29 June 2012

"Rather than overhaulin’ ... work to improve"


Dear Dr. Bones,

Your amateur Marshalls and homebrew Brandeises are distinctly more satisfactory

(( fold here ))

when encountered playing for the other team. Fortunately the WhightGuard Officers Mess, vanguard an’


epicentre of lysdexic eno-conservatism, spreads a lavish smorgasbord. I like Rear-Colonel von Bielat and Freelord Tizzy best myself:

Sean Bielat - Candidate in MA-4

"I am very disappointed in the Court’s ruling," Bielat said. "However, I am not discouraged. It’s critical we repeal ObamaCare and work toward real healthcare reform that does not cripple the nation’s economy, but rather supports job growth, competition and innovation... the White House chose to limit job growth and medical advancement exactly when our country needs it most...those are Two Pillars of American Prominence. I will fight for reform that boosts our economy, puts people to work, increases research and improves the quality of care. The President chose to ignore these goals."

The posthonourable and neogallant freelord does not come very near jurisprudence, but I suspect that is just as well. Impatient of technicalities, this khakiclad sails whight to what I believe the CCUSA, and less august Funders, must decide is the eye of the storm, the POTUS of us all deliberately conspiring against "job growth, competition, innovation" plus, if the fiends have any time left over, against "medical advancement" as well.

Come to think of it, the Fingers of Fehrnstrom are probably better off to shtyk with that, an’ not insist that our poor Barry is trying to rip the Fedguv Constituition to shreds in addition. Sooner or later, even Wally Wombschool an’ Cindy from Wasilla, maybe even BoZo from EaBo, will start wonderin’ how even fiends can keep it up eighty-three hours a day. You’ll remember, Dr. Bones, that we donkeys notoriously never met a slacker we didn’t like.

In theory, I suppose St. Elisabeth of H*rv*rdy (for example) could go without food or sleep by præternatural--dæmonic--assistance so that all our EBT queens and affirmative basketcases hardly have to stir at all. Such a division of labor vaguely reminds of those "textbooks written by geniuses for idiots to understand" that the War Department supposedly cranked out from 1942 to 1945. Her Beatitude, especially as photographed by the much-esteemed Herald of Louisedayhicksville, does look a little as if she might have Faustian means of support. For that matter, Her Beatitude also gives Paddy and Eye, at least, the impression that with Herself hammering back to defend The Middle Class from icky special interests, everybody else who is pleased to consider himself mediocre can just sit back and watch the show. To rush out and wave one’s own rusty pitchfork at the dragon would be of no material assistance to St. George. If lots of bluevolks started doing it too, the resulting hubbub might even tip the correlation of farces over to Lord Freedragon an’


 Massa Tom Donahue of the CCUSA.

The catch, though, is that our poor Barry at the top of the donkey ticket gives no such impression. Not exactly a ‘slacker’ is BHO, not even inexactly, but he does distinctly savor of Surtout, ¡pas trop de zèle!" Say maybe "No sweat" in the vernacular. If we assume, improbably, that poor Barry had no more idea than we did what Party Neocomrade J. G. Roberts, Jr., C. J., was up to, he must have prepared an elegant oration accepting the ‘temporary’ set-back with dignity and restraint and certainly no hint of even the most figurative and allegorical of pitchforks. Fortunately there was no occasion for that.

Unfortunately, there is not much sign of our poor Barry’s having had anything much to do with the nonoccasion. He is bound to say in retrospect that he knew all along there could be no constitutional objection of any significance. Counterfactual considerations can never prove otherwise, but, all the same, sure the Muses and yourself, Dr. Bones, agree with Paddy and Eye that the over-all impression is that our poor Barry plumb lucked out. We assume, along with pretty well the whole world, that the Five of Nine might easily have shot PPACA down, and, if they had, we would not, I think, be in a mood to congratulate our poor Barry on having done his total maximum utmost to ward off defeat.


Richard Tisei - Candidate in MA-6

If anything is clear from today’s Supreme Court ruling it is that our leaders in Washington need to go back to the drawing board, and work together to pass a bi-partisan plan that will reduce rising health care costs and provide Americans with more access to affordable health care coverage. I believe that every American should have access to affordable health care and that every insurance plan should contain basic protections that provide health care security to every citizen of this nation. As a Congressman, I will bring that same spirit of cooperation to Washington and work with both Democrats and Republicans to pass legislation that provides incentives to states to create more choices and more coverage. Rather than a Washington-based "one size fits all" approach, I believe that every state needs to tailor a plan to their individual needs and that Americans should maintain control over their own healthcare decisions.... I will approach health care reform with the recognition that we currently have the best quality system in the world. Rather than overhauling our current system I believe that it makes much more sense to work to improve what we have."

Paddy is irresistibly put in mind of a passage from St. Jack:

Wither was slower to notice what was happening. He had never expected the speech to have any meaning as a whole and for a long time the familiar catch-words rolled on in a manner which did not disturb the expectation of his ear. He thought, indeed, that Jules was sailing very near the wind, that a very small false step would deprive both the speaker and the audience of the power even to pretend that he was saying anything in particular. But as long as that border was not crossed, he rather admired the speech; it was in his own line. Then he thought, "Come! That's going too far. Even they must see that rou can't talk about accepting the challenge of the past by throwing down the gauntlet of the future."

¿What will Overhaul make of the Gauntlet of Improvement, thus boldly flung at his feet? ¡Tune in next week an’ find out!

The Freelord of Tizzy is an ornament indeed to the Freedumb, or Stupid, Party, but this hack is also free-dumb in distinctly an old-fashioned way. All that guff about a "spirit of cooperation in Washington" is so obsolete as to be neoheretical. Should Grover Firstlord Norquist learn that Neocomrade Tizzy still natters squishy-soft nonsense like that, his freelordship might well win a complimentary one-way ticket to the AEIdeological Correction Camp out near Feverswamp FL.

The only orthodox Otherparty boilerplate I detect is "we currently have the best quality system in the world," and even that is dubious. Not, of course, because it is egregiously not the case, but because the CCUSA, an' inferior Wreakers of Whighteousness, have not (I think) committed themselves to pretendin' that it is.  A Tizzyoid "bi-partisan plan" is the very last thing that Hire-Up Otherpoliticians want to replace ‘Obamacare’ with, but it remains an open question whether their freelordships will be funded to replace it with anythin' whatsoever.

His freelordship may have been lured into lookin' even free-dumber this morning than most days by a vague inchoate brute-animal feelin' that the question remains open.  Should the CCUSA neocomrades decide that the Otherparty Line ought to be "best-quality health-care system in the world," Tizzy can claim that he got there ahead of the crowd.  If, on the other hand, their firstlordships eventually resolve on somethin’ less unreality-based,  well, ¿Did not Party Neocomrade R. R. Tizzy expressly mention "work to improve what we have"? [*]

Things will be splendid for his freelordship, I guess, once the CCUSA makes up its Line, but meanwhile little Tizzy is stuck soundin' a bit like that popsong (or whatever it was) about "I love you.  You're perfect.  ¡Now change!"

Happy days.
--JHM

___
[*]   With a little easy shading and lighting,  this Tizzy ploy could be made to look Machiavellian, by Party of Grant & Hoover standards, if not simpliciter.   Perhaps, therefore, Paddy and Eye had better explain for those of them at Rio Limbaugh that we do not think his freelordship anythhin' like bestembright enough to have concocted this muddle deliberately.

The pious viennasausage about bipartisanship most likely comes from the S. Philip Fratboy Radio Theatre, as it were.  The ElevenPercenters are completely unrepresented in the Fedguv House of Representatives, which means that a Party Neocomrade can holler "¡Buy Partisan!" when what he really means is "¡Please, MA, elect at least one of us harmless little fuzzball reactionaries this time around!"   Should the goodvolks up in cousin-marriage country fall for it, the chances that there will be anythin' particulary ‘bipartisan’ about Freelord Tizzy's personal votin' record down at Potomac River City are, in our view, negligible.   But Grover knows best.










26 June 2012

Live by the Sea, Die by the Sea

Dear Dr. Bones,

The pol who proposes to live by kiddiegames ought not to be amazed or indignant to find himself dying like this

OBAMA: I just want to say, uhhh, "Thank you for Youkilis."

BOSTONIANS: (groans and boos)

OBAMA: Ummm..,.

BOSTONIANS: (boos)

OBAMA: I'm just saying, he's gonna have change the color of his socks.

BOSTONIANS: (boos mixed with laughter)

OBAMA: Ha-ha-ha-ha!

BOSTONIANS: (boos)

OBAMA: I didn't think I'd get any boos outta here, but...

BOSTONIANS: (laughter)

OBAMA: I guess I shouldn'ta --

BOSTONIANS: (boos)

OBAMA: I should not have brought up baseball!

BOSTONIANS: (boos)

OBAMA: I understand!

BOSTONIANS: (boos)

OBAMA: My mistake!

RUSH: Even in Massachusetts, they choose the Red Sox over Obama. Over Kardashian.

from time to time.

