31 October 2011

"I second the motion"



Dear Dr. Bones,


Will the sexual harassment allegations against Herman Cain hurt his campaign?
david | Sun, Oct 30, 2011 10:51 PM EST

This is sort of a follow-up to Charley’s post about the tragic state of the Republican presidential field (...) don’t assume that Mitt Romney has retaken the lead.


Mitt Romney doesn't need to "retake" the lead.

Last I checked he was ahead in four early states, and I still don’t know how Herman Cain got all the press to begin with. Why was some random businessman given more credence than any of the other no-namers on the NH primary ballot as I posted the other day? I mean BEFORE a few polls showed him gaining ground, only I’m convinced because the press covered his crazy comments. My money is still on Romney to be the nominee.

christopher @ Mon 31 Oct 12:27 AM


Given her exalted standing -- on top of the Great Blue Hill, as it were, not to speak crudely of socioeconometric and tertiary-educationalist feats -- and her resulting wide horizons, your typical Blue Blazer probably does not entertain the damnfool propositions here implicitly attributed to her, neither (A), that our MA’s dear old Mittens has been overshadowed by a no-’count person of pizza, nor the much more jaw-dropping (B), that America’s Otherparty is in a "tragic state." (What, in the proposed system of nomenclature, a ‘farce’ would be, it boggles this keyboard to imagine.) [1]

As the Duke of Wellington insightfully said, "If you believe *that*, sir, you would believe anything."

Accordingly, I homologate the sentiments of the previous poster, EXCEPT FOR the words "only .... because the press covered his crazy comments," which smack of Rio Limbaugh. _Nihil est in journalismo quod non prius in populo_, or at least the scribbler and his employing corporation invariably *thought* that their rubbish would find some echo in the bosom of Vox Pop.

Moralisation is far more likely to actually lead to an outcome when pointed at oneself before pulling the trigger, so whenever "the press" seems to be conspiring to advance utter tripe and baloney, let Master Narcissus ask himself, "¿How, exactly, did I lead them to think that I might want to buy that odious gunk of theirs?" [2]

Happy days.
--JHM

---
[1] Genuine tragic pscenarios can be devised, they always can, but to be plausible about this material they must start from 20 January 2013 rather than end 6 November 2012. I myself am at present working on a YaleoDra™a to star POTUS Mittens. It is tentatively titled "Two Dips and a Nosedive."

=

[2] Miss Cerulea Birdseye, who has appeared already as "your typical Blue Blazer" , can require no advice from the likes of us humble, yet I mutter to myself under my forelock that she, too, might not unprofitably wonder what theory of herself is held by Engineers of the Human Soul who can take for granted that she takes Pizza Man _au grand sérieux_.

Something to do with Social Daltonism, I betcha the explanation has. But "this is neither the time nor the place for...." .

The ‘tragedy’ _shtyk_ is easier to work out: the Engineers must (with me) suppose that Miss Birdseye thinks it would be impossibly _louche_ and prole of her to laugh out loud at the Otherparty clown show. ’Tis far more genteel (_sc._, Beanville-Brahmanical) to furrow one’s brows and wonder, with crocodile gravity, how the sweet Republicanine puppies *can* ever have gotten themselves into such a thoroughly unsatisfactory kerfuffle..

(( I expect Miss Cerulea Birdseye has quite as much fun at the circus as anybody else, perhaps more than most of us. But one would never guess it to look at her. ))

29 October 2011

On the Menial in Massachusetts



Dear Dr. Bones,

Mr. Poster here

But they aren't the right KIND of jobs.

I mean, it’s MENIAL work. With your HANDS.

Not a DESIRABLE job like being an Essential State Worker in a casino!

porcupine @ Sat 29 Oct 1:06 AM

may be no _echt_ Blue Blazer, only a cultivated despiser, red in neck and claw. The casino crack suggests as much.

Still, in one way he is quight whight: commercial fisheries are scarcely going to ring in the Brave New Taxachusetts.

As everybody ought to know by now, that historic rôle is strictly reserved for Medicine/ Frankenetics and Tertiary Educationalism ("¡Think H*rv*rd, Mass General, and Genzyme!") with perhaps a small assist from venticulture , especially on sunny days with the wind behind us [1] as well as Mlle. de la Main Invisible drawing us [2] ever onwards and up 24/7 from the vanguard.

Now, none of these triune economic saviors is particular ‘menial’, but that is not what makes them salvific. Or certainly not the main factor. E-comrade Pëtr Otyètsovich has done us such a nifty little fandango -- ""... navigator, engineer, meteorologist, … EMT, cook, refrigerator repair (¿huh?) , biologist, businessman, ...." to that tune that I feel a little bad about pointing out that ‘meniality’ and its reverse have really not much to do with our poor MA’s case one way or the other. But there it is, _et magis amica Veritas_: keeping one's hands clean is all very well, but what *really* matters (I think, quite possibly erroneously) is that Tert. Ed. and the twin Frankenrackets do not require any raw materials worth mentioning.. Whereas fishing depends on ... well, let's face it . . . on FISH.

(Now there is a four-letter ‘F’-word if there ever was one.)

In the Keynesian, or even in the Chicagonomic, long run there may be problems about MA having specialized in doing well what can be done (and, in principle, done equally well) anywhere at all, but that will be then, and, ¡O lucky us! -- now is still only now. For the moment.

Happy days.

___
[1] The usual suspects have deposed that "Sectors vital to the Massachusetts economy include higher education, biotechnology, finance, health care, and tourism."

Sorry, Mr. Peter, and you too, King Jimmy: no mention at all of the Trade Apostolick. Rather a low blow, that, considering that Big LEW manages to notice "the second largest cranberry producing state in the union (after Wisconsin)."

And (there) is yet another good reason to stand up and holler, "¡Curse you, Paul Ryan!"

=

[2] ’Tis all vaguely _Faust_like, _¿no es verdad?_

"¡Mama, Mama, I've been [jugged]!"



Dear Dr. Bones,

Or, should the Muses and you do not care for that title, Bones, ¿How about "The Jug is Up" to stick over the following little _trouvée_?, which I accidentally spotted just now whilst admiring oneself from atop the Great Blue Hill :

Massachusetts Liberal


Observations on politics, the media and life in Massachusetts and beyond from the left side of the road



Thursday, October 27, 2011
A change is gonna come

The Massachusetts Democratic Party just got a whole lot more unified for 2012. No knock down drag out Senate primary or redistricting fights. Now it's a simple goal: defeat Scott Brown.

It was the equivalent of a political earthquake yesterday afternoon with the tandem stories that Alan Khazei was taking his hat out of the Senate primary ring and John Olver was retiring after 20 years in Congress.

Gone like that was a divisive game of musical chairs that would have pitted two of the state's 10 incumbent liberal Democratic House members against each other -- the rumble being Olver and his sprawling 1st District against Jim McGovern and his Worcester-based constituency.

Pundits have noted the 1st, based on population, could easily run from the New York border to Worcester. Now that will be the home base for Springfield's Richard Neal. And a potentially disruptive fight between Olver and McGovern avoided.

And it's all over except for the shouting in the Democratic primary or the right to face Scott Brown. With all due respect to Tom Conroy, Marisa DeFranco, James Coyne King and Herb Robinson, they have even less of a chance of halting the ...

*** JUGGERNAUT ****

than Khazei did.

Not that the novice candidate would not have benefited from a primary to sharpen her campaign skills. While Warren appears to have made a smooth transition to public campaigning, it has not been without hiccups that the GOP has been quick to pounce on. A major gaffe (quick, it's Ben Cherington, not Theo Epstein) could be deadly.

But the dynamic of this race changed mightily from the moment she entered and a potentially divisive primary with Khazei slinging arrows had the potential for more harm than good.

So now there's only one face on the dartboard in Democratic State Party headquarters and the occupants won't be able to emulate Will Rogers famous line: "I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!"

Look out Scotto
.
Labels: 2012, Alan Khazei, Congress, Elizabeth Warren, John Olver, redistricting, US Senate

posted by Outraged Liberal | 5:00 AM

0 Comments:



This e-comrade has a better sense of humor than most. He runs a butterfly--several butterflies, actually, plus maybe a moth or two--down with his lady friend's steamroller five seconds after announcing that *he*, the murder-vehicle artist, is the party ‘outraged’. I like that plan a lot better than I would like a perpetual early November of bared treason, and weeping wimpery, and bleeding heartfeltness, and compassionate Kant, BUT . . .

. . . if one is going to present oneself in e-veryday life as "Massachusetts Liberal" working out of a virtuous McMansion gazeteered as http://baystateliberal.blogspot.com, it might be well if one looked a little more like the rest of the good volks whose Boy Poster one has unilaterally nominated and unanimously elected oneself to be. In fact, was *eye* a Redneck Massochist, eye do believe eye would start mumblin’ at this point darkly ’bout maybe takin' pserious steps [1] to repel infringement of patent and/or copywhight.

