Lowry :

Elizabeth Warren’s Piffle The folly of a supposed “underlying social contract.” A campaign riff from the Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has rocketed around the Internet and been greeted by the Left as a rhetorical triumph.... Warren’s theme is that the rich should pay more taxes as part of “the underlying social contract.” This is taken as a slam-dunk rejoinder to the charge that Pres. Barack Obama’s proposed new tax increases are “class warfare” . . . .

Ktl

Picking on cripples again

Dear Dr. Bones,

Here is what I just sent to _The Louisedayhicksville Tar & Feathers_

So: Mikeyboy has sunk to packie-bashin’. I hope Mom is proud of her little laddie’s obstruction of small entrepreneurships just trying to make a killing in bad times. And in bad neighborhoods. [*] Happy days. === [*] But seriously:

The rest is footnote, as far as the kiddiecons are concerned.

I am not certain that the neo-issue raised by this scriblette -- no, ‘scriblet’ is better, like ‘Chicklets’ -- and singled out by the present hate-inspired keyboard to pile on is august enough to be classified as AEIdeological in nature. There is, perhaps, a sort of pseudogravity -- the "¿Is the class of all classes a member of itself?" sort, approximately -- about wondering out loud whether the Lions of Littlebiz have a whight to take goodies from the Wicked State, thereby improvin’ (one hopes) their own bottomlines, while at the same time wreckin’ Ye Olde Republicke an’ lockin’ the Bad Poor into the impoverished badness of Murrayan Dependency (Pat. Pend.) ever more an’ more hopelessly -- though on the other hand, ’tis not as if anybody is going to let the BP out of MD if Mikeyboy’s Mom’s crew can prevent it.

The whight (though not, in this exceptional case, perhaps the rite) answers seems clear enough: Of course, the COAC belongs to itself!

An’ OF COURSE every fine, upstandin’ Littlebizzy can do whatever it takes, even unto consentin’ to engage in EBT with SNAP. _¡Not kennt kein Gebot!_. And furthermore, _¡Salus corporationis, suprema lex!_

I hear thee objecting, Dr. Bones, that most ‘packies’ are not likely to be _veræ corporationes_, for Mom an’ Pop plus some verbiage from Limbozoom are still only Pop an’ Mom. "Dan an’ Lizzy Littlebizzy," as it were. By no means a _hochwohlgeborene Freipaare Ernst von Boch_ are they. Let alone a Corporate Supercitizen proper, like ScroogeBank or the Goldman-Saxons.

(Can’t fool you, can I?)

The whight answer, nevertheless, the answer given at the back of Chicagonomics for Dummies, the answer proclaimed in thunder tones by every vibrant moral fibre of Mattress Shrugged, is that it is simply no business of ours what happens in the Secret Sector. That, oddly enough, is why AEIdeologues an’ Chambermaids of Commerce always call it ‘private’.

Mikey, son of Mom, ought to be in trouble with its own team’s Neoquisition, if you ask me. Here it is, impertinently takin’ cognizance of how Dr. Dan an’ Mizz Lizzie have chosen to conduct the affairs of Thunderword Adult Beverages LLC (666 Melnea Cass Crescent, Louiserville MA -- telephone number available soon) without bein’ itself a specuvestor, or a supplier, or a customer, or even a no-’count trailer-trash hired hand. Or anythin’ else I can name off-hand but an egregious Nosy Parker.

Perhaps, though, Mikhaïl Mommovitch works for the Party Neoquisition itself? Hmmm. I can see how that would combine with the day job . . . .

If so, its neocolleagues must find Mikeyboy rather a trial at times. That "incurable looseness of thought" mentioned in _Eminent Victorians_ is nicely illustrated here, when it suddenly drops the EBT trail an’ starts bayin’ after crimmigrants an’ criminaliens instead. Only out in Mikeyworld--turn hard whight just past Foxcuckooland--there may be no ‘instead’ about it, no change of subject viewed from the inside: "You seen one Bad Poor, Neocomrade, take my word for it, you seen ’em all." All the Bee Pees that have (so far) managed to break into the _Heimatland G*ttes_, anyway.

From our point of view, us having mentioned Dan an’ Lizzie Thunderword, though hardly from little Mikey’s own, there is a tolerably sane way to connect the EBT dot to the _indocumentados_ dot. Mikhaïl Mommovitch wants to tell Dan an’ Lizzy how to run their secret-sector littlebiz as regards accounts receivable, an’ it also wants -- or oughta want --to teach secret-sector Big Management their personnel policy. ¡Let ScroogeBank an’ Warbucks Widget (&c. &c.) purge themselves of all paperwork-incorrect Don Juans an’ Doña Lindas at once! An’ that includes all those countless shofers an’ nannies an’ groundskeepers an’ yachthands an’ polo-pony grooms an’ whatnot that work for Big Managers as individuals.

Given that looseness-of-thought problem, Mikhaïl Mommovitch Graham-Cracker should probably be viewed by secret sectorians who are in earnest as an accident waitin’ to happen. Who can guess what it will be pokin’ its Pinocchio into next an’ wantin’ to dictate to its Betters about?

Not, of course, that this crocodile can weep much for such victims as they. Mikeyboy would not be where it is today, had the Babbitts of Worcester County not befriended an’, more to the point, befunded it. If Mikeyboy turns out at last to be a sorcerer’s apprentice, even a Freedumbstein’s monster, well, ¿an’ whose fault would that be?

Happy days.
--JHM

¡Let us have our neoclichés in full, please!

