23 May 2011

Up from Tájí



Dear Dr. Bones,

Would you happen, sir, to have made contact down there, sir, with a late Mr. Whitman from Brooklyn NY? A poet, allegedly, and also -- more importantly for us at the moment -- a prose agitpropper for America’s party. I am seeking the ideal reviewer for this mornin’s latest last word in dogmatic slumberware, a stunnin’ destructocreation in monochrome from Party Neocomradess (eighth class) N. M. Guariglia. [0]

Now the designer’s press agent’s YaleoDrama™ist’s blog has already labelled this undoubted mistresspiece "G.O.P.’s Best Bet [for 2012]." Plainly there will be a lot more buzzards of that feather slinkin’ towards Hinckley before the true heir of J. Sidney McCain shall have been identified, duly uptarted, an’ installed as Dolly LLama to the Party of Grant & Hoover.. I ws hoping some sound Lieberal and Demoncrat with the better angles of the _Heimatland G*ttes_at heart could get Citizen Walt -- the late Mr. Whitman -- to write us a whole series of reviews-cum-essays to appear under the unbrella title _Foxcuckooland Vistas_.

A gifted parodist would be almost as good as the whight stuff itself. Maybe, given the Tee Putty an’ the Wisconsing Ascendancy an’ a’ that, margarine would wash even whighter than whight. [1]

’Tis far beyond the powers of this coarse and illiterate keyboard, needless to say, to make as much fun of the Freedame of Guaraglia as ought to be made.

To be sure, the chances are excellent that Wally Wombschool an’ the formally incomparable Cindy from Wasilla will not be carin’ for her freeladyship much more than Eye do. A vision of all selfservative kiddiedom takin’ to the malls an’ freedumbways of Rio Limbaugh/Port Ste. Luce under banners emblazoned somethin’ like "¡Pawlenty an’ West, Won an’ Insufferable, Now an’ Forever!" is positively _plus-quam-_foxcuckoolandic, if that’s a neoword. I believe the pollsters have established pretty firmly that Master Wally an’ Mizz Cindy find the _wolnomozhny Pan_ Pawlenty eye-glazin’.

As for the posthonourable an’ neogallant Alan, Master of West [2] in the peerage of Wingnut City, well, if Eye had to click the link to make quight sure I was thinking of the whight Party neocomrade, not even my fake modesty wll keep me from venturing that probably Wally an’ Cindy are in the same boat.

In short, the Freedame of Guaraglia proposes to entrust the bones of Barry Goldwater (&c. &c.) to Professor Snooze an’ Doctor ¿Who?

This, I fear, is a great deal too good from the donkey standpoint to be probable.

My fear is not (as I conjecture) much like what Master Wally an’ Ms. Cindy will be dreadin’, however. From their point of view, that of the Party base an’ vile, the objection to Prof. Snooze is that he is a ravenin’ R.I.N.O. To Dr. ¿Who?, that if "political correctness" compels their Party to nominate somebooby of *that* unfortunate description, why, ¡winnin’ would be almost indistinguishable from losin’!

The kiddies themselves tend to bark as if win-loss confusion were the problem with their rhinoes as well as with their tokings. This, however, seems to me, standing of course well outside the money house, to be not at all the case. As becomes a Party of illiberalism an’ antidemocracy, a Party that rarely sees an inequality that does not instantly appeal, his Freemightiness of Pawlenty an’ Neocomrade Fedguv Representative A. B. West are polar opposites.

Were the freedame scribbler a good deal more bestembright, she might have noticed as much herself, an’ recommended her gruesome twosome, drawn from the furthest corners of the ((goak here)) Big Tent, to the kiddies as a way to make sure their Party ticket embodies the great neovirtue of Fairembalance. True, the kiddies don’t actually give a hoot about Fairembalance, apart from when they lapse into self-sorrowin’ mode about those icky lame-stream medias, occasions which afford not much guidance for campaignin’.