We will, I trust, have Massa Liberal around to shoot at regularly, so let me cut straight to the steamroller. As you see, I have ventured to add a little EMPHASIS to the above-swiped. *J*U*G*G*E*R*N*A*U*T* is enough by itself to be the _plat du jour_ for Day One over _chez Massa_.

If you have read all my scribbling more faithfully than it merits, sir, you will know I have deployed not only the ‘J’-word itself about St. Elizabeth of H*rv*rdy [2], but ‘jugged’ as well. Maybe I also borrowed Mr. Bentham's ‘juggical’, Dr. Alzheimer refuses to either confirm or deny. Anyhow, the late apotheosis of Her Beatitude struck me as a distinctly juggiform human event well before I met my _trouvée_.

At this point it would be natural to modestly announce "Great minds think alike" and go back to sleep until spring, except that Massa Liberal and Eye do not in fact see altogether I-2-I. Specifically, M.L. is the first agitpropper I have ever run into who does not think there is even the faintest far-off cloud of disapproval hanging over the word ‘Juggernaut’. Why, ¡it might as well be ‘steamroller’ or ‘Panopticon’ or ‘runcible’ for all he cares!

Beseiged as we good guys are by ravenin’ Republicanines just over every border, it is likely enough that that is the direction in which our English is ultimately headed. What surprises me is not that the vernacular should go to the dogs in this respect, but only that our own Big Juggie should get up so early in the mornin’ an’ that he should march off to join the poachers without any farewell or notice given.

Worse, no sooner does one learn that Big Juggie has defected at all, than one finds him back gnawin' at one’s figurative leg exactly as a respectable cloth-coat-Republican cur would gnaw, warnin' one like a not-so-nice cop on the _Deweyplatz_, "You might as well come quiet." [3]

Well, Dr. Bones, you can work out from these presents how quiet I, at least, propose to come.

Happy days.



___
[1]
By creating an account on Red Mass Group you agree to abide by the following rules. 1) You will not post libelous statements about any figure public or private. 2) You will not post links to any commercial services or goods without the express written permission of the management of Red Mass Group. Violation of these rules will result in a $1,000 per violation charge, each link will be treated as a seperate violation An invoice will be sent to the email account you used to join. If this invoice is not paid within 15 days of the date, legal action will be taken.

(( That little exuberance strikes me as so remarkable, Dr. Bones, that I want to hang a framed copy of it in "the smallest room of my house" so I can always find it "behind me" without difficulty. Massa Liberal probably thinks he is the hardest-nosed overseer on any political plantation inside I-495, maybe even east of the Berkshires, but he pales by comparison with the real Charlie McCoy . No surprise there. ))

===

[2] The iconography, I am told, is unlikely to be reality-based.

===

[3] To be exact, Juggie barked at me--with his mouth full, I am sorry to say-- that I "just got a whole lot more unified for 2012." _Et vide supra passim_ for a good deal more to the same effect.

Now, "with all due respect" (as Juggie further barked, though not at me) I take a little exception to this effect, because it seems to imply there is some real danger I might be too I.Q.-challenged to notice when I have just been jugged.



"Lefty Meets the Lyin’ Class" (An Open Letter to the Great Blue Hillbillies)



¡Much Esteemed Blazers of Blueness!

I write in respect of the following passage noted _chez vous_


I love how they . . .

. . . . keep quoting how she’s “thrown rocks” as if she was suggesting she threw rocks literally. It makes me chuckle.

Seriously, though, the GOP continues to demonstrate that it has absolutely, positively NO PROBLEM lying like a freaking rug. They will SAY ANYTHING to get elected, lying about supporting things they’re blatantly trying to kill. The truly amazing thing is the length to which they get away with it — the fact that the media simply won’t allow itself to tell the world that the emperor has no clothes, instead creating false equivalencies or allowing GOP spin without fact checking.

ryepower12 @ Fri 28 Oct 12:49 PM


I think Your Worships ought to look at the unproblematical "freaking rug" from your Class enemy’s point of view. If YWW [0] were the Republicanine Representative of the Wisconsin First in the Federal Congress, might not even YWW find yourself scribblin’ in the _Wall Street Jingo_ looney bin ("op-ed page") of 5 April 2011 that "the safety net for the poor is comin’ apart at the seams"?

Indeed, might not YWW have scribbled that yourself yesterday afternoon for Mother Dog or Firelake Jones or perhaps the brand-new _Osservatore Zucchiniano_ or _Deweyplatzer Nachrichten_?

Exactly *where* your worships might have said such a thing one cannot guess, for it were mere delusion to suppose that the Vanguard of All Bluegressive Humanity, V(G)ABH, can ever confine itself to one particular medium of record, not even ’GBH or the New York Tomes Company. A murdochopoly, or single bottle-neck, through which all emanations of the Higher Blueness must trickle is nearly as unthinkable as it is nonexistent

Still, YWW could give P. D. Ryan mendacity lessons if I am simply mistaken in supposing that YWW frequently think thoughts that very closely resemble "the safety net for the poor is comin[g] apart at the seams." ¡Golly, would YWW have had *me* fooled!

I appreciate that Lefty was upset largely because the seams in question are bein’ continually picked at by good volks like the whiz-kid neocomrade. Nevertheless, when that specimen emitted the soundbark that runs in fuller

No one person or party is responsible for the looming [1] crisis. Yet the facts are clear: since President Obama took office, our problems have gotten worse. Major spending increases have failed to deliver promised jobs. The safety net for the poor is coming apart at the seams. Government health and retirement programs are growing at unsustainable rates. The new health-care law is a fiscal train wreck. And a complex, inefficient tax code is holding back American families and businesses

the only reason I myself feel the slightest urge to come forwards to extinguish the posthonourable neogallant’s pantaloons is that "fiscal train wreck" baloney. I admit that the Smirk of Janesville does make itself look [2] a little worse an’ smirkier than it absolutely needs to when it comes closest to flat-out lyin’ at the same point where it also comes closest to its own ‘professional’ ‘expertise’. [3]

The question, however, is ¿How close is that? And I reply, "Not very close."

Had the Smirk been sincerely worried about wreckin’ trains, it would not have blithely proposed to do pretty near nothin’ at all about the Medicare Menace for a dozen years. But ¿to call it a liar on that account? I think not. By a standard of veracity *that* severe, ¡well mun we alle singen _Cum vix justus sit securus_!.

Once we dismiss that, the most plausible count of the mendacity indictment, lesser included charges must evaporate as well, like presentin’ a Thirty Year Plan for Party & AEIdeology under the utterly absurd pretenses of it bein’ a Fedguv budget for twelve months, FY 2012. Nobooby who knows enough about such things to be dangerous can deny the utter falsity, in one sense, of that shameless ploy, but that undeniability itself lets the Smirk off the hook _quâ_ liar: it cannot properly be said to *lie* to us, after all, when none of us would even dream of believin’ a word that it barks.

With most of such factious barkin’s, questions of True v. False do not arise at all, it seems to me. A Smirk of Janesville makes queer noises ’bout ‘seams’ an’ "safety nets" to alert other Party neocomrades that it is one of them. To treat such tokens as policy proposals would be like solemnly discussing whether a Mohawk warrior’s haircut is factually accurate or logically compelling.

That is to say, somebody has made a mistake about the *genre*.

Happy days.
--JHM


___
[0] ‘YWW’ is to be pronounced so as to rhyme with _Vdd._ in Cathtilian. Which--small world--is also what it means.

=

[1] As I said, this alleged loomin’ incident took place several -- nearly seven -- months ago. So the Smirk is undoubtedly guilty of quotin’ itself. That offense, however, is quite distinct from lyin’.

=

[2] http://j.mp/cwH4gU

That beaut is at the Smirk’s own day-job website, notice. Every time I recur thither I wonder that that cartoon has still not been replaced. Nobody at all would holler ’bout lyin’, I don’t think, if the Smirk just silently put up a less off-puttin’ snapshot of itself. As one who happens to have grown up just over the southern border of Smirkestán (Lake County IL), allow me to assure YWW that the yocals do not *all* look like that up there.

The fact of nonreplacement perhaps rises to the level of the Sherlockian barkless dog in the night, in that the Smirk’s core constituency must either not notice any æsthetic problem, or else actually *like* that sort of thing. My guess is that the Core-in-Chief, the globalised Bigmanagers of NewsCorp an’ ScroogeBank an’ Warbucks Defense Widgets (&c. &c.) simply don’t care: such exalted freelordships as they would not be caught dead in Kenosha anyway.

The in-district core, on the other hand, whom I take to be small-town neo-Babbits an’ Chambermaids of Commerce much like those of Worcester County, find the smirkin’ a positive plus: after all, their clever little laddie in Congress has a whight to look smug, havin’ figured out admirably which side its bread is buttered on. To which there may or may not be added a certain smugness on their mini- an’ microfreelordships’ own score, for of course they know themselves to be safely masters, well aware that if the Smirk were *really* as clever as it accounts itself, it would not be in politics, it would be out stayin’ rich in the secret sector like a rational critter.