Dear Dr. Bones,

Wandering, lonely as a cloud, over the Palace of Public Television atop the Great Blue Hill, I intercepted a still, small voice transmitting as follows:

Why porcupine? Probably because a peaceful protest against corporate power can be portrayed as the rabid, brown, left wing mobs out to get hard workin’ folks like us jconway @ Sun 18 Sep 2:01 PM

Make that, at very least, "rabid, BLUE-brown, left-wing mobs out to get DECENT, hard-workin’, BY-THE-RULES-PLAYIN’ [**] folks like WUNNERFUL US"

But seriously (¿?), we really could do with a canonical form of this Tee Putty boilerplate, without which the Three Weird Sisters would be reduced to something like fifty percent dead air on the caller side.

There are, by the way, 9,160,000 g@@gs (in 0.26 seconds) for "play by the rules" as opposed to a mere 1,430,00 (0.22) for "we make the rules," a ratio that may be pertinent to the eventual fate of the cult of St. Elizabeth.

(( "Who, me, officer? But I was just countin’ . . . . Well, and maybe playin’ Pin-the-URL-on-the-Lynx a little with Ms. Goneril an’ Ms. Reagan an’ What’s-her-face over there hidin’ behind King Geezer." [*] ))

Happy days.

[*] _Vide supra_: [Links fixed. Please, for the love of Pete, learn how to insert links instead of typing in long URLs! -ed.]

***

[**] (( PHILOLOGICAL ADDENDUMB for Specialists (and the VERY bored ))

I sent the pet g@@gle out with my new, improved version and what I got back was

tollwütigen, blau-braun, linker Flügel Mobs aus, um anständige, hart workin ', By-The-Rules-PLAYIN "Leute wie Wunnerful US

I find it hard to decide what to like best in that surprise packet. ¡’Tis the Plenty of Father Zeus, begorrah!

(1) Winner is, I guess, that mysterious "_um sich_" with neither a ‘_zu_’ nor a verb anywhere in sight. ¡Talk about "wander lonely as a cloud"!

(2) Runner-up is the way they flip a coin each time as to whether the republicanine mood of the American verb should be spelled in New High Prussian with single or double inverted commas. An’ speakin’ of -canine, Wildhagen 1953 (675a _infra_) never heard of _*tollwütig_, giving _Tollwut_ as the name of the brain disease, but bare _wütend_ as an adjective for the patient or victim or consumer or user thereof.

(3) Naturally my little attempt to get in the target-language spirit with "by-the-rules-playin’" only made everything worse. Shoulda known that it would. "No good deed goes _unbestraft_," after all. And furthermore, ¿Hath President Berliner not said, "_Das Leben ist nicht fairembalanced_?

(4) On the nerd side, not only do the B'nê G@@G not allow one to cut-and-paste their invaluable gibberish without a struggle, they have found a way of omitting the phrase to be translated from the U.R.L., so that one can no longer toss a link around but must copy it all out -- after figuring out the paste puzzle. Though this nifty arrangement makes it a little more difficult to nail the perps in error, it does not make it utterly impossible, which alone would seem to me to make it worth their trouble.

Mais que sçay-je? (( The B.G. get that one wyrd too. Natchrully. ))

My Day at the Track

Dear Dr. Bones,

While not occupied with creating the unhappiness of journalists, Dr. Pressbeater runs optimism races with Dr. Pangloss--and usually wins. Little Miss Sunshine still leads the pack overall, but ¡let her look to her laurels!

The bad news (if one may mention anything so uncongenial here at Seeper Downs), is that the foundations of Bake®i™e brand Proleptic Bliss may be less than sound. Passing over the worst problem [*] for now, let me draw attention to how this piece nicely illustrates the second-worst, as I rate it. Dr. Pressbeater--unless he is positively cheating, a thought beyond unthinkable--does not notice that the various passages of Scripture upon which he relies to announce our imminent national (re-)entry into Be‘ûlâ Land are not all equally authoritative.

Built on the rock, as it were, on the one hand, is (A) stuff like this:

[T]he Congressional Budget Office's projections for Social Security ... show a 1.6 percentage point increase in the payroll tax would leave the program fully solvent throughout its 75-year planning period.

Not, perhaps, PERFECTLY rocklike, yet tolerably close. Most of what is being prognosticated depends more on elementary mathematics [*] than on the former real world.

Quite different is the case with (B) the following, which Dr. Pressbeater himself introduces "by [way of a] comparison," though hardly the present comparison:

[W]orkers[’] wages are projected to rise by almost 40 percent over the next three decades.

One circumstance that makes that prooftext sound a little fishy (or sandy) is that it is not attributed to anybody in particular. Evidently one takes it or leaves it according as one's faith in Pressbeaterism was antecedently quick or sluggish. Mine is rather a sloth, though not quite a slug: metamathematical predictions are notoriously tricky, and especially about the future. Nevertheless, it seems to me permitted to a rational creature to doubt, always decorously and never importunately, that extrapolating the next forty years from the last four hundred with a straightedge (or digital equivalent) is bound to get it all right.

We may even be in for--¡brace yourselves and secure the horses, please!--a little dose of Economic D*cl*ne.

That is to say, all that downsourcing, and outsizing, and always adopting the preferential option for paper-pushing rather than some banausic activity that might get one's hands dirty, &c., may actually matter a little. I don't mean that the heathen Chinee will inevitably be beating poor old Sam at the _Finanzkapitalismus_ game by the end of next month, but . . . . WWNN.

Dr. Pressbeater is not unaware that such things have been going on, he even fits pieces of them into his curious system of conceptual grooves and crotchets on occasion, but these are only tiny sunspots on the face of the general Panglossianity. The skies over Seeper Downs are hardly ever cloudy at all, let alone "all day." And as for "discouragin’ words," well, I presume you can see that I act here on the assumption that that sort of thing is mostly left to incompetent newspaper employees, ignorant lay sheeps, and peanut-gallery peanuts to supply, if we have the bad taste to want such a product.

