25 January 2011

"I am ... a prize-winnin’ historian"



Dear Dr. Bones,

One trait that makes the neocomrades so interesting for us _Geisteswissenschaftler_ is the way they push ordinary human deficiencies to militant neoëxtremes. Take the Wolnomozny Pan Radoszcz here -- take him an’ his selfocentricity.

Few roses blow down the pike from Foxcuckooland to us humble altogeher without a silver linin’, however. It seems plain [1] that whilst the Muses and thou and I are attending to such freelordly an’ kiddiemagisterial self-sorrowin’s as the present _radoshschína smútna_ nay afford us, we cannot possibly look to others the way Master Narcissus Dexter --an’ his Party an’ his AEIdeology -- look to us. At any rate, such is my latest theory of the matter. [2]

But let us get straight to work:

(A) Once past the alleged poorness of the poor devil, we observe His Freemightiness workin’ a really nifty (il)logical contraption: anybooby sufferin’ under "a torrent of verbal abuse and _ad hominem_ attacks" must be in the whight, argumentwise, an’ her adversary rong.

’Tis not worth the waste of powder and shot to blow *that* bologna straight back to H[ooverville] where it comes from, because there is no more than about a 0.000347% chance that the Wolnomozhny Pan would recur to this particular First Principle on the occasion of encounterin’ a Party neocomradess -- say, the Freedame of Coulter -- similarly belaborin’ some hapless Lieberal or Demoncrat. Fortunately, HFM possesses a plethora of First Principles, three or more to suit every occasion. ¡Never to be caught at a loss is Party Neocomrade R. X. Radosh!

On the other hoof, though, the poor devil’s conception of ‘lunacy’ needs some work: wingnutettes an’ wingnuts may, in the path of Party an’ Ideology, believe many of the same dotty things that l@@nies an’ M@@Nies do. However the causes or reasons are quite different in the two cases.

(B) Then comes _das Pivenepos_, which I guess we shall have to take the freemighty word for, or maybe Comrade Cloward’s word, not knowing a piven from a pimiento ourselves. Or even from a pivot.

Look at the dates, though, Dr. Bones. I betcha Neocomrade Radosh got into Piven back when he was still a paleo- with the Seventh (?) International. Nothin’ is more obnoxious to a neoteric than its own immediate yesterteric. Everybooby knows that! Think "Gloomy Gus of Hippo and the brand-name Manichees!"! [3]

(C) Next is a short oracular response which I have trouble grasping. Can you, sir, explain the following sentence?

I have no objection to debating Peter Dreier or anyone else on the issues, BUT I believe he is being disingenuous (&c. &c.)


The puzzle is that high-an’-freemighty ‘but’. To thunder "but I cannot be bothered to argue with liars" would make excellent sense, though not without a certain huffity-puffity of manner more acceptable to pajamatarian palates than to mine. That, however, is not what gets thundered. As the neobark stands, it might as well be "Roses are red, BUT violets are blue." I mean, only Father Zeus an’ His Freemight of Radosh can know for sure what the adversative conjunction is militatin’ against. It cannot mean that HFM refuses to argue, because if it did, the scribble would have to end right here.

Furthermore, after a thunder of my sort, there should follow a deluge or drizzle of examples of deliberate Drierite (or possibly Clowardly) misrepresentations. His Freemight rains down nothin’ of the sort upon us, instead, He just inconsequently wanders off to "[not] dealing with the serious conservative critique," -- a misdemeanour which will no doubt sound very naughty in the ears of Rio Limbaugh/Port Ste. Lucie, but is scarcely what expensively educated speakers of New High Homeland™ic understand by the term ‘disingenuous’.

So I say again, "What is goin’ on here, exactly?"

(D) Best left to neospeak for itself is

I am hardly an “ultra-right wing propagandist” but a prize-winning historian who respects the truth and takes it where it leads me (...) Dreier ... writes that my article on Piven “would have had little impact outside the right-wing blogosphere,” a claim he makes because the opposite is the case.