"Jowls trump smirks," a hostile observer of America’s Otherparty might generalize, with reasonable safety.

=

[3] The "intellectual foundation" (©, and ®, and ™) of the Smirk’s pro expertise appears to be He went on to graduate from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, with a B.A. in economics and political science in 1992 which sounds ¿maybe a tad thin? to the present H*rv*rd.

(( DIGRESSION. Big LEW, The Learnèd Elders of Wiki, almost make one side with the oppressed wingnutettes an’ wingnuts when they venture to suggest that the Smirk’s Tert. Ed. credentials are to be reinforced with rubble like "Ryan briefly worked during college for the Oscar Mayer meat and cold cut production company as a Wienermobile driver."

(( This, too, is (presumably) no lie, yet ’tis not exactly good-tasty either. ))


27 October 2011

¡But Some of Us LIKE Nasty!



Dear Dr. Bones,

When ‘folks’ talk ’bout havin' feelin's . . .

Unfortunate

I can’t really blame Alan (or Setti) for dropping, all things considered, but an unchallenged nominee makes me nervous. She’s done great so far, but I have a feeling this campaign will be nasty.

jimc @ Wed 26 Oct 9:13 PM Reply



. . . McNasty (’66/’72) must reflect how vastly superior it is to have an "intellectual foundation" (as somebooby just called it) upon which to lay one’s silly little head. Upon which one's hormones can get to work.

For example: strapped to the commuter rail tracks, poor Pauline, mere Ninety-Niner, IQwise, that she cannot help herself being, announces that she "feels a little scared." Had she been predestined by her Mother Nature and/or her Father Zeus to a three-digit percentile [0], however, she would speak rather of "a rational perception of the headlamp and roar of the swiftly on-rushing St. Elizabeth Express." [2]

A reactionary writer of great stylistic merit has guessed that when ‘folks’ talk like that, they are merely bein’ plight: "To avoid the rudeness of saying ‘I have detected a _non sequitur_ which I will now demonstrate, we feign that what is really, or what we take to be, a rational perception, is merely a fugitive emotion."

Though Pauline is probably safe enough for the moment, the St. Elizabeth has just terminated Comrade Hazy and plunges onward in her wild career [3]. Somebody *really* important must be late for a meeting, I guess. ¿Is the Duchess, perchance, giving another machine-in-the-garden party?

Happy days.



___
[0] Mathematical pedants will be aware that there is only a single "three-digit percentile" available, the one-hundredth, most of it already owned or leased by the Greatest University in the County [of Middlesex].

Nerds and other Levelers can count from zero at the bottom and then have no three-digit percentiles at all, thus living up to the diagnosis which lovers of the Spiritual Beauties of Inequality have very justly been making about us for millennia: if we cannot have any, we simply snatch it away from those who can. ¿What, after all, on G*re's green earth could be more fairembalanced than nothing for nobody?

Antilevelers, if that's a word, are free to visit Lake Woebegon and see for themselves how much progress has been made on reclaiming additional luxury percentiles at the high end of the ever-immortal Herrnstein-Murray ©u®ve . I suspect not a lot, but ¿what would I know?

=

[2] Or how about "saw the handwriting on the wall in terms of money and attention"?

(( Jugheads who feel a little embarrassed about being frankly juggical in public, possibly because they wish to continue to be taken for lieberals and demoncrats, ought to find that formulation helpful. It is not they, it protests, who go about scribbling graffiti on other ‘folks’' walls; they only report what Mlle. de la Main Invisible has placarded already.

(( _Facilis descensus Averno_, "¡This way to Foxcuckooland, ladies and gentlemen!" ))

=

[3] That's just ridiculous: of course: the Paulines and Alans and miscellaneous assorted "small people" are in danger of getting juggernauted by a ‘City of St. Elizabeth’ only because her course is not the least bit ‘wild’ but proceeds with utmost reliability and rigour "down the ringing grooves of [Hope and] Change," as the Poet of the Harry S. Truman Library & Museum (¿? -- ¡good old HST!) hath it.

Maybe a little behind schedule now and then, admittedly, but it is not as if these tin lizards keep jumping off their grooves all the time.


24 October 2011

Breakfast of Champions, Party of Cripples



Dear Dr. Bones,

The Party of Grant an' Hoover (& Fratboy, & Hudak, & Bielat, & ...) has, laboriously an' postgallantly an' neohonourably, elected zero (0.0) percent of the Massachusetts delegation to the Fedguv House of Representatives.

Now had EYE been engaged to agitprop for the Funders of Fratboy, LLC, as Party Neocomrade Ch. X. Cassidy of the _LDH Herald_ has, it appears, been, I trust that I would keep that number in mind a little as I scribbled. For there is some danger under such circumstances of makin' oneself an' one's Venerable Funders look silly.

For example, one might start by whimperin' that America's Otherparty is sadly underrepresented around here just at present. To work up some alligator tears and crocodile sympathy from us donkeys, notoriously bleeding of heart as we are, with a self-sorrowin' _shtyk_ seems to me quite feasible, though admittedly not likely to result in any concrete affirmative action on behalf of the political cripples. However, if the crips insist simultaneously on pretendin' to be comic-book superheroines able to go around (quote) SLAMMIN' (endquote) whatever gets in the path of the Big Party an' Her AEIdeology, well, the sentimental mood is swiftly ruined, the sympathy of us strangers, always precarious, forfeited almost before it was properly garnerished in the first place.

Furthermore, Lady Logic advises me that the Party of Cripples will not be -- CAN not be -- worse off than they are at present, no matter what cruel vivisection may befall all those dogs and ponies held behind closed doors in the dungeons an' labòratories of Bacon Hill. True, Fratboy Himself will perhaps fall at the hands of St. Elizabeth of H*rv*rdy--¡Father Zeus hasten the glad event!--but that has nothing to do with redistricting.

Operative Cassidy does the Party of Crips no great favor by unearthin' an' drawin' attention to certain notions of what True Fairembalancement (® & ™ & ©) requires current in cripple circles. Even if the Illustriously Freemighty Lord (_jasnie wolnomozhny Pan_) of Bielat were an academic or Party TankThinker with no personal ax to grind, _ad hoc_ery like CD lines "drawn to make sure you have an equal voice for people with similar problems" would only be yet another part of why we laugh from them. It would indeed be great fun to see a map of the Hill City Commonwealth drawn up on those lines, yellow, say, for all those precincts of MA where the prevailing local problem is the Heartbreak of Psoriasis, but dark blue where underwater real estate, or perhaps the unsatisfactory techniques of Native Management now employed down at Washin’ton City, take precedence. However it is clear that there is no such map and never will be, that what the nifty neoproposal is really about is not having His Freemightiness (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) as one’s Fedguv Rep., a ‘problem’ that ‘similarly’ afflicts everybooby from Provincetown to the Berkshires.

And of course if one gives the crips an inch, they'll soon be yammerin’ for an ell. Most donkeys have figured out by now, one hopes, that it is safest to assume that what the Party neocomrades really understand by fairembalancement would be, more or less, a dictatorship of the Worcester County Chambermaids of Commerce: "An EMPLOYER and an employee are clean different things" -- that's the ticket, Dr. Bones!

"Really understand by" here refers not so much to what goes on consciously in the dittopans of individual Republicanines, but to the effective principles of their self-behavior, those rules of thumb that most accurately predict what the kiddies will be gettin’ funded to yammer for next. In making such predictions the sudent of neocomradological science must bear in mind that the Mass. Party of Cripples is significantly different from the correspondin’ Homeland™-wide crew. Roughly speaking, the latter stand to the former as the CCUSA of Massa Tom Donahue to the freedamsels of Worcester an’ Essex, far less parochial an' provincial, far readier for prime time. Yet not essentially different. Not less zealously devoted to the EMPLOYER Ascendancy, only scabbin' for a more sophisticated representative of The Class.

Happy days.
--JHM


17 October 2011

¡Introducing Little Orphan Jennie!



Dear Dr. Bones,

Scabbin’ for ScroogeBank in the columns an’ e-columns of the Voice of Louisedayhicksville, a certain Party Neocomradess (fifth grade) J. C. Braceras, "lawyer and political commentator [1]", has arrived at her James Russell Lowell Moment™ (Pat. Pend.) [2]:

. . . last best hope . . . final chance to redeem . . . either validate or repudiate . . . It is about first principles. The lines have been drawn. Which side are you on?


The thing havin’ been thus attempted in prose, ¿how about we try rime?


Once to every nerd and wingnut
Comes the moment to decide,
In the clash of Doit and Shekel
For the better payin’ side.
Some great boon, the new Mass. Zion,
Offers us a rival bid
And that choice goes by forever,
¡Better grab it _pronto_, kid!

Not altogether happy. ¿Perhaps if we let the pet g@@gle chew on it a little, to break it in, like?