Not altogether trivially, Paddy and Eye notice with utterly unexpected pleasure that over chez Limbaugh where that came from, transcripts are available to all comers gratis, whereas the prose-challenged are, most uncharitably, profiteered off of.

Exactly what is goin' on,  only the dittobrained know for sure.  Probably not many even of them.

One possible guess, though, is that the Witch Doctor of Democracy wants all non-backwater print media to abound in stories about Himself, an’ accordin’ly makes it easy for them to get their daily dose of Rio Limbaugh tripe an' bile.  Even if the mainstream monsters are prepping for is itself a <A HREF="http://j.mp/Nyvrs3">son et lumière</A> shebang,



 they would, we assume, want hard copy to work from.

Let us know, sir, if the Muses and yourself can think of a better explanation.

Happy days.

20 June 2012

We'll Dismember, Come November



Dear Dr. Bones,


Up to a point, the Empress Dowager of Camelot is fair game for THUWF, "Those Hire Up Who Fund," [0] ... fund, that is, frathouse babes, an’ Jay School fruits, an’ pretty near every wad of Tee Putty from Lovecraft Country to the confines of Nieuw Amasterdam.  Plus the Fingers of Fehrnstrom preëminently. 


This morning’s gruesome twosome,. however, are not givin’ their Venerable Funders full bang for the buck. Or not unless their firstlordships have agreed in so many words that they do not care what the "small people" of America’s Otherparty scribble, qualitywise. It is fun--partly because it is not utterly impossible--to imagine that the Herald angels are actually in possession of formal dispensation from the FireArchy, or at least many informal winks an’ nods an’ repetitions of "¡Our fishwrap, whight or ’rong!" Moreover, because the general whighteousness of the Herald can not sanely be doubted, it really would be pretty ... pretty typical, if the V.F.’s suddenly decided that they like firin’ babes an’ fruits even better than they like fundin’ ’em. [1]


One does not say "even better than their firstlordships like READING the Herald" for the chances that Those Hire Up Who Fund actually work through G*re’s Gift to Louisedayhicksville are nil. Their freelordships may have the shofer or the second-best parlour maid or the crimmigrant garden boy, if Jaimito has picked up enough Americanoe, read the BH an’ pass along the good (?) bits, but no more than that.


Thirty years ago a respectable source on the Classwar, reported that what he called "the rich out of sight" seem to buy only "books on ’Management’" [2] That was well before the FireArchy switched from English to Powe®Poin™ as the internal langue de guerre of their Class. This epochmakin’ transition probably means that nowadays their firstlordships buy natural-language books of any type strictly as gifts for the Lower Orders, amongst whom may be included the firstlordships’ naturalborn kiddies up to the age of puberty.


Anybooby who wants to boggle her mind retains the freedumb to wonder exactly who would be the ideal recipient for a complimentary subscription to the much-esteemed Herald of LDHV. Paddy tells Eye he figures that everybody who likes that sort of thing is a subscriber already, which can not be technically accurate, but probably points in the whight direction. Of course some out-of-step firstlord, with more sense of humour than most Classmates possess, might buy a year ot two of the fruits an’ the babes an’ Massa Howie for some especially obnoxious Lieberal or Demoncrat, who can safely be counted on NOT to like it that sort of thing.


(( It occurs to Eye that Comradess V. R. Kennedy-Sprecher-Reggie might do for this purpose. ))


Meanwhile, back at the Bangless Buck Ranch, low-grade Otherparty operatives Ch. X. Cassidy an’ H. X. Chabot plainly never thought that to scribble pious viennasausage that runs to the tune of "Snub of Vikki Kennedy won’t alter race" or to go out trawlin’ for Fratboy-friendly quotes such as "voters likely won’t remember" makes no sense unless there really was somethin’ kinda deplorable here somewhere.


Those of us who survey the circus with plusquam Sprecher-Reggie impartiality think it is kinda nifty that ten days ago it was the Little Flowers of St. Elisabeth of H*rv*rdy who could not reassure us often enough the Law Squaw fuss would evaporate prontíssimo, vanishing quicker than morning doo-doo on the grass of August. A discomplimentary Herald subscription might actually do thosevolks a little good, were it not that the "gentlemen who dwell above the clouds" would not dream of studying the damnthing personally.


(Well below everybody’s salt is the Herald of Louisedayhicksville seated.)


By the time we get to Hallowe’en, so many un-altering long-forgottens about both Fratboy and Her Beatitude may have piled up that a Froodian slip-up will be almost inevitable.


A second symptom of the bestembrightness gap is that Ch. X. Cassidy an’ H. X. Chabot do not even try to implicate Empress Dowager Victoria directly.  As I said, such implication is possible and even legitimate, but it takes a little more than simply barkin’ with Howard Lawrence Louis [3] Carr, "¿Don’t Yoo know who Eye yam?"


Happy days.
--JHM


__
[0] Rhymes with ’goof’. Not inappropriately.


[1] The reference is to Governor Romney’s precious words on this topic, which were a little too brief for Paddy McTammany’s full edification. Unless what goes on over to the fornmer Allston (Massachusetts) Academy of Chirurgy and Haircut Science is far more esoteric than Paddy and Eye have always thought, is His Excellency, who is M.B.A. / J.D. ’75, cannot long indulge in the great sport of his Class without doin’ a certain amount of hirin’ as well. To be sure, the nature of baincappin’ appears (to ignorant lay sheeps, at least) to be such as to have allowed H. E. to delegate that unpleasantness to less exalted members of the FireArchy.

In the McCarthy Era, there was a proverbial expression about Fordham alumnuses spyin’ on Ivory Leaguers--Comrade Hisssss, that would be--in pious an’ patriotic pursuit of Trooth, Justice an’ the AEIdeology. Nowadays, perhaps Master Horatio Alger is engaged by somebooby with an M. B. A. from, say, the Yooniversity of Feenicks, an’ only runs into a top-drawer FireArch raised up at the feet of Freelord Semiperfesser Neill von Ferguson (or at some slightly inferior seminary of Mammon) at firin’ time.

Since it is Master Horry who is gettin’ scrooged, he may not fully appreciate the neo-irony that in fact he really *did* made it to the top of the greasy secret-sector pole--whight before Big Management proper pushed him out the boardroom window. I believe there has been more than one Science Fiction entertainment in which Master Horry madly fancies he has finally been invited to run with the huntin’ an’ shootin’ countyvolks, only to find that ’tis rather the foxes an’ the hounds with whom he has been Classified for purposes of genteel field sport.


 [2] The shudderquotes were set in place by Comrade Fussell himself, unless Dr. Alzheimer is gaining ground faster than ever.  Nobody who pokes fun at Haircut Science can be all bad.


[3] ¿If we could just see the birth certificate? Please.

18 June 2012

Pressbeater on Start-ups and Job Creation


Dear Dr. Bones,

Start-ups and Job Creation
Sunday, 17 June 2012 07:57

There was a lengthy and pointless debate that began in the early 90s over what sized businesses created the most jobs. The original story was that small businesses created the most jobs. This turned out not to be true on more careful investigation, since small businesses also lost the most jobs.

(( ... ))

We now have the sequel to this silliness with the claim that it is new businesses that create jobs. This claim emanates most prominently from the entrepreneurially oriented Kauffman Foundation. It was picked up in an Ezra Klein column yesterday. The argument coming from this direction is that all the job growth in the last three decades came from new businesses. Employment in firms that existed in 1980 has just stayed roughly even.

The reason this claim is silly is that....

(( ... ))

The long and short is that new businesses are wonderful, but policies that go overboard to push people to start new businesses are likely to ruin many lives and lead their promoters with lots of egg on their face.


¿Cui bono?

(( fold here ))

"Policies that go overboard to push people to start new businesses are likely to ruin many lives and lead their promoters with lots of egg on their face," says Dr. Pressbeater of the prestigious Seeper Institution.. And he says it accurately.

However this particular accuracy may not have much bearing on what is really going on. How if the pushing is not in fact intended to help the pushees, or "create jobs," but rather to make sure there is a reliable supply of tolerably likely horses on the track for the gentlefolks of our Gamin' Class to specuvest in? It's not a secret that our financial Betters are sitting on piles and piles of capital they can't think of anything much better to do with than buy Fedguv Treasury notes--no kind of sport for a gentleman! Foreigners are wildly unreliable nowadays, and, as Pressbeater points out, here at home "the vast majority of new businesses fail within a decade," which amounts, as it were, to far too *much* sport for the cultivated palate.

What the devotees of Ms. Tyche need, it seems to me, is to have a preliminary winnowing of the field by persons of a lesser station whose plebeian faces do not look quite so bad with egg all over them. With ninety-nine percent of the field pre-winnowed before the start at Hialeah and Belmont, the problem is reduced to manageable proportions.

Moreover, after this thorough pre-winnowing, almost all of the nags that make it into the paddock will already have created *some* jobs, and few will be so unlucky as to go belly-up altogether before a decent interval has elapsed. Assuming that these Kaufmann Foundation touts are not just flat-out fibbing, they must be referring to the jobcreational track record only of those candidates who make the final couple of cuts.