Moving whight along, [4]

(E) "[T]he only reason I [get] up in the morning [is] so I [can] go shopping in Wal-Mart to exploit the poor" is so entertaining that I suspect it just a little. His Freemightiness gives a paraphrase rather than cite the actual e-words of Comrade Dreier, but even if we could subpoena the original ("What original?") it might be difficult or impossible to decide whether this exuberance was original-intented as a joke.

Assuming it was not, Comrade Dreier evidently entertains off-beat ideas about ideological perversion. He wrote as if His Freemightiness (as he now is) had abandoned only the notion that it is a rong and unwhight thing for the Daughters of Virtue & Sons of Wisdom, LLC, to exploit the Bad Poor, while retainin’ the factual or ‘factual’ belief that such exploitation happens all the time almost everywhere you look under _Spätkapitalismo_. Surely the odds are overwhelming that HFM(ahni) ditched both the supposed fact and the negative evaluation of it simultaneousl?

If that analysis be not quite sure, ’tis only because it seems so unlikley that many ideoperverts distinguish anywhere near as nicely as all that. Very likely HFM(ahni) has never thought about the whole business beyond that he used to be a foe to _le Oualmartisme en Amérique_ whereas now he is become a neobuddy thereof. _¡Et voilà tout!_

For practical purposes -- an’ for as long as the Wolnomozhny Pan Doktor Profesor abstains from scribblin’ us a prizeworthy History of Wal-Mart "in three volumes boxed, suitable for throwing purposes" [5] -- that really *is* toot. Or close ’nuf.

And I wish you, sir, as ever,
¡Happy days! (through affordable healthcare)
--JHM
.

__
[1] The "it seems plain" sort of throw-away is a potential problem, a big one. Doubtless every whimper that His Freemightiness (_wolnomoznosc_ -- context makes clear that ‘slowmightiness’ cannot be the whight translation) emits strikes HFM Radošch himself as better grounded than "2 + 2 = 4."

And there, but for the favour of Father Zeus, . . . !

Oh, well! On the practical side, call me up Thursday or Friday and we will consult M. Pascal via the E-dja board and ask him to weigh this brainwave on the _Bien Penser_ Scale..

Meanwhile, I think tolerably _bien_ of oneself already for having just now discovered that the "There, but for the grace of [Chemosh, or such fabled deities]" formula is a (not very) subtle form of verbal self-stimulation. There is a large, probably on most occasions a preponderant, element of "Don’t let’s talk about her, let’s talk about ME!" in the TB4TGOG soundbark.

Once a noticer has noticed that, she will not find it puzzling, or even especially sarky by Rio Limbaugh standards, that His Freemight should buckle down to his self-whimperin’ with the words "Poor Peter Dreier." Whoever P. D. may be.
(As if HFM were about to whimper for somebody else!)

But I beg your pardon: the point is precisely that it does not much matter to anybooby, His Freemight preëminently included, who P. D. is. One might as well expand the initials "Poor Devil" in the sure and certain hope that the Kindermeister von Radoschtsch will incidentally explain enough about the deviltry in question to avoid unintelligibilty in the course of the self-censin’ process. Which indeed he does.

[2] As usual, a rash or premature generalisation risks making oneself look rather like Billy Blake, so I shall mention, but not positively recommend, the conjecture that all public exhibitions by Master Narky are _eo ipso_ occasions for the rest of us to polish up our altruism skills.

[3] (3a) The ‘immediate’ is required to cover a case like Gloomy Gus eventually discovering that Mizz Monnica had been whight all along.

(3b) Exactly what the neocriterion may be for the _argumentum ad homunculum_ is not a topic I can recite on with any confidence. So probably I had better play safe and assume that Pajama Junction NJ would be displeased to hear me wondering out loud whether any wild oats sown by the _na tym punkcie czasu Wolnomozhny Pan Radoszcz might have included such doo-doo and boo-boo as a subjectively sincere wish to "bring the system down."


[4] All contents of the freemighty trophy case notwithstandin’, there may be a middle-school-level misunderstandin’ here. I cannot tell with certainty, but it looks _primâ facie_ as if the Wolnomozhny Pan assumes that Truth, _prawda_, is an adequate defense against imputations of ‘propaganda’ the same way it is with libel and slander in the Holyhomeland™ic legal system.