Una vez que todos los nerd y tuerca de mariposa / Llega el momento de decidir, / En el choque de Doit y Shekel /
Por el lado del pagando mejor .

Algunas gran bendición, la nueva Misa Sión, / Nos ofrece una oferta rival / Y que la elección va por siempre,

¡Es mejor cogerlo _pronto_, chico!


(( ¡Oh, well! ))

That will do for whight now. Please *do* make a memorandumb, though, sir, of Little Orphan Jennie. I mean to get back to her freeladyship soon and maybe scribble a little less merrily.

Happy days.
--JHM

___
[1] The political commentary of the PNC-5 JCB neomechanism you may examine for yourself, sir.

In addition to this morning’s portentous singin’ with Lowell an’ Lucifer an’ all the _Herald_ angels, the freedame puts out a regular (?) vanity e-press product called "JENNIFER BRACERAS / Political and Cultural Commentary / by a Red Mom in the Bluest State.

Possibly, though that is not what the blog is called, but only the name of the blog, or maybe what the name is called -- also floatin’ around in the factional drool is plain (he jested) RedMom-BlueState.org (for of course it was not plain at all, but tutti-frutti to the max).

(( The _Alice_ guy could have lots of fun with little Miss Jennie makin’ haddocks’ eyes at her Uncle Scrooge, an’ at her Daddy Warbucks, _¡y naturalamnente a su Tio Ruperto!_.

"We report (what is out there), you deride (what you find)."

You really should come look at this little neocircus, Bones. The ScroogeBanksters (or equivalent at NewsCorp or the Warbucks Widget Trust) have stood Little Orphan Jennie to a really spiffy, pro website.

A respectable HTML-coat donkey like me would have to spend forty-five minutes with a cookbook to figure out just how they did the label of the appellation of the droolpan in Read, Blew an’ Colourblind. Firstlord Ebenezer was presumably just indulgin’ an idiot niece, but there are real commercial possibilities here: the Frogs, and we Paddies, and every other band of Lesser Breeds Without that waves a tricolor flag (of which there seem to be several hundred) ought to be wanting one too, after maybe a little nudgin’ from the Commercial Speech Division of ScroogeBank.

=

Pardon my technicalities, sir. The affiliation of the PNC-5 JCB mechanism with the shyster community are of more interest to neocomradological science.

¡Not merely a shystatrix is her freeladyship, but a H*rv*rd one!

As a matter of fact, her freeladyship’s C. V. (as self-presented) is so similar to that of St. Elizabeth of Warrenbuffet -- up to a certain point -- that I find it difficult to avoid guessing that the liver of PNC-5 JCB may bubble with spite an’ envy whenever her freeladyship is forced to reflect how much farther than that point Her Beatitude has somehow managed to sneak. "Life is unfair," obviously. Were it not, of course their Jennie would be sittin’ pretty in the Fedguv Senate, and our Lizzie still taking parajournalistic whacks at the L. D. hicks. (At the Blue Blazers would be more likely, though, really, considering Her Beatitude’s Trotskyite attitudes..)

=

[2] My own patent application will soon be pending. ¡Imagine getting a nickle for one’s ownself every time the sweet puppies of Endarkenment start barkin’ like they had just swallowed his freelordship of Kirkegaard!


16 October 2011

One Wiseburger Deluxe with Side Order of Flies



Dear Dr. Bones,

The esteemed wiseburger, and obvious aspirin’ Kiddiemaster, from Fox-on-15th-Street here comes up with a number of points of compare-and-contrast between the Tee Putty and the New Bolsheviki, but overlooks what this caller would call ‘obvious’, namely that the Tee Putty are mostly the PARENTS of middle-aged selfesteemist wiseburgers, whereas the Neobolshies are their kids.

Though never addressin’ the crude chronological point head on, an’ perhaps genuinely impercipient of it, the F-15 hotshot’s "correlation of sympathies," so to call an important concept for which I have never seen the technical term, is just what the doctor ordered:

(1) TeePees are "driven from above," discloses Sir Oracle -- driven, that is, much the way Mommy an’ Daddy (an’ Uncle Superego) used to drive oneself.

(2) TeePees are "pretty clear [in their] view of the world," chockful, that is, of plausible soundin’ reasons why one would *wish* one had been turned into a pumpkin if not in bed by midnight.

(3) The wiseburger’s discussion under the rubric of *Impact* does not summarize itself quite so handily, but "without producing any substantive accomplishments" seems to be the thrust an’ crux thereof. Which fits handily into my own admittedly preconceived pigeon-holes, for or course in the long run one does (in most cases) get out from under Uncle Superego an’ his minions an’ surrogates.

This ineffectuality is that of the TeePees. The Neobolshies are rather a tricky topic seen from this angle, for Sir Oracle has (as I conjecture) not yet given up hope of makin’ a little impact Himself. Someday. Somehow. An impact on those "probably at an earlier stage of [their] lifecycle." [1]

(4) By contrast, the *Style* rubric is easy sleddin’. Naturally TeePees are sniffy an’ stodgy, Neobolshies cooool -- though perhaps not quite so well groomed.

(5) Last, an’ presumably least, come *Strategy and Tactics*. At some risk of frivolity, I would point out that the wiseburger’s own Ma an’ Pa will always be found walking upright or ‘vertical’, whereas his kiddies (an’ many other folks’ as well) are much more likely to do the ‘horizontal’ thing. [2]

=

The oracular neodeliverance concludes with "The parallels are much stronger than either prefers to admit.."

¿Perhaps one might add "or than ever-starboard-driftin’ wiseburger Yalies in their mid-forties care to distinctly recognize"? The alliance of brats with Gramps against poor Ozzie-in-the-Middle is well attested.

Furthermore, had Sir Oracle thought all these things out perspicuously, it seems to me he would have had to worry a little about the political an’ personal kinematics as well as the statics. That is to say, the second childhood of Neocomrade J. X. Weisberg is bound to unfold more alone Dr. Altzheimer’s sort of trajectory that those studied by the late M. Piaget. (In the vernacular, "Jake is not gettin’ any younger either.")

JXW certainly appears to spontaneously *like* _Neubolschewismus_ a good deal better than he likes the Tee Putty [3], but nevertheless only the latter are a club to which his own credentials might gain him admittance.

(( Fairembalancement perhaps requires my suggesting that we all thank Father Zeus heartily for the generational self-separation diagnosed above. "Geezers against Greed" would perhaps be not much more dangerous than we geezers are taken individually, but if the the average age of the victims of AstroTurf™baggin’ were eighteen instead of seventy-eight, one would have to retire the "Tee Putty" label: those clobbered would not be soft an’ malleable, especially when moistened a little with fundin’, they could easily be the sort of whippersnappers who go in for literal whips.[4] ))

Happy days.

___
[1] That is as close as Sir Oracle comes to makin’ an age-cohort-based analysis, and it is not very close, for he is talkin’ allegory ’bout the ‘lifecycles’ of agitprop movements, not of particular zöological specimens.

=

[2] No rule should lack a good probative exception, so I rejoice that Sir Oracle tossed in that "ballerina perched atop Wall Street’s bronze bull." Though, come to think of it, ‘perched’ does not strictly imply verticality. (¿Does it?)

=

[3] Even if he did not, he would have to pretend to, or else find a new employin’ corporation. The WaPo Foxoids are not yet quite ready to unmask themselves. Maybe the day after Hallowe’en. Or in honor of Inauguration Day in 2013.

=

[4] Before moving on to his five formally distinguished rubrics, our wiseburger smuggled in a sixth. Tee Putty, we learn, "has remained a purely American affair, while [Neobolshevism] strikes a global posture."

My guess is that his freelordship of Fifteenth Street has run two quite different thought clichés together here: "purely American" partly insinuates that the TeePee geezers look dowdy an’ parochial an’ provincial, not quite People of WalMart, perhaps, but definitely somewhere off in that general direction.

That part is covered under Rubric IV. However, I do not think absence of a "global posture" is exclusively about one’s Style in the fashion-plate sense. Sir Oracle, consciously or subliminally, imputes bein’ what I just called "soft an’ malleable, especially when moistened a little with fundin’" to the Tee Putty as a part of their Yank Exceptionalism: "Swarthy an’ well-mustachioeded foreigners need not apply," so to speak.

From my standpoint, this is a mistake: though as a matter of fact the Tee Putty could probably teach the Daughters of the American Revo lessons in (the absurdly so-called) ‘nativism’, of course there is nothing "purely American" about simply having become too grown-up to be a succesful thug any more.

To think that would be Fisher’s Fallacy, "It must be a terrible thing to be a Frenchman, because all Frenchmen are mortal."


14 October 2011

"Wingnuts, sir, are an *honest* people"


Dear Dr. Bones,

Probably the key to this latest thrillin’ episode of "¡Yeaaaaah for YaleoDrama™a!" is not what you are thinking, sir.