_Alio modo_, you might say that one of the main grooves in beautiful downtown Deambakerville is named "Normalcy-is-just-around-the-corner Boulevard."

But Keynes knows best.

Happy days.
--JHM


___
[*] The student may notice how "remedial 3rd grade arithmetic" puts in a cameo appearance.

[**] Philologists may compare Labour-in-vain Road , Ipswich MA 01938.

Indeed, both the name and the zipcode have a sort of vague allegorical appropriateness for a wider audience.

"Where are all these new faces coming from?"

Dear Dr. Bones
,

¡Rejoice!

Up the figurative slippery slope at Castle Yankeestein [1], the Baron has just had good news. Project AstroTurf™ Bagger has passed the final feasability test! (You heard it here first.) One really *can* take a human--anthropoid, at any rate--dittopan an’ reduce the contents to neomush by repeated concussion an’ attrition in the path of Party an’ AEIdeology.

Here is the neomush to prove it:

sicofit replying to Popham / ? +8 Good Comment -7 Poor Comment My solution is to vote out all incumbents, close the borders, fly all illegals back home, stop letting people whose countries are at war in to collect public benefits, and start anew. I heard a story recently about an immigrant telling a relative from Africa to come to Boston so they could get housing and money. If you walk around the city, you will see so many none Americans flooding the area. Where are all these new faces coming from? Posted 3 hours ago [subtract from 09/17/2011 12:07PM] Reply Link Abusive

The objectives of Project AstroTurf™ Bagger are such that it does not matter a nanoreagan what problem the patient supposes itself to be solvin’.

In fact, I can’t even guess the problem. The immediate occasion is a routine slice of _Boston Humbug_ baloney called "Romney, Perry do a job on each other / Attack records on testy campaign trail / By Hillary Chabot / Saturday, September 17, 2011" Party Neocomradess (sixth grade) H. X. Chabot never does get around to the Attack Record Trail Menace, so perhaps that is the one. His Texcellency an’ Willardmitt, second Freelord Romney, an’ first Freelord Romneycare, in the peerage of Foxcuckooland, are not, I presume, problematical in themselves not for for kiddiecons an’ the conners of little kiddies.

¿Why insist on havin’ any particular problem, though, when the solution tastes so scrumptious? "Life is uncertain: eat dessert first!" And don’t ask too many questions, or else all your clothes will suddenly turn invisible like in the fairytale. And then ¿where will you be? I ask you, sir.

No rose without a silver linin’ though: the flaw in this gem is those mysterious "none Americans." Had the oracle had been conveyed to us at any point by telephone, we could just assume "nun Americans" and carry on [2], but Señorito Poster will almost certainly have typed it in. Oh, well!

So, then, Bones: do not merely make a memorandumb of this precious treasure, please have it skinned and gutted and stuffed by experts. I propose to have it mounted in the Hall of Mirrors to be unto us as a _ktêma es aiei_.

Also to have it readily available in 2019 or thenabouts, when the _nuevoseñorito_ gets all those druthers, but still ain’t happy, a thing which is as about as predictable as yesterday’s sunset. [3]

Happy days.
--JHM


___
[1] On Route 127.5 at the Arkham-Innsmouth line, across from the sixteenth (16) Dunkin’ Donuts of twenty-three (23) on the whight or SE side of the Boston-Newburyport carriageway.

As I suppose you know, direction of Project AstroTurf™ Bagger has been entrusted to Perfesser Tarr of the E-sex Neojunto an’ Doc Feather of the Greater Worcester Chambermaids of Commerce, Inc.. With additional fundin’ provided by the ever-immortal Bacon Hill Institute .

¡Well serviced indeed is his freelordship of Yankenstein!

(( Yes, I realize it was ‘Yankeestein’ the first time ’round. Let me know which you like better, please. ))

***

[2] With or without expressly speculating whether this patient has mistaken the spiritual daughters of Lady Shariah for an obscure order of Ratzingerite _devouées_. The mistake is, again, immaterial, for obviously the couch potatoe of any Superstition or Enthusiasm who insists on wearing her potatoe bag as street clothes deserves whatever she gets. Up to a point, anyway -- "mud, not stones."

***

[3] One hopes the learnèd, neogallant an’ thoroughly posthonourable Tarr an’ Feather have thought carefully in advance about their freenoble employer’s vast an’ megalopsychic Project. And similarly the Baconian Hillsters. I am pretty confident that all that spicy arizenophobia which they mix into their mush is of scant interest either to themselves as psocial scientists or to their Venerable Funders,the Class of Employers, as selfservicers, yet if it does not break down naturally in a reasonably short period, grave problems of political toxic waste disposal may develop.

If you squint at the above mess of e-pottage a little, Dr. Bones, I believe you can already see glimmers of the danger of which I worry. Taking certain words in it certain ways, a strong reader might read it so strongly that one would have to possess -- legitimately and demonstrably, preferably with a picture ID card -- a Christojudæan name like ‘Masconomo’ or ‘Cochise’ or possibly ‘Pocohontas’ not to be, eventually, slated for summary deportation from the _Heimatland G*ttes_.

Dan Paddy Moynihan of Louisdayhicksville, an’ the Tee Putty victims more generally, has been successfully ’turf’bagged into thinkin’ that gettin’ rid of poor old Auntie Zeituni will do the trick. But obviously it will not. So ¿What will happen when the kiddiecons figure out they have been had? ¿When everybooby there are even the remotest plausible grounds for deportin’ has been kicked out, an’ yet, somehow, the streets are STILL chockful of Bad Poor, with slimy tentacles forever reaching out hopefully towards the wallets of their Betters?