One glance at where the dread P-word came from historically stops that clock in its silly tracks: The Protoratzingerites of A. R. 1031/1622/5383 were by no means implictly announcing that their own stuff "ain’t necessarily so"!

His Freemightiness, bein’ a congenital member of The Greatest Demographic™, may have been reared in such a way as to render most references to specifically Christian Christojudæanity almost as obscure to him as if they had been about Mahayana or Mormonism. ( I assume you remember Joel Whatzamovitch, the learnèd Turcologue, who seemed genuinely flabbergasted to run across "_Sic enim dilexit D*us mundum" &c., Ev. Joh._ III:16? )

From his own palæocomradely youth, however, the Wolnomozhny Pan (as he now is) might be expected to remember that the agitprop artists of International III were not shaking things up verbally because they disbelieved in _Bolschewismus_. Considered in that light, indeed, it is more a kindergarten mistake that we are discussing than anything that had to wait for Little Ronnie Rad. to reach seventh grade.

(( But St. John Dewey knows best about levels of educationalism. ))


[5] Can you name that tune, Dr. Bones?


24 January 2011

De Adumbratione Epistola



Dear Dr. Bones,

America is not alone ... [t]he rot is deep and widespread; it is civilizational. The entitlement promises made by national and local governments of the West are so vast that they can never be kept. When people finally and fully realize this, the capitals of the world will shake with the rage of masses which have come to expect everything, and will accept nothing less. Indeed, it is already happening. The recent unrest in Greece, France, Britain, and elsewhere *adumbrate* our future rather nicely.

The reckoning is coming. It will be swift, and it will be terrible.

‘Adumbrate’ is good, and especially as coming from a freedumbdownee.

On the other hand, it looks as if St. Dilbert Antistate College [1] did not teach this particular sweet puppy of Redarkenment any mammonology at all. Not even of the Chicagonomic or Vienna-Sausage type.[0]

Meanwhile, back at ‘adumbrate’, does not the dingalingism

The government’s debt is our debt, and when our creditors at last demand their due, that heretofore unseen $45,300 per person in debt will suddenly surge to the surface and sweep all before it in a terrible deluge. Not one person in America will be unaffected . . . .

stand in what might be termed "an adumbatory relationship" [2] to one of our own favourite gold-standard oldies?


There was a jolly miller once
Lived on the River Dee;
He work’d and sang from morn till night,
No lark more blithe than he.
And this the burden of his song
Forever used to be;
I care for nobody, no, not I,
If nobody cares for me.

The reason why he was so blithe,
He once did thus unfold;
The bread I eat my hands have earn’d;
I covet no man’s gold;
I DO NOT FEAR NEXT QUARTER-DAY [*] ;
In debt to none I be.
I care for nobody, no, not I,
If nobody cares for me.

A coin or two I’ve in my purse,
To help a needy friend;
A little I can give the poor,
And still have some to spend.
THOUGH I MAY FAIL, YET I REJOICE,
ANOTHER’S GOOD HAP TO SEE [**] .
I care for nobody, no, not I,
If nobody cares for me.

So let us his example take,
And be from malice free;
Let every one his neighbour serve,
As served he’d like to be.
And merrily push the can about
And drink and sing with glee;
If nobody cares a doit for us,
Why not a doit care we.

This version was discovered in 1857 written on a flyleaf of a 1716 collection of John Dryden’s poems.


[*] A great fearer of quarter-days is Party Neocomrade (seventh class) M. X. Patterson. (His freelordship's autoterrorization serves as my chief pivot of adumbration, don’t you see?)

[**] About 98.6% of the original-intented function of all Whig Pastoral is to induce the Bad Poor to take the attitude nicely captured here in only a dozen words. And captured at least a century and a half ago! A closer dating would be welcome: do you know anybody in the Eng. Lit. Department, O Bones?

A preferrer might prefer to anachronize a little, though, --dulce desipere in loco--and imagine Yeoperson D. Miller going about her daily grind wearing one of Freedame Patricia Nixon’s second-hand, yet thoroughly respectable, cloth coats.

---

There is also a platinum-standard version available, with notes by Mynheer van Beethove’.

¡Happy days! (through affordable healthcare)
--JHM


_____
[1] Or Wingsdale, or George Peppermason , or wherever. I doubt this neospecimen could have been admitted to Wombschool Normal University , salve magna pestiferens, for, if it had been, they would have invigilated at least a little worldly wisdom into it. Not about *this* world, naturally, but still . . . .


[2] Part of my own blitheness at the moment , I betcha, is to reflect subliminally that Wally Wingnut an’ Cinda from Wasilla don't know ‘adumbrate’ well enough to bring out the dumb in it. But Freud knows best.

(( Golly, I just noticed it's a twofer: why, with both ‘dumb’ and ‘brat’ built in, this one word is virtually the CliffsNotes version of Neocomradology 101! ))


[0] As you know, sir, I don't like the ad homunculum manner much: as Mommy said, gossip is for proles, we of The True Middle ©lass (Pat. Pend.) would much rather talk phænomenology or ætiology. Maybe in a pinch, we sink as low as Political Arithmetic. But definitely never to mere tattle about Master Wally an’ Mizz Cindy an’ Kiddiemistress S. L. Heath-Paling of AK-49.

On the other hand, is it not just what one expected that a PNC7 M. X. Patterson should prove to "be a senior editor at the Capital Research Center"?

Oops. It appears that the Party neocomrade does NOT, as I guessed from the name of his coven, spend many hours a day breakin’ individual brokees under the guise of providing financial consultancy. No Neocomrade Th. X. Bloomer of Mason OH is MXP! Instead, he is a tank-thinker, a bush-league Heritagitarian or AEIdeologue: "Capital Research Center (CRC) was established in 1984 to study non-profit organizations, with a special focus on reviving the American traditions of charity, philanthropy, and voluntarism.

From what follows, I gather that the single greatest failin’ of our holy Homeland™'s unprofitable sector is . . . in CRC eyes . . . not to despise the Wicked State sufficiently. ¡Quelle surprise!

For gossip purposes, though, my mistake is immaterial: whether ponzificatin’ retail or wholesale, the advantages of not knowin’ much ’bout ickynomics are about the same.

Given MXP's institutional settin’, I wonder whether the CRC inmates might not be applyin’ St. Adam of Edinburgh's "division of labour" scheme with rigour. I mean, do other CRooCs concoct the cake, an’ then Neocomrade Patterson slathers some prose-style icin’ on the top an’ down the sides before they ship finalized neoproduct out to Hooverville an’ Rio Limbaugh/Port Ste. Lucie? That way, his freelordship would need to know no more of Chicagonomics than some heathen Chinee shrink-wrapper knows about the circuitry of the electronic gizmos he packages.

In the same institutional light, wan and flickerin’ and compact-fluorescent and generally crumby all through, it seems a pity that today’s Pscenario of Doom should include not a single word that is unmistakably the fruit of any focusin’ whatsoever of the study of non-profit organizations. ’Twould not have been difficult to include a few, would it? I mean, it took me miserable slightly under 7.1035 seconds to think of feigning that "John D. and Catherine T." -- sc. the Foundation of Geniuses, rhymes with "breakfast of champions" -- have undermined, and worse than undermined, all the sterlin’ accomplishments that the Freelord of MacArthur wreaked in person before his promotion to a Higher Sphere of Service.

And M. le baron György du Soros-Schwartz is still around for kickin’ purposes, ¿no es verdad? Though possibly the Foxcuckooland GHQ has awarded a monopoly on Soros-bashin’ to Don Glenito de Beck y Coughlin. There are lots of alternatives, though.


Sobie spiewam a Muzom




Dear Dr. Bones,



¡Happy days! (through affordable healthcare)




[0]





20 January 2011

Securus Judis, Cat!




Dear Dr. Bones,

(1) It is not very tasty (is it?) for a leftover from the Seventh, I think it was, International to abuse other people’s fishwrappers as old-fashioned.

(2) This particular gentlebein’ has perverted so often that it would be no wonder if he is never quite sure which direction is ideologically up on the planet _du jour_. To an impartial neocomradologist looking in from beyond the asylum perimeter, however, it is quite plain that _The New Republic_ is a secret-sector business corporation exactly on a par with ScroogeBank, or H*rv*rd, or the Warbucks Widget Trust LLC [*], which means that for a Wolnomozny Pan Radoszcz to attempt to edit it by remote control is sheer impertinence. [**]

¡Happy days! (through affordable healthcare)

___
[*] One may not legitimately invoke the unprofitability of The Weekly Peretz as evidence that it somehow is "not really a business." Where would America’s Moonpaper be, by that far-too-rigorous standard?

Turning from Lady Cynthia in the sky with diehards to the Big Picture right here in Hooverville, you should always remind yourself, sir, when watching the song-an’-dance of Massa Tom Donohue an’ the Chambermaids of Commerce -- or, closer to Pajama Junction NJ, the solo striptease of Neocomrade Th. X. Blumer, who "owns a training and development company based in Mason, Ohio, outside of Cincinnati [an’] presents personal finance-related workshops and speeches at companiest," -- that, even if it be the case that most new jobs are created in pettybusiness as opposed to Big Management proper, pettybiz is also where most jobs terminate, often without the Samuel Joseph, Freelord of Wurzelbacher, wannabe in question havin’ attained to colorblind ink for even a single quarter.


[**] Sometimes -- not often, but not never either -- the quaint neodogmata of Kiddie Selfservatism work in our favor rather than the kiddies’ own. Wherefore they mun alle singen, "Life is unfair."


USC Annenberg Innovation Lab



Dear Dr. Bones,

Please make a memorandumb of the following:

I run the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab (&c. &c. )

and file it under both "Annenberg, Planet" and "Squid, Vampire, Lesser Tentacles of the Great."

Though it is always distressing to find that CNAI, "the Commissariat for the New American Innovation," has metastasized even worse than previously detected, there there is not, in this case, any need to panic immediately. Our previous impression that Planet A. must be located many godzillions of conceptual light-years away from Zip Code 02139, salve magna parens, remains entirely valid. Not many little green gentlebeings will be making *that*that trip in the physical mode. Very likely the Tapling 2020 subcomponent is the only one that actually has. Possibly the only that ever will.

Our wannabe pal Vampy of CNAI (¿"of the Seein’ Eye"?) needs lots and lots of worrying about, no doubt about it, but since you and I only have two eyes, I recommend keeping one fixed mostly on the Native Management tentacle, and the other on the Fiscal Neoresponsibility tentacle." Plus the occasional surveyance of Fox on Fifteenth Street.

Mr. Prof. Dr. Taplingstein von Annenberg’s labóratory of the new American creationism can be worried about adequately on alternate Saturday mornings from 0315 to 0600 hours. Supposing some weird neovation with extraterrestrial DNA does escape the gloomy dungeons of USCAIL, lots of alarms will go off, unless extremely great care has been taken to make Citizen Critter look CA-normal. Successful camoflauge [1] would require such exceedingly great care, that if Von Annenberg actually manages the trick, he will have proved himself so vastly bett’rambrighter than mere Earthies that our resistance would have been futile in any case.

This outcome, however, does not seem likely, to judge from the specimen of _Zukunftswissenschaft_ immediately at hand.

As usual, I see no reason to doubt that the exotic gentlebeing believes its own neostuff with complete subjective sincerity. Indeed, an arguer might well argue that a cynical scamster would have carefully avoided "The Arab Street Revolt" at this point in spacetime, knowing how fishy it looks to us, who watch with unenchanted dragon eye, that the Wave of the Future (Pat. Pend.) should so much resemble the contents of this week’s more intellectually respectable fishwraps. My own crystal ball has been on the fritz for years, yet I believe I could manage *that* third of the Taplingstein Revelation even without it. Now if his xenolordship had picked, say, "Subtle Demographic Imbalances in Bolivia and Ecuador," . . . .

The "China" third is no better, though defective in the opposite way: That ola del futuro has been circling the globe for whole decades and degenerations now, like an albatross in the Drake Straights. Like De Vliegende Hollander (spookschip), even. Unfortunately for Taplingstein von Annenberg, stale and trendy do not often generate a higher synthesis, they mostly just sit there cheek-by-jowl and sog. Oh, well!

Moving whight along, we arrive at "U. S. Social Tensions," which even my dragon admits begins not unpromisingly:

... the U.S. [ought] to mind its own business [because] it will increasingly confront domestic social unrest ...

But T. von A. cannot keep that level up, lapsing immediately into "if the current economic stagnation continues," a bathos which shunts us fellow travelers straight back to Trendy Terrace, "Do not pass GO! Do not collect $200.00!" Furthermore, though one would have supposed Planet Annenberg at least as impartial as Mars, it does look as if their emissary should get out of CA and ¡USA! a little more: maybe -- just ‘maybe’ -- Uncle Sam and Nephew Schwarzenegger will not be the Omphalos of Time to Come. [2]

In any case, T. von A. should definitely crosscheck with the Financial Neoresponsibility tentacle: I betcha the crystal balls over there resonate more to the tune of "The U.S. [ought] to mind its own business [because] it will find it impossible to pay for doing anything else." Which impossibility will probably *not* take the shape of POTESSA S. L. Heath-Paling havin’ to devote half the G.D.P. of 2020 to riot control, an’ year-round summer camps for Lieberals, an’ similar measures for keepin’ the Bad Poor down in our place where we belong.

(( But Nostradamus knows best. ))

¡Happy days! (through affordable healthcare)
--JHM




___
[1] Could you ask your learnèd colleague Alzheimer what it means that I was perfectly sure that I had mispelled ‘camoflauge’, but lo! and behold!! what I keystroked agrees exactly with the "Answers to Selected Exercises" at the back of the web.

Is there not, sir, a sinister allegorical appropriateness that this rather commonplace type of ‘mischievment’ / Fehlleistung / *parapraxis should befall me in conjunction with precisely this of all available C-words?

Though, come to t’ink of it, more suitable would have been for the blasted t’ing to look whight whilst being thoroughly ’rong. "And that in deed and not in word alone," as the bard Hausmanius hath it.


[2] _Omphaloi_? ‘Omphaluses’?

09 January 2011

Fernández y Podhòretz on J. L. Loughner



Dear Dr. Bones,

Your portrait, sir, at _URL cit._ is more than usually to the point. Someday we shall have to discuss how you folks feel about enlargement of the membership of your club by physical violence amongst us predead.

But first things first, for here is Don Ricardito de Fernández y Podhòretz again, who seems to have become the utility Party-pooper of Pajama Junction NJ. Presumably our secret-sectorian Betters do not draw up formal written contracts of neopatronage an’ neoclientship. We can’t reasonably expect that, say, a discovery by M. d’Assange et Cie. will someday allow us to know the exact cahoots obtainin’ as between the Señto. de F. y P. and Neocomrade R. L. Simon, Freelord Padjaama in the peerage of Foxcuckooland.[1] But it sure *looks* as if the inferior party has been licensed to say pretty well anythin’ it likes that Wally Wombschool an’ Cindy from Wasilla probably won’t like -- that F&P holds more or less the position that Comrade Frank of KA held over at The Wall Street Jingo until -- as I reconstruct ab externo_ -- some colonial stickler pointed out to the Firstlord of Murdoch that our North American Heimatland Gottes his much less relish for the clever arguments of heretics an’ infidels than Gloomy Gus of Hippo, or the natives his freelordship’s aboriginal Kangaroostan.

Specifically, then, Don Ricardito has poured the followin’ sort of cold water into the selfservative kiddies’ pajama soup:

[I]t seems fairly evident that any attempts to portray Loughner as a Tea Party activist, Communist, Anarchist, Left winger, Right winger, Republican or Democrat are probably not meaningful. From what evidence is available, Jared Lee Loughner was nuttier than a fruitcake.

To be sure, that conventional sort of niceynice is so much like School, that Master Wally an’ Mizz Cindy may not even notice it,. Not very good at noticin’ are they, after all.

The chances that they will comply with the hired-hand señorito’s recommendation are about zero. Wombschoolin’ an’ freedumbin’-down would reveal themselves as utterly impotent, were Wally an’ Cindy not quite certain that scarcely a single fruitcake on G*re’s green earth carries the card of America’s Otherparty, whereas naturally if you’re talkin’ ’bout Lieberals an’ Demoncrats . . . !

Well, you know *that* drool, sir: "It’s a jungle out there." Outside The Womb™, in fact, it’s *all* Fruitcake Jungle. I know you like extinct languages better, Dr. Bones, as very naturally you would, so let us make a memorandumb of the point as Extra UTE®UM nulla sanitas.[2]

Wingnutettes an’ wingnuts take for granted, then that the distribution of fruitcakery on earth does not look a bit like the ever-immortal Herrnstein-Murray ©u®ve™ . Or like the E-I HM©™ turned upside down, with lots of data points off east and west, hardly any in the middle of the road to keep that yellow stripe an’ the dead armadillos from gettin’ lonely. [3] Fruitcake is, in Foxcuckoofact, distributed exactly the same way as Original Sin: you either (A) ain’t got any, or else (B) you’re obviously not one of Us Wunnerful an’ we don’ wan’ nothin’ to do with you.

(( A "two-step step function" I think the physics envious would call this scheme: the value of the Inverse Fruitcake Function is -1 everywhere left of the Why Axis, but +1 in all the more respectable neighnorhoods. But Gauss knows best. ))

Still, though freedumbin’ down has made great strides of late, so that it is now very safe to assume that Wally an’ Cindy have no more notion of the former _peccatum originale_ than of rocket surgery or brain science, I wager The Womb™ is not yet so well sound-proofed that they have never once encountered the formula "There, but for the favour of Father Zeus, go I." To suppose that the selfservative kiddies *believe* in any such stale an’ wimpish tripe would be absurd. Nevertheless, few of ’em have yet advanced so far in the path of Party an’ AEIdeology as to guffaw at it the way it theoretically [4] deserves to be guffawed at.

This is why I said that bein’ nagged by a Fernández y Podhòretz like this probably reminds the kiddies of icky School: they don’t want to hear that pious tedium, but they would just be makin’ trouble for their neoselves if they took evasive action, let alone active countermeasures.

***

So far on the assumption that the _nuevoseñorito_ sincerely believes its own stuff, which is, as almost always, by far the most likely thing to suppose.

It seems to me at least slightly suspicious, however, that F&P should not mention the possibility thar Arizenophobia may have played a rôle in these all-too-human events. That was own first or second reaction, and it would be remarkable, I think, if a Party-an’-Ideology agitpropper who spends so much time an’ bandwidth pesterin’ the neocomrades to be nicer to Juanita an’ José than they spontaneously wannabe simply never thought of the Latino / Hispanic / Crimmigrant / ‘Spaniard’ / Criminalien / Iberian / Huntin’tonioClashist angle.

I betcha, Dr. Bones, that at this point both I and Don Ricardito can no more think of AZ-48 without ¡Ship ’em all straight back to Boca Grande! than of OZ in a greenfree black-and-white. Or of AK-49 minus former Governess Heath-Paling, and polar bears, and oil spills.

These are but mental icons and idols, of course, and accordingly of no probativity whatever outside Foxcuckooland and maybe Vatican City. As psychological occurences, though, they do happen to come to pass and may still, as far as I know, be referred to in intellectually respectable circles as long as they are not mistaken for arguments.

And I wish you, sir,
Happy Days (through affordable healthcare)



___
[1] Did I mention that RLS is ¡¡The World’s Premiere YaleoDramatist!! ?


[2] To spoof more exactly about "_nulla SALUS_" would clash us up against Lord Prof. Dr. Bloom of Neohaven’s American Religion, a not-bad idea not worked out satisfactorily.


[3] Dr. Alzheimer has warned me to lay off the hard math, but I can still window shop a little, right? It appears that some fruitcake comrade of Unser Klassenkampf has decided to swipe the H-M thingee, pervert it 180 degrees bottom-to-top, and then try to make a Big New Deal about what he calls a "Well Curve".

(( The Señto. de Fernández y Podhòretz should be advised that the Fruitcake Plague has reached San Diego CA. Had reached it already by August 2003, actually. ))


[4] Big LEW explains the neotheory of the matter here. Chicagonomics-for-Dummies always gives this coarse and illiterate keyboard a severe keyache, but possibly you can make something of it.


07 January 2011

A Word for the Œconomic Fool


A Word for the Œconomic Fool



Please don't needlessly stick a monkey-wrench between the spokes of the bakercycle now that it is finally on a roll, going on about the disemployment that everybody can see, rather than about Zukunftsproduktivität knowable only by the pure of heart and differential of equation.

Why, the comrade is even going on, a little bit, about inequality, of all lumpy-prole things!

Those who read Dr. Baker over chez soi every day, as Ms. Poster seems not to, will appreciate how dreadfully low he is slumming in this off-beat article. A proposition like the following

The massive trade deficits of the last decade were the direct result of the over-valued dollar. These deficits led to the shortfalls in demand that were filled by the bubble-generated growth.

is so extremely semi-intelligible that it must be *grossly* oversimplified.

The sentence immediately after those two suggests a complete abadonment of High Mammonography for the exchequered shade of belles lettres:

The over-valued dollar also had the effect of PUSHING DOWN the WAGES of manufacturing workers BY ELIMINATING many of their JOBS.

"The carp of sarcasm surfaces in the pond of discourse"! ’Tis not quite Dean Swift, but definitely headed that way.

‘Orwellnomics’ at best, *that* unprofessionalism is.

Happy days.

How are the Mighty fallen!


Mr. Poster (the Happy Caliph) says

I’m beginning to understand our Democratic Party’s problem: we are playing wiffleball, while the Repubs play baseball. And, we will probably just say, "We all make mistakes, so forget about it!" ....


Respondeo: We donkeys are certainly in deep doo-doo if this latest release of the M. J. Rosenberg product be the only life left in our party. "In deepest ELEPHANT doo-doo," one might even say.

Q. Do you suppose Massa Tom Donohue and the Chambermaids of Commerce commissioned MJR to come try to make us all weep along with the Freiherr von Böhner?

A. Actually, I do not. What I suppose is twofold:

(A1) Mr. Rosenberg does not know the Russian proverb "Another’s tears are water," and furthermore, (A2) his sweet tooth for sentimentality, of which he is, like most such patients or victims, inordinately fond and even proud, will start aching at once, should he ever run into it.

(B) He and his dental apparatus are at bottom only more casualties of the MacL@@han Tube -- TV is the antifloride that has put his precious body solids at risk.

Such is my diagnosis. For once in a way, I can think of a therapy also: let the patient suppose rigorously that *everything* he sees -- on any t@@b channel whatever, WWWonderland channels included -- comes to him straight from Foxcuckooland, where the Freelord of Ailes carefully precalculated all the angles an’ effects in close consultation, via the ouija board, with the late Kiddiemaster of Atwater.[1]

(( Easy enough to prescribe, and ’tis not *my* fault that the patient will almost certainly not take the pills. ))

Happy days (through affordable healthcare)!

___
[1] Not strictly the case, of course.

It seems plain that His Freelordship, the Neospeaker of the Fedguv House of Representatives, is a happy, but entirely accidental or serendipitous, trouvé from the viewpoint of the Paymasters an’ media impresarios of America’s Otherparty. If such a neospecimen as _M. le baron de Boehner_ did not exist independently, I feel quite sure that even Murdoch, Ailes, Atwater LLC could never invent it.

Fun though it would be for us decent political grown-ups to spread rumors that Dr. Victor Ronpaulryanstein, Freelord of Smarmy-Smirk, assembled the Von Böhner creature out of spare parts an’ Exmas leftovers in the dank recesses of his McCastle basement at Janesville WI an’ then galvanised it into its present condition of neolife, yet we mustn’t tell such fibs even in the best of old causes.

We may, however, think like that to ourselves privately and use such pscenarios as a guide to what the militant extremist Republicanians are likely to do next. Which is the plan I recommend to Comrade Rosenberg -- doubtless in vain. Oh, well!