I admit this show of the Hire Bozodom *looks* as if his freelordship of Simon Pajama has simply had that vacant lot between the recently gentrified ears stuffed full of Dr. Limbaugh’s day-old dittos, that he is down for the neostruggle ’gainst the stodgy ol’ Republicanine Establishment (RK9E), all those icky Karl Hannas an’ Mark Roves an’ General St. Alexander of Hamilton, Esq., wannabes who have never yet allowed their own Party’s sweet puppies off the leash properly. "¿Who says, ‘Whightboys can’t jump’?"

To watch his freelordship jump an’ jive with The Herminator, barkin’ an’ bellowin’ "I can *too* jump, Ma, ¡you just watch me!" is so excessively meretricious that I doubt not that all has been carefully calculated for effect in some top-secret Labóratory of YaleoDra™a at Pajama Junction NJ or Neohaven CT or possibly Undisclosed Springs WY, out by the Cheney spread.

A lot of the freelordly calculation is accessible to the mean(-spiritèd)est intelligence. Naturally when his freelordship perverted from Hollywood Hebraism to the First Church of Eddie Burke, no blanket endorsement of the way the latter conduct their rites -- the way that got them called "God’s Frozen People," ¿don’t you know? -- was expressed or implied. From Day Zero -- maybe even from Day Thirteen BPE, "before the Pajamatarian Epoch," -- his freelordship will have been intendin’ to give the other whightboys remedial coachin’ in the saltation department. "To make it more FUN to scab for ScroogeBank," a sayer might say. (Your competent sayer could say this one a zillion different ways, actually, and drag in pretty well every bit of prole-soundin’ slang she ever heard correctly. Plus some bits which she perhaps did not quight.)

Meanwhile, back at the country club, the RK9E nobility an’ (Upper) neogentry continue to maintain that the Chief End of Macho is to knock little white balls around a green-side-up course. [0]

That’s only the _literaliter_ of Establishment stodge, of course, yet the _allegorice_ is like unto it: to clobber their own "small people" (whightboys) over the noggin with bags full of AstroTurf™ until the contents of their dittopans are reduced to Tee Putty once an’ for all. After which, ScroogeBank will rule unobstructed from sea to whinin’ sea, the North Atlantic will turn to gin-an’-tonic, the moon shine Bloody, but Merry, &c. &c. [1]

(( ¿Where was eye? ¡Ah!

(( Thou and I, Dr. Bones, probably spend too much about the intrinsic second-rateness of Neohaven an’ all its works an’ pomps. An’ autodrama™urgy. There is, after all, a whole world of lower rates still available elsewhere. Better make your reservations soon, though. ))

As I was saying, my view is that this drool was, despite certain appearances, not simply decanted into Freelord Simon from the vast droolcellars of Shatto Limbaugh, but clotted where we find it entirely spontaneously and independently. The Witch Doctor of Democracy would never bark some of his freelordship of Simon Pajama's here barkin's. For example "money ... too might not be as important as it is cracked up to be" is an exuberance that the WDD would never allow himself. The WDD knows his golfin’ buddies far too well to think that they are in the market for any vintage that tastes the least bit like that.

A recent pervert to the Kiddie Selfservative Movement like his freelordship no doubt needs a little time to learn the neoropes. Furthermore, in the case of Roger of Simon Pajama, there are individual quirks an' quiddities that may tend, notably (A) Neohaven, which causes his freelordship to suppose himself adequately credentialled for almost anythin' already, an’ (B) Hollywood, which his freelordship is bound to account evidence of a freelordly an’ potentially kiddiemagisterial ‘creativity’ unavailable to lesser breeds. [2]

That his freelordship aspires to be a Grand Kiddiemaster is obvious. Grander, even, than Karl, Firstlord of Rove, if possible. So it is no surprise that the latter RK9E pooh-bah should be first in line to get his windows soaped for Simoween.

Happy days.
--JHM

___
[0] Our friends over on North H*rv*rd Street appear to be pickin’ up where his freelordship of Simon Pajama left off. At least, they seem determined to apply _hammabîn yabîn_ to the name of their shoppe.

Well, O.K. If they don’t care to explain the little joke, I see no reason to get myself in trouble with Paddy and Brigit and the management of *T*H*E* Country Club by doing so for them.

=

[1] Full details of my hasty etcæteration are available in the last thrillin’ chapter of the _Neotestamentum_. San Juan may, however, left out the part about seven days of steady rain that shall put an end to Occupy Wall Street.

=

[2] By contrast, (A) Party Neocomrade (first grade) Dr. R. H. Limbaugh cannot be hindered in the rope-learnin' process by his Tert. Ed. He, blissfully, does not have any.

As for (B) ‘creativity’, that word is such a weasel that I am sure one could find some sense in which Himself of E.I.B. would humbly acknowledge that he is twice as creative as the day is long. This, however, would certainly not be a sense near akin to the ‘Hollywood’ brand c®eativity of a Simon Pajama. The Destructive ©®€@™ionism ideoproduct would be a good more pertinent.

Wisest of all, however, in coming profitably to grips with Citizen Rush is for the neocomradologist to discard the category altogether, and take the patient's own word for his utter NON-creativeness. ¿How many times does HIMSELF have to bark that all he does is express sentiments an’ resentiments that rankle obscurely already in the breasts of Wally Wombschool an' Cindy from Wasilla before we of the bicycle-challenged classes start to wonder if maybe this is not indeed the case?

Nobooby with "a Yaliewood background," so to christen the pajamatarian _Mischling_, would take that line except as a deliberate deception. Pervert though his freelordship be, yet some traits are what a caller might call "unpervertable from." Under no circumstances will Roger, zeroth Freelord of Simon Pajama in the peerage of Foxcuckooland, stop bein' a victim of IHS, Invented-Here Syndrome, where ‘here’ refers to the freelordly dittopan already alluded to disrespectfully.

Should the other lemmin’s of Party an’ AEIdeology someday refuse to let his freelordship "have ideas of his own" -- not altogether an inconceivable development, _me judice_ -- I betcha HFL will ditch them too: "¿What Life, what Joy, without golden Yaliewood?"


13 October 2011

"demonstrated his commitment to being with everyday people"



Dear Dr. Bones,

The Blue Blazers (BB) are more fun than nine barrels of wingnutettes, yet I incline to expect they do not actually enjoy being dissented from much more than we Lesser Breeds Without (LBW) do.

Now amongst the LBW figures a certain Comrade Conroy, who insists on making an embarrassment of himself before the Cærulean nobility and gentry by buttonholing them in their corridors of publicity and insisting that he, Comrade Conroy, is holier than is St. Elizabeth of H*rv*rdy. ¡FAR holier!

This pest wastes the time of his Betters with such silly immodest stuff as


* Doesn’t it make sense to choose a candidate who has ["Me, who have"] worked for years and offered solutions on the broad range of critical issues facing our state and our nation — strengthening our economy, creating new jobs, improving our schools, protecting our environment, controlling health care costs — rather than just one narrow area of expertise?

* Isn’t the smart choice a candidate who has ["Me, who have"] good working relationships in both government and the business community, who has taken the best of both to write new laws that are helping create jobs in Massachusetts right now?


The rhetoric is not as bad as the cause. Observe how a certain four-letter verb--begins with ‘W’--gets a thorough w*rkout. Her Beatitude will, if nominated and elected, presumably go in for all play, all the time. And never, ever, get caught Creating a JOB.

I fear it is a little uncertain that our Betters value J.C. ("job creation") so highly that that tactic will have all the impact on them original-intented, but one does not, after all, know this for sure. And in any case, it was a nice try, worthy of a 'B+' at least in my view. ¿How would you score it, sir?

Those are the last two salvos of five from the conguy. The one in the middle impressed me most:


And don’t we also want a candidate who can win back all those Democratic leaning voters in Worcester and Lowell and Taunton — the guys who defected to Brown last time? Don’t we want a candidate who can relate to them, who knows what it means to be unemployed [0], who has met them on the street and in their fire stations and front porches on a walk to the four corners of this state, and demonstrated his commitment to being with everyday people?


I’d say Comrade Conroy has put a new twist on _fas est et ab hoste doceri_: he gives the impression of having sat humbly at the feet of Senator Fratboy, or perhaps more profitably at the boardroom table of the Funders of Fratboy, LLC, to learn how to dispose of the fiendish and frivolous St. Elizabeth. [1]

That ploy is more than just rhetorical, obviously. Unfortunately the non-rhetorical part seriously misfires _chez moi_. "No, comrade, I am not, as it happens, especially shopping for "committment to being with everyday people." Committment to being on the floor of the Senate would be more to the point, and committment to voting there the way that I would vote myself would be better still. I appreciate that being one four- or five-millionth of a constituency is not likely to let me call a Fratboy or Conroy up and get my exact policy druthers on every bill that comes down the pike, BUT, although I admit it would be dotty to expect to get that much, I don't think it at all unreasonable to desire it. There is no way not to take what one gets from one's ‘representatives’ in Congress, but that is no reason to forget what it was that one wanted. [2]

The most charitable construction, I guess, is to gloss it a little and hope that the comrade has resolved to commit himself to "being with everyday people ON THE ISSUES." That could pass for Mere Demonocracy, maybe, although that ‘everyday’ epithet looks very like a weasel to me. [3] It suggests that the comrade has in mind some particular class of Weekend People, or Holiday People [4], or the like, whose wishes would count for less with "Senator Conroy."

