¡She believes in an America!

“I believe in an America…” jkleschinsky | Fri, Jul 27, 2012 2:13 PM EST In response to Sen. Brown cherry picking a quote for his new, albeit confused ad “Let America Be America.” I thought I’d give everyone a bit more context from then Senator Kennedy’s speech on October 31st 1960. I tried to edit it down into something more digestible, but also added a link to the full text at the end who want to read it in its entirety. The point is, America is America when we work together, care for one another, and invest in our Country. Something our current junior Senator has failed to do time and time again. (( snip quotation ))

2012 - 1960 = ???? (( fold here )) Not a hard problem, that one. Or at least ’twould not have been before the Grade Inflation Plague™ hit, sometime in ’68. Really there are two quite distinct sequellæ to ‘Camelot’: to burn figurative candles to St. Jack of Brookline in the spirit of November 1963 through August 1968 [*] is quite a different thing, it seems to the present keyboard, than to be a latecomer to the cult, a devotee, that is, who has been tainted, probably unconsciously, by Secretary MacNamara, and President Nixon, and Moynihanian Neglect™, and Indowhatsis, and so on, by all those petty differences between Oughtabe and Is that mostly do not seem to matter much taken separately but add up relentlessly all the same. That probably are adding up to "President Romney" behind our backs even as we of the geezer community reminisce. (( Betcha "Recommended by christopher, kloechner, methuenprogressive, somervilletom, dave-from-hvad" does a pretty good job of unmasking geezers. Moreover, I take it to be "no accident" that the Big Three have not found this one ready for prime time. I’ve got a snapshot somewhere that makes plain that their editorial excellencies can no more personally remember President Kennedy than they can Queen Anne and King Assurbanipal. )) Even a political Spring Chikin ought to have noticed, however, that there is a whight-wing JFK icon floatin’ around nowadays as well as the prog ditto revered above. The true Holy Grail, whightvolks assure was not anything like "a government of men devoted solely to the public interests," it was--to put it my way rather than the Republicanine Way--"a government of taxcutters devoted solely to the care and feedin’ of jobcreators." Though in fact ‘solely’ won’t do, for our now economic whightists profess to admire King Arthur’s (real) anticommunism as well as his (more like ‘alleged’) Chicagonomic fiscal soundness. On the terminology front, Paddy McTammany wishes that good guys would think twice before using the verb "to invest" in such a sentence as "America is America when we work together, care for one another, and invest in our Country." I apologize to Mr. Poster if in fact he *did* think twice, but there are plenty of othervolks who do not. To them I say, "¡The United States of America is not a hedge fund, gentlemen!" Moreover, King Arthur is nowhere reliably recorded as having exhorted the Table Round, "¡Ask not, my fellow Camelotions, what your country can invest in you, ask what you can invest in Our Country!" I am pretty sure, though not absolutely, that when His Majesty decided that Greater Camelot needed more schools, or roads, or bridges, or Palaces of Public Tubavision, or any other such all-around goodies, he managed to make his meaning clear without any mention of either ‘investment’ or ‘infrastructure’. ¡Those, those were the days! "And that in [word], and not in [deed] alone." Happy days ___ [*] There is no point in insisting on petty details of personal ideochronology, but it may be explained that I consider The Great Good Time -- which overlaps with everybody but Uncle Sam’s Age of Emergency -- to have commenced with the Roosevelt inauguration, 4 March 1933, and terminated at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago during the week of 29 August 1968.  "¡Alas, poor Hubert!" Why, ¡it really looked for quite a long time as if we might become a civilised country! Instead of which, the genuine "permanent high plateau" came to a sudden end, and down we tumbled to ______. (Fill in the blank to suit yourselves.)

