24 August 2012

Master of Seamus Does the Dishes




Romney is capable of showing kindness to certain animals in certain situations. Such as the time he tried to rescue a ferret from a dishwasher. From Michael Grunwald's new book, The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era:

[Former Utah senator Bob] Bennett says his friend Mitt Romney commiserated with him about the ingratitude of the Tea Party, telling a presumably apocryphal story about getting bitten by a ferret he had tried to rescue from a dishwasher. "Mitt said the Tea Party people are like that ferret in the dishwasher," Bennett says. "They're so frightened and angry, they'll even bite Bob Bennett, who's trying to get the country out of this mess."
Despite the suggestion that the story was apocryphal, we consider it plausible that the incident actually happened to Romney.


Happy days.


20 August 2012

The Apotheosis of Tee Putty


Well, AN apotheosis.

Obama puts Medicare in critical condition
By Deroy Murdock | Monday, August 20, 2012 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Op-Ed

(...)

The Washington Post conveniently itemizes Obama’s 10-year decreases in Medicare:

* The lion’s share, some 34.8 percent or $249.2 billion, involves “reductions in how much Medicare reimburses hospitals and private health insurance companies,” as Kliff observes. Team Obama lamely argues that these are not Medicare-benefit cuts. Nice try. This is like saying that Washington is not reducing student aid, just limiting tuition payments to colleges and university systems.

* Another 30.2 percent of Obama’s Medicare reductions, or about $216.2 billion, is gouged out of Medicare Advantage. This highly popular program lets seniors choose among private insurers. But, since Obama knows best, this market-friendlier approach gets catapulted off a cliff. “These cuts will force seniors to pay $3,700 more for their health care by 2017,” according to the Ethics and Public Policy Center’s James C. Capretta. “The Medicare trustees project that the cuts will drive some 4 million seniors out of Medicare Advantage plans between 2012 and 2018.”

* A further 8.8 percent ($63 billion) comes from payments diverted from home health providers. * An additional 5 percent in cuts ($35.8 billion) affects Disproportionate Share Hospital adjustment payments. These subsidies assist hospitals that treat large numbers of uninsured patients.

* The remaining 21.2 percent ($151.8 billion) consists of cuts to another 10 or so Medicare services, The Washington Post reports.

(...)

Deroy Murdock is a columnist with Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with Stanford University’s Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace.

walkman56 ? 0 0

Obama gave the money to insurance cos., hospitals, and closed the donut hole for seniors who are by and large living like paupers. Disgraceful.

Posted 5 hours ago Reply Link Abusive


¡Well, well!  Anybooby who manages to get that much wrong in that few words would appear to be a poster child for AstroTurf™-baggin’ by the Fearless Funders of Freedumb.

THIS is the intended end product!   THIS is what all those hardly earned megabucks have been poured forth like irrigation water in order to raise us a crop of.   A scab so loyal to its bosses that it refuses to make any picky distinction between doughnuts and holes.  Or between geezers and paupers.  A scab prepared to believe that what the esteemed Hoovervillain has a quotee call, accurately enough, “reductions in how much Medicare reimburses hospitals and private health insurance companies" amount to BHO giving money to insurance companies and hospitals.

Freedumb of Private Judgement could hardly go farther.   Facts and Irish need not apply.

The trouble with this sort of seemin’ perfection, though, is that one can never be ENTIRELY sure one is not being practiced upon. The reason Mr. Poster looks rather too scabby to be true could be that he is not true at all and never intended to be.

Giving his walkmanship the benefit of the doubt, sinceritywise, Paddy and Eye think he might profit from a famous maxim of one


of the Venerable Pioneers of 'Turf’baggin:

That we may be altogether of the same mind and in conformity with the [AEIdeology], if She shall have defined anything (si ... Hierarchica ita illud esse definiat) to be black which appears to our eyes to be white, we ought in like manner to pronounce it to be black.
The point to be emphasized is that the homebrewin’ amateur may--should--simply leave it all alone until her hire-ups formally pronounce.   In the meantime, it ought to suffice to establish her utter neoloyalty to the Class of her Betters to annouce in advance a perfect willin’ness to see things their freelordships' way the instant she has been reliably informed which way that is. 

I guess his walkmanship might conceivably imagine himself to be, as it were, auditionin’, when he scribbles like this.   In order, that is, to show that he can see whighteousness when all looks Black (or at best Tan) to mostvolks, he gives us a sample of his stuff by lookin’ at "reduction in how much Medicare reimburses" and seein’ "gave the money to insurance cos., hospitals, and closed the donut hole."

Eye fears Fabulous Fernie,



or more likely some lesser underlin’ of America's Otherparty, would be rather perplexed to have his walkmanship in for a job interview. "It is very interestin’, neocomrade, that you can look at pink and see purple.   Not many can.  I congratulate you on your remarkable talent.   Unfortunately what Mittius Coriolanus Pompo and the Smirk of Janesville require at the moment is orange perceived and presented as green.  So please don't call us, we'll call you.   And have a nice day."

Happy days.
--JHM


18 August 2012

Confronting the Tired Trend of Personal Gain


Liberals exploiting blacks is tired trend
By Joe Fitzgerald | Saturday, August 18, 2012

Black history hasn’t taught us (sic) much, or so it seems when we see it continually reduced to a self-serving prop by those who regard it as a tool for advancement.

Joe Biden telling a Virginia crowd of blacks that GOP policies are “gonna put y’all back in chains” is just any echo of shameless exploitations we’ve all heard before.


(( ... yimmer ... yammer ... yada ... ¡SNIP¡ ))

Black history is American history, too, so to see it appropriated for personal gain ought to offend anyone inclined to honor our heritage.

(( .... ))

Joe Not-the-Wurzelbacher—rhymes with Clemens non Papa—lapses into the superduperthoughtful SOSO, "same old, same old," mode, one that kiddie selfservatives seem especially prone to. [*]

"I've heard it a thousand times, ERGO, I don't believe a word of it.  ¡So there, consider yourself refuted, O scum of a Bolshevik!"

Naturally your kiddiecon (or Kiddiemaster wannabe, like Old Colourblind Joe) takes a different tack when it is a question of neopropositions drawn from the Smaller Kaddiechism. Or from the Greater Kiddiechasm of the AEIdeology either, should the matter be especially deep-goin.

Even the lovely (but not so tal...) Cindy from Wasilla, who is surely, let's face it, about the last-ditch rock-bottom specimen of a Party neocomradess, bestembrightnesswise, is not likely come back with SOSO to, say, that beautiful,
that all but all-consolin apophthegm,

"A risin tide lifts all boats."

More urgently still, sievalisation as we know it (’tis the Whight Sievalisation of the Western Race to which Paddy and Eye refer, needless to say,


for of course there is, there can be, no other) would founder in a flash, Jumblies an all, were kiddiecons, or even less abnormal customers, to start applying SOSO to the so-called "commercial speech."     If, having heard the same radio plug for ScroogeBank, say, or for the window-replacement firm of your choice, for the 13,209th time made Ol Joe from Jay School an other rank-an-file Walmartians feel the way Vice President Joseph makes Ol Joe feel, why, commerce would grind to a halt.

Grass would grow in State Street an Herald Square, wolves howl in the very shadow of Baincap Tower an the Prudential. Soon Wellesley, an Weston, even Manchester-by-the-Sea (!), would become hard to tell from Louisedayhicksville or Chelsea. Lovecraft Country as a hole would lapse into such a sad state that Eye betsya even Massa Howie Carr might be ready to entertain the idea of lettin the Wampanoags take it all back. Especially if we stout Euromales could maybe weasel some kind of refund out of ’em, the Massachusetts product having proved unsatisfactory. Doubtless the warranty period has expired, but if the Natives expect us to steer other potential buyers to them in future . . . .

No, SOSO is deployed only when the kiddiecon, or some Fitzgeraldoid conner of kiddies, runs into some bit of eyeglaze she disliked at first sight on dogmatic-mythological grounds.  Otherwise, repetition mostly just produces inattention, Eye thinks, though with just a smidgen of doubt that there may be something to common Social Scientistic notions of subliminal suggestion. Clearly the Froods and the Jungs and the Adlers and, more importantly, their corporate epigones here in the Heimatland G*ttes did not think that repetition as such typically leads to SOSO, to what we may perhaps venture to christen as NtWS, "Not-the-Wurtzelbacher’s Syndrome." Or how about 'Fitzgeralditis'?

I think if that were the case by and large, even "WXKS AM 1200 Newton an (formerly) Rio Limbaugh" would have got the word an ditched it by now.

As is customary (obligatory?) in the stricter whightist circles, his freelordship of Fitzgerald stays as far as possible from anythin the least bit like the hateful Goose-and-Gander Paradigm. A catcher sure won't catch Ol' K*l*rbl*n' Joe thinkin that maybe--just 'maybe'--we donkeys can get quite as bored with his own Party drivel, as here exhibited for not exactly the first time, as his freelordship is impatient of Mr. Biden’s alleged ditto.

To attack head on, for a change: his freelordship was graciously pleased to begin by vouchsafin that "Black History has not taught us very much."

¡Love that US!  For obviously what irks his freelordship is basically that those people (so to call THEM) have signally failed to learn that they ought to have remained regular Republicanines such as they were back when General Ulysses was personally in charge of the Party of Grant & Hoover. (Well, sort of in charge.)