Why, ¡the comrade might even mean the Blue Blazers! Though if he does, it is not very sensible not to ward of such a suspicion a little more when holding out his begging bowl here, right square in front of the Palace of Public Television atop the Great Blue Hill. ’Tis a bold beggar who frankly admits to his customers that all spare change contributed will probably be used against them.

I have heard it rumored that literal panhandlers sometimes use that technique successfully, and of course in a certain sense Courage is always lovely, but . . . .

Happy days.
--JHM

___
[0] Though not much into anecdotal gossipdence, I cannot help wondering whether the comrade has not carefully ‘crafted’ that sentence for purposes of _suggestio falsi_. From Big LEW's account of him, it seems unlikely that he was ever what you would call SERIOUSLY disemployed. "Between jobs," no doubt, for that is a fate that can befall even a Yalie, but . . . .

=

[1] This cannot have actually happened, but it is pleasant to reflect that if it had, the Fratboy Funders would probably have hired a hit man to give Comrade Conroy a brief course of Whitey Bolger Therapy. ¡Intolerable, that this ratfink of a seemin’ _chela_ should leak all of Master Scotty's secret campaign plans!

=

[2] "¡Take *that*, Dr. Altzheimer!"

=

[3] Or, if not a weasel, then a Populist. You will remember, Dr. Bones, that we agreed long ago that the cardinal difference beetween plain vanilla Demonocrats like ourselves and dubious Populists is that the former accept all comers as belonging to US The People, whereas the latter indispensably require an additional category of "Enemies of the People."

=

[4] Either of these would do nicely to grace the plinth of the straw statue of St. Elizabeth of Warrenbuffet erected by Comrade Conroy. Her Beatitude's alleged disdain for the ‘W’ word and for the J. C. process, noted above, amount, ¿do they not?, to wishing that weekends and holidays could be with us 24/7.

Her Beatitude is undeniably a Populist, a notorious recognizer of Enemies, from whom She proposes to deliver us small people. Not quite the same Enemies of Quotidianity that Comrade Conroy detects, but definitely Enemies.

(( More exactly, one *can* deny that proposition, but only by supposing that Her Beatitude secretly proposes to sell us all to Wall Street the moment She can do it safely. I do not much care for Her Beatitude, as you know, sir, but that is only ridiculous. ))


10 October 2011

Seven in every ten


Dear Dr. Bones,

"What song the Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture."

That was then; this is now. We *know* that Babbitt of Zenith assumed the name "Th. X. Bloomer" to camoflauge himself among the Mason jars that grow not far from the banks of the silvery Ohio. And as to the songs his incognito freelordship sings to the Warren County Chambermaids of Commerce, ¿Who needs conjecture now that we’ve got Pajamas?

Today HFL has resorted to the farther reaches of the kiddie-selfservative repertory. Rarely do the stout Neohomers of Party an’ AEIdeology strike their bloomin’ liars, an’ make a long face, an’ wail "A significant percentage of start-up businesses fail in a relatively short time."

(( Neohomer eventually whips out his handy iScam device, which informs him that seventy percent over ten years counts as ‘significant’. ))

¿Can the kiddiecons an’, more importantly, a wannabe Conner of Kiddies like his freelordship, REALLY want this bit of ‘news’ to get out? ¿Or further out, any way?

’Twill not come as much of a revelation to many folks other than Wally Wombschool an’ Cindy from Wasilla, plus possibly Joe the Wurtzelbacher, but I thought that to keep precisely that gruesome twosome in the economic dark was the whole crux and pith and gist of Vienna Sausage Chicagonomics. It has always been difficult for me to imagine the bards an’ other hogen-mogens of the Sausagenomical Community hushin’ their scandal up forever, though easy as pie to understand why Master Wally an’ Mizz Cindy should be predestined suckers for the so-called "Whig Pastoral." [1]

The trouble, however, is so plain that it ought to be visible even at Rio Limbaugh. Suppose that Master Wally finds himself most unaccountably [2] scrooged by ScroogeBank, his "middle class" (for of course a Master Wally *will* call M.C. any position he can squeeze his obesity into) position downsourced to Xanadu an’ Bangalore, or possibly outsized altogether. ¿What is he to do? ¡Not a hard question! -- OF COURSE Wally Wombschool must now go out an’ *entrepreen for himself. Everybooby knows that is the only way to avoid Death an’ maybe even Ponzi.

So Wally tries it [3], an’ promptly hits his 70/10. Well, what the younker hits is everybooby’s 70/10, really, the 70/10 of which stout Neohomer here barks, but always remember, Dr. Bones, that "another’s tears are water": ’tis Master Wally’s stubbed nose that hurts Master Wally.

From this plain and simple consideration, I conclude that the viability (as agitprop) of Whig Pastoralism an’ vulgar sausagenomics an’ the _Idylls of Bloomer depends on everybody not tryin’ to entrepreen themselves at once. Probably on most people not trying it ever.

In a way, Whig Pastoralism, in its current ‘pettybiz’ recension, resembles Prof. Dr. Turner’s frontier hypothesis: entrepreenin’ oneself works as an escape valve in practice, but only because not many Walter Mittys or Wally Wombschools ever get around to actually trying to escape. Were the whole theater to rush for that supposed egress at once, why, ¡Father Barnum alone knows how bad the disaster would be! Most assuredly, sir, not even the giant egress of Madagascar could ever lay enough gold-standard eggs to meet that panic level of demand. [3]

I incline to guess that their G.O.P. Geniuses (®) -- mot unassisted, to be fairembalanced, by our £eader$hip Democrats -- have already pushed outsizin’ an’ downsourcin’ past the tippin’ point. Anybooby really serious about _L’entrepreneuriat en Amèrique_ nowadays had better have good connections at Shanghai.

(( And ¿wouldn’t it be lots of fun to write up "The Chinese Adventure of Horatio Alger?" Or make that, if you like, ". . . of Horatio Bloomer." [3] ))

To guess that Greenback Exceptionalism is dead and gone entails, I think, the further guess that the pettybiz flim-flam will finally have to stop sometime around three weeks from next Wednesday. There will be so many seven-in-tenners visible that even Master Wally Wombschool may soon get an inklin’ why there used to be a joke about us all making a living by taking in one another's washing. [4]

Happy days.
--JHM



___
[1] I have always thought that Schlesinger Minor called it so in his _Age of Jackson_, but the pet g@@gle does not seem to agree. One might even get a silly impression that this coarse and illiterate keyboard is myself responsible.

*

[2] ‘Unaccountable’ is only for starters. Not only is Life ‘unfair’, so is ScroogeBank. I mean, ¿Did the SB’s not solemnly promise young Wally that he an’ the lovely Cindy would be eaten last of all? Yet here they are, despised an’ betrayed an’ disemployed -- an’ worst of all, ¡that Demoncrat Lieberal ratfink of a Bob Cratchitt has STILL not been fired!

*

[3] I sacrifice accuracy to merriment a little here, admittedly. Little Horry Bloomer would never have an exotic adventure, he’s as parochial Yank as a huckleberry sundae. As boondocksy as a Babbitt of Zenith.

*

[4] Meanwhile, out at the Masonjar Country Club, only a few short clicks from Cincinnati, Party Neocomrade (third grade) Th. X. Bloomer may be found congratulatin’ the local three-in-tenners (plus a few seven-in-tenners not yet unmasked) on so splendidly bodyin’ forth the Spiritual Beauties of Inequality.

"American Whig Pastoral" is by no means the only shaft in little Horrie’s quiver. Indeed, the intellectual level of American whightism may improve a little -- ¡at last! -- when the Party neocomrades can give up pretendin' that everybody is, or can be, or ought to be, a Wunnerful Winner almost on a par with their golfclub-assembled freelordships. (The real W.W.'s must get very sick an' tired of *that* cant.)



09 October 2011

The Brown Peril and Me


Dear Dr. Bones,

This piece addresses a completely different problem raised by Funders of Fratboy (L.L.C.) -- and echoed by the cultists of St. Elizabeth of Warrenbuffet insofar as *they* can not plausibly object to carpertbagging as a spiritual principle.

At any rate: though a carpetbag will do nicely to tote one’s AstroTurf™ about in, ¿How does one make sure that there are no little crimmigrants or criminaliens (_cimices lectulariæ_, or possibly worst pests, undocumented yet in prose or rhyme) hitchin’ a free ride?