Nil nisi whatever

Message from God? somervilletom | Sat, Jul 28, 2012 11:14 AM EST Multiple sources reported yesterday that Don Perry, leading spokesperson for Chick-fil-A, died suddenly of a heart attack.   (&c. &c. ) *** end post begin comment *** Probably in bad taste but yes people from that corner of Christianity have an awful lot of certainty about what God is and is not saying. kbusch @ Sat 28 Jul 11:56 AM

Speaking of bad taste, (( fold here )) Paddy McTammany’s nominee for the all-time world champion in the present subcategory turns up in, of all places, Supreme Court for Dummies by Lisa Paddock [*]: (( Might here attempt a high-falutin’ 02138 little funny about ¡O Felicis culpa!> )) Happy days. ___ [*] This tome is a curiosity of literature in a couple of other ways besides preserving that dreadful anecdote: (1) There is definitely no definite article in the title, and (2) there seem to be no numbers on the pages either. Must be something about dummies.

You Win, Alzheimer

Dear Dr. Bones,

If not quite at the Very End of the Line, one is over the last hill and in plain sight of it when Maureen Dowd, an employée of the New York Times Company, starts making sense about something that matters:

What drives [Governor Romney’s] gaffes is his desire to preen over accomplishments. As a candidate, he’s expected to stoop to conquer, to play a man of the people. But he really wants voters to know that he earned $250 million, and not even in the same business where his dad made a name for himself. So he keeps blurting out hoity-toity stuff to make sure we know he’s not hoi polloi — about his friends who are NASCAR owners, his wife’s Cadillacs, how he likes to fire people and how he, too, is unemployed. And he builds a car elevator in the middle of an economic slough. In his interview with Brian Williams in London, Romney couldn’t resist giving himself the laurels for saving the Salt Lake City Games by analyzing whether the British ones were off by a hair, or a hire. Then he tried to scamper back to the obligatory common-man script and ended up looking clumsy . . . .

Apart from the trash psychobabble about Daddy, that view of

M. Coriolanus Pompo, Demander of Apologies, is not worth distinguishing from our own.

Paddy and Eye could have distanced ourselves from the laughable lady to some extent by quoting more than we have, but it would be a little dishonourable of us to do so, when we believe this part that Mizz Maureen did get right to be The Key to All Mittologies.

Happy days.

"One fence to fit them all" [*]

Dear Dr. Bones,

It is notorious that Lefty Loser is no good at thinking like a violence professional. Still, ¿what social scientiser worth her bicycle helmet will turn up her nose at a little additional formal proof of what everybody human has always known unofficially and merely by that low animal cunning that does not really count?

So here, then, with no more ado:

Domed cities – the environmental fall back of the Gazillionaires – an explanation for the climate change deniers amberpaw | Fri, Jul 27, 2012 10:46 PM EST Domed cities image [mostly by] courtesy [of] Alexander Ratko For some time, I have been trying to figure out how billionaires can be denying climate change, and the United States of America can have refused to sign onto so many treaties and initiatives to control carbon emissions, and fight global warming. Then I figured it out – the top 1% of the top 1% (the folks who send 32 trillion out of their own countries) are ready to automate all processes that produce what they care about, create domed cities, and let everyone else bake fry ((sic)). Can you come up with a better explanation, anyone? Denial won’t stop this problem. (...) It cannot be that “they don’t know," it must be that “they don’t care” because they have made other plans. It does, however, boggle the mind to think of the Romney Dynasty Domed City – and the Walton Dome. Other suggestions, anyone?

Though undeniably elegant, those domes seem like an awful lot of pointless trouble (( fold here )) to Paddy McTammany. ¿Wouldn't it not be far easier for our selfmade TopPercenters to relocate to the top latitudes (after the poles warm up a little more, that is) and then erect a really stout Maginot Line to keep us Bad Poor down and out? Happy days. [*]  Sings the pseudo-Tolkien One fence to fit them all, one fence to pool them One fence to shield them all, and in the warmin’ cool them O happy land of Baincap, where the Greedies lie!

Happy days.
--JHM

Note on the Correlation of Farces

Dear Dr. Bones,

This one runs off the rails halfway to its destination, no thanks to Paddy McTammany.  I do, however, confess to being too lazy to rewrite it completely now that I have figured out how Kravitz, Esq., was taken advantage of by incompetent boondocks journalism.