Paddy and Eye believe that Freelord Fitzgerald has stumbled across our very favorite pronoun of the first person plural, the one that contains NEITHER the speaker (Apprentice Kiddiemaster Fitzgerald himself, that would be) NOR those addressed (Wally Wombschool an the aforementioned Mizz Cindy, plus Rio Limbaugh an Wingnut City at large). The { we, us, our, ours } set that is semantically and functionally identical with { they, them, their, theirs }.

Now We Ourselves hereby demand to be addressed as "Marie of Roumania," if his freelordship, an The Fehrnstrom Fishwrap, an all the Louisedayhicksvillains really believe that they have not learned everythin that really matters bout Black History. The trouble is only, ¡quelle surpise!, that so many Blacks and Tans have yet to see the whight, and repent, an, havin repented, amend their lives by rushin down to City Hall to enlist with Rear-Colonel Bruce Tarr. Hopefully accompanied by two forms of photo I. D.

Not bein a complete jerk, Old Colourblind Joe does not attempt positively to expound the infallible racial teachins of the Smaller Kiddiechasm.  His freelordship just pseudo- an neo-moralises around the edges, as it were: "To see [Black History] appropriated for personal gain ought to offend anyone inclined to honor our heritage."

"PERSONAL gain" strikes a distinctly odd note, ¿does it not? One does not often meet with Republicanines an AEIdeologues who speak thus disparaginly of personal gain.  Moreover, whatever the Vice-President of US all may have thought he was doing the other day will not have involved spiffing up the Biden retirement portfolio.

Betcha Ol Joe from the Jay School had his dittopan temporarily disconnected from his keyboard when that one popped out. Your competent whightist agitpropper would have spoken of Party or factional gain, with or without a brief explanation for those of them at Rio Limbaugh why she who weasels financially for Tammany Hall and Cook County and "the Democrat party" is far, far worse than she who merely obtains banknotes to partially reimburse her personal expenses out of Spiro Agnew Brand (®) paper bags.

The freelordly tripe as it stands is not rendered any more tasty when one reflects that it is very difficult to think of plausible ways to become a Black History entrepreneur, boldly to pile up the literal doits and shekels for oneself alone, becoming at last the Steve Jobs, the Koch Frères, the Willard Mitt Romney, the Sheldon Adelson, the . . . of the Triangle Trade.  Not only was Mr. Biden not doing that, ’tis very doubtful that the "personal gain" thing can be done at all. Not, that is, unless ‘gain’ be reduced to such small potatoes as to be negligible in the eyes of a Fearless Funder of Freedumb. At best the future Gibbon of Afromerica may conceivably match the cash value of dear Kruggie's Nobel Prize, merest peanuts by TopPercenter standards: "10 million Swedish kronor (during January 2008, approx. US$1.6 million; 1.1 million Euro)"

Even assuming a strong wind of Affirmative Action from behind, corruptly blowing the trashbags ever up and up, only a fool would go into any sort of History Department guided by a dream of Avarice.

Were Their Ford still comin down to breakfast, chances are He would snap at the kiddiecons, an specially at their Party Neocomrade (sixth grade) J. X. Fitzgerald, that Black History is only more kolorblind bunk, for anybooby who wants to look out properly for Number One like a rational critter.

Happy days.
 --JHM

_____
[*] N.B.: Eye does not say "EXCLUSIVELY prone."

17 August 2012

O Auream Integritatem!


There may be a learnable moment here, outside, naturally, of the corporate offices of The Fehrnstrom Fishwrap an Louisedayhicksville an the greater Rio Limbaugh area.

Mittius Coriolanus Pompo, Demander of Apologies, Master of Seamus, &c. &c. &c. &c., has been shamefully pestered about his taxes by plebes and proles and cobblers and weavers and (especially)  representatives of the non-backwater media.

Pompo comes stately down to the Forum to show off his Classwar wounds, an to warn Senate an People against the dark threat of ... of, among other dusky unwhighteousnesses, protected patients an affordable public medicine. Also to commend his idiot stepnephew,


P. Smirquius Caseus Minor, who, though not from the City aristocracy, is considered, no doubt correctly, to be the very model of a respectably cloth-coated Republicanine at Janesville WI.

The riff and the raff, however, are not half--not a twentieth--as interested as they oughtabe in Smirquius Minor with his ever-immortal Thirty Year Plan for TopPercenter Ascendancy, cleverly disguised as a Fedguv budget for whichever FY happens to begin next at any given moment.   Roused by the hate-crazed demagogue Reid, who is still, somehow, to our shame as Neoromans,



Princeps Senatus, the rabble want M. Coriolanus Pompo's 1040's released to them almost as badly as their brethren of the external proletariat once wanted



that universal hearth-throb Barabbas released to them, instead of what's-his-name, some out-of-commonwealth relative of the Coriolani Pompones, I believe that troublemaker was.

Anyhow, it has seemed good to Pompo -- or perhaps to Erich, Freiherr von Fehrnstrom, which comes to the same thing -- to have Volumnia Equestrix, consort to Coriolanus Pompo, to join her guy on the rostrum an remark "There’s going to be no more tax releases given.   Mittius is honest.   His integrity is just golden.”

Now Freedame Volumnia notoriously lives an exceedinly retired life.  Her freeladyship may be innocently unaware that Neorome ditched the gold standard sixteen (MCMXLIX - MCMXXXIII) years before her freeladyship was so much as hatched.  Quite as likely, though, her freeladyship was just readin what Fabulous Fernie wrote for her freeladyship to read.

We now arrive at the learnability moment, which works as follows: what makes aristocratic goodvolks like the Coriolani Pompones (an Volumnii Equestres) be aristoes -- makes ’em constitue, that is, a CLASS of aristoes, not just a laundry list of ruggedly self-infatuated individuals -- is that the freeladylike appeal would actually work, were it addressed strictly to Classmates.

With the proles an plebes an cobblers an weavers an mainstreamers actually before her, Freedame Volumnia will, needless to say, effect nothin worth mentionin.

Inside The Class™, however, on the freeladylike home turf, so to speak, reciprocal self-avouchin like Fernie asked for not only works, 'tis the glue that hold the whole aristoe shebang together.

The late Dr. Marx made an admirable beginning on the hypothesis that Classmateyness is basically an economic phænomenon. I suppose that view is, even today, sound enough, provided that one glosses ‘basically' with a great deal of care.   For rough-and-ready everyday use, however, it is more helpful to start with The Psychological Reality of Classmateyness, so to call it, and not get unduly hung up on technicalities about their freelordships' current net worths.

In practice, you may safely assume that you, too, nust be a Classmate, if you have no problem about takin Freedame Volumnia's bare unsupported word for the wunnerfulness of M. Coriolanus Pompo. (Inasmuch, however,as you appear to be readin the peanut gallery of The Fehrnstrom Fishwrap, there is no need to worry about where you stand, Classmatewise. "Four-letter word, starts with "SC", ends with a 'B', . . . . Either that or a Bolshie.)

Somebooby like the late Comrade Vidal--a traitor, I mean, like Comrade Delano, to his hereditary Classmates--expressed the essence of this concept by pointing out that, presented with some specimen of Dives not known to oneself personally, we humble of the Murrayan Underclass will probably wonder "How much is he worth?" A proper Classmate, however, will ask "Who are his people?" That is to say, an echt freelordship wants the dots filled in between himself an Dives Ignotus with genuine ‘people', Classmates whose vouchins for one another are known to be acceptable.

It follows (unexpectedly to Paddy McScribble) that Classmates must find the whole circus about M. Coriolanus Pompo's taxes (an the freelordly finances of other sorts as well) not so much distasteful as unintelligible.

Suppose the questionable Dives Ignotus attempts to enter the sacred precincts of


the Unionbasher League Club to dine in secret-sectorial bliss with (those whom D. I. evidently fancies to be) his peers an peeresses.   No UBLC member in good standin would dream of bein so crude as to demand that Ignotus present papers on the doorstep or be referred to the attentions of the cops.   Should Ignotus happen to be dressed the way P. Smirquius Caseus Janesvillensis allegedly dresses--an be not accompanied by some known club member an Classmate like M. Coriolanus Pompo--he will almost certainly not get in, or not get in far for long.   But even so, there would certainly be no silly prole-plebe-cobbler-papparazzo fuss about tax returns, or birth certificates, or photo I.D.'s.  Das wäre für die Gasse, they used to say in Ye Olde Country.

Fabulous Fernie's Jay School fruits an frathouse babes are likely to refer this sort of thing as WWNN (alio modo: W2N2), "wink, wink; nod, nod."

That observation, however, best serves to remind that Freelord Fehrnstrom is no Classmate. 'It is probably safe to say," thinks Paddy McTammany from well outside the mon[k]ey house, "That if one can detect any unmistakable winkin or noddin, probably the goodvolks involved are not Clasmates. Top-drawer hired gunclingers, possibly, yet not quight the really whight sorta volks whose ‘people' your Vidal-class Classmate would inquire after."

Naturally if Freedame Volumnia had winked or nodded whilst standin by her Heroe, one would take for granted that divorce proceedins have commenced. [*]

Happy days.

___
[*] It seems antecedently likely that her freeladyship has not much better an idea about the financial doins of the Baincapper Extraordinaire to whom she is hitched than Senator Reid, or Yoo, or Eye does.   No more idea, that would be, than M. Coriolanus Pompo admitted to havin about some friend


of his wife's named ‘Rafalca’ who got into the non-backwater media recently by way of some politically irrelevant connexion.

      

11 August 2012