Happy days.
--JHM

(( I really did think from the link that the story would be about His Pickupship. Something ’rong with me, no doubt, that I skipped over the subtitle as if it were not there.

(( The come-on was "The Brown Peril," a soundbark which, as the learned _Slate_ scribblers eventually reveal, dates from 1908. Political self-whighteousness prevented them from noticing that way back then it started out as a joke (¿?) on Charlie Chan and his enemies.

(( Some real epidemiologist should have a look. Messers Johns and Fairchild mess about with things in a puzzling way. In the late 1860’s bedbugs seem to be distinctly neocon(federate) in their distribution, to really go with Mark I scalawags and carpetbaggers and clue-clutchers. Yet then forty years on,

a doctor with the New York City Department of Health had the temerity to declare in the _Times_ that bedbugs had sacked Gotham. He assured readers that “a short zoological excursion” through any apartment or hotel suite would yield evidence of the “brown peril.”

(( Naturally one’s Massachusetts Exceptionalism (Pat. Pend.) prohibits one from supposing the Little Friends of Morpheus ever got much farther than, say, Scarsdale and New Canaan. ))


Concerning the Brown Peril


Dear Dr. Bones,

This piece addresses a completely different problem raised by Funders of Fratboy (L.L.C.) -- and echoed by the cultists of St. Elizabeth of Warrenbuffet insofar as *they* can not plausibly object to carpertbagging as a spiritual principle.

At any rate: though a carpetbag will do nicely to tote one’s AstroTurf™ about in, ¿How does one make sure that there are no little crimmigrants or criminaliens (_cimices lectulariæ_, or oissibly even worst pests undocumented yet in prose or rhyme) hitchin’ a free ride?

Happy days.
--JHM

(( I really did think from the link that the story would be about His Pickupship. Something ’rong with me, no doubt, that I skipped over the subtitle as if it were not there.

(( The come-on was "The Brown Peril," a soundbark which, as the learned _Slate_ scribblers eventually reveal, dates from 1908. Political self-whighteousness prevented them from noticing that way back then it started out as a joke (¿?) on Charlie Chan and his enemies.

(( Some real epidemiologist should have a look. Messers Johns and Fairchild mess about with things in a puzzling way. In the late 1860’s bedbugs seem to be distinctly neocon(federate) in their distribution, to really go with Mark I scalawags and carpetbaggers and clue-clutchers. Yet then forty years on,

a doctor with the New York City Department of Health had the temerity to declare in the _Times_ that bedbugs had sacked Gotham. He assured readers that “a short zoological excursion” through any apartment or hotel suite would yield evidence of the “brown peril.”


(( Naturally one’s Massachusetts Exceptionalism (Pat. Pend.) prohibits one from supposing the Little Friends of Morpheus ever got much farther than, say, Scarsdale and New Canaan. ))


07 October 2011

Blue noses and Blue Blazers


Dear Dr. Bones,

Well, well! Happy birthday to me! Plus presumably to four lucky others per 1,431 Massachusettienses.

An up-market scribbler has scribbled as follows about our natal-day surprise packet:


Much ado about nothing all around.

Brown is getting way too upset that Elizabeth Warren made a reference to his photoshoot, especially when practically invited to by the questioner. Our side (though notably not Warren herself it seems) is getting way too upset about Brown’s joking “Thank God” reaction to her comment. I think everyone needs to lighten up a bit.

christopher @ Fri 7 Oct 12:43 AM


I, on the other tentacle, can only hope that everybooby left and whight will "heavy up" [1] about Frathousegate.

Now Hope is well enough--commended in Neoscripture, even, is Miss Hope--yet Rational Expectation usually disagrees, and goes on to turn out to have gotten the better of the correlation of farces in practice. R. E. advises me that Blue Blazerdom will not not want to do much with this little _trouvée_ that has turned up in their laps and their laptops so unexpectedly. Had their excellencies known that Frathousegate was comin’ to crash the Garden Party of Massachusetts, as it were, why, the "Gated Community on a Hill" might finally have pressed the button and we would find out whether those out-of-commonwealth contractors were having us on about how quickly modern defensive measures can be deployed. [2] As the case actually stands, the B. B.’s will probably mostly try to freeze the crass interloper out after the event with their H*rv*rd _hauteur_. Than which nothing could possibly be tastier, if not necessarily more effective.

If one prefers getting weepy about natal days and a’ that, one could compare-and-contrast, _¡Eheu! fugaces ..., what fun the Party of George Washington Plunkett (and General Jackson, and Mr. Jefferson) would have had with Senator Fratboy an’ St. Elizabeth of H*rv*rdy with how little the Party of Princess Emily and Radio Free Altzheimer’s is likely to make of it.

Less seriously, I fear e-comrade ‘christopher’ is simply mistaken about Fratboy an’ the Fratboy Funders gettin’ "way too upset." Obviously this is not the ideal way to play the Frathouse Card, but, up to a point, "all publicity is good publicity": at least everybooby’s attention is now directed in what the F. F. Club consider the whight direction, at Senator Fratboy’s sociological peculiarities rather than at whose carpets he is baggin’ economically.

The Great Blue Pumpkin himself is not quite so easily distracted as ‘christopher’:


Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) defended Brown and his comments in statements to POLITICO. “I know Scott Brown’s story, and I know that he had many obstacles to overcome in his youth,” Ayotte said. “It’s inappropriate to make light of his personal circumstances, or to disparage or belittle him for the decisions he made to improve his life. Scott is one of the best guys to work with in the Senate, and I am proud to call him my colleague.” Collins similarly turned the spotlight on Warren, saying Brown was “merely responding” to comments first made by the Harvard professor, in which she “made light of the difficult choices in his life” – a reference to Warren’s recent jab at Brown’s decision to pose nude for a magazine in his 20’s. “It’s wrong to mock anyone who had to make hard choices to overcome tough obstacles,” she said. “His story is no different than millions of Americans who are doing everything they can to make ends meet.”

Gosh, to read those statements, you’d think that Warren was the one who had brought up the issue of Scott Brown’s posing nude in Cosmo. So let’s get one thing very clear: it was Republican activist and Melrose Republican Committee Chair Scott Conway, not Elizabeth Warren, who first mentioned Scott Brown’s decision to pose for Cosmo.


Unfortunately the G.B.P. did not guess exactly whight what this keyboard would think to read such statements. Who first brought Scottie’s disvestiture problem to light is of no importance at all after thirty years. What one ought to keep one’s eye on here and now is Republicanine crocks an’ allegators sheddin’ tears ’bout "disparage or belittle him for the decisions he made to improve his life" or "make light of the difficult choices in his life."

The strategy of the Fratboy Funders is twofold: (1) DIRECTLY, they appeal to the Louisedayhicksville element among us, to those who relish Frathouse Family Values an’ despise H*rv*rd an’ all its works an’ pomps. Little of this is visible from the PPTV atop the GBH, as I was complaining yesterday before Frathousegate broke. The Great Blue Pumpkin, and all the lesser gourds and squashes and zucchini and arugulæ, hardly live on the same planet as the Louisedayhicks. No doubt their excellencies ought to try to condescend a little more than they do, but naturally one can not rationally expect anything much of that sort.

(2) INDIRECTY, however, the Blazers are precisely the target of the Fratboy Funders’ ancillary battle plan. Archie Bunker & Company are never gowintabe made suckers of with "the difficult choices in his life," but ¿_Quién sabe?_, ¿maybe a Great Blue Pumpkin will actually fall for that shameless phoniness? Fall for it and then (I presume) not oppose poor up-an’-comin’ Scott Fratboy so ferociously as to deprive his Funders of certain political self-servicin’s in which they have specuvested heavily.

The G.B.P.’s response is about as inadequate as it could be, short of utterly failing to see what the enemy is up to. His Excellency does quote that eminently pertinent tripe an’ bologna from Party Neocomradesses K. A. Ayotte and S. M. Collins, as a *completely* clueless analyst would not. But, although the G.B.P. perceives that the tripe IS pertinent, he does not seem to understand HOW and WHY.

The "shirtless cosmopolitan" _shtyk_ is a red-state herrin’ from head to tail, not just in respect of who started it. The true locus of the attempted swindle is the child-abuse topos, a business which the two North-of-Boston blabbermouths did at least manage to contain themselves about. [3]

Happy days.
--JHM

___
[1] If that be an expression _nominandum inter_ Anglophonies. "Make heavy weather of" would, I believe, have passed for idiomatic back in Skipper Morrison’s day.

*

[2] Speaking of "out of commonwealth," Dr. Bones, I trust you noticed yesterday on your AM dial that Howard Lewis, Freelord of Carr in the neopeerage, cannot mention the Blessèd Name of St. Elizabeth without ‘Oklahoma’ taggin’ along close like Tonto, or Sancho Panzer, or the Fool in ‘Lear’.

_Projectio malignans_ is the technical term, I think.