You Want Jobs? Try WAR.

Dear Dr. Bones,

I have decided to spare Comrade Blow of the NYTC and his corporate employer’s Letters Editor the following

Are too many (icky, selfish) organic citizens chasing too few jobs created by (clean-cut, futuristic) Corporate Citizens? Not a hard problem: FOR JOBS, IT’S WAR! " Only conscript the Bad Poor _quantum sufficeat_ and put them to work -- or ‘work’, if you insist absolutely -- in the Violence Sector. Why, ¡the conquest and occupation of Cathay alone . . . ! Bomby days.

effusion of McMerriment.

Our Betters will probably figure it out for themselves soon enough, now that they have resolved to boldly reconsider formerly closed and _tabu_-sealed policy questions. Even only a sneaking suspicion that Cap’n Ludd [1] may have been at least partly whight about the Jobs Plague must open the door, I think, for Officers Club nobility and gentry of hire rank to step through and give the Bad Poor an’ Lesser Breeds Without a refreshin’ dose of _sich durchzusetzen_.

Cornet von Blow (let us thus exalt his horn, _honoris causâ_) and Commodore Clifton, commanding the "U. S. S. Gallup," are, of course, to be commended for reopening the Ludd dossier. Equally of course, of course, nobody except ourselves who actually notices what they have been up to will have anythin’ but factious abuse to offer them. ¿What becomes of the AEIdeology, once word gets out about "five billion people over 15 years old .... [and] only 1.2 billion full-time, formal jobs"? ¿Of "The Middle Class," what? [2]

Be that as we shall see, short of actually naming the _innominandus inter Christojudæanos_ Ned, Cornet Blow and Commodore Clifton could not have made it plainer whose banner they have enlisted under.

For the record, let us have the whole swearing-in ceremony, shall we?

Clifton explains that of the world’s five billion people over 15 years old, three billion said they worked or wanted to work, but there are only 1.2 billion full-time, formal jobs. Therefore his conclusion “from reviewing Gallup’s polling on what the world is thinking on pretty much everything is that the next 30 years won’t be led by U.S. political or military force. Instead ... the world will be led with economic force — a force that is primarily driven by job creation and quality G.D.P. growth.” And guess who is vying for the lead? That’s right: China. And I [Carolus Jungherr von Blow] must say, we don’t appear to be poised to fight this war.

Oddly enough, the good Cornet does not, unless I have missed something, include Luddophobia amongst poise-disturbing factors. One might think he had just enlisted with St. Ike, not Captain Ned! Instead of justifying that all-but-pornographic diagnosis, the younker wanders off in quite a different direction:

In education we’ve gone from leading to lagging, our infrastructure is literally crumbling around us, ever-expanding health care costs threaten to suffocate us and our politics have succumbed to paralysis (...) the recent American educational achievement gaps — between black and Latino students and white ones; between low-income students and the rest; between low-performing states and the rest; and between the United States as a whole and better-performing countries — not only cost the economy trillions of dollars, they also “impose on the United States the economic equivalent of a permanent national recession.”

A much more familiar direction, that one. Exactly the direction, indeed, that the Muses and comrades and you and I would have expected from the Mark I civilian Blow before he heard the Word of the L*dd and neopented on the spot.

Now, although I think Luddism very well worth a second look, almost as worthy of revisitation as the (other) dogmata of Absolute Free Trade, nevertheless this is not a case for "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly." Cornet von Blow and, to a slightly lesser extent, Commodore Clifton, are headed in the whight direction, but there are serious problems about their evangelical methodology. In particular, it requires real dexterity in DDoubleThThink to maintain that the solution of "too many organisms, too few niches" can involve cranking out more, and perhaps still worse ‘overqualified’, ergozetetic organisms than ever.

It looks plain as day to me that Cornet von Blow is trying to use his new Peruna to cure himself of what now turn out to be imaginary diseases previously misdiagnosed by quacks who knew not L*dd. Were he to go all the way back to Square Zero as the good neovert should and start over from scratch, he would forget about his silly ‘gaps’ and tackle the Jobs Plague head-on Not necessarily by forcibly neoliberating the heathen Chinee, as this keyboard has modestly suggested, but certainly not by wallpapering over "educational achievement gaps" either.

The good Commodore is not much better. As quoted by a perhaps overzealous subordinate and recent neovert down around the bottom line here, his freelordship seems to have hatched a variant form of Neoluddism designed to join ’em rather than lick ’em. Clifton evidently accepts his Cap’n’s basic diagnosis -- ever fewer and fewer niches for more and more organisms -- but supposes that one can set up a local _refugium_ inside which entropy runs uphill. Just circle the wagons and the "1.2 billion full-time, formal jobs" immediately around Cap’n Ned and Commodore Clifton and Cornet von Blow, and _¡voilà!, the 3.8 (or howevermany) billion Bad Poors are effectively disappeared! They will not be out of sight and mind forever, presumably, yet at least we happy Peruna-imbibers of Greater Europe will be the last to succumb. Anyway, "In the long run, we are all dead." Tra-la-la.

Ludd-Cliftonism is most plausible, I suspect, when viewed through Antisocial Darwinist spectacles. If you pass up my chosen claptrap of ‘organisms’ and ‘niches’ and _refugia_ &c. for comparable Antisocial Keynesian paraphernalia, Dr. Bones, then Ludd-Cliftonism looks a lot like "beggar thy neighbor," ¿does it not? Which leads whight to the conceptual difficulty of working out how we shall get/stay richer than Croesus whilst marketing the fruits of our neoproductivity to beggared customers. True, mere vulgar Luddism, all Luddism simply as such, assures us that there must be always more and more of the latter, yet what we really want is, I take it, not an immense horde of ragpicker ‘patrons’ but more like scads and scads of Accounts Receivable paid in full, complete with penalties and interest. Plus, ideally, a tip on top., it bein' obviously always a pleasure to service Wunnerful US.