[new] Brown just racking up endorsements, but Warren has Hollywood Impressive endorsements by Brown. Former Mayor Ray Flynn, former Worcester Mayor Konnie Luke’s (both Democrats), America’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and now Bloomberg. Shows just how independent Brown really is. Not too long ago, Obama and Bloomberg had breakfast together. Methinks Obama wants his endorsement, no? Now, if Menino endorses Brown, or nobody, that will be the nail in the coffin for Warren, we all agree, right? Of course, she can fly in Matt Damon, Barbara Streisand, and Jon Bon Jovi. danfromwaltham @ Fri 27 Jul 12:39 PM

[new] Yawn I am sure that you are not especially influenced by endorsements by outsiders. Why do you think anyone else will be? hrs-kevin @ Fri 27 Jul 5:26 PM

What Terry Troll thinks about this (( fold here )) (and most other things with which the Party neocomrade vexes the Blue Blazers) amounts to not much more than to strikin’ back at Lieberalism, and Democracy, and "the Democrat Party," and pinky-ringed Union Thugs, and [whomever], with such recent whight-wing talkin’ points as the Party neocomrade happens to remember off hand. That is to say, speed of response and volume of fire plainly count for more than stratagem and marksmanship. Considered on its stand-alone merits, "See Michael Bloomberg an’ raise you Barbra Streisnd" is about as dumb as Freedumb Fighters get. Now the serious student cannot be sure that General the Freelord of Fehrnstrom has instructed his troops to behave like that. There are a lot of ’no-count trailer-trash guerillas around nowadays, crank amateurs accountable to nobooby. Nevertheless, his freelordship MAY have issued some such directive, seeing that it definitely makes sense in some encounters. Verbally, at any rate, "throw the kitchen sink" sounds like a thoroughly traditional strategy for the Party of Grant & Hoover (& Goldwater & Atwater) to adopt. Still, ’tis a GOOD traditional strategy only to the extent that we donkeys approximate to being a "Party of Lee," as it were, subtle scalpel wielders rather than bloody-minded butchers. That little lady from the Big University did drool of our (¿?) alleged Intellectual Bottom the other day, but I fear that is mostly pious viennasausage and fatuous self-esteeming on Her Beatitude’s part, a sort of tasteless bluff and bluster far more becomin’ to virile gander Republicanines than to us silly geese. Perhaps at this point, though, we should hear from Il Primo Uomo Blu, who started the thread rolling: Really rich guy endorses Scott Brown [updated] david | Fri, Jul 27, 2012 11:38 AM EST Surprised? I didn’t think so – after all, Scott Brown has raised epic amounts of money from Goldman Sachs and other denizens of Wall Street. You might be a bit more surprised to hear that the really, really rich guy in question is New York City’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who announced yesterday that he is backing Brown. (( ... )) There is no call to be surprised by His Honor (that I can see). Kravitz, Esq., disappoints a little, though, inasmuch as he sounds exactly like Our Miss Sappy [1] when he starts explaining what it was in the NYTC piece about Bloomberg that surprised him. Over in the shyster community they like to say Expressio unius, exclusio alterius, a maxim which implies that Kravitz, Esq., must have missed what we ourselves found a little remarkable, namely a perfect willingness on the part of the New York Times Company wage slave to explain Citizen Bloomberg’s innermost secret-sector motives to his Corporation’s customers. One could hardly have been told with fewer winks and nods that the Mayor pretends to back S. Philip Fratboy (R-MA) because of some nonsense about gun control, but really is only worried about "buck control," if one may thus christen Perfesser Warren’s only-too-‘hammering’ monomania. ¡¡¡ ******* !!! ¡Oops! No, wait a minute. Paddy and Eye naturally assumed that a kulchur voucher like IPUB, Il Primo Uomo Blu, would have read all about it in the NYTC’s adult or metropolitan edition, just as we had already done ourselves, learning from the very first sentence / paragraphette that "Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, one of the most outspoken defenders of Wall Street, has sided against one of the financial industry’s biggest critics in a hotly contested Senate race in his native Massachusetts." Not until the third sentence / paragraphette do we start being fed press-release baloney, "Mr. Bloomberg, through a spokesman, said his endorsement was not about Wall Street at all, but about his desire to reward Mr. Brown for voting against his party and the National Rifle Association on a gun control measure." Kravitz, Esq., has relied, a little shockingly, on that far-exurban NYTC daughter product, the BossTown (NY) Globe, which really did more or less just reprint the P. R. put out by Bloomberg Intergalactic LLC. Our local-franchise yocals stepped off with "Michael R. Bloomberg, the billionaire mayor of New York, waded into one of the nation’s fiercest Senate races and threw his financial and rhetorical support behind Senator Scott Brown on Thursday."  They get around to mentioning St. Elizabeth’s disease only when they get around to Her Beatitude considered personally as Fratboy’s opponent: Warren, who accepted the endorsement of the Massachusetts Credit Union League on Thursday, pounced on Bloomberg’s backing as evidence that Brown champions the interests of major financial institutions. “Today, Scott Brown stands with Wall Street, and I stand with every credit union in the Commonwealth,” she said at her campaign headquarters in Somerville. A vocal defender of Wall Street, Bloomberg may chafe at Warren’s persistent criticism of the financial sector and big banks. But Loeser, the Bloomberg spokesman, said that was not the basis for the endorsement and declined to comment on Warren’s candidacy. If "Loeser, the Bloomberg spokesman" said as much to the NYTC suburban reporter, both the challenge to comment and the response have been admirably suppressed.  [2] Happy days. ___ [1] For those of them at Rio Limbaugh: Sappy formally signs her bankcard authorizations as "Sapientia Conventionalis, Ph. D."