Fibbing or not, their sincerity is not worth writing home about, however, because jobcreationism, real or imaginary, is entirely incidental. They do have to tell some such story to the lower orders, though, or else risk having the unemployed picket the Gamin' Class at their accustomed pleasures. Why, Class War . . . !

In the old days, I believe the cover story was National Defense instead of Full Employment, a spirited breed of cavalry horses being highly desirable back in the Middle Ages. That story, too, was only a cover. In fact, a day at the races has always been its own reward--for those bred to appeciate the finer things.

Happy days.




14 June 2012

The _Herald_ Angels Like Sheep Too


Dear Dr. Bones,

Under the traditional cloak of editorial anonymity, Paddy McTammany’s favorite pack of Jay School fruits an’ frathouse babes leap to the defense of Democracy-as-Publicity:

Define ‘bottled up’
By Boston Herald Editorial Staff | Thursday, June 14, 2012 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Editorials

Rank-and-file lawmakers who want an expansion of the bottle bill seem suddenly shocked to discover that the leaders of the House and Senate hold all the power to decide what comes to the floor for a vote — and just as important, what doesn’t.

Yes, the very same representatives who dutifully file into a back room during the annual state budget “debate,” close the door behind them, then get to the real heart of the spending decisions out of public view, seem to have discovered a brand new respect for the concept of open democracy.

The sheep, all of a sudden, want a voice.

Now if only their newfound reverence for the democratic process applied to an actual issue of substance — one that wouldn’t have consumers once again reaching for their wallets.

Instead they mostly whined on the front steps of the State House Tuesday, calling for legislative leaders to allow a vote on a bill that would expand the state’s bottle deposit law to non-carbonated beverages, including water, juice and sports drinks.

The reps and senators insisted there is broad support for the expansion in the Legislature. The problem they say is with leadership, specifically in the House, which has expressed no interest in holding a vote. Tomorrow marks the deadline for the committee considering the bill to vote on its recommendation and things aren’t looking good for the bill’s supporters.

Now, we are among the first to argue that proceedings at the State House are indeed too tightly controlled by the party in power. Too concealed from public view.

But this crowd really ought to spare us the lectures on democracy. In this case it isn’t about “the process.” It’s about money. It’s about the millions in unredeemed deposits that an expanded bottle bill would pour into state coffers.

The Senate two weeks ago explicitly rejected an attempt to expand the bottle bill during its budget deliberations. That ought to be the end of it.

Imagine, Dr. Bones, if somebody with a warrant showed up at the front moat of Castle Herald and demanded to know all about--ANYTHING about--how these kiddies’ Employin’ Corporation makes decisions and for whom, if for anybooby, those decisions are good. The next sound you hear will be a splash. After that, the crocodiles will kick in. Not pleasant to listen to.

To be sure, with a little rearrangement of props and lights, a competent stage manager could get the F&B scribblin’ out of the other end of their keyboards. Ask them, for example, whether Château Sulzberger ought to be required to tell all about what goes on in either Manhattan Island GHQ or the Morrissey Boulevard summer cottage. Betcha the babes an’ the fruits get that one whight, recognizin’ in a flash that the NYTC is a public utility, not a proud ornament of the Secret Sector like their own Employin’ Corporation. Public like H*rv*rd, even, though of the Timesters are not one-tenth as good as the Crimson are at fiendishly pretending to (and worse, achieving) those privileges of nondisclosure that belong only to bonâ-fide secret-sector corporations.

The Venerable Funders (those for whose Class good the Herald angels ought always, by definition, to act) might want to consider gettin’ a better batch of hired help. Replacement scabs who can think for themselves (at least a little) an’ tell a Class enemy from a harmless lovable little fuzzball. Indeed, the fuzzballs du jour could do the kiddies’ job, for their back-room skulduggery about bottle refunds makes no sense unless it be in aid of more or less the same Venerable Funders who bring you Boston’s second-best hometown-away-from-home fishwrap. Jigger the lighting only a little, and their shepherding their back-bench lambs into a dark and private pen where they can twist some ears and tails until the little dears give up on this "wicked and improper project" so obnoxious to the Jobcreationist Class is a model of how the J.C. ought to be pandered to nowadays.

Perhaps ALEC might feature it in their monthly newsletter, "Management Masters Massachusetts" would be too optimistic. "Beacon Hill gets down to Business" might do, execept insofar as ‘down’ suggests Business is not the tippety-top of everythin’ important already.

This freedumbness of the BH babes an’ fruits is not, I am happy to be able to report, the result of any disloyalty to their Betters. As a general barkin’ point, they know well enough that secrecy is always to be praised in the Secret Sector, reviled, if encountered out in the Naked Nonsecret Square (Pat. Pend.) of the Rev. Neocomrade Neuhaus. Gizmoes like the Freedom of Information Act recently, an’ the Congressional investigation, which is at least as old as Bull Run, can be immensely useful to the cause of Obstruction an’ Reaction an’ Freedumb generally. Even if Nosy Parker cannot positively make Big Management do anythin’ in particular, simply having to tell her what it is that BM is doing has "a chilling effect," as they say in the shyster community. Viewed from the bigmanagerial perspective, to invite Jay School reporters an’ videobabes to attend every board meeting--an’ then go on about what happened afterwards the way Herald angels go on ’bout stuff-- would be tantamount to proposing to outsize and downsource all ScroogeBank operations to Antarctica. ’Chilling’ is far too weak a word. ‘Suicidal’ would be more like it. Or ‘lunatic’.

Nevertheless, every good rule has a couple of probative exceptions, and on occasion bigmanagerial secrecy is desirable even in the Evil Public Sector. One does not have to be EXTREMELY bestembright to work out that this is one of the occasions. Democracy-as-Publicity on bottle refunds would play into the hands of the Class enemy; all the rank-and-file Lieberals and Demoncrats in the General Court would be found spouting pernicious anti-litter rot that goes down well with constituents in (say) Concord or Weston, but has little connection with what the Venerable Funders have ascertained to be really good for the Commonwealth on a Hill.

"The cause of the Greater Worcester County Chamber of Commerce is the cause of us all!" will do as a field guide to Real Good, and naturally the GWCCC wants nothin’ to do with more bottle refunds. Considering the state of the economy, I doubt the BH would have much difficulty findin’ an’ hirin’ Herself some scab fishwrappers who don’t need to have anythin’ as natural as that laboriously explained to them every time a little self-exceptionalism is called for.

Meanwhile, back on Bacon Hill, the Venerable Funders’ underlyin’ problem is that their freelordships are ElevenPercenters, whereas the General Court is fiirmly in the hands of the 89%. Amazingly firmly.

What their freelordships the Venerable Funders really require, it seems to Eye and to Paddy, is something like "Democracy-as-Ten-Percent-Majority-Rule," a product far easier to label than to imagine in detail. Senator Fratboy was supposed to give us "Democracy-as-FORTY-Percent-Majority-Rule" so as to strangle the Affordable Care Act in its cradle, but that seeming precedent does the GWCCC no good, for a couple of reasons: (1) in the event, Fratboy never came thru; (2) after the 2008 election, Fratboy did not need to come thru; and (3) all this is at the Fedguv level anyway, far, far removed from Greater Worcester County. Plus of course (4), ’twould be rather a long stretch from 11% to 41%. even if there were no other hitches in sight.

On the other hand it is what a Jay-schooled frathouse scab would almost certainly miscall ‘ironic’ that the majority leadership in the General Court can pass for Ten-Percent-Rulers if contrasted rather with their own flock in the Chamber rather than with the Daughters of Virtue & Sons of Wisdom LLC out in Lovecraft Country beyond Route 128. Were House and Senate to conduct their business as if they were a Norman Rockport town meeting, hardly anything would ever actually get done, an unresult that would (most of the time) please the Venerable Funders immensely, but also a result so easy to foresee that the Bacon Hill Gang, though hardly the sharpest bulbs on the Exmass tree, will make sure it does not happen.

I daresay Speaker DeLeo and Senator Murray have to put up with a lot more guff from their own team than Governor Romney, for example, did back when he was actually out there baincappin’ volks. It matters quite a lot that they cannot actually fire their ‘associates’, no matter how much they’d like to. Still, they are in the same line of work, mostly, as Big Managers proper, meaning the corner-window executives of secret-sector business corporations, so beautifully credentialized with M.B.A. degrees from the H*rv*rd Victory School. ScroogeBank and Warbucks Defense Widget and J. P. Morganchase (plus Baincap Herself, nay, ¡even the Boston Herald Angel Trust!) are not run as democracies, and neither, in a lot of ways, is the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

I believe Comrade Jean-Jacques complained of this arrangement a long time ago that the alleged kratos of the dêmos begins and ends on election day. So it does, but to whine about it seriously is the first step down that slippery slope that leads to one becoming an apologist for the Golden Freedumb of Ancient Poland.

Happy days.
--JHM

13 June 2012

Introducing La Siège Silencieuse (Pat. Pend.)


Dear Dr. Bones,

Here, whight from the same goodvolks who brought you "The Silent Majority," ta-DAAAH:

Close, but not a bingoe

(( fold here ))

What the Funders of Fratboy L.L.C. ought ideally to instruct their operatives to seek is not simply "a whole hour of Warren talking about the middle class being hammered," beneficial though that show would be for the ElevenPercenter cause. Especially if the 89% could somehow be forced or frauded into tuning in.