From beyond the asylum perimeter, it is clearer what the inmates are really up to than it can be to themselves. Though his Minnesota freemightiness almost certainly will not win the boobies’ prize, still, he might. Granto-Hooverism as we know it would not be notably troubled, let alone subverted, should Pan Pawlenty’s funders buy his freenmightiness’s way to the top of the greasy pole. The chances of anybooby in TopPercenterdom ever buyin’ A. B. West a ticket to any spot so upmarket as the Vice-Potency of the N.S.A., Neocon(federate) States of America, are negligible. A transition from Richard Bruce, Freelord Cheney, in January 2009 to A. B. ¿Who? in January 2013 would be the Foxcuckooland equivalent of the Goths sacking Rome. ’Twould be like Citizen Samsa waking up in the morning to find himself somehow transformed into _una cucaracha grandíssima_.

Sooner or later, after another degeneration or so, somethin’ of that sort may conceivably befall the Grantoids an’ the Hoovervillains, but (A) NOT WHIGHT AWAY,

And (B) when - IF -- it does happens, I fancy it will be a comparatively small part of _Il Gran Refiuto_, the chaos that follows when the noble Godzilla loses her sole-remainin’-hyperpowerful grip, and all the evil bambies from the boondocks of the world start to get most things their -- thoroughly unwhighteous -- way.

_¡Cum vix Neojustus sit securus!

¡Hyperzion an’ Wingnut City shall not mourn alone, when that Day comes!

Nevertheless, O Bones, I expect the present racket to last my time with only minor tinkerin’.

Meanwhile, the Freedame of Guaraglia with her "tea-party war-vet rock star" is just business as usual. Rather behind the cuttin’ edge of Limblovian "societal evolution" is her freeladyship, in fact, inasmuch as she has failed to notice the birth of Cheneyanity from the spirit of _¡Sit pro ratione voluntas!_ Her freeladyship still regards the VicePotency as "a bucket of warm spit," blind to the marvelously foxcuckoolandic vista of a power center squirreled away in the (otherwise) evil Fedguv that can, in the hands of a suitable Daughter of Virtue or Son of Wisdom, do business on sound secret-sector principles, with no silly nonsense about accountin’ or respondin’ to anybooby whatsoever: "¡‘Transparency’, go eff thyself!"

To be sure, if the _Serenissima Signorina_ did perceive this radiant effulgence, she would not be wise to talk about it very explicitly, lest liebral and demoncratic fiends sit up and take notice also. "¡Softly, softly, catchee money!"

But it would be ridiculous for her freeladyship to be so extremely softospoken as to seriously wish to see Neocomrade Dr. ¿Who? at the hidden helm. Or any other Tee Putty or star rock in existence.

¿Who? does, I grant, possess (sorta) the whight violence-profession credentials: He achieved the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army, electing to retire after an investigation of his conduct during the interrogation of a detainee in Taji, Iraq. Though Big LEW’s account of this ‘conduct’ is, as usual, likely to be such as pious neocomrades would start self-sorrowin’ about, I get the impression that ¿Who? was a minor-league Cheney wannabe, in that he had grasped the usefulness of waterboardin’ without stint or limit as a technique of Big Management.

Nevertheless, waterboardin’ is not all the world. Or even all the H*rv*rd Victory School M.B.A. curriculum. There are lots an’ lots of other mysteries that the junior birdperson must master before she can soar like a Richard Bruce Cheney in the bigmanagerial empyrean. There is no sign here that ¿Who? has mastered the whole HVS MBA _m’gillâ_, though I suppose _Signorina la baronesa_ may want her patients to suppose the rank of O-5 a good deal more bigmanagerial than it really is. Or even suppose so herself, her freeladyship not bein’, as I have mentioned, the sharpest tack on the Republicanian tarmac.

Like that other business, around which and about I pussyfoot myself, the good Rear-Colonel’s "¡No more Mr. Nice Guy!" impersonation did not strike her freeladyship as suitable for explicit communication to her agitproppees. Very likely when the Freedame of Guaraglia swoons "One listens to him speak and it is evident that they are listening to a leader" -- there is a curious specimen of Granto-Hooverite neogrammar, by the way; you might want to make a memorandumb of it -- she is thinkin’ to herself of the Tájí Incident. Eye am at a loss, however, to guess what she expects Master Wally an’ Ms. Cindy to make of such gush unexplained.

Had her freeladyship provided the explanation in full, it seems to me that she would still not have forwarded her Party an’ its AEIdeology much. The virile ruthlessness of ¿Who? would still be only window-dressin’, much like the foreign- and aggression-policy expertise of Comrade Biden. Obviously her freeladyship does not expect the Titan of Tájí to *run* a putative Pawlenty Régime any more than the late Party Neocomrade S. Th. Agnew ran the railroad of Richard XXXVII Nixon. Her freeladyship would like to see the name of Rear-Col. an’ Fedguv Rep. A. B. ¿Who? (AOP-FL.22) on the national ticket of her Party for essentially the same reason that cow-crazed Hindoos of the Congress persuasion used to like to see Bessie on their ballots: it sets the proper tone. Only the seriously misinformed would draw policy conclusions from mere Madison Avenue stuff.

Happy days (through affordable healthcare).
--JHM

___
[0] Thanks are hereby rendered to the Freedame of G. for graciously havin’ provided the johnhancock in _Pravda-Izvestiya_ neostyle "off the rack" as it were. I betcha all her freeladyship’s servants adore her -- up to the very moment of their disemployment.


[1] Please make a memorandumb of "¡Anythin’ Western Civilization can do, NeoChlorox™ can do better!" for possible refinement and use against.


[2] This intitulation is to be parsed strictly, like Master of Ballantrae for some bonnie freelaird’s eldest male brat.


19 May 2011

The Responsibility to be Truthful and to be Interesting



Dear Dr. Bones,


This little kiddie circus is so perfectly whight that I can scarcely believe it actually happened.

¿But who dares doubt the word of a _Herald_ angel?

So there it is: Willard Mitt, second Freelord Romney an’ first Kiddiemaster Romneycare in the peerage of Foxcuckooland, really does think "speaking Truth to Power" means giving the whole front page [*] over to Wunnerful US in the narrowest possible sense of the pronoun of the first person autoplural.

The Muses and you and I have agreed that America is where everybooby (everybooby with the whight stuff) has run away from home. Call that "the America of Christopher Columbus "

His freelordship’s monkeyshines remind me of the large overlap with "the America of Frances Trollope," that noisy land where a poor foreign gentlewoman could scarcely get a word in edgewise, the runaways were so busy selfpraisin’. [**]

"Willard loves Willard; that is, wingnuts be wingnuts."

And I wish you, sir, today more than ever,
Happy days (through affordable healthcare)

--JHM



___
[*] Obviously one might say a discouragin’ word or twelve about what it was the front page OF.

Such invidiousness would be immaterial, though, this being one of the cases foreseen by that Nostradamic cliché "It’s the thought that counts." Or the selfthought, in the case at hand.

[**] _Fanny in Selfwonderland, or, Domestic Manners of the Americans_ is available _chez Google.

16 May 2011

Buypartisan



Dear Dr. Bones,

You can see, sir, that they do not put out _The Boston Humbug_ for overeducateds like us. The nameless an’ faceless Voice of the Corporation does not trouble to suppy a link to the alleged _Wall Street Jingo_ article, doubtless figurin’ that their own kiddies would find too many hard words in somethin’ that far up the market.

Oh, well, "Purcell's difficulty is Google's opportunity":

The legislation is reportedly to be introduced today [Friday 13 May] by Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.) and Rep. Gary Peters (D-Mich.). (...) The new agencies, of which there would be five or more, would act to boost mortgage lending and keep home loans affordable by supporting a secondary market for mortgages. Much like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, they would buy mortgages made by lenders and repackage them as guaranteed mortgage securities for investors. Though privately owned, the agencies would operate under the supervision and authority of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which presently oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Unlike Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the securities would come with an explicit, rather than implied, government guarantee for mortgages that meet certain underwriting standards. Those standards would be stricter than those required by Fannie and Freddie, however, and the government guarantee would apply only to the securities and not to propping up the agencies themselves in the event of failure.

And here here is a slice of the real McJingo:

Like Fannie and Freddie, the new entities would be restricted to buying loans that meet certain standards, including size caps. But the firms would have to hold much more capital than Fannie and Freddie. And only the mortgage-backed securities that they issue—not the companies themselves—would enjoy [F]ederal guarantees. The companies would operate more as public utilities and likely wouldn't have exchange-listed shares. The approach signals policy makers' desire to usher more private capital into the mortgage market, where the government currently backs more than nine in 10 new loans. But the measure also reflects an unwillingness to cut the federal cords entirely.