Though Cornet von Blow’s citations look pretty conclusive, ‘damning’ even, I daresay we really ought to look at Commodore Clifton’s book ourselves to make sure we are 100% accurate and fairembalanced about Ludd-Cliftonism.

Meanwhile, my own violence-pro approach -- "¡Draft ’em all an’ ship ’em out to police the boondocks of the world!" -- is a policy tub that stands on a completely separate theoretical bottom. One might, though, make certain concessions to the Ludd-Cliftonites. Cornet von Blow might be reassured, for instance, that there will be an immense need for Mil. Sci. instructors over on the Educationalism Front. It makes no material difference that I can detect whether we label our loci of instruction "basic training barracks" or "high schools." And since almost the whole curriculum will be new, previous gaps need not apply.

Commodore Clifton is (probably -- we really do gotta read him) likely to be more worried about what the Chambermaids of Commerce will think than about the Officers Club crowd. To him we may bark sharply "¡Military-Industrial-Academic Complex!", which is not, to be sure, a full explanation-cum-justification in itself, but strongly suggests there must be one lurking somewhere in the nearby bushes. If nothing else, we could pick up a lot of valuable curios after we neoliberate the Chicoms. [3]

Bomby days.
--JHM

___
[1] R.H.I.P. (or grade inflation) applies even to urban mythology: in addition to the solid middle-class, the "respectable cloth-uniformed Republican O-3," as it were, Big LEW says the folkloric character of Captain Ludd [was] also known as ‘King’ Ludd or ‘General’ Ludd .

We humble are content to leave General His Highness the Prince of Ludd to confer with ‘Dr.’ Greenspan an’ with all the kernels in Kentucky.

***

[2] I realize that I have been boring thee for years, O Bones, with my notion that nobooby who insists on wailing or railin’ about "The Middle Class" every chance she gets has any contribution to make to grown-up political sociology. Only this moment, though, have I noticed that the violence pros are not troubled by this pestiferous baloney: either they let you in the door at the Officers Club or they keep you out. Period. The entire category of ‘middle’ is delightfully absent -- unless one were to count warrant officers, which would be plumb dotty.

***

[3] Mil. Sci. has sadly and strangely neglected the matter of Loot, _le pillage_, since about the time of Napoléon _Ier_. This oversight should be corrected at once, and then, to insure a steady income over and above our initial windfalls, naturally we will persuade everybody on the block that they ought to treat Big Sam Globocop at the local (equivalent of) Dunkin’ Donuts both early an’ often.

¡Go[es] without sayin’, that oughtta!

Problems of Din’alin’ism (Part MXI)

Dear Dr. Bones,

Though St. Elizabeth, Granny of God ¡and a H*rv*rd man to boot!, cries out to be ridiculed, she will keep till tomorrrow. Unless my signals are crossed, the track must be cleared at once to let this one through:

Report: ‘Romneycare’ a killer Study finds Bay State lost thousands of jobs By Frank Quaratiello / Thursday, September 15, 2011 The Bay State’s controversial 2006 universal health-care plan — also known as “Romneycare” — has cost Massachusetts more than 18,000 jobs, according to an exclusive blockbuster study that could provide ammo to GOP rivals of former Gov. Mitt Romney as he touts his job-creating chops (_sic_) on the campaign trail. “Mandating health insurance coverage and expanding the demand for health services without increasing supply drove up costs. Economics 101 tells us that,” said Paul Bachman, research director at Suffolk University’s Beacon Hill Institute, the conservative think tank that conducted the study. The Herald obtained an exclusive copy of the findings.

There’s a lot more where that came from -- ¿ain’t we got fun? -- but perhaps I have administered too large a dose already. Not having had to turn a page or click a link to get from the shoppe window to the bowels of Kiddiecons-‘R’-Us, you will probably have failed to do Master Frankie Q.’s employin’ Corporation full justice in the matter of Freelord of Romneycare’s *¡*K*I*L*L*E*R*!* status. One was hoping, of course, on the basis of the headline, for hot Tales of Whitey Bulger stuff, at very least, photographs of the graves of thirty-eight (37.709) innocent victims of Willard Mitt.

Only to find that ’tis no more than yet another whight-wing wheeze or burble from The Louisdayhicksville Tuba-Trumpet. [1] [2] _¡Quelle chagrin!_

The Corporation-employed headline artist, who is presumably not identical with the scribblin’ _signorino_, is antecedently prepared to believe pretty well any scabbery that comes down the pike, includin' "Bay State lost thousands of jobs." That is certainly the way Foxworld oughtabe. No pious foxcuckoo is likely to doubt for an instant that anythin' that sounds so perfectly swell for her Party an’ its AEIdeology might not be 1040% accurate.

Decent political grown-ups, on the other hand -- an’ not so decent Willardmitt groupies also, if any still exist around here -- will demand just a little more than the bare word of the all-prestigious "research director at Suffolk University’s Beacon Hill Institute." "¿And how, exactly. would HE know?" is the crux of it, though I have to wonder a little on the side with what "on average, Romneycare cost the Bay State 18,313 jobs" has been averaged.

The odd thirteen slain jobs is a nice rhetorical touch, yet rhetorical is all it is. Had Freelord Bachman an' the B.H.I. b'hoys wanted to just make their stuff up, "18,313" is not significantly more difficult to coin an’ utter than eighteen thousand on the nose would have been. A little farther on, "reduced investment in Massachusetts by $25.06 million" seems to me positively finicky in its attempted pseudoprecision.

Be that as it may, I find it an uphill struggle to believe that the b'hoys actually sent out --and received back -- questionnaires to everybooby who has had the bad judgment to specuvest in Romneychusetts. Even more pertinently, to everybooby who did NOT so specuvest. Were you asked, Dr. Bones? Do you suppose the Chambermaids of Commerce at Beijing, for instance, were asked? What about the CoC’s of Bangalore?

Let us face it, sir: an unheard-of crew of Bachmanites can not possibly have paid the postage required, all Coorses an’ Bradleys to the contrary notwithstandin’, one wonders what they actually did do. Perhaps a selective telephone survey of used-truck dealers in Worcester County? Or how about a couple of _indocumentado_ spottin' field trips north of the Mystic? [2] Or ....

Happy days.
--JHM


___
[1] One imagines Don Francito, or its employin’ Corporation’s headline artist, or both, twirlin’ their Hoovervillainous moustaches as they came up with the little joke or libel. Not so easy, though, to imagine Wally Wombschool an’ Cindy from Wasilla actually noticin’ it an’ enjoyin’ their factious yuck. "Life is unfair." And Art goes unappreciated.

*

[2] "The only good job is a dead job" tresspasses across my mental front yard.

I shoot the intruded down with gusto and impunity, knowing that if the "Beacon Hill Institute" coven were up to thinkin’ as clearly as that, they would have emigrated to NYC or DC long since. It is an admirable thing, a tribute to Yankee Exceptionalism, that even Cousin Marriage Country an’ the second-string Babbits of Worcester County should possess their very own Tanks of Thought. _¡Nur in Amerika!

Nevertheless, if the BHI were significantly better than a provincial backwater of Foxcuckooland, the Muses and you and I would not need to wonder _¿¡Quienes!?_, or need to turn to Big LEW for confirmation of our uncharitable suspicions about Coorses an’ Bradleys an’ so forth an’ so on. (( Though it *does* make one feel good to have guessed whight about such a neo-thing. ))

The Class of Coorses an’ Bradleys (&c. &c.) will not, be needin’ any lessons in jobicide from their own hired hands. Not only is that "¿My foot, my tutor?" country, ’twould call for the audience to suppose poor Ms. Miranda has a club foot on top of her run-of-the-mill juvenile delinquentisms.

*

[3] Don Juan and Doña Lindita do not themselves specuvest, naturally. Nevertheless, a notable increase in their numbers would almost certainly reflect a decline in specuvestment by their complexional an’ socioeconomic Betters. I have no notion, myself, how the detailed quantification would work. But bear in mind that I never took Ec. 10 at _alma mater_, let alone his freelordship’s "Economics 101" at, say, Wingsdale or St. Dilbert Antistate University.

We ignorant lay sheeps would have no business presuming to follow his freelordship of Bachman an' the b'hoys through a maze of differential equations (or whatever). But, unlike Don Francito de Quaratiello an' the _Herald_ angels, we cannot feel altogether satisfied with an announcement of completely methodology-free neoresults. Not when the neoresults are blatantly designed to be used against us an' to exalt the Horn of Wingnuttiness.

The Cuteless Perplex

Dear Dr. Bones,

I don't think they (MA political candidates) should have to comply by (_sic_) any stinking rules It should be like having sex or buying drugs or something. Just mind your own business already. Also – what’s is ActBlue’s connection to the Democratic party? Does it refuse to help Republicans? Independents? Does it help all Democratic candidates or only progressive ones or what? And why doesn’t the government simply own the whole fundraising system, make all donations go through a public version of ActBlue, for all candidates, if it’s so important for the public that it be done right? Who is ActBlue and how do we know they aren’t laundering and sanitizing and making stuff up? dont-get-cute @ Tue 13 Sep 1:40 AM

As you see, sir, Dr. Cuteless writes as if she notices no differences between ‘sex’ an' "buying drugs or something."

Something must speak for itself, but as to the other two, it matters a little, I think, that there are laws on the books against pharmacological entrepreneurship.

Unenforced rules are not the same thing as not havin’ rules. The policy implications are different as well.

Obviously [1] Dr. Cuteless adores unenforced statutes, and this is -- perhaps -- a defensible position for a stout paladin of the Secret Sector to assume, but one that needs to be glossed rather carefully to insure full compliance with the AEIdeology. Most selfservatives do not bother with this particular emanation from the Party Pænumbra, simply or simplistically preferrin’ that there be no regulation by The Wicked State at all, rather that there be lots of regs that are never -- well, HARDLY ever -- insisted on.

As regards campaign finance in particular, the orthodoxy of selfservatism is almost monolithic: any attempt to control, or even disclose, what is goin' on behind closed board-room doors campaignwise is anathema. Plus furthermore ¡it is a declaration of war against Freedumb of Speech!

To defend the Cuteless heresy is at once easy and nearly imposible. Easy, insofar as large masses of (usually) ignored rules ensure that the Unitalitarian Executive has lots of discretion, nearly as much as the BigManagers of a secret-sector business corporation have. The impossibility is to get Party neocomrades not to notice that "public administration" (as it used to be called) is not in fact a Secret-Sector phenomenon. About the last thing most Party neocomrades want to see is discretion in the hands of some St. Elizabeth of Warren --- "In the paws of Wesley Mouche", as it were. So to speak.

For Cutelessism to possess any appeal, one must, I think, fancy oneself wielding the discretion rather than being subject to it. The main stream of kiddie selfservatives probably came as close as they ever will to agreein’ with Dr. Cuteless back in good Vicerpotus Cheney's golden days. Even then, however, discretionary enforcement must have seemed far less kiddie-threatin’ in questions of foreign and aggression policy than closer to home. _Vis-à-vis_ the Lesser Breeds Without, Walter Mitty can dream Cheyneyoid or Cutelessite dreams securely. Unless his papers are in a *really* serious condition of disorder, nobooby is gonna take good ol’ Walt for a criminalien or an Islamophalangitarian. [2]

===

The ActBlue stuff is news to me, so let it wait till I have compiled a dossier on it.

Happy days.
--JHM


___
[1] She might, I suppose, be spoofin’ the Blue Blazers a little.

If so, she is good at it; her e-face looks perfectly straight to me.

=

[2] Her freeladyship might find a wedge-entry point for Cutelessism over at Logan. The jet-set kiddies really do seem to hate bein' treated like probable Muzzies, when any fool can see at a glance that they are only Walter Mitty. Or Grandma Moses, as the case may be.

To pick up essentially the same _shtyk_ by the other end, airport security could "go cuteless," leavin’ all the fancy terror-detectin’ gizmos where they are, but savin’ scads an’ scads of money in the present Age of Austerity by not pluggin’ ’em in or payin’ Union thugs to stand beside ’em.

I write merrily, but recall, Dr. Bones, that there are a respectable number of Party neocomrades who claim that The Jewish State (Pat. Pend.) handles all matters of global tourrorism an’ Native Management far better than we Homeland™ers do. And the reason why TJS is supposed to outdo USA in this department boils down, as far as I can make out, to discretionary enforcement. Or call it ‘Cutelessism’.

Pickin’ on Party Cripples

Dear Dr. Bones,

Mass. voters are ripe for the picking By Holly Robichaud / Tuesday, September 13, 2011 - (( ... snip factious screed ... )) Liberated I'm sorry, have you not heard of Ron Paul? Perry is just the red version of Romney. They're both on the same team essentially. Team status-quo/pro-corporate lobbyist. Texas Congressman Ron Paul on the other hand hasn't flip-flopped or resorted to passive aggressive behavior when confronted with past "mistakes." He also doesn't force girls to get vaccinated. I would think in times like these we would appreciate the freedoms that are being stripped from us by the day and someone that has been fighting to preserve them for over 30 years consistently. Posted 4 hours ago (( 09/13/2011 05:58AM )) Reply Link Abusive

'Liberated' indeed!

Not exactly representative of "Mass voters," however. Even the second-best used-truck dealers of Worcester County -- even Perfesser Tarr an’ Doc Feather up in the E-sex Neojunto -- will not soon be lookin’ for a DILBERTARIAN neoliberation.

That first syllable in our dear MA’s Christojudæan name is lots of fun -- I make the joke early and often myself -- but not so much, perhaps, when Party neocomradesses like H. X. Chabot an’ H. X. Robichaud start barkin' as if everything within a hundred kilometres of the Bacon on a Hill were _eo ipso_ ‘mass’ in the "mass murder" sense.

More broadly: without scads an' scads of "unenrolleds," whight wingnuttiness in Winthrop Country is not a MASS movement at all. Thus the formal machinery of the Party of Grant and Hoover (an' Goldwater ’n’ Atwater ....) in these parts is already a minority's minority, even before gettin' taken over by the sort [1] of persons who take over recruitment-challenged factions


Happy days.
--JHM

___
[1] To be polite, say, "Those who enjoy bein' BIG FROGS in small puddles."

Should accuracy be attempted, one might mention bores, an’ charlatans, an’ neoscalawags, an’ Filene’s-Basement-local sugardaddies, an’ everybooby who makes sure that her smallbiz self-advertises relentlessly via the Three Weird Sisters, ’RKO, ’XKS an’ ’TKK,

¿Did I mention the Herald angels?

"My Sun the Neoindustrialist"

Though my politics are about the same as those of little Miss Sunshine, especially when it comes to piling on "every New Democrat and any old Republican" in the delightful quest for policy scapegoats and economic voodoo dolls, her whistling about "the time for [a] neo-industrial America" as she skips past the graveyard seems a little superficial. Missy does not much want to look at the darker possibilities, in particular to consider that maybe it’s all as simple as "Ladies and gentlemen, our turn is over. Henry Luce has had his century (most of one, anyway), and now the Lesser Breeds Without will finally be getting some too."

One can imagine Missy at Madrid around A. D. 1650, pestering grandees and Crown ministers with projects for a "neo-agricultural Spain" to replace the "postagricultural Spain" that was not working out well.

Imagination is not to be blindly trusted, however. Whatever "went wrong" in that parallel-looking case, dogmatic adherence to Absolute Free Trade cannot have been involved. Actually, the more stody and academic idolators of AFT among us like to claim -- or used to -- that their own stuff dances on the grave of an antediluvian foolishness called ‘monetarism’. I got the impression that, had that Peruna been as good as it was touted, we would all be living in the late Reaganite morning or early Obamatan afternoon of _los siglos de oro y plata_, or call it "the Habsburg Millenium." Though if we had to be living around here where we actually do live, Habsburg Exceptionalism would perhaps not be our preferred ideology. ¿Who wants to go to the trouble of discovering How The World Really Works™ -- only to find that there can be no question of it working especially well for the likes of US?

Missy is most interesting when she condescends to gossip and anecdotal evidemce, notably

Thirty years ago, when defenders of American manufacturing first suggested that the nation commit to a “domestic content” standard in the goods we bought, they were howled down by nearly every economist and editorial writer in the land. (A friend counted 98 newspapers that editorialized against it, and none that wrote in favor.)