The "empty chair" strategy of Comrade Sutter and Citizen Paleologos is old and tired, every way unworthy of the Fingers of Fehrnstrom. No, what would suit America’s Otherparty best, both in the Mass. Senatorial election and in the great POTUSial foodfight, would be for Senator Fratboy (or Governor Romney) to be seen sittin’ on the said chair, but SEEN ONLY.

What yoovolks want is rather a Silent Chair (Pat. Pend.) for your team, than an empty one for ours. ¡That would indeed be the catbird seat!


Sir Galahad about to fill the Chair of Silence
(( Sir Galahad de Wrentham about to fill La Siège Silencieuse ))

The Otherparty should play to their strengths, of which lookin’ good--whether lascivious or respectable--from a distance is undoubtedly one.

That is speaking generally. With the Shirtless Cosmopolitan himself as a candidate . . . well, ’twere a pity if the Fratboy Funders were deaf to Ms. Opportunity hammerin’ like crazy Khazei on the back door.

Happy days.

I guess Party Neocomrade Fehrnstrom is too young to remember the palmy days of The Silent Majority™, but presumably Republicanines actually do keep records, records to which the Otherparty may recur in a pinch, when Their Ford is not around to holler ¡bunk! I don’t remember the exact SM™ M.O. myself, but it stands to reason, ¿does it not?, that silence ought to call out to silence, awakenin’ transparent echoes in the bosom of every half-plausible candidate for future membership in the Daughters of Virtue & Sons of Wisdom Inc.

Even if Paddy is mistaken on that point, there remains the hits-one-in-both-eyeballs fact that Fratboy an’ Romney are far more photogenic than the good guys. Your [1] ideobuddy over to the Herald, Howard Louis Lawrence (¿?), zeroth Freelord Carr in the peerage of Foxcuckooland, likes to go on about "the Beautiful People," meanin’ us donkeys. Perfectly absurd--though admittedly the editors at his freelordship’s employin’ Corporation know better than Howie does, as witness their on-goin’ quest for the most repulsive snapshot yet of Perfesser Fauxchahontas of H*rv*rd. [2]

Fratboy is, of course, preëminently photogenic.  "The shirtless cosmopolitan," as Eye have spoofed already.  Should two years of warmin’ The People’s Seat™ have already made it insufferable to his freelordship to assist quietly while others harangue the mob, perhaps he need not sit in person.  A blown-up copy of the pertinent page of the pertinent national magazine could make the Chair of Silence almost as deadly a political weapon, and that arrangement would obviate all risk that the golden Silence gets broken by some ex tempore exuberance that could be used against.

I remember the other day the Fingers of Fehrnstrom did something or another, forget what, that caused Paddy and Eye to recall the late Nicholas Biddle's proposed handlin' of General Harrison von Tippecanoe, pen and ink to be forbidden as strictly as to a mad poet in Bedlam &c.  Ah, here it is:

Biddle To Herman Cope
Phila. Augst. 11, 1835

My dear Sir,

My theory in regard to the present condition of the country is in a few words this. For the last few years the Executive power of the Govt. has been weilded by a mere gang of banditte. [2]  I know these people perfectly — keep the police on them constantly — and in my deliberate judgment, there is not on the face of the earth a more profligate crew....

(...)

I have but one remark more to make. If Gen1. Harrison is taken up as a candidate, it will be on account of the past, not the future. Let him then rely entirely on the past. Let him say not one single word about his principles, or his creed — let him say nothing—promise nothing. Let no Committee, no convention—no town meeting ever extract from him a single word, about what he thinks now, or what he will do hereafter. Let the use of pen and ink be wholly forbidden as if he were a mad poet in Bedlam. Gen1. Harrison can speak well & write well — but on this occasion he should neither speak nor write — but be silent — absolutely and inflexibly silent . . . .

America's Otherparty bein' of, by an' for essentially the same Biddle-oid goodvolks in 2012 as in 1835, that advice is likely to be better than anythin' neo-innovated by Fehrnstrom & Co.  So let us hope they never think of it.

Happy days.
--JHM

_____
[1]  This  article has a complicated provenance:  Paddy and Eye started out addressing it all to Dr. Cuteless personally.

[2] Cultivated despisers of Wingnut City should take care lest we become so extremely cultivated as to think tabloid tactics an’ the agitprop of a Howard Lawrence Lewis (¿?) Carr beneath notice.


[3] "Wielded by _banditti_" is no doubt what his freelordship intended.

Two boobooes like that perpetrated whight together cast a little doubt, perhaps, on the merits of "Due to his rapid educational progress, he entered the University of Pennsylvania at the age of 10. When the university refused to award the teenager a degree, he transferred to Princeton and graduated in 1801, at 15, the class valedictorian.

   

¡Qué lástima! that Old Nick should not be a fruit of Neohaven.






12 June 2012

We All Like Sheep


Dear Dr. Bones,

¡Baaaaaah!


I beg your pardon,sir, that kind of just blursted out.  Mustabeen a ‘seizure’, Eye guesses.

But seriously,

Anatomy of a Scott Brown Fundraiser (a.k.a. How Wall Street Gets Its Way)
progressmass | Mon, Jun 11, 2012 11:34 AM EST
Some of the local monied interests behind Brown laid bare. Of course, even larger sums are accessible in New York. Excellent research. - promoted by Bob_Neer

We all know that Republican Scott Brown is one of Wall Street’s favorite members of Congress. &c. &c. &c.  ( ... )

... [1] Chairman of Litle & Co., a payment processing company ... [2] investor who headed Noble Partners hedge fund, before it went under in 2009 due to “poor performance” ... [3] General Partner and Chairman of Windspeed Ventures, a private equity investment firm ... [4] lawyer from Sullivan & Worcester, focusing on corporate finance and investment management ... [4] managing director of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney ... [5] Partner and co-founder of Clough Capital Partners, a global investment management firm ... [6] “retired venture capitalist and former partner with TA Associates [private equity firm] and a co-founder of M/C Venture Partners [private equity firm]” ... [7] Chairman, CEO, and co-founder of Clough Capital Partners, a global investment management firm ... [8] Managing Director and Co-Founder of General Catalyst Partners, a venture capital firm ... [9] Managing Partner and Founder of Watermill Group, a private equity firm ... [10] President & CEO of Litle & Co., a payment processing company.... [11] Managing Director of Gemini Investors ... co-founder of Boston Scientific medical device firm ... [12] Chairman of Nordblom Company, a real estate investment firm ... [13] CEO, Chairman, and Director of New Boston Real Estate Investment Funds. (You may recognize Rappaport as the 2002 Republican candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts spurned by Mitt Romney in favor of Kerry Healey.) ... [14] CEO of Putnam Investments.

Hmm. Fourteen of ’em at table for the Lost Supper, now impertinently rediscovered.  Fifteen if one counts The People’s Seat™warmer, which, however, I think one definitely should not. The horses-for-Missy kind of newvoe-reach affectation should not blind us to the fact that Senator Fratboy is no Classmate of such titanic firstlords as these. Never was, never gonnabe.

Speaking of ‘14’, ¿Do you remember how M. Clemenceau reacted to Perfesser Wilson’s notorious little list with "¡But the Good Lord Himself had only had Ten Points!"?   Or Twelve Apostles to dinner, as the case may be.

But Eye digresses.

That runinous anatomy is only FYI background filler, now we get to the goodstuff:

[new] Laughable

I know a bunch of these people, and they are all very successful. But many a[re] tremendous civic leaders in the Boston area and in their local communities. If I had the money to attend, I would. These are some very nice people.

You think Warren doesn’t have a similar list, perhaps even more Wall Street and out-of-state than Brown’s?

Please, spare me.

bostonshepherd @ Mon 11 Jun 8:00 PM

[new] If you know those people...

…that says a lot about the circles you travel in, not that there’s anything wrong with that per se as long as we acknowledge the context. If you can find a similar list for EW let us know, but we’ve had posts about “the Goldman Sachs primary” and “the JP Morgan primary” which if I recall correctly were both unanimous for Brown.

christopher @ Mon 11 Jun 8:31 PM
[new] You know nothing about me
and the circles I travel in. But that’s ok. I like that reputation.


bostonshepherd @ Mon 11 Jun 11:16 PM


Union bosses don’t funnel money.

Just like corporations, unions are required to have PACs, which are contributed to voluntarily.

As for knowing about you I was just going by what you said. Of course if you followed the example of many of us and used a version of your name as your handle we might know more about you.

christopher @ Tue 12 Jun 12:11 AM

If you are interested in the unionthug angle,


Dr. Bones, you will have to examine the Urtext in full. I recommend you do so in any case, for what we have here would be a noteworthy jewel in the forehead of the Blue Class Group, did it not come from elsewhere in the first place.

Despite all the other fun in the funhouse, Paddy and Eye find ourselves operating entirely in ovine mode this morning

Do shepherds worry that their sheep know too little about them?