Though Paddy and Eye hate to agree with Her Freelordship, Jasonne, Duchess of Sanseverino-by-the-Sea,

about anything at all, yet in this context it is difficult to forget how his freeladyship used to bark that "The Boston Glob" is expressly produced for suchvolks as prefer their news a day or two stale.

The backwoods Lilliputians must, I mean, have been aware of how Big Brother was covering the same story down in the bright lights of the Big City.  It is not as if His Honor had been vacationing on Nantucket and offered the globaloney purveyors a special interview.

Happy days.
--JHM

Concerning the I. Q. of M. Coriolanus Pompo

Dear Dr. Bones,

The text for today is brief and to the Powe®Poin™: a certain Blue Blazer has had the bad taste to refer to Governor Romney as "a stupid moron, ¡so there!" Plus maybe the one that goes "My people are from Ireland / We know a thing or two about ‘the Anglo-Saxon model’" is pertinent as well.

The beauty of belongin’ to The Class (®) (( fold here )) is that though one be indeed "a stupid moron" taken individually, yet that simply does not matter. Or maybe it complicatedly does not matter. In any case, Freelord Moron remains forever, far more more significantly, a Dynastic Scion, a fruit of Cranbrook, a double-barrel H*rv*rd ’75, . . . . In sum: ¡a predestinate Master of Seamus! [1] Speaking of the H*rv*rd Victory School--we allude to the former Allston (MA) Academy of Chirurgy and Barber Science--the Gang of Seventy-Five was graced not graced by Governor Romney (as his freelordship would one day inevitably become) alone, George XLIII Bush was around as well, lookin’ . . . well, let’s face it, lookin’ far more stupid-moronic by mostvolks’ standards, especially those of Paddy and Seamus, than his late-bloomin’ wannabe emulator. Happy days. ___ [1] As His Excellency was out discoverin’ just the other day, provincial-colonial Seamus Management is not identical with, or even necessarily simpático with, the Old World product. Torycomrade Cameron’s delightful crack about "out in the middle of nowhere" has a deep background amongst the genuine (¿?) Folk of Hengist and Horsa confronted with Messrs. les nouveaux riches de South Succotash TX an’ Rio Limbaugh FL. Even, I fear, confronted with the homebrew neopeerage of Belmont MA. It will be centuries, I betcha, before Airstrip One succumbs to H*rv*rd Victory School ‘values’ so completely as to remove the sting from His Excellency’s uncivil "¿Who ever taught you klutzes how to big-manage an Olympiad?" kibitzin’. Neocomrade Professor Doktor Niall Campbell Douglas, zeroth Freelord Ferguson, is doin’ his damndest towards that happy end--towards, that is, a general conflation of the Spirit of Late Baincapitalism with the alleged "Western Civilisation." His freelordship’s pains were rewarded with the official write-up for his recent Reith lectures omitting to mention the Victory School connection, resulting in the flagrant suggestio falsi that his killer-app freelordship is GSAS simpliciter -- and therefore impeccably respectabiggle. For many moons to come, Oxbridge and Camford and Redbricke will (as Paddy conjectures) continue to be cultivated despisers of Haircut Science and all practitioners thereof, even perps of highest rank here in the Heimatland G*ttes. Freelaird Fergusson and Baron Thatcheress between them have no chance of converting the "nation of shopkeepers" to the (utterly dotty provincial) notion that shopkeepin’ is a learnèd profession.