Probably the "public utilities" crack means that the Banî Murdoch an’ the B'nôt Gigot do not much care for the scheme. Which is maybe a little ungrateful of them, because I can't imagine anybody else the gruesome twosome could have been aiming at with "the government guarantee would apply only to the securities." Anybody, that is, other than our good Specuvestment Class.

On the other hand, full compliance with the AEIdeology would consign it straight to the shredder: ¿What kind of Freedumb of Enterprise is it, -- I ask you --when Uncle Sam starts setting up nominally secret-sector business corporations as if they were toy soldiers? Once start down *that* road to serfdom, sir, and you'll soon sink to the level of the Tennessee Valley. Or lower.

Happy days.
--JHM


15 May 2011

Intersection on 15th Street


The current debate has an ideological incoherence on both sides. Republicans endorse a premium support model for Medicare even as they work to undo the new insurance exchanges in the health-care law. Democrats distrust premium support when it comes to Medicare but support the exchanges, with sliding scale subsidies that amount to premium support, in the health-care plan. The problem of getting health-care costs under control is complicated enough without knee-jerk opposition being the default reaction to any proposal from the other side.

"The current debate has an ideological incoherence on both sides" errs by defect. Actually, the seventeen principal sides exhibit an average of 4.509 ideomuddles apiece.

On a broader front of the _Klassenkampf_, this neobrainwave from the High Command at Fox-on-Fifteenth-Street ought to allow the F-15 Squadron to draw up a joint platform with the _Wall Street Jingo_, where there is no really deep affection for "moral hazard" -- or aversion to "death panels" -- to overcume, as long as this gruesome twosome afflict other folks exclusively, preferably the Bad Poor. Plainly there is no reason in principle why we slackers should not FIRST pay higher premiums, with hearty strengthenin’ effect upon our moral fibre, obviously in need of re-ruggediziation, and THEN get a little death-panel therapy from the premium-collection agency, that plan being the surest way to cure our Uncle Sam's insolvency, if not, perhaps, in all cases the complaints of Big Sam's idiot nephews and nieces.

Though they do not emphasize it, _et pour cause_, the F-15 Squadron must have noticed that gapin’ hole in the Thirty Year Plan recently issued by the Smirk of Janesville [ http://j.mp/g1WlyX ], the vast gap that for a while I thought I alone had detected. A few neocomrades have complained out loud that the Smirk proposed nothing significant in the direction of terminatin’ the Ponzi Security Administration, but nobooby at all pointed out that if profligate Medicare is not so much as begin to be superseded by frugal an’ inspirational SmirkCare™ until a decade after it is enacted, ¿how on G*re’s green earth will The Superclass get richer, as they naturally deserve to, by prudent specuvestments in the medical sector durin’ the interim?

My first thought was that the Scrooges an’ Warbucks an’ Goulds an’ Rockefellers of our own day have degenerated intellectually from the level of their sires an’ grandsires an’ greatgrands. I still think so, but now think I overestimated the extent of this sad tendency. Mostly, I have come to think, they are distracted from the long-term implications of the Smirk Program by their fixation on gettin’ the "Bush tax cuts" locked in forever. Until that happens, their freelordships will be in no fit condition to look as far ahead as the end of next week.

Considered in isolation, this bad attitude is no worse than usual, par for the course at the Unionbasher League Club. The daddies (&c.) of the Jingos seem to have whined about "restoring business confidence" in the 1930's in a fashion almost indistinguishable from what the Great Selfservative Noise Machine cranks out at present.

Bein’ belated perverts to the banners of The Superclass, the F-15 Squadron can still see the correlation of farces more clearly. In time, they will no doubt get freeedumbed-down to the average level of their new ideobudddies, but for one brief shinin’ neomoment they have (I think) perceived what Big Management will be feelin’ unconfident about next. ¡An’ perceived it before the biggies have started to feel it themselves!