(( fold here ))

Such tender concern seems highly improbable to Paddy McWoolite and Eye,






Happy days.
--JHM

10 June 2012

If this be ‘betrays’, ¡let's everbooby make the most of it!


Dear Dr. Bones,

Factious double-standardizing has been known before this, I believe, to defeat itself.   But decide for yourself, please, sir:

Romney campaign betrays America again
somervilletom | Sun, Jun 10, 2012 12:50 PM EST

I find this rather shocking ... and I don't recall anything like it happening before. - promoted by david

(( ... quick snip to the bottomline ... ))

This brazenly delusional and flagrantly political attack on President Obama — in a foreign language and in a leading foreign newspaper — in the midst of a delicate, fragile, and enormously important diplomatic crisis is despicable. Mr. Romney and all Americans should be ashamed and appalled.


A splendid time to check on how the pet google is coming with her German

(( fold here ))

Do not learn from America
by Glenn Hubbard
06.09.2012, 14:27 clock

[Ed.] The adviser to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Glenn Hubbard explains in his commentary, why Obama is on the wrong track and save the path for sustained growth.

The European debt crisis threatens the growth in the euro zone and in the world. This crisis is observed in reality a crisis of confidence, and any attempt to solve this need. Unfortunately, the advice of the U.S. government going to solve the crisis is misleading. For Europe and especially Germany.

In a hitherto unusual ways the Obama administration tries, Germany to force them to stand up for financially-strapped governments and banks in the euro-zone, so that the Greek crisis infects not other states. Specifically, calls the U.S. Treasury-Bond €. This would mean that Germany guaranteed the debt for all members of the monetary union. It also calls for the recapitalization of insolvent banks on the Spanish rescue fund ESM and the purchase of government bonds of weak countries by the European Central Bank (ECB) in a big way.

These tips are not only unwise. They also reveal ignorance about the causes of the crisis and on a growth path into the future.

Low interest rates in the euro area had led to a boom in private and public credit in many states. This debt reveals the imprudent fiscal policy, which was made in the currency union. The public finances were hardly controllable. In addition, strong differences in competitiveness led to current account surpluses in countries like Germany and large deficits in countries such as Greece. MORE GROWTH WOULD GENERATE IF the financially ailing euro-zone COUNTRIES WOULD REDUCE THEIR SPENDING (AND THEREFORE THE FUTURE TAX BURDEN).

Euro Bonds be considered in the U.S. as a solution to the European debt crisis in the sense of Hamilton. This refers to America’s first Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, who advocated independence after the war to take over the debts of the American states by the federal government. This bold step, improved confidence in the financial strength of the new republic. But that was a one time thing.

The federal government has not followed the loans granted to individual states in the long run.

Und so weiter, all the intelligible parts being exactly what one would expect from an Andrew Mellon Republicanine and apologist for Late Baincapitalism.

Paddy especially liked the sentence EMphaSIZED. Play it again, Fritz:

Mehr Wachstum ließe sich erzeugen, wenn die finanziell angeschlagenen Euro-Länder ihre Staatsausgaben (und damit die künftige Steuerbelastung) reduzieren würden.

Closer to home, "brazenly delusional and flagrantly political" is not, I presume, to be understood to imply that Dean Hubbard does not believe every word of his own Party stuff, devoutly and in all known languages.

As for "rather shocking ... and I don’t recall anything like it happening before," well, Paddy would like to think that exuberance was more like an inadequately prepared ‘Casablanca’ reference rather than ... like anything else.



(( ¡Hubba, Hubba! ))

Happy days.
--McShameless

On the other hand, Comrade Perry deserves at least some credit for not solemnly guffing us about the Logan Act of 1799 in the manner traditional on such occasions.

As far as Paddy and Eye can see, the only value added--subtracted, really--by the Guardian piece goes like this:

The op-ed drew immediate criticism from Obama officials. "In a foreign news outlet, governor Romney's top economic adviser both discouraged essential steps that need to be taken to promote economic recovery and attempted to undermine America's foreign policy abroad," said Ben LaBolt, press secretary for Obama's re-election campaign.

There is a lot of difference between "to undermine" and "to betray," yet still not as much as one wishes there were,

Happy days.
--JHM

Wunners of Wal-Mart

Hub black ministers extend invite
By Hillary Chabot
Saturday, June 9, 2012 (...)

A group of Hub black ministers is urging U.S. Sen. Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren to meet with them and take part in a forum where they will be asked what they will do for poor minorities in the Bay State.

(( ... snip-an’-skip to the peanut gallery ... ))

MikeArnold

Here’s a question I’d love to see get answered from both of these candidates plus the 10-point coalition (¿?): since this is about what can be done to help the poor minorities, my question is, "Do any of you people, not only as Senatorial candidates and People of [Father Zeus] but as husbands, wives, parents, teachers, leaders, breadwinners et al think it’s fair and just that WAL-MART with its jobs and low prices is being shunned from the city limits of Boston [by] the whims of one person, that being the blithering nitwit bagman Mayor and his toadies from within and outside the community? M. A.

Posted 1 day ago


I don’t believe the Funders of Fratboy, or the rest of the Herald-Angel Class either, have ever yet seen as clearly as Mr. Poster does here that Wal-Mart is THE Secret-Sector Solution. The best neopolicy conceivable, that is, short of cuttin’ off the Bad Poor with no non-secret provision whatever, a plan for which Louisedayhicksville is no doubt ready, but not nearly enough othervolks. Not yet.

Somebooby should therefore put it to the Mayor, and the Governor, and to Sen. Fratboy & Perfesser Warren & all the Solons on both Hills, and to the POTUS of us all, that whatever is available to the Bad Poor cheap at W-M should under no circumstances be supplied to them out of Mass. or Fedguv revenues.

That takes care of food and clothing.  Housing is a little trickier, maybe, but I presume they sell tents?  Medicine is a problem in a class all its own, as usual, but

(( truncate letter to editor here ))

between the W-M pharmacy and the emergency room in one of their Betters’ suburban hospitals, I daresay there is a reasonable amount of safety net for the "small people."

An’ ¡all this with negligible danger of moral hazard!

The negative side is even niftier: W-M already does not sell such luxuries as intoxicants and shares in the lottery, so the Bee Pees will be unable to ape the entertainment or specuvestment habits of their Betters, happily doping away with that pitiful, because antecedently hopeless, emulation on which they presently waste scads and scads of dough without visible benefit to anybooby.

An AEIdeological problem or two might arise, though, as "How if the Wal-Martians decide in future they do want to sell booze or cut-rate credit-default swaps?" ¡Nothin’ would be wickeder, surely, than for The Wicked State to just say ’No’ to that sort of entreprenurial get-up-an’-grow!

And similarly, if their freelordships decided to stop doin’ groceries. Or tents.

For that matter, the off-hand way I have picked up Mr. Poster’s shtyk sounds as if their Wal-Martian freelordships are to be granted a monopoly, as if the W. S. would send in Her blue meanies to close down K-Mart or Target or Niemann-Marcus should they attempt to horn in on the nonsecret-provision subsector.   Strict dogmatic mythology of the Chicagonomic or Viennasausage School assures us that the attempt must fail, since ex hypothesi Wal-Martians charge less than anybooby else can ever possibly afford to charge.

Nevertheless, I believe most of the stout Paladins of Freedumb would deem it heretical that even the lousiest bad judgment in the ranks of Big Management should be second-guessed by mere elected persons.   In the ever-immortal words of Party Neocomrade (eighth grade) C. M. Schillin’, "Far better not to be saved from oneself at all, than to be saved from oneself by The Wicked State!"

Happy days.
--JHM


09 June 2012

A Scribble of Scant Importance

Dear Dr. Bones,

I realize that the court historians of Princess Posterity will not care much about this item, which Paddy and Eye are sending to you only so as to obtain a firm URL for the included scrap of idolatry when we venture to address the cerulæan nobility and gentry.

Nobody can tell from the snapshot what day's bond rates those are, and the link to the page will always give the latest.

Why raise taxes?

The US government is lending money at negative interest rates – no one should be talking about raising taxes until we start making treasuries more expensive.

dhammer @ Fri 8 Jun 9:31 AM

‘Negative interest rates’ is hypothetical

(( fold here ))

Paddy McTammany, at any rate, can easily imagine POTUS Romney an’ Secretary of the Treasury P. D. Ryan, Jr., "the Smirk of Janesville," takin’ US all for a tailspin over to the Wunnerful World of Deflation to delight Grover Freelord Norquist in particular an' their Classmates/Paymasters in general.

The result might be that in ten years your freelordship’s Fedguv I.O.U., acquired last Tuesday morning, will, in June 2022, have been redeemed for, say, ‘only’ 101.63%



of face value.    Since, however, each stately neobuck in the third year of the first Ryan


Administration will be worth (say) $1.50 of Bernanke von Ludendorff funny money from a decade earlier, why, ¡your freelordship will really be gettin’ not quite $1,525.00 back for every thousand specuvested!

Smirkonomics will probably be not quite *that* successful, I realize, but it does not need to be to falsify "lending money at negative interest rates." Plus afford your freelordship a tolerably comfy real R.O.I.