As early as 1621 / 1981, then, little Miss Sunshine had already started working on her portrayal of Princess Cassandra of Troy, fearing _monetaristas_ / Absolute Freetraders even *before* they had altogether stopped bearing gifts. _¡Qué providencia!_: SHE, at least, has seen all along that there is something awfully fishy about that absurd ‘horse’ of theirs. [1]

Her Royal Highness looked AFT in the mouth then, and, d.b.a. "Little Miss Sunashine," she is still looking it in the mouth now. I do not want to complain too loudly of the never having moved on to the rest of the horse’s anatomy. Yet there it is -- though HRH is to be warmly [1] commended for disbelieving in Freedumb of Trade, and thus making a pariah of herself even in the eyes of the disreputable fishwrap community, her heresy has never been radical, it never goes beyond first suspecting, then knowing, that AFT has -- somehow -- become a dumb idea for US. At no point does she seem to have cared what anybody-else-in-particular’s idea of it may have been or ought to be. Still less, what The Philosopher [2] makes of it, considered globally and historically and eternally.

The result of not looking beyond the oral cavity is that this scribble insinuates, whether thus original-intented or not, that to acknowledge "mistakes were made," plus or minus two aspirins and a glass of wine, ought to suffice to restore US to true economic sunshine _pronto_. Missy is not visibly worried that her "neo-industrial America" might be no more likely to arrive than a troupe of unicorns. Missy does not say "The hour is late, but if we all pull together, we can drag that nag Manufacturing back into our national barn where she belongs." [3] Missy takes for granted that if there were a Will to neoindustrialate, then to discover the Way would be no big deal.

(( This sort of thing is how she got the cutesy nickname. ))

Happy days.


___
[1] VERY warmly! I write merrily, but bear in mind that coming out audibly for icky Protectionism used to be like endorsing the Black Death. The consensus that Missy dared to think independently of would have made Juggernaut envious.

[2] My thanks to Mr. David Hume of Edinburgh.

[3] Mr. Hume’s buddy Kant of Koenigsberg would rule, perhaps, that Missy neglects to ask the ‘critical’ question: _¿Wie soll "eine nachindustrielle Amerika" überhaupt möglich sein?_ -- "Hey, guys, before we start hunting snarks, are we *perfectly* sure they have not gone extinct over the last thirty years when nobody was looking?"

The Prophet Honoured at Home

Passing over Howard Louis, Freelord Carr, we come to a peanut-gallery wingnutette who seems to live in MA without actually hatin' W. Mitt Romneycare all that much:

I notice that the people who criticize Romney always skip over the fact that he is an extemely successful business man. He built businesses from the ground up. He saved the Olympics. What a joke that some dopey guy from Utah that was affiliated with the Olympics said that Mitt "just happened to come in at the right time". Well, I hope he just happens to come in at the right time to Washington, say around Jan. of 2013. Maybe he'll just happen to get lucky there too, like his businesses just happened to get lucky. Any sane, non political fanatic has to look at this guy as the most qualified to turn around the economy. What other national candidate with executive experience is more qualified to fix a broken economy and get the deficit and unemployment moving in the right direction again? Someone try to debate that without using names or insults or general statements. And if you're going to just say "Romneycare" and not cite any specifics, I'll just assume you have no idea what you're talking about. There is a big difference between a state trying to reign in it's (_sic_) own health care costs and trying to nationalize the entire health care industry. If you try to compare the two, you are not capable of looking at things in-depth. Slogans and catch phrases that try to simplify intricate matters only prolong the problem. We need honest debate and well thought out solutions. Accusations and demonizing are only masking the problems like a pain killer when surgery is required to solve the fractured bureaucracy on a more permanent basis.

The neocomradess seems not to appreciate that she is proposin’ an innovation. Traditionally, America’s Otherparty has not run its Owners for President. From outside the mon[k]ey house, the reason appears to be that Republican hack pols are, consciously or subliminally, always presumed by their own Party base an’ vile to be third- or fourth-raters: I mean, if they were really any good, wouldn’t they be out enrichin’ themselves in the Secret Sector like rational creatures?

His Texcellency -- Don Ricardito de Perry y Stetson -- is perfectly traditional by that standard. [**]

Willard Mitt, second Freelord Romneycare in the peerage of Foxcuckooland, on the other hand, is a bit of a historical puzzle.

Perhaps his freelordship suffers from self-doubt problems an’ has decided that he is not really up to bein’ a proper Owner of America, but would make a really top-drawer hired hand, devoted to the interests of his acknowledged Betters? [*]

Happy days.

___
[*] Willard groupies might prefer to believe that their Neohero is inauguratin’ a new age, an’ therefore not to be bound by the conventions of yesteryear. Well, OK: an arguer might argue that Ownership of America is no longer what it was back under General Grant or Major McKinley, that mere ownership is nowadays trumped (ahem) by Big Management, especially now that the latter has become a learnèd profession in which one can obtain formal degrees from the H*rv*rd Victory School and lesser seminaries of Mammon.

Since his freelordship sports both an HVS MBA an’ the traditional J. D. of the hack pol (from H*rv*rd Law, as it happens), he might even be regarded as the perfect transitional figure, if one disregards the HVS MBA of George XLIII -- which, to be sure, it is rather a wonder the H*rv*rds did not revoke, considering what a mess Master Dubya seems to have made of the secret-sector business corporations he tangled with.

=

[**] Well, not quite perfectly: Don Ricardito never did trouble to get that nominal law degree.

A compare-and-contrast exercise with Freelord Romneycare as regards experience in the Secret Sector might be fun: what is Bain Capital, after all, when set down next to "several summers with the Southwestern Company, as a door-to-door book salesman"?