*

[3] David, Freelord Koch, or whoever else may be head honcho of the Fratboy Funders, really ought to have a stern word or two with his loose-lipped ladies. Gettin’ (some of) us Demoncrats an’ Lieberals to put up with the reëlection of Master Scottie on the grounds that his childhood was unhappy is guaranteed to fail unless the marks an’ dupes can think they thought of it all by their ownselves. Assumin’ we have to think of it consciously at all.

Here is a clear occasion for the proverbial " ‘¡Shut up!,’ he explained. " The connection between supposed grounds and desired consequents becomes laughable as soon as it is distinctly conceived. I betcha even St. Eleanor of Roosevelt would snicker if she saw the political heathen were tryin’ to get at her bleeding heart that way.

Nevertheless, it seems a pretty nifty ploy to me -- IF they can sneak it by silently enough.

05 October 2011

"little to knock her off her stride"


Dear Dr. Bones,

"And The WINNA is . . ."

. . . not hard to detect (¿is it?) in the following account prepared for the use of the New York Times Company [*]:


[1] Warren demonstrated her ability to combine a professor’s command of the economy with the plain language of a populist fighter.

[2] Khazei, co-founder of a national service program, spoke about the importance of building coalitions to advocate for (_sic_) important causes and solve problems.

[3] Conroy offered anecdotes about the people he met while walking the state this summer, saying their stories illustrated economic problems in this state

[4] Bob Massie, a former candidate for lieutenant governor, said he is in the race “to see capitalism move to a next step...to be sustainable and just.”

[5] Marisa DeFranco, a little-know immigration attorney, may have offered the night’s biggest surprise, punctuating her responses with fiery appeals to fight Washington.

[6] The sixth candidate, engineer Herb Robinson, made the crowd laugh with a few one-liners about his girth and his marijuana use, but otherwise looked nervous and uncertain on many questions.


The individual slaves of Sulzberger, Comrades N. X. Bierman and H. W. Robinson, are perhaps letting their own druthers show a little more than corporatist decorum ideally demands. To add to the circus fun, the two sets of druthers don't seem to coincide, though one cannot tell which is whose.

Good old Massa ‘Bob’ is obviously a goodguy, far exalted above all stiff formal nomenclature. There can be little doubt that one local cog in the Great Chain of Fishwrap is a Massietarian.

The cog's colleague is almost certainly a pious adherent of the cult of St. Elizabeth of H*rv*rdy, though this guess *could* be in error, inasmuch as if one were to encounter "a professor’s command of the economy" in a dark alley at 0300 hours--or in the columns of a certain debate sponsor at any hour-- one would take it as sarcasm. At a Lower Merrimack Valley institution of tertiary educationalism, however, and not too long after sunset, to take it at face value, as an attempted affirmative direction of the customer’s attention, is, I believe, safe enough.

¡Everything looks suspicious once you get started! It occurs to me that Citizen ‘Bob’ reforming -- no, say rather "guiding the future evolution of" -- _der Finanzkapitalismus_ single-handed might also be hostile caricature, one belonging to the "nonsense on stilts" subspecies.

***

What I think we ought to do, Dr. Bones, thee and eye, is take refuge with The Master. Starting from "Form trumps matter," the NYTC comrades must look positively ‘awesome’ to the sound Aristotelian. A clearer, or briefer, report card on the sixpack I can hardly imagine. Scribblers with so solid a grip on Form as these two exhibit should not be accused of weaselry unless the evidence against them is unmistakeably damning.

(( A formal epicycle: a guesser with a flair for symmetry might guess that items [1]-[3] reveal the Biermanite druthers, and [4]-[6] the Robinsonian. Or maybe the other way around.

(( In that case, we must not miss the next thrilling episode, wherein B. & R. (or, as the case may be, R. & B.) will, presumably, switch sides of the sixpack and thus allow the student to break their seeming tie. If the Elizabethan likes ‘Bob’ better than the Massietarian likes Her Beatitude, well, ¡That will be that! ¿Will it not? [**]

(( I suppose it would be worth knowing which the Freelord of Sulzberger prefers, even though (so fasr as I know) his freelordship and the Corporation, _¡Rex in æternum vivat!_, are technically not permitted to vote in MA. ))

Happy daze.
--JHM

___
[*] Carpetbaggers and carpetbaggery are everywhere you look in this show. If it keeps up, obviously Senator Fratboy should be reëlected by unanimous acclamation. The chances of finding a better representative of the Carpetbag Principle than he are negligible.

Non-Peripatetics tend to lay a great deal of stress on whose carpet is getting bagged, that of Hooverville (with Scottboy) or that of the Great American Muddle Class (with Ms. Lizzie). "Not very philosophical of them," I calls it.

(( Also to be said, by the way, in favor of Comrades Bierman and Robinson is that the M. C. tomfoolery appears only once, and that in direct quotation of Her Beatitude, "“No one has any question where I stand. (...) I fight for m*ddle cl*ss families and nothing, nothing will change that.”

(( The trouble, of course, is that nobooby from either party whom Her Beatitude is likely to go up against would dissent from that supposed unquestionability by the tiniest iota. Or iotum.

(( A second trouble: though ’tis indeed true that not a single booby from sea to shining sea questions where all our hack pols and mornin’-glory reformers stand on Muddle-Class Family Values, poor Ms. Booby has no better idea than the Muses and you and I what any of ’em take THE Muddle to be located, mathematically. The most one can confidently say is that they *never* mean anything so uninteresting and polemically useless as "percentiles thirty-four through sixty-seven of the U.S.A. income-and-wealth distribution."

(( But Mammon kniws best. ))

*

[**] I take it, you see, that R. & B. have already given up Messers Conroy, DeFranco and Hazy--plus "[t]he sixth candidate, engineer Herb Robinson" even more so--for hopeless. But if you can see a glimmer of silver lining in their NYTC obnubilations, please let me know. I definitely need all the help available anywhere to keep on pretending that I do not know how this one comes out.



04 October 2011

"a few naive but honest members"



Dear Dr. Bones,


unclefactor ? 0 Good Comment 0 Poor Comment

The Occupy Boston group do not need any advice or assistance from the teabaggers. The Tea Party is a right-wing fascist organization which is basically a front for the extremist wing of the Republican Party. There may be a few naive but honest members among their number. They should ditch the Tea Party and hook up with the Occupiers.

Posted 2 hours ago [10/04/2011 04:44AM] Reply Link Abusive

With all dew respect to Mr. Poster, this keyboard must stroke that I think he is all wet.

Nobooby *needs* "advice or assistance from the teabaggers." The ethical beauty of our North American _Teehemde_ is that they give of their own unsolicited, even as they give without crude expectation of reward.

Anyway, it is not as if scabbin’ for ScroogeBank, an’ Warbucks Widget, an’ THE News Corporation (&c. &c.) pays well nowadays. ¿How should it? Nowadays the economic Hogen-Mogens do not run any Cecille B. DeMille cast-of-thousands factories nearer than Shanghai. Or possibly still Guadalajara to some extent. To spend any serious shequelles on takin’ measures against Union thugs way out over there might make sense; around here, it would only be silly.

Their freelordships have, in this keyboard's view, figured the correlation of farces out quight whight: No danger of strikes == Not many bennies for wannabe strikebreakers. "Sorry, Charlie." (You too, Howie.)

AstroTurf™baggin’ the kiddiecons until the contents of their dittopans are reduced to Tee Putty costs very little. It is only a question of *differential* fundin’, of makin' sure that small people who would mostly bark an’ bellow like Party Neocomrade Dr. R. H. Limbaugh (rather than like, say, Miss Rosa Luxemburg ) in any case get a little extra encouragement.

Just the occasional pat on the fangs, as it were.

Kiddie selfservatives mean badly, they come with fangs pre-installed. As it were.

At the same time, they are at least 99.43% "naive but honest." Kiddiecons are not, after all, anythin’ near bestembright enough to be cynical. Or even to keep their fibs straight. What they bark is what they think, an' what they think is what they bark. As honest as the day is long, as naïve as the night is dark (in the absence of the Rev. Moon), are they.

To be sure, those self-dittoes between their ears are not homebrewed. ¡Far from it! Few developments in politics are less mysterious than "The Birth of Tee Putty from the Spirit of Finance Capital." Nevertheless, the course of subhuman events has been slightly more complicated than Scrooge an' Murdoch an' Ailes an’ Warbucks handin' out banknotes to Wally Wombschool of Louisedayhicksville MA an' Cindy from Wasilla AK in Spiro Agnew Brand (®) paper bags.

***

"Basically a front for the extremist wing of the Republican Party" is by way of a Trifecta™ win for Mr. Poster, an analysis that is at least triply ridiculous, inasmuch as the Monolith of Party an' AEIdeology has no ‘base’ as opposed to its superstructure, no ‘front’ as opposed to its backside, and no ‘wings’ as opposed to its torso.

Plus of course utterly no extremism as opposed to its sublime neomoderation.

Happy days.
--JHM