Happy plays.

Paddy and Eye might have added, what Dr. Pressbeater of the prestigious Seeper Institution would certainly have, that "making treasuries more expensive" is not altogether up to Wunnerful US.

Should the Lesser Breeds Without keep throwing their doits and pesoes and whatnot at poor old Sam the way they have been lately, I do not see how Freelord Norquist, and The Smirk, and Freelord Hammer, and all their Classmates an’ golfin’ buddies, are to obtain dear money for Sinn Féin, no matter *how* badly they crave it.

But Keynes knows best.

Happy days.
--JHM

07 June 2012

"to make an emotional connection with voters"

Dear Dr. Bones,

Another morning, another memorandumb:

Take charge, part 2: it’s not the populism, it’s the partisanship
tristan | Wed, Jun 6, 2012 4:45 PM EST

Your think piece for this evening - there's no Celtics game, so you have the time! - promoted by david

On the Talking Points Memo post, I don’t have the same read that Charley does here. The problem identified by “JB” was not a lack of anti-plutocratic populism — though I think that has been part of the problem underlying the spinelessness of establishment Democrats. Instead, the problem “JB” identifies is much more pervasive and endemic, reaching beyond DC to progressives all over the country — it’s a lack of partisan chutzpah, driven by a misperception about how politics really works.

(( ... yimmmer ... yammer ... yada ...  ¡snip! ))

American politics is based on emotion

at least for a majority of voters who matter — the swing voters. It’s frustrating to those who believe that the person with better policy ideas should win, but that’s the way things are. If this is not something you can deal with, then you need to find another line of work.

Obama won in part because he’s a great campaigner and gives great speeches, while McCain is dull. Not the only reason but one important one. Democrats won in 2008 because finally they picked the best candidate, not the one with the best resume on paper or whose turn it was. I’m not sure a dull, boring Deval Patrick could have won in ’06 with the same strategies and platforms.

It’s not just making the case but making the case in a way that connects with people. In the current environment especially, Democrats need candidates who are gifted in communicating and connecting, because it is is easier to stir up fear and anger in an era of declining standards of living than it is to counteract those forces once unleashed.

I’m sure Marisa DeFranco was ready to make an aggressive case for progressive values as well. Elizabeth Warren is so exciting not only because she sticks to her guns, but she does so in a way that gets things done and inspires others to join her cause. I know many voters who admired the way she kept her cool while testifying in Washington despite the shabby way she was treated. So it’s not necessarily about being the loudest and most aggressive. There’s more than one way to make an emotional connection with voters, but above a certain level, it’s usually necessary. I haven’t seen it necessary in statewide races Ike attorney general — which may help explain why our last few AGs who ran for higher office didn’t do so well.

oceandreams @ Wed 6 Jun 10:27 PM


"There’s more than one way to make an emotional connection with voters"

(( fold here ))

Now there is an oracle worthy of Delphi, or Dodona, or 20 Quincy Street.

But oracles demand the dragon eye. However ‘exciting’ to bluevolks who can get excitated about such a product, St. Elisabeth of H*rv*rdy is in danger of coming out about the same place where the late King Crœsus of Lydia came out, there having proved to be more than one way "to destroy a great kingdom."

Perhaps the connection reliably established for somevolks by scraping chalk on a blackboard is not ‘emotional’ in the strict clinical sense, but it comes close enough for Fedguv purposes. There is no need to take Paddy McTammany's word for it when one can easily ask Senator Coakley. Or grab firm hold one's bluenose and then do a little amateur political sociology in the e-columns of the much-esteemed, mnogouvazhàyemniy, Boston Herald, where the fruits of the Journalism School an' the frathouse babes are gonna work up a hernia one of these days if they keep on scrapin’ so hard.

This, however, though supremely pertinent in Paddy's opinion, will not be what Dame Oracle had in mind. Nor will She have been vouchsafing that, in addition to (1) the inevitable and fearfully pricey MacL@@han Tube, one can get at the hormones of the populace nowadays by way of (2) WWWonderland. And maybe even still via (3) direct mail, though that is getting dubious. Plus of course (4) even Her Excitation is bound to attract at least a few street-corner sign-brandishers. [*] And, strictly for auld lange sygne, ¿why not toss in the Boston (NY) Globe as well, making (5)?

No, that enumeration is not the right kind of "more than one way" either.

Almost certainly Dame Oracle meant that Her Excitation, or rather Her Excitation’s funders’ operatives, have a wide variety of Mass. emotions to appeal to: pity, envy, ambition, disinterested admiration (¡hah!), sex nausea, "the presentation of Self in everyday life," Cherokee chauvinism, gown-v.-town, &c. &c. -- all these, and many more, might be practiced on so as to move a fewvolks to pull the lever for Lizzie.

She herself (D. O., that is) specifies only "fear and anger," not a happy sampling, in light of how difficult it would be to work up much of that against the cuckoo currently nestin’ in The People's Seat™. Senator Fratboy has a really deplorable native flair for the responsio mollis [quæ] frangit iram.

Soft-soap ‘R’ Scottbo. [3]  <sigh>

Happy days.
--JHM

____
[1] A fresh outbreak of Black Death would not deter that crew. As if Mass. intersections were not accident-prone enough when just left to themselves.


[2] Lib. Prov. XV:01. As for sermo durus suscitat furorem, that appears to Paddy and Eye to be pretty much what some of the (other) nobility and gentry in this thread would like to see more of, with their "pugnacious liberals" and their deploring that "we want to tell stories without villains" and so on.


[3] I guess Dame Oracle supposes the cuckoo broke in originally by resortin’ to "fear and anger," though this conjecture would be tricky, I think, to elaborate in a manner reconcilable with scrupulous reality-basing. One wants, after all, to avoid mention of anything that it would be respectable to shudder at or thunder against.

In Januuary 2010, the Funders of Fratboy (LLC) certainly classified ‘Obamacare’ under that rubric. Their freelordships even, very intellectual-foundationally indeed, hoped that Fratboy, once installed, would decisively vindicate the neoteric Forty-Percent Majority Principle (Pat. Pend.). Scottbo bobbled the medical catch, and we are still waiting to see if the Supreme Court will back him up on the play. Moreover, once America's Otherparty started havin’ old-fangle fifty-one-percent majorities to talk about again, their poor new F-PMP was relegated to high on some dusty shelf at the American Ideological Enterprise until the Otherpartisans need it again, ¡Father Zeus hasten the happy day!

Unfortunately, though Paddy and Eye can do a pretty plausible imitation of pavor indignatioque about SmirkCare™ for invalids an’ ‘filibustocracy’ for the Senate, we two are hardly representative of Televisionland and the electorate. Even if we were, to emote about matters that substantive would put us three fields over from Their Worships’ present topic, which, as you no doubt recall, is "On a Certain Lack of Partisan _Huçpâ_ Amongst Demoncrats."

Somebooby should maybe advise E-comrade ‘Tristan’ that the Seemighties Themselves never mean anything good by the show-off technical term he borrows. Better would have been plain four-letter ‘zeal’, or maybe--¡bow-wow; arf, arf; grrrrrrrrrr!--‘ferocity’.

M. Roget must have a couple zillion synonyms for the supposed magic ingredient.

That "yimmer yammer yada" bit is maybe a little disrespectful even by Paddy O'Forelock's standards.

Life would be a little less unfair if only the nobility and gentry could be persuaded to adopt our own principle that, barring genuine inaccuracy, if one does not like one's own stuff entirely without sugar sprinkles on top, maybe it is not really one's stuff aftet all.

Oh, well.

Happy days.







06 June 2012

Test Your Compassion Quotient


Dear Dr. Bones,

The Great Blue Hill nobility and gentry went all blue-nosed / grim-lipped / apoplectic-visaged about the following

Women are already better off than men

Women are already doing better in the short term of this economy as well as the long term of the past generation. E.W. claims to be for the middle class, but she takes part in misguided attacks on men like this.

It speaks to her demonstrated ignorance of how an economy functions if she thinks that we can hobble the men who work hard, sacrifice, take risks and develop new ideas and somehow come out at the end with more money.

The results of this act would be to cut the productivity and earnings of all employees, male and female. Essentially it’s a strategy for a Mondale Democrat who seeks to divide and peel off this or that old liberal constituency. If at the end we are all worse off, that’s ok as long as I can tell my voters that they got theirs and we reduced inequality.

seascraper @ Tue 5 Jun 5:01 PM

bit of fluff, but as for Paddy and Eye, well, we just

All males are profoundly to be pitied, of course, but

(( fold here ))

especially me


Crock O’Tears


and my buddy here:





(( A stiff compassion test, ¿no? ))


Happy days.



It’s also an excellent argument for transcripts as opposed to raw cadenzas on the MacL@@han T@@ba.

Nearly ten minutes to sit through, as opposed to surely less than a minute to read, unless one be gravely lysdexic.

Anyhow, that is the way to get a scrap of MacT@@T into HTML.

Naturally we pass it along to you, sir, that ye may "see, and know, and yet abstain."

Happy days.