Happy days.
--JHM

The Einstein of our Age puts it in a nutshell

Mitt Romney Gets Specific Paul Waldman May 24, 2012 Sort of. But not really. I  have been on a long crusade, which began before this campaign and will probably continue after it, to get everyone to think more clearly about what it means when a politician says "I’m not a politician, I’m a businessman." (( ... )) Halperin keeps trying to get something specific out of Romney, and Romney keeps evading. At one point he protests that he can’t give Halperin a specific innovative idea to create jobs, because "It is a whole passel of elements that come together to create a strong economy, and for someone who spent thei life in the economy, they understand how that works." So, to sum up: Mitt Romney understands how the economy works. And what ideas does that understanding produce? He understands how the economy works. What’s he going to actually do once in office? He understands how the economy works.

Everybody this side of darkest W*lth*m should read the whole piece, which may border on cruelty to mental kiddies, but still . . . .

Happy days.

P. S.: Paddy McTammany recommended the Deval Patrick Show this morning. If you listened in, I trust you will agree that the successor to

 

(( M. Coriolanus Pompo, Demander of Apologies ))

has a remarkable flair for not actually answering the questions he is asked without setting off all the alarms the way poor Pompo does.

"Scott Brown gets in on the Big Lie"

Dear Dr. Bones,

Thinking it over, Paddy and Eye decided that we should write up the sublime parochialism and self-provinciality of the ’GBH nobility and gentry as a separate Ding an sich rather than mix it up with factious Fehrnstromiana.

Meanwhile we shall park this one also chez vous:

What one might call the Lovecraft Country squabbles (( fold here )) between Senator Fratboy and Professor Warren have actually drawn a little attention down in one of the big cities of Brightlightia: Posted at 12:32 PM ET, 07/23/2012 Scott Brown gets in on the Big Lie By Greg Sargent Look, ma, I can lie about Obama’s quote, too! Obama’s now infamous “didn’t build that” speech is similar to Elizabeth Warren’s viral [1] remarks about how the rich didn’t get rich on their own. So it’s not surprising that Senator Scott Brown has just released a new Web video (embedded below) . . . . And so on and so forth. Other E-provincials can read the piece through for themselves and then, if they like, attempt to guess whether Mr. Sargent has been in contact with performances by the Blue Class Group, or is simply a Great Mind thinking alike independently. This citizen of the lesser metropolis strikes Paddy McTammany, at least, as having definite pretensions to Great Mindedness. "To generalise is to be an idiot," said the late William Blake. Mr. Sargent picks up his cue and runs with it boldly: This gives me an occasion to make another point. The whole ”didn’t build that” dust-up is important, because the larger falsehood on display here — that Obama demeans success — is absolutely central to the Republican case against Obama. The Republican argument — Romney’s argument — is partly [2] that Obama’s active ill will towards business owners and entrepreneurs is helping stall the recovery, so you should replace him with a president who wants people to succeed. (. . .) Republicans have decided the policy difference isn’t enough. They also need to sow doubts about Obama’s alleged intentions and hostility towards private enterprise and individual initiative, to give voters a narrative about the Obama presidency and an explanation for the sluggish recovery that will make them more receptive to GOP tax and deregulatory policies they might otherwise greet with skepticism. The claim that Obama demeans success is central to that narrative. It is impossible to judge with certainty from the boondocks of Lovecