29 February 2012

Cats and ’Crats


Dear Dr. Bones,

The Muses and you, sir, and I can never be in a position to contend with such truly blue-nosed Blue Blazer--or autoleucophile Whight Guardists either, though that is another story--are not merely H*rv*rds but juris doctores to boot. As Luck would have it, our categorical inferiority has been fixed by Fate Herself. One can never reflect enough, it seems to Paddy McTammany, that ’tis nobody’s fault but our own (mostly) that we now lack the _ultima ratio advocatorum_. or first refuge of shysters. But for the unwillingness of Father Zeus, we, too, coulda gone to Law School too. Maybe even have become a heavy-weight contender.

Nevertheless, "a cat may look at a king," or used to be permitted to before Mrs. Windsor came in on Airstrip One and eventually found Her Majesty surrounded by nobooby of equal status save way out in a few decidedly woggy patches of the global boondocks like ‘Ammán and ar-Riyád and ar-Ribát. Plus lately ¡an adder can even add al-Manáma! Ridiculous though the thought of that particular _altesse royale_may be, I daresay really earnest monarchy groupies are happy to take whatever is available. Anyway, they’ll no doubt take an al-Bahrayn, though they might draw the line at a comparably excessive self-credentialising ont the part of the Grand Duchess of Fennwycke. [1]

As you must have guessed long since, O Bones, what I am leading up to is this:


SA 1520. Mr. BLUNT (for himself, Mr. McConnell, Mr. Johanns, Mr. Wicker, Mr. Hatch, Ms. Ayotte, Mr. Rubio, Mr. Nelson of Nebraska, Mr. Roberts, Mr. McCain, Mr. Kyl, Mr. Coats, Mr. Barrasso, Mr. Toomey, Mr. Lugar, Mr. Cornyn, Mr. Boozman, Mr. Paul, Mr. Hoeven, and Mr. Graham) submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by him to the bill S. 1813, to reauthorize Federal-aid highway and highway safety construction programs, and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:

At the appropriate place, insert the following:

SEC. __. RESPECT FOR RIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE.

(a) Findings and Purposes.--

(1) FINDINGS.--Congress finds the following:

(A) As Thomas Jefferson declared to New London Methodists in 1809, ``[n]o provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority’’.

(B) Jefferson’s statement expresses a conviction on respect for conscience that is deeply embedded in the history and traditions of our Nation and codified in numerous State and Federal laws, including laws on health care. [Page: S539]

(C) Until enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Public Law 111-148, in this section referred to as ``PPACA’’), the Federal Government has not sought to impose specific coverage or care requirements that infringe on the rights of conscience of insurers, purchasers of insurance, plan sponsors, beneficiaries, and other stakeholders, such as individual or institutional health care providers.

(D) PPACA creates a new nationwide requirement for health plans to cover ``essential health benefits’’ and ``preventive services’’ (including a distinct set of ``preventive services for women’’), delegating to the Department of Health and Human Services the authority to provide a list of detailed services under each category, and imposes other new requirements with respect to the provision of health care services.

(E) While PPACA provides an exemption for some religious groups that object to participation in Government health programs generally, it does not allow purchasers, plan sponsors, and other stakeholders with religious or moral objections to specific items or services to decline providing or obtaining coverage of such items or services, or allow health care providers with such objections to decline to provide them.

(F) By creating new barriers to health insurance and causing the loss of existing insurance arrangements, these inflexible mandates in PPACA jeopardize the ability of individuals to exercise their rights of conscience and their ability to freely participate in the health insurance and health care marketplace.

(2) PURPOSES.--The purposes of this section are--

(A) to ensure that health care stakeholders retain the right to provide, purchase, or enroll in health coverage that is consistent with their religious beliefs and moral convictions, without fear of being penalized or discriminated against under PPACA; and

(B) to ensure that no requirement in PPACA creates new pressures to exclude those exercising such conscientious objection from health plans or other programs under PPACA.

(b) Respect for Rights of Conscience.--

(1) IN GENERAL.--Section 1302(b) of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Public Law 111-148; 42 U.S.C. 18022(b)) is amended by adding at the end the following new paragraph:

``(6) RESPECTING RIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE WITH REGARD TO SPECIFIC ITEMS OR SERVICES.--

``(A) FOR HEALTH PLANS.--A health plan shall not be considered to have failed to provide the essential health benefits package described in subsection (a) (or preventive health services described in section 2713 of the Public Health Service Act), to fail to be a qualified health plan, or to fail to fulfill any other requirement under this title on the basis that it declines to provide coverage of specific items or services because--

``(i) providing coverage (or, in the case of a sponsor of a group health plan, paying for coverage) of such specific items or services is contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions of the sponsor, issuer, or other entity offering the plan; or

``(ii) such coverage (in the case of individual coverage) is contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions of the purchaser or beneficiary of the coverage.

``(B) FOR HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS.--Nothing in this title (or any amendment made by this title) shall be construed to require an individual or institutional health care provider, or authorize a health plan to require a provider, to provide, participate in, or refer for a specific item or service contrary to the provider’s religious beliefs or moral convictions. Notwithstanding any other provision of this title, a health plan shall not be considered to have failed to provide timely or other access to items or services under this title (or any amendment made by this title) or to fulfill any other requirement under this title because it has respected the rights of conscience of such a provider pursuant to this paragraph.

``(C) NONDISCRIMINATION IN EXERCISING RIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE.--No Exchange or other official or entity acting in a governmental capacity in the course of implementing this title (or any amendment made by this title) shall discriminate against a health plan, plan sponsor, health care provider, or other person because of such plan’s, sponsor’s, provider’s, or person’s unwillingness to provide coverage of, participate in, or refer for, specific items or services pursuant to this paragraph.

``(D) CONSTRUCTION.--Nothing in subparagraph (A) or (B) shall be construed to permit a health plan or provider to discriminate in a manner inconsistent with subparagraphs (B) and (D) of paragraph (4).

``(E) PRIVATE RIGHTS OF ACTION.--The various protections of conscience in this paragraph constitute the protection of individual rights and create a private cause of action for those persons or entities protected. Any person or entity may assert a violation of this paragraph as a claim or defense in a judicial proceeding.

``(F) REMEDIES.--

``(i) FEDERAL JURISDICTION.--The Federal courts shall have jurisdiction to prevent and redress actual or threatened violations of this paragraph by granting all forms of legal or equitable relief, including, but not limited to, injunctive relief, declaratory relief, damages, costs, and attorney fees.

``(ii) INITIATING PARTY.--An action under this paragraph may be instituted by the Attorney General of the United States, or by any person or entity having standing to complain of a threatened or actual violation of this paragraph, including, but not limited to, any actual or prospective plan sponsor, issuer, or other entity offering a plan, any actual or prospective purchaser or beneficiary of a plan, and any individual or institutional health care provider.

``(iii) INTERIM RELIEF.--Pending final determination of any action under this paragraph, the court may at any time enter such restraining order or prohibitions, or take such other actions, as it deems necessary.

``(G) ADMINISTRATION.--The Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Health and Human Services is designated to receive complaints of discrimination based on this paragraph and coordinate the investigation of such complaints.

``(H) ACTUARIAL EQUIVALENCE.--Nothing in this paragraph shall prohibit the Secretary from issuing regulations or other guidance to ensure that health plans excluding specific items or services under this paragraph shall have an aggregate actuarial value at least equivalent to that of plans at the same level of coverage that do not exclude such items or services.’’.

(2) EFFECTIVE DATE.--The amendment made by paragraph (1) shall be effective as if included in the enactment of Public Law 111-148.


(...)

Happy days.
--JHM

_____
[1] Being an incorrigible Romantic and Jacobinite, Paddy has resolved to prefer to imagine that Isabella of Stuart, great-great-granddaughter of Henry I-and-IX of UKGB(&NI), still imperiously sways it over Fennwycke. (( Kindly do *not* correct me about this one, sir. ))




27 February 2012

"Which side will you fund, my friend? Which side will you fund?"


Dear Dr. Bones,

Paddy McTammany has received the following sad shabbiness from certain creeps (dba my.barackobama.com) evidently out to reëlect the POTUS of us all:


The kind of organization we all decided to be a part of only works if people like you pitch in to build it. Please take a second to answer these two questions about your support for the President in 2012.

((multiple choice)) I. Which best describes your attitude? (*)

A. I plan to donate to President Obama's campaign in the next few months

B. I plan to donate after a Republican nominee is selected

C. I plan to donate in the last few months of the campaign

D. I do not plan to donate

E. I have already donated to the President's 2012 Campaign

OTHER: [please specify]
If other (please specify) ________________________

((writing sample))
II. What's one thing that would inspire you to donate to the Obama campaign? (*)

__________________________________________

(*) denotes required field

Paddy expects to spend the next week in bliss making up mental "one thing" sarcasms. "Winning the lottery" has its charms, for instance, but so, too, with reference to I. (E), does "Knowing that one deals with an organization competent to keep track of its own marks and dupes." [*]

Even moneygrubbing has its serious side, I suppose, but ¿Is it really Paddy's fault that so many goodcreeps should waste more bucks on follow-ups than they got the first time?

Happy days.

___
[*] There are also what a caller might call "backstory sarcasms," more general reflections not suitable as blank fodder. Like a pscenario about Paddy's visit to General Jackson in the Elysian Fields to inquire whether he ever thought of the Great American Democracy as one "kind of organization [that] all decided to be part of."

24 February 2012

Burro of Dan meets Toaster of Cuteless


Dear Dr. Bones,

¿Where, o where, is that Neo-Elizabethan "intellectual bottom" product when wanted?

Few occasions could be more wanting of it that this one, on which Paddy McTammany finds myself implicitly demoted by a field-grade officer of the Whight




Guard to the rank of "[only an]other appliance or inanimate object." As follows:

00 [new] What doesn't require belief?
05 Maybe my toaster will take
10 that leap with you, but
15 everything I know requires belief
20 and I don’t think I
25 want to stop believing in
30 things to join you and
35 other appliances and inanimate objects.
40 dont- get- cute @ Thu
45 23 Feb 10:20 PM

Prescinding from the hurt feelings, Paddy is reminded irresistibly by this memorandumb-worthy gem of that old wheeze about whether the barber shaves himself or not--only substituting her freeladyship’s ‘toaster’ for the late Dr. Ockham's ‘razor’.

_Per syllogismum_:


(Major) "Everything [Cuteless] know[s] requiers [B]elief"

(Minor) Cuteless knows her own toaster.

===

(Subtotal) The Toaster of Cuteless requires Belief.

Q. E. D.


((McGloss)) Unfortunately the only reason the humble artefact ever got promoted to the solemn rank of _philosophandum_ and fit yokemate for the celebrated "Lieberal Demoncrat



of Buridán" is that it supposedly *can* somehow manage to live by NSTAR alone.

***

One hears idle chatter all the time of "adject contradictions," far more often than one actually encounters one, but here is the real thing, ¡no doubt about it! As you may see at a glance from the mysterious format deployed above, the freedame required only forty (39.6) words of adjaceny at most. Exactly the proverbial "twenty-five words or less" if one reckons only the strict Zone of Contradiction from ‘everything’ through ‘objects’ inclusive.

Happy days.
--JHM


20 February 2012

"Where is this guy? What would HE do about the MBTA?"



Speaking of "our former governor’s


thoughts about the current MBTA funding scheme," Paddy McTammany can’t help wondering whether anybody at the Massachusetts Bay Torture Authority has yet thought of asking herself, "¿What would ‘Mittens’ Romney do?" [1]

She’d *have* to ask herself, naturally, not His Excellency directly. It is well known that for many years now H. E. has been deeply engrossed in some mysterious long-term project of his own in the Secret Sector, and is therefore unlikely to be available to casual inquirers with trivial and public purposes.

Moreover, to respond to such an impertinence in any detail _gratis_ would be unworthy of that Consultant Culture of which Mittens has been so splendid an ornament. [2] Like givin’ a quarter to a bum on the Common--only worse, really--to prepare a free Five Year Plan for Secretary Davey and Acting _Quälmeister_ Davis [3] would only (further) pauperize them. Indeed, if persisted in, that sort of misguided charity could ultimately reduce our poor MA as a whole to ... ... to . . . a condition of ... of ¡Murrayan Dependency!

Though not in the runnin’ personally, Mittens is undoubtedly the whight *sort* of freelord to have recourse to in fiscal extremity, far more suitable than the likes of Citizen Michael. Though both ex-Excellencies are Juris Doctor in the eyes of the Greatest University in the County, yet only Mittens is M.B.A. ’75 as well, which attainment is a couple of orders of magnitude more to the present Powerpoin™. Obviously.

In addition to that generic superiority, W. M. Romney possesses a second, which one detects as soon as one distinctly notices that the problem now before the Torture Authority, by her own account, is half one of which bus and rail and ferry lines can be baincapped


Caution! Baincapping in progress!

to optimal advantage. With all due respect to The Man in the Tank, ¿Would it not be an extremely improbable accident, if he also should prove to have a flair, or knack, or a whatever-it-takes, for baincappin’?

So, then: what the Torturers ought to do, in Paddy’s opinion, is humbly solicit an audience with Freelord Romneycare and, should their petition be granted, beg--not for a complete Five Year Plan for Mass. Torture from the august keyboard, or for anything the least bit like it--but only for the name of some former underlin’ whom His Excellency has found to be a competent baincapper. That transaction should not take more than perhaps sixty seconds of H. E.’s invaluable time.

Even better, the dread spectre of Ch. A. Murray would not be invited to haunt the banquet. Paddy’s plan would be like that Common hoboe accosting his freelordship to seek advice about where to apply for a salaried position: possibly Mittens would be in too important a self-hurry to comply with the request, but his freelordship would have no legitimate grounds to complain that he was gettin’ mooched from.

Happy days.


___
[1] Poor Paddy actually thought that might be what was going on here, because the cross-reference under "Recent Comments" mentioned "this guy" and "former Governor" but without a picture or the guy’s johnhancock.

___
[2] W. M. Romney ( M.B.A./J.D. ’75) even been accused, I seem to recall, of havin’ been present at the destructive creation of the Consultant Culture. But this, as appears at once from the date of his freelordship’s happy twin credentializations, is so impossible as to be absurd: Vixere ante Agamemnona / Multi, [et] omnes illacrimabiles . . . .

___
[3] Just keeping Tweedledumb and Tweedledoozy


straight is a torture. Once you get away from the Gotham City _Globe_ and the _Herald_ of Louisedayhicksville, fishwrap accounts are full of purely imaginary critters like ‘Davy’ and ‘Davies’.

When the wind is in the N.E., Paddy darkly suspects that this, two, was deliberately pre-arranged so that we who venture to assist at the flak-catching sessions would get the _nomenklatura_ wrong, thereby proving, to THE Nomenklatura, that the opinions of lay sheep are uninformed about everything really important--and thus need not be overmuch deferred to.

IRRELEVANT DIGRESSION. ’Doozy (to the reader’s right above) is the one Paddy spotted, _¡mirabile dictû!_, actually inside an MBTA conveyance, travelling from Heath Street to Prudential on a former Arborway trolley, Wednesday 1 February 2012, after catching some comparatively upper-class flak at the Jamaica Plain dog-and-pony show. This was not done for Dukakidoid ostentation, so one must assume the cause to be sheer masochism, in which noble quality, however, the Secretary’s colleague far surpasses him. If only the cheerful readiness to be shot full of arrows in public


San Sebastián (del Greco)


were of the slightest use towards raising $161,043,998.12½!

Speaking of J.P., the passionate hatred which the Torturers cherish for their own #48 bus has made Paddy (from exotic 02139) want to ride it once or twice just to gaze into the True Vacuum, but the damthing runs so rarely that I have never yet succeeded, though confusing Saturdays with weekdays and deciding it was too cold to wait a second half hour at Jackson Square was undoubtedly Paddy’s own fault. Anyhow, I recommend 48 - Jamaica Plain Loop Monument - Jackson Square Station via Green Street & Stony Brook Stations to the attention of Trotskyites, and Alinskyites, and ‘Occupoopers’ generally, who want to *really* get under the bureaucratic skin.

___
[4] Here in the decent obscurity of a note, Paddy may admit he has never been able to decide whether H*rv*rd Victory School methods like baincappin’--and outsizin’, and downsourcin’, and, for that matter, double-entry bookkeepping itself--are to be classifed as arts or as sciences. So I rather ungallantly cover both flanks above. If baincappin’ be an art, then probably Mr. Dukakis does not have any more special talent for it then he has, for, say, the fiddle or the hoboe. If a science, then Mr. Dukakis has *certainly* not learned it, not unless Big LEW’s rehearsal

Dukakis attended Brookline High School in his hometown. He graduated from Swarthmore College in 1955, served in the U.S. Army 1955–1957, stationed in Korea, and then received his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1960. Dukakis is also an Eagle Scout and recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts of America.

of his educationalism record is gravely defective.


16 February 2012

Not "class warfare" when kindergartners do it (?)


¡Much-esteemed Kiddiemaster Katz!

Paddy McTammany, a.k.a. / d.b.a "the present keyboard," has been at little perplexed at the approach adopted by your freelordship, an’ by the Employin’ Corporation, an’ presumably the Venerable Funders of the E. C., to demolishin’ the latest generation of the Serene House of K*nn*dy.

One does not expect avowed selfservatives to come out swingin’ *against* DNA-based superiorities. To be sure, there is a lot of hereditary deadwood here in the _selva oscura_, this Veil of Tares behind which even Sin can never be entirely self-made. [*] Paddy’s impression, however, is that the Whight Guard of all previous periods has preferred to hush these unfortunate paradigm-challengers up, almost as if they were high-wellborn damsels in fœtal distress. ’Twere silly to expect your freelordship (an’ the E.C., an’ the V. F. of the E.C.) to go out of the way to hush up Kennedy Tertius, but I surely there are lots of other unwhightousnesses about that person for Hooverville an’ Rio Limbaugh an’ Talk Radio 1200 to feast on.

As to the general principle, or weekly standard, or neocriterion, or whatever, of this question, Paddy has put it in the title of my scribble.

I trust your freelordship appreciates how a casual tuner-in might conceivably get the imperssion from this morning’s freelordly an’ kiddiamgisterial agitprop that we got at least a _Klassenkämpfchen_ goin’ on whight here in Charles River City.

Happy days.
--JHM

_
[*] Paddy rehearses the above pious viennasausage strictly on an "as is" basis, neither endorsing nor actively thinking, at the moment, of suing for _defamatio generis humanis_.

(( St. Elizabeth of H*rv*rdy, by the way, is especially edifying on the topic of non-selfmadeness, or ¿maybe call it ‘anautopoësis’? ))

13 February 2012

The Tao of Mittens


Dear Dr. Bones,

¿How about this

Insofar as he is the source and the guarantor for the Law, the Empty Suit [1] is identified with the Way™. Thus he must devote himself to being empty: he is empty of all desire, empty of all thought, and empty of all intentionality. The Empty Suit rules his subjects thanks to the [L]aw, radiant as _yang_, and thanks to manipulation techniques, hidden as _yin_, that free him from dependence on his own talents. This control over others comes through his clear-sightedness. Even though all eyes are turned ro him, the Empty Suit can manipulate others because the proper techniques allow him to see through them. His subjects are transparent to him provided that he is impenetrable to them. It is enough that he appears indifferent, while others are inflated with appetites and possessed by passions.[2] A man without qualities, he offers nothing to others because he is nothing other than the mirror reflecting nothing.

Still, he must possess the secrets for attaining this state.

To the outward art of dominating others through their passions is opposed the esoteric art of self-control, consisting of ruling one’s appetites, or rather ridding oneself of them. The elimination of desires can only be obtained through . . . (&c. &c.)

for consilience, sir? Or call it ‘serendipity’.

Happy days.
--JHM

___
[1] Paddy McTammany has ventued to put "empty suit" where the English translation of the French translation of the Orientobabble original has ‘sovereign’. By Paddy’s dim Western lights, Mittens ain’t sovereign yet. _D. V._, never will be.

And yet one wants a generic or quasi-pronominal expression, ’twere uncouth to just stick in "Governor Romney," even though the fit be so perfect that one hardly requires any Tee Putty to seal the deal.

Tee Putty is available, however, both on the West side and on the East, as follows:

(1) Research has revealed that one empty suit in six belongs to Willard Mitt Romney. More exactly, the pet g@@gle claims 1,860,000 matches for "empty suit" _simpliciter_ as against 358,00 for the set { "empty suit", "Romney" }. That is 19.25%, close enough. Almost, but not, by Paddy’s dim Western lights, quite enough to speak of "one empty suit in FIVE."

Paddy doubts that any other individual public figure, dead or brain-dead, even begins to be fit to tie His Excellency’s shoelaces, emptysuitwise. However, I admittedly have not looked into other contestants, preferring, personally, to follow Count Dracula’s--¿or was it Anthony Trollope’s?--excellent plan of not doing any research after sunrise.

(2) Tee Putty East is located in the very next sentence.

Paddy certainly did not make up the ‘empty’ part, though one of those pestiferous transpersons may have. Although there was probably not many ‘suits’ (in the sartorial sense) around in (-2696)–(-2598) of the Wiki Epoch, yet there were, as we learn from the oracle itself, "manipulation techniques" that permitted, maybe even ensured, "control over others."

Whereas "empty suit" is, after all, a figurative expression, and

Whereas the only suit of interest in connection with ‘Mittens’ Romney is the executive suit, now reduced to being a sort of Class uniform overwhelmin’ly associated with the secret-sector business corporation, and

Whereas even today the chief end of the H*rv*rd Victory School M.B.A. is to attain "control over others" usin’ "manipulation techniques," an’ ‘transparency, an’ ‘impenetrability’, even "freedom from dependence on one’s own talents" in the sense that the former Allston (Mass.) Academy of Chirurgy and Barber Science inculcates Big Management as if it were a matter of technique or erudition rather than of animal magnetism or personal flair, a ‘science’ rather than an art,

Paddy McTammany therefore concludes that the Yellow Emperor knew at least as much about the Big Management by Empty Suits as does W. M. Romney ’75. A whole lot more, that would be, than was ever apprehended by G. W. Bush, also ’75.

___
[2] "Hi, there Massa Speaker! An’ you too, Saint Rick!"

12 February 2012

" gut-renovating our welfare state to fit a libertarian ideal,"



Dear Dr. Bones,

Bein’ as yet but a young an’ untried whight-wing whippersnapper, Don Rossito de Doûthat has yet to apprehend in full the beautiful music that its Papá’s _tertulía_ have been makin’ under the baton of Maestro Murray.

The NYTC’s second-string ‘conservtive’ ‘intellectual’ complains of perhaps the greatest theorist of reaction since Joe de Maistre that

[w]hat’s exasperating is what the author suggests policy makers can do about the social crisis: in essence, nothing. Or at least nothing realistic. Instead, [1] Murray argues that our leaders should embrace his own libertarian convictions, scrap all existing government programs (and the dependency and perverse incentives they create) and replace them with a universal guaranteed income. This is a fascinating idea; it’s also fantastically impractical, and entirely divorced from American political realities. Which means that it’s divorced from any possibility of actually addressing the crisis that Murray so vividly describes.

That’s only the second-cum-third paragraphette of a seven-hundred-worder, to be sure, and so from the functional standpoint it’s only a verbal trampoline upon which Don Rossito proposes to bounce so as to show off how it can soar even higher than its Tio Chuck can, as is shown (?) in the sequel by the handy-dandy four-powerpoint Doúthat Plan for a Greater North American Co-Prosperity Sphere. I think, Dr. Bones, that _homines bonæ voluntatis_ may safely neglect the _señorito_’s homebrew NeoPeruna, though it is mildly interesting to notice that one need not be a reactionary to see some merit in one Powerpoint, the last an’ presumably least, "work to reduce incarceration rates."

I may revert to that uncovenanted chink in the Doüthatesque armour later on, but the great thing here is the juvenile (as I take it to be) incomprehension of the age-old Wisdom of the Whight: "¡Don’t do anythin’, neocomrades, please, for Zeussake, please simply just stand there!" Assuming the ‘there’ is well chosen so as to create maximum obstruction [2], I think that’s almost the only product the Daughters of Virtue & Sons of Wisdom (L.L.C.) need to keep in their political cupboard. [3]

Now Party Neocomrade Prof. Dr. Ch. A. Murray is an old hand at pickin’ his factious ‘there’s, an’ doubtless understands the complete therelessness of "a universal guaranteed income." in addition to bein’ safely Neotopian an’ Dilbertesque an’ generally ain’t-never-gonna-happen, UGI has the extra advantage of *soundin’* specious, like something a Lieberal or Demoncrat or icky Psocialist might dream up. Properly deployed--deployed, that is, as Rear-Col. the Freelord of Bellcurve intends it to be--UGI ought to keep the less intelligent sort of LibFash [4] talking Policy Fiction when she would do much better to notice that his freelordship is blockin’ the road.

Bein’, as I said, still wet behind the ears, the cub twistatorialist Don Rossito de Doùthat simply does not grasp what Freelord Bellcurve is up to with UGI, let alone that, in a wider perspective, Murrayanity is a couple of orders of magnitude more likely to advance the banner of Party an’ AEIdeology than the laddie’s own "modest steps in areas where culture and economics intersect."

At the higest level of abstract rhetoric, Señorito Doùthat does not see that the last thing that scabs for ScroogeBank an’ flacks for the Daughters of Virtue & Sons of Wisdom (LLC) should take an interest in is ‘steps’. One can not achieve a salutary stagnation, or exercise a Benign Neglect™, by takin’ steps. "¡Softly, softly, catchee monkey!" -- the thing for the Vanguard of All Regressive Humanity to do, pretty obviously, is take their seats in as inconvenient a position for everybooby else--an’ then just stay put as if they were paraplegics at least until the cows come home to roost. That is pretty much the traditional vulgar notion of ‘conservative’, and, although those who are, or fancy themselves, Freelords an’ Kiddiemasters rather than mere other-ranks Party base an’ vile, very naturally start out with Eddie Burke prejudices against everythin’ vulgar or mobbish or demoncratic, nevertheless, even Vox Pop. is not *always* ’rong.

Speaking of Mr. Burke, his own freelordly notion of Whiggery as expounded in the "Letter to a Noble Lord"




___
[1] You might make a memorandumb of that ‘instead’, Dr. Bones, and pass it along to your funereal grammarian colleagues. Maybe they know already, but this is certainly the first time I ever distinctly noticed that ‘instead’ requires an antecedent, which, in the case at hand, the whizkid freejunker has omitted to provide.

=

[2] I daresay only a decent political grown-up would care to call obstruction ‘obstruction’. A Little Friend of Eddie Burke™ such as Don Rossito is, or feigns to be, must inevitably prefer some monnicker a little more boosterish an’ less knockerly than ‘obstruction’. "Conservatism of motion" might do. Or ¿How about "the Higher Law of Least Effort"? -- ‘higher’ to distinguish this ideoproduct from that of the late Mr. Zipf of H*rv*rd.

=

[3] The pedigree of DDAJST is not to be questioned. One must ascend at least as high as Lao Tzu in quest of its origin, and when your arduous climb eventually reach that sage, you will find yourself overshadowed by a couple more Everests of antiquity so fogshrouded and ill-recorded as to be inaccessible. My understanding is that Citizen Tzu lived immediately after the invention (or discovery) of the road, a contraption which, needless to say, he denounced as yet another pernicious innovation, not to mention a blasphemous parody by uppity ex-monkeys of THE Way (®©™) _par excellance_.

Vanilla DDAJST was already as old as the hills, what Citizen Tzu did was discover (or invent) DDAJSTABTR, "Don’t do anythin’, just stand there and *block the road*." Though the hateful novelty could not be abolished, yet the amount of damage wrought could thus be keep to a minimum.

=

[4] I allude, naturally, to the learnèd investigations of the only whightist _señorito_ in captivity that inherited from its Mommy rather than from its Papá.

"Policy Fiction" rhymes with "Science Fiction."

=

11 February 2012

Our Right Explained and Triumphantly Vindicated Over All Other (Especially Yours)


Onion: Iran Worried U.S. Might Be Building 8,500th Nuclear Weapon

TEHRAN—Amidst mounting geopolitical tensions, Iranian officials said Wednesday they were increasingly concerned about the United States of America’s uranium-enrichment program, fearing the Western nation may soon be capable of producing its 8,500th nuclear weapon. “Our intelligence estimates indicate that, if it is allowed to progress with its aggressive nuclear program, the United States may soon possess its 8,500th atomic weapon capable of reaching Iran,” said Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi, adding that Americans have the fuel, the facilities, and “everything they need” to manufacture even more weapons-grade fissile material. “Obviously, the prospect of this happening is very distressing to Iran and all countries like Iran. After all, the United States is a volatile nation that’s proven it needs little provocation to attack anyone anywhere in the world whom it perceives to be a threat.” Iranian intelligence experts also warned of the very real, and very frightening, possibility of the U.S. providing weapons and resources to a rogue third-party state such as Israel.
The Onion piece was spot on.

I’ve never understood what right we have to tell Iran they can’t have a nuclear weapon when we are a nuclear power ourselves.

christopher @ Fri 10 Feb 3:57 PM






(( Vermeule, E., Adpects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981, p. 6. ))

Happy days.


05 February 2012

Do Blue Blazers understand kiddiecons?


Dear Dr. Bones,

Paddy McTammany ’66/’72 seems to be always running into toney upmarket Lieberal / Demoncrat / St.-Elizabeth-of-H*rv*rdy agitprop that runs roughly, or sometimes smoothly, to the tune of

Conservatives frame progressive taxation as “punishing success” or “class warfare”. That’s silly, and a red herring, in that it proposes an “evil” intent behind the idea of progressive taxation — without actually demonstrating how it would be bad.

There's so much that is dubious there that one can hardly choose where to start doubting. Indeed, maybe I *won’t* start.

But, no, one must at least wonder outloud why on G*re's green earth ‘evil’ should be shudder-quoted. Neither the kiddie selfservatives nor their Kiddiemasters talk like that much. Freelord Ann of Coulteress, who does, is not to be counted as a host in itself for statistical purposes.

This ploy looks like the flip side of a bent _shtyk_ developed an’ brought to perfection over many years at The New Criterion. Roger, Freelord Kimball in the peerage of Foxcuckooland, invariably kicks each issue off with a feature that is not, I think, expressly labeled, but which ought by whights to be headlined "This Month's Worst Liberal Outrage Ever." Here is a for-instance. When the customer is an ideobuddy, as she usually is, this product seems to have been intelligently designed to induce her to suppose that all swans are cola black. Or, at any rate, fast on their way to becomin' so.

Perhaps it will do no harm to mention the Doubt of Doubts, all doubts excelling, which is based on the fact that the genteel Blazerly mindset does not often make necessary distinctions among ‘conservatives’.[1] The sentences quoted are about as good an occasion as there will be, for Paddy finds it impossible to believe that anything like a majority of American selfservatives could give an accurate account of what is progressive about "progressive taxation." [2] Guesses by those ignorant of what a thing *is* about its intent are not worth attending to. (Are they?)

Mr. Poster's fudging and glossing over (and perhaps simply not noticing) the dotted lines could be represented, with only a little bit of malicious spoof added, as "Poster thinks the typical Republicanine BOTH understands progressive taxation as well as the fanatics who scribble the op-ed pages of _The Wall Street Jingo_ AND simultaneously account it ‘evil’ after the manner of Brother Savanarola or the Rev. Doc. Elmer Gantry. That fun cartoon does not correspond to ‘conservatives’ with no epithet attached. I am not entirely confident it corresponds to anybooby at all. [3]

happy days.
--JHM

___
[1] There may be an admixture of kiddieworthy narcissism at theis point, for Paddy continually finds myself worrying about a topic I have nicknamed "The Anatomy of the Elephant." Mr. Poster (and the general run of GBH nobility and gentry) is evidently a lumper, and Paddy a splitter. The problem with simply saying _De gustibus_ and shrugging and moving on to something more agreeable and agreed on is that Paddy does not much care to be left wondering whether those dotted lines he keeps seeing are only in his mind or actually "out there in the real world," tatooed, as it were, on the hides of the Whight Guard beasties.


[2] I wish one could be more confident about our side of the isle understanding this one. We jennies and jackasses would probably score a bit higher than Team Hoover, but nothing to write home about Everybody--well, 99% of those--safely gated atop the Great Blue Hill will be able to recite on all the various progressivities of Progressive Humanity in their sleep, yet what percentage of our side of the island politic is the GBH, after all?

"Not that big a one," thinks Paddy, not altogether grammatically.


[3] Q. But did Paddy himself not just this minute speak of ‘fanatics’?

A. Yes, indeed. But to conflate ‘fanatics’ with ‘evil’ would be more fudge-and-smudge. Savvy of Florence was a fanatic, to be sure, but he is hardly the prototype or paradigm. There are lots of fanaticisms entirely untainted by holier-than-thou-ism. Among them, that of the Jingoes, which consists mostly of their living in Cocktailnapkinland, where, though all taxation is, of course, theft, if an insister insists on putting it that way, the serious adult objection to theft is not that it is immoral but that it tends to interefere with the maximization of productivity, an' profits, an' ((genuflect here)) with sacred jobcreation.

If the militant extremist Jingoes could lynch only one of their long, long list of enemies, I suppose they'd select Professor Krugman, whom, nevertheless, they do not account ‘evil’ in the slightest. Demented, perhaps, but not *E*V*I*L*.

02 February 2012

¡Death to Freebies!


Dear Dr. Bones,

Shelter drops lunch program
‘It’s terrible. ... They’re just squeezing the homeless.’
By Richard Weir
Thursday, February 2, 2012 - Updated 4 minutes ago

A city-run homeless shelter in the South End has scrapped its free lunches in a controversial, cost-saving move that is forcing the needy to hike as far as two miles for a midday meal.

“It’s terrible because you got to go out in the cold and walk for miles just to get something to eat. They’re just squeezing the homeless,” said Alexander James, &c. &c.

How, do you suppose, sir, a fruit of the J School like Party Neocomrade R. X. Weir acquires such hot poop? Can the Fearless Voice of Louisdayhicksville have 'moles' amngst those down and out in Paris an' Roxbury?

This riddle is especially hard to guess, because, as his freelordship elicited from one of the vile drones runnig the trough in question, "“We did not cut the budget. We’re just going to put it toward a more effective use [of the bucks we stole from the taxpayers]." That means (does it not?) that there cannot have been any public announcement. _Ergo_: somebooby musta dropped a dime.

It is fun, though fantastic, to guess that the FV-LDHV sends inspectors around on a regular basis to ascertain that the Bad Poor are still using their bathtubs exclusively for coal storage .

Happy days.[0]
--JHM

_____
[0] Well maybe not so very happy at Hooverville an' Rio Limbaugh.

In the holiday spirit of "¡So many pedestrians, so little time!" allow me to point out that there are still an awful lot more free lunches where that one used to came from.