05 June 2012

"overinvestment in capacity for the next profit"

[new] Lack of demand...

is “the problem” only to the extent that credit-based consumer spending has slowed and we still have an economy based on meeting that unsustainable demand. The sooner we end ALL stimulus and accept that the previous false economy isn’t returning, the sooner capital can begin looking for uses that are modest in terms of next-quarter profits, but ultimately more productive for us as a society.

Federal policy is still about continuing the Greenspan-era cheap credit economy, yet private sector actors know it can’t last. So yes, uncertainty is a major issue, even if it’s not exactly what you’re hearing on Fox News.

couves @ Mon 4 Jun 12:25 AM

===
[new] Capital

is sitting on its ass looking pretty. It doesn’t matter, if there is no demand, it will not commit to spending on creating capacity to produce. It’s not sitting there due to the fact of a policy “not lasting” – know why? Capital, at least modern capital, could care less about the future really. If it can make money in the next quarter it will. This is HOW bubbles are made – overinvestment in capacity for the next profit. Not the far-future profit. The private sector doesn’t “know it won’t last” – they can’t get anyone to buy up the current stock of widgets, so why make more?

End of story.

The cheap credit thing however I agree with. We do need to curb cheap credit, and curb credit ABUSES while we’re at it. Institutional investors and banks abuse credit (ie leverage a dollar like 35 times) and then when the chips fall, so do the dominoes.

lynne @ Mon 4 Jun 12:20 PM


Like almost everybody else nowadays with any specious pretension to proud ownership of that Intellectual Bottom (Pat. Pend.) product the little lady mentioned the other day, Paddy McTammany is a bit of a crank economist.

My pet crank happens not to fit too well into the groove labelled "overinvestment in capacity for the next profit. Not the far-future profit," however, although I do start, more or less, from "sitting on their assets looking pretty."

What the Malefactors of Great Wealth mostly want just at the moment is above all higher returns on their Fedguv Treasury bonds. The reason why Bernanke von Ludendorff does not give his Classmates that for which they pray has not much to do with "continuing the Greenspan-era cheap credit economy" and a great deal to do with what has been happening overseas, where the MGW of lesser breeds insist on buying Uncle Sam’s I.O.U.’s because they trust their own local secret-sector whizkids even less than they trust Big Sam. Good old Kruggie of Princeton and Dr. Pressbeater of the prestigious Seeper Institution keep suggesting that the Fed could inflate us a little if only they cared, but, being a crank, Paddy is not so sure his twin gurus are right. Especially if the euro collapses, there could be enough foreign demand to swamp domestic bloody-mindedness and keep interest rates low no matter what General von Ludendorff rashly attempts or benignly neglects.

Since the real, after-projected-inflation, long-term return on U. S. notes is now (I believe) slightly negative, "sitting ... pretty" is a stretch, though to gamble madly on the ‘real’ American economy--what is left of us outside the financial sector, that is--would almost certainly cost the Masters of the Universe even more.

ScroogeBank really is in the catbird seat, though, as long as Uncle Ebb


can keep on borrowin’ money at 1.55% and then lend it out at 7.19% . As to "overinvestment in capacity for the next profit," as far as I can make out, ScroogeBank does not have to invest in anything at all except the treasuries. So it’s zero overhead for Uncle Ebb, ¿No es verdad?

To be sure, Paddy, who like six cranks in ten don’t mind boasting that I am not an economist, could easily be missing something here.

Happy days.


Failure summarized



NYT summarizes GOP’s failed economic policy
Bob_Neer | Tue, Jun 5, 2012 12:42 AM EST

One of the most concise summaries of current Republican economic policies I have seen. It is always useful to be reminded of Scott Brown’s essential campaign objective: lower taxes for the rich, no matter what the costs to Massachusetts.
Until the government does more to stoke demand and growth, including with job-creating aid to states and investments in energy and infrastructure, college graduates and everyone else will struggle. Republican politicians have blocked the needed policies, claiming that cutting the budget deficit is more important and that somehow — given enough deregulation and tax cuts for the rich — things will turn around. They haven’t, and they won’t.

"One does not want to be the _prima donna_ in the shoestore,"

(( fold here ))

fibbed Paddy, "who makes the poor clerk get out one hundred and sixty-eight (173.29) pairs of haute sabotage before buzzing off without buying so much as a flip-flop, but, well, ¿Perhaps we might see at least a couple of alternative ‘summaries’ of "failed G.O.P. economic policy?"

It might have been better, marketingwise, if the poor put-upon lad had left the box the company-recommended political footwear came out of in the back room. "Class of 2012" is marked on the side plainly, which arouses suspicion in some breasts that maybe--just ‘maybe’--the NYTC comrades did not suppose themselves to be briefly setting forth the Intellectual Bottom™ (Pat. Pend.) of America’s Otherparty. Advocatin’ "¡Just Say NO!" is scarcely a ‘policy’, which entails that quoting or paraphrasing the same should not be passed off on the hapless e-consumer as analysis.

Friends of the working stiff may rebut that the product he flogged at us was not simply JSN, it was more like "¡Keep on sayin’ NO while you wait for the downtrickle." More exactly, "given enough deregulation and tax cuts for the rich, things will turn around." That is recognizably Otherpartisan, at least, though if that’s all the ‘summary’ one gets, an indignant demand to have one’s investment refunded would be only human.

As it happens, a couple of shops down Market Street, Brighton, towards the Palace of Public Tubavision, a different tentacle of the Blue Beast is having a special on a product that really does more or less meet the specifications. At any rate, dear Kruggie’s Monday column met them tolerably well, so I presume, without examination, that a special edition for the prose-challenged must be O.K. too.

Kruggie’s shoe-box was marked "This Republican Economy," labelling congruent with "summarizes GOP’s failed economic policy." A little too congruent, maybe, in that the Intellectual Botto™ or underlying conceit is that what policy there has actually been lately has been more Republicanine than ‘Democrat’: "slash spending and cut taxes, ... the policy we’ve been following the past couple of years[,] ... is already the economic policy of Republican dreams."

To summarize things like that is polemic as well as mammonological: ¡the Otherparty perps certainly don’t think that they have been in control! And, like Comrade Blazer, Prof. Krugman might be reprehended for using the word ‘policy’ to refer to a vector sum that (one presumes) nobody specifically intended.

Of the eight hundred and seventeen (817) words in Kruggie’s piece, not one (0.0) is ‘college’ or ‘university’ or anything synonymous, which seems about the right proportion to the present keyboard.

Comrade Professor Doctor Blazer, Esq., of Columbia University in the City of New York would disagree. And that makes sense: to a hammer, we all look like nails; to a tertiary educationaliser, like seminar fodder.

This perfessional deformation, as I account it, is harmless enough in itself, maybe even kinda cute, if you set up the lighting just so before you take the snapshot. To take for granted that throwing money at schools is the only sort of Keynesio-Stiglitzio-Krugmanite stimulus that calls for protracted discussion puts one in mind of The Eagle and the Wren.

’Tis not quite so charming, though, when the omphaloscopic Mme. Wren sets herself up to be specially emblematic of the Spirit of Massachusetts, for this province has long been in danger of making Tert. Ed. unto us wonderful what bananas were to Ancient Nicaragua. Should the crops ever fail simultaneously at H*rv*rd and Mass. General, I expect we’d be chewing at our boots in no time.

Moreover, Mme. Wren has been so long and so well entrenched in her Faculty Club as to have lost all personal recollection of what that admittedly picturesque institution looks like from the outside. "¡Women and educationalisers first!" does not, I fear, make all that favorable an impression on mostvolks, and that without wandering as far into the virtual slums as The Boston Herald.

The Columbia E-comrade, like Blue Blazerdom at large, is likely to find himself an extra in "Senator Coakley, the Sequel" if he cannot manage to snap out of his collective self-narcissism pretty quick and start taking "the costs to Massachusetts" somewhat more liberally than merely setbacks for medical and educational tourism.

Alternatively, he might want to consider conversion to a frank and manly self-cynicism. This would entail consciously accepting the axiom that quacks and pædagogues and possibly a couple of ancillary professions [*], but nobody else, ought to be remunerated ever more and more above the general rate of inflation in sæcula sæculorum amen. This plan will be--or at least with a little rearrangement down in the servant quarters, could be--perfectly swell for the Commonwealth on a Hill, not quite so good for the rest of u... for the rest of them.

Happy days.

_____
[*] Should this spoofery ever fall into the paws of Mass. Republicanines, they would no doubt want baincappin’ ("the financial services industry") to be classified with medicine and educationism as a no-expense-barred zone. Equally without doubt, the Blue Blazers would be reluctant, to put it mildly, to grant such crass materialistic petitioners that for which they pray.

At that juncture, it would be interesting to watch e-comrade ‘David’ do us one of his characteristic shysterly double-standardizations. Though he could scarcely appeal to the fact that baincappin’ can be done anywhere--for so can health care and "knowledge care"--he might make a little headway by pointing out that, as a matter of fact, der späte Bainkapitalismus already mostly *is* done out-of-commonwealth, Governor Romney and B. C. proper bein’ rather eccentrically sited.