This feat was beyond the skills of Party Neocomrade P. D. Ryan, Jr., who accordin'ly deserves to get badmouthed a little. The exact form of the mild reprimand from Fox-on-15th to the Smirk of Janesville is rather clever: " [T]he premium supports would not grow fast enough; seniors would have to shoulder an increasingly unsustainable share of their medical costs" *sounds* like the sameoldestst of lieberal and demoncratic same-olds.

That tired whimperin’ on behalf of sickos an’ poor geezers is not what the F-15 Squadron chiefly mean, but it is very convenient for them that it should sound like that. The longer the neofoxies can pretend to a continuity with the former _Washington Post_, pretend, that is, to be a "lieberal lame-stream" medium, the better they can serve The Superclass.

The real message is slightly encrypted, winkwinked an’ nodnodded at rather than boldly declared. But as I said, I think, upon reconsideration, that our now G.O.P. Geniuses are probably bestembright enough to work it out. From "[P]remium supports would not grow fast enough" ’tis no great distance, surely, to "Insurance corporation revenues would not grow fast enough."

Of course if the neofoxies actually said that in so many words, their cover would be blown once and for all. ’Tis scarcely as if Potomac River City needs two separate daily versions of America's Moonpaper. Or three, rather: one must not forget the freebie [ http://washingtonexaminer.com ], after all.

Unlike the Smirk of Janesville, then, the neofoxies on 15th are properly worried about their paymasters’ *true* best interests, wherein they completely coincide with the Wall Street Jingoes. Neocomrade Ryan is, as I conjecture, makin’ a mistake quite common amongst ‘conservative’ ‘intellectuals’, the mistake of supposin’ that those for whom they scab really need an’ appreciate buttressin’ up on the AEIdeological side -- as if his Uncle Scrooge or his Tio Ruperto would ever so much as cross the street to advance Freedumb of Enterprise™ considered in the abstract an’ apart from ¿what-is-in-it-for-ME? Neocommissar Smirk's Thirty Year Plan must gladden the hearts of Heritagitarians an’ Palo Alto Hoovervillains an' Catoholics, but I betcha those who actually engage directly in payroll-meetin’ an’ railroad-runnin’ will discover (as the neofoxies sagely anticipate) that SMIRKISM IS NOT ENOUGH.

In particular, it will not restore "business confidence" if SmirkCare™ does no more than keep their freelordships’ taxes down to current levels rather than steal ever more an’ more bucks from the Alone Producin’ Class only to keep throwin’ ’em into the bottomless pit of medicine for the Bad Poor. Though necessary, avoidin’ that will be far from sufficient.

A pious abhorrence of Moral Hazard -- naturally, only for those with annual salaries in fewer than six or seven digits, lesser breeds without the pale of The Superclass -- can do no harm, an’ maybe it will even do some small fiscal good as well as a whole lot of neoëthical ditto, yet, even between them, Taxation Restraint and Moral Hazard Limitation cannot do the trick. As the labels I choose give away, these are purely negative measures. What Scrooge an’ Warbucks an’ Murdoch an’ ... and Freedumb and Justice (and Fox-on-15th) demand -- or damwell oughta demand -- on the healthcare front of the Class War is POSITIVE steps that commence IMMEDIATELY to put money in the pockets of Ætna an’ CIGNA (&c. &c.) so that it can then trickle downwards to bless us, every one.

Given That Man in the White House an’ the fiends in control of the Senate, ‘immediately’ will probably have to go by the board, but there can be no excuse for abandonin’ ‘positive’ the way the Smirk of Janesville has abandoned it. Probably that little laddie’s pipemasters did not make perfectly clear exactly what tune they wanted, but this is no excuse at all. I mean, ¿What is the ‘conservative’ ‘intellectual’ good for, if she cannot *anticipate* her Masters’ just an’ reasonable requirements? ¿If the F-15 Squadron can do that in D.C., why cannot The Smirk do it in the First of Wisconsin? ¡One would hate to have to think that there really is something intrinsically decerebrating in the air and water of Flyover Country!

Of course an unsigned foxitorial is not the place to present a proposed improvement over SmirkCare™, or any other morsel of policy-wonk fodder, in eye-glazin’ detail. It sounds, however, as if Party Neocomrade F. X. Hiatt an’ his freelordship’s like-neominded merrypersons think they could do it. They lay it down expressly that the holy Homeland™ needs BOTH the Smirkites’ "premium support model" AND the reactionary lieberals’ "new insurance exchanges in the health-care law." That sounds as if we are in fact most of the way to Beulah Land already: the pipe (insurance exchanges) has already been forged. It has even been connected to the trough (Secretary Geithner's Department). Now, if only somebooby would please find the spigot an’ turn it, the flood of Fedguv swill would fruitfully shower down upon the parched wastelands where Ætna an’ CIGNA (&c. &c.) languish so sadly [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/14/business/14health.html ] at the moment.

Which reminds me just a little of the neocomrade foxitorialists’ "ideological incoherence." One will not find the Freelord of Hiatt an’ minions pointin’ out that it is, after all, in large part "Fedguv swill" of which we sing. Greedy selfcentered geezers amongst the Bad Poor certainly deserve to pay much more for their medicine than they have been paying, but that is a great *moral* neotruth primarily. Ætna an’ CIGNA (&c. &c.) are already charging about as much as that sort of traffic can bear. They always have an’ they always will, for such is the teachin’ of Chicagonomics for Dummies. Really significant revenue enhancement therefore requires gettin’ at Big Sam.

That is where ‘incoherence’ comes into sight, given that the neofoxies are passionate groupies to Peter Peterson, the Freelord of Concord. Addicted to "fiscal responsibility" are they. Comin’ from Freddy Hiatt's crew, that soundbark probably means what it sounds like, what his freelordship of Concord presumably means when he barks it. On Fifteenth Street in Beltway City, F. R. is not simply Tax Limitation for oneself personally masqueradin' as policy prescription, though of course it *is* that among other things.

’Tis no accident, therefore, that one finds no explicit rehearsal of the "¡Down with fiscal irresponsibility!" soundbark here. Every penny the neofoxies would rechannel from China to Bernanke von Ludendorff to Geithner von Hindenburg to CIGNA to trickeledown is red ink from the accountant’s-eye or Concord Coalition view. Today's foxitorial is not on that account automatically to be deemed an "ideological incoherence," however. Any appearance thereof results from the fact that Hiatt©@®€ (Pat. Pend.) just happens to be one of the dispensations of Fedguv swill that the neofoxies thoroughly approve of. It thus resembles lighthouse maintenance (I assume) an’ Native Management (for sure). Freelord Freddy an’ the F-15 neoguys are not doctrinaire dilbertarians who refuse to admit that the Wicked State may be allowed to do anything at all. They just wanna pick an’ choose a little.

Unfortunately, that is another thing they would be unwise to say out loud. Naturally they cannot reconcile lemme-pick-an’-choose [*] with Financial Responsibility without any mention of the former, so there is much to be said for their decision to mention neither.



___
[*] Pronounced, I believe, "Lem-ME pick an’ choose," with heavy stress on the second syllable and the First Person.

Defection to Foxcuckooland has not made the former Posties any less _élitistes_ then they have been all along. To be sure, up to a point they really *are* more bestembright than others, havin’, for example, managed to come up with sounder policy for The Smirk of Janesville’s paymasters than it could.


10 May 2011

Their Master Brooks



Oh, come along, Comrade Pressbeater! Señorito Brooks is simply not clever enough to be ‘mendacious’ on any significant scale.

The little laddie may not even be clever enough to have figured out yet that when its elders speak of ‘lies’ (pardon my Unfrench) they assume the liar knows better than she says. Master Davey's big three fibs about public medicine -- other people's supposed invisible garments as detected and deplored by Davey, that is -- are


(1) The current law institutes death panels.

(2a) The Smirk of Janesville's proposed law involves a privatization of Medicare;

(2b) SmirkCare would constitute "the end of Medicare."


If one draws the line around the category of "merely verbal" where I happen to, these propositions are all objectively untrue. On the other hand, it does not take much factional zeal to believe otherwise. To believe otherwise SINCERELY.

As given, (2b) is especially silly: features in the draft version of a Thirty Year Plan that would not take effect for a dozen years are not sanely to be called "the end " of anything here and now. Plus of course we Antismirkists almost invariably say "the end of Medicare *as we know it*," which is rather different.

The _señorito_ probably did that last bit of twistification -- misquotation of its Class enemies -- deliberately. But since it misquotes by truncation rather than positive contradiction, perhaps the word ‘mendacity’ need not apply.

In any case, the whole little circus is far more illustrative of Don Davidito's limited cleverness than of any actual malice. It seems really to suppose that we jennies and jackasses will have no serious objections left to raise once we have been reassured (truthfully) that in 2023 and 2045 -- and why not 2437? -- there will still be a Fedguv program called Medicare in existence to throw taxpayers’ money at insurance companies.

Looking towards the better side of the railroad tracks, it supposes, with almost equal weirdness and improbability, that its own Party base and vile can be persuaded to give up chantin’ "Death panels" at the drop of a blood pressure. Being a _señorito_ is not without drawbacks, and this is one of them: Don Davidito's sympathy with the Tee Putty peons out workin' its Papà's fields does not extend to understanding them well. Similarly, its grasp of Papà's serious agribusiness concerns is also far from perfect.

Nothing could be clearer than that the _señorito_ passionately wishes everybody could be more moderate and civil and generally "grown up." Like Tio Pedro de Péterson y Concordia looks to it to be, for example. Unfortunately, Master Davey does not have much of a clue what any major class of economic adults is up to all day long. Plainly they tend to have longer faces and less fun than ‘conservative’ ‘intellectuals’ like Davey do, but beyond that . . . .

In short, one of the least readworthy books in the world is titled "The Economic Consequences of David Brooks." For practical purposes, there are no consequences. Long faces and less fun and tea-party manners are all very well in their way, perhaps, but they disappear into the background noise at once if one tries to consider them as part of the Gross Domestic Product.

Like the Marie Antoinette of Edward Burke, as told by Tom Paine, Don Davidito de Brooks is all plumage and no bird.

So let's knock off the ‘mendacity’ malarkey, shall we?

Happy days.

08 May 2011

The Jewelled Toad Watch



The key now is for the White House and the regulatory agencies to ignore the threats from Congress and elsewhere, and move ahead with their efforts. After all, the sentiments of the 92 percent of the public that favors transparency, and the eight justices on the Supreme Court that have endorsed it, should outweigh the objections of the reborn anti-disclosure cabal.

The obvious way to pick up that _shtyk_ is to express pleasure at the prospect of freedom of thought maybe breakin’ out over at the American Ideological Enterprise, praising the heterodoxy of this out-of-lockstep scribble.

There is, however, a flip side as well. I ask you, ¿Is not Party Neocomrade N. J. Ornstein to be commended for fidelity an’ loyalty above an’ beyond the call? I mean, ¡Just look at what is really goin’ on here: ¡The neocomrade still sides with the Executive against all comers, just as he must have done back in good POTUS Cheney’s golden days!!

The weaker siblin’s of Hooverville an’ Rio Limbaugh have simply switched horses: now that one can say ‘Congress’ and mean The Smirk of Janesville instead of the fiend Pelosi, most kiddie selfservatives an’ Party Paymasters are gung-ho for legislative superiority. There can never be enough "threats from Congress and elsewhere" until the happy day when BHO is terrorized straight back to whatever Kenya he came out of..

Whereupon the dittobrains will flip their flop again, naturally. [*]

Neocomrade N. J. Ornstein is better than that. Præternaturally better, almost. Possibly better even than Richard Bruce, Freelord of Cheney, himself, though I have not been following his freelordship’s posthumous career closely enough to tell.

So, then, ¡let us have a bipartisan round of applause for Above-the-Norm Ornstein!

Happy days.

___
[*] Neocomrade Dr. R. H. Limbaugh likes to bark ’bout havin’ "half my brain tied behind my back, just to make it fair." As the sting in the tail makes clear, Himself modestly supposes this interestin’ neocondition to be His alone. In fact, though, most of Himself’s patients or victims could say the same, addin’ that they regularly switch halves between dittopan an’ dorsum on the basis of electoral returns.

Good ol’ Abovethenorm, by contrast, is not too proud to keep all his smarts in the same place, even though that plan might conceivably lead to some suspicion that there may not be enough smarts to spread around much.