On the other hand, Paddy and Eye decided the other day that it would be nifty to establish a (very slightly) Greater Massachusetts in which the Athens of Suffolk County queens it over three major off-shore islands rather than two: Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket and Manhattan.

(Just a suggestion)

03 June 2012

Rainy Day in Springfield

Dear Dr. Bones,

 Paddy’s e-arthritis is acting up again.  Must be the weather.



Rainy day in Springfield

(( fold here ))

Paddy O’2139 reads in my sole-surviving home-away-from-hometown newspaper that noble Godzilla taught evil Bambi a lesson on Saturday that she, the latter, should not soon forget:
Warren Fends Off Party Challenger in Massachusetts Race ... KATHARINE Q. SEELYE ... display of political muscle ... overwhelmingly won ... pushed Ms. DeFranco aside ... "not as if anybody pushed anybody off the ballot" ... “snuffed out”... lopsided victory ... “the very thorough slap-down of a candidate" ... "not backing down ... [because never planned] to fold up the first time I got punched" ... HUGE CHEER ... aggressive steps ... a new defiance ... "“I don’t care what they throw at me ... I will stand my ground" ....
Meanwhile, down amidst the bright lites of Bigcity, the Boston (NY) Globe has finally arrived at a just estimate of all those goodvolks up in New Iceland who pay to get at it, assuming that they will probably need to be told in which state exotic, unheard-of ‘Lynn’ is located. The mobile goodvolks, that is.

(( I believe it was the late Whittaker Chambers who wasted a lot of time wondering how one could tell whether one lives at the beginning of a new Dark Age. R. I. P. ))

Happy days.

Ah, here it is:

Happy days.
--JHM

02 June 2012

¡Don’t just sit there, weep somethin’!


Dear Dr. Bones,

Whightists are even cuter than usual when they carry on with passion an’ neosincerity ’bout

SHAME SHAME SHAME

Democracy dies today………

bluemaxxx @ Sat 2 Jun 5:30 PM

So, ¿Why is this day unlike all otherdays?

¡Not a hard question! The Blue Meanie, Esq., explains pellucidly:

DeFranco Fails to Make the Ballot
david | Sat, Jun 2, 2012 3:21 PM EST

The votes are in, and Marisa DeFranco has fallen well short of the 15% support she needed at the Democratic convention to appear on the primary ballot this fall. Initial reports have the tally at about 95.8% of the delegates for Warren – very, very impressive. So, from here on out, it’s Elizabeth Warren vs. Scott Brown.

Whether you think this is a good thing or a bad thing, we can expect to hear a great deal from Republicans – who are suddenly DeFranco enthusiasts – hilariously pretending that this is some sort of outrage. Rob at Red Mass Group is actually suggesting that DeFranco’s constitutional rights might have been violated and that she should sue over it. What short memories they have. They did exactly – exactly - the same thing to Christy Mihos only two years ago, when they gave 89% of the support at their convention to Charlie Baker, thereby denying Mihos the 15% he needed to secure a spot on the ballot. Funny … I don’t recall Rob or any other Republican being too upset about it back then.

One more thing: I seriously doubt that Deval Patrick’s endorsement of Elizabeth Warren had much impact on the delegate count. Those delegate slates were elected in (mostly) February at the party caucuses, long before Patrick had weighed in. Maybe a few uncommitteds changed their minds at the margins. But Warren’s victory was big enough that there’s just no way the die wasn’t cast well before Patrick got involved. If DeFranco was really serious about being on the ballot, she should have been all over the caucuses. She wasn’t, and so she isn’t.

_Ad quos Patricius_:

¡Don’t just sit there, weep somethin’!

(( fold here ))

"Oh woeful day! Oh day of woe," said he / "And woe is me who lived this day to see"



Happy days.

¡Look, MA, It's a five-fer!

My Toenail, My Tutor

Dear Dr. Bones,

The VFWh, Venerable Funders of Whightism, must find this

Readers’ advice for Brown: Steer clear of rival’s ‘wreckage’
By Todd A. Prussman | Saturday, June 2, 2012 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Local Politics

Best bet for U.S. Sen. Scott Brown this weekend: enjoy the show and don’t get in the way of his biggest challenger’s self-destruction.

That’s what Herald readers had to say during yesterday’s Friday Throwdown news chat as Brown’s potential rival....

 ((&c. &c.))

sort of thing a bit of a nuisance. Just a cut above bein’ panhandled.

However it seems to me that Their Firstlordships have asked for it, as follows:

The original idea of the freelordly organization chart was presumably to make sure nobody (except their freelordships) has all the puppet strings in hand. Senator Fratboy gets his marchin’ orders an’ barkin’ points from the _Oberkommando_, and so do the Jay School fuits (an’ frathouse babes) over to the _Herald_ of Louisedayhicksville, BUT neither gets their MO&BP by way of the other. (It helps, naturally, to this end that the People’s Seat™holder has to spend a lot of time down in Beltway City broodin’ over The Seat lest it catch cold. Also lest their freelordships’ Class interests suffer impairment.)

However, one of their freelordship’s’ journalist scabs at LDHV--probably *not* Party Neocomrade (ninth grade) T. A. Presssman--this same gimmick turned up a couple of days ago--,but somebooby a little hire up the Great Chain of Freedumb--thought she would make an original an’ creative contribution to the Cause of Whighteousness by solemnly consultin’ with the local Tee Putty about what Sen. Fratboy’s MO&BP ought to contain. "After all," the Unknown Freedame must have figgered, "Most of the pious viennasausage from the peanut gallery will at least be pious, even if not actually helpful tactically an’ operationally an’ strategically."

Paddy inclines to guess that genuine helpfulness was never sincerely aimed at, it seems more likely that her freeladyship was, is, lookin’ for a raise. And/or maybe a ticket out of the New Iceland backwoods to the whight lites of Bigcity, where alone Jay School fruits are properly appreciated on the meat-an’-potatoes side. $$$$$.

Now the VFWh ought in principle to sympathize with such a noble self-motivation as I have reconstructed. In fact, though, greed can be a bit of a nuisance to their freelordships when it falls into the hands of the lesser breeds without Class. ScroogeBank I imagine to be rather like the Hapbsburg Empire, in fact, but with "¿But is she greedy for our Class?" replacing Franz Joseph’s "¿But is he a patriot for me?"

Scabs bein’ scabs, one may pretty safely assume that she is not.   At best, her freeladyship doesn’t mind too much if their freelordships win far bigger as long as she wins what she has comin’ to her. At not-so-good, she does mind, an’ minds a lot, yet not enough to risk disemployment over it. Especially not in a Crawford-Crash economy, an’ at a time when the bricks-an’-mortar fishwrap is fading away faster than you can say "General of the Armies Douglas MacArthur, Jr."

All of which may undercut the nobility of her freeladyship’s self-motivation a tad, but goes far to make it seem rational.

All the same, it’s gottabe a pain to the Hire-Ups to have their "small people" carry on as if it were just an accident that they do not sit on the VFWh Board of Directors. In this case there is the serious aggravation that her freeladyship’s nifty shtyk consists in goin’ even further down the Great Chain of Freedumb in quest of C.E..O.-level gems of wisdom. "My foot, my tutor" turns into "My toenail, my tutor." As it were.

Now Paddy believes that this quest is mere persiflage from the scab journalist side, that her freeladyship took for granted before sallyin’ forth that any pearls she might pluck from the pigpen were not goin’ta be the real thing. Apart from personal self-advancement, not usually avowable, the Unknown Freedame probably figgered it could not hurt to butter up the swine a little by suggestin’ that maybe they have important contributions to make to the Cause of Whighteousness, intellectual if not financial:

“Sen. Brown can’t get too comfortable,” said Celticwheels, “He needs to keep up the work he’s doing. When the time comes debate Mrs. Warren and then the real fun begins.”

¿Would anybooby cross the sidewalk to pick up that? Not Paddy or Eye, certainly.

But that pearl is atypical, what mostly catches the Unknown Freedame’s jackdaw eye is rather

“Mainly he just needs to keep clear of the impending wreckage on the campaign trail,” said Petefromwoburn. “Keep himself more or less removed from this and watch his foe self-destruct, with agonizing slowness.”

There are several variations on that, indicating, I guess, that her freeladyship, too, wishes that Fratboy would just shut up about the Law Squaw.

Not bad advice at all, maybe, but the quality of it is unimportant compared to the violation of HireArchy:  ¡It is for the Venerable Funders, not Jay School fruits an’ frathouse babes, let alone Wally Wombschool an’ Cindy from Wasilla, to direct the Fingers of Fehrnstrom!  A very general reassurance, once in a (longish) while, that all things which Their Firstlordships command are, ultimately, commanded in response to frathouse demand is probably advisable, but even to pretend to be open to dictation in detail is not merely a sin against the AEIdeology but a practical blunder that could be dangerous.

It occurs to me, Dr. Bones, that the wisest course for the Venerable Funders of Whightism might be for Their Firstlordships to consult, early an’ often an’ above all ostentatiously, with the former


Silent Majority™. That plan elegantly discredits in advance any particular scrap of "dictation in detail" than anybody has ever actually heard mentioned.

Happy days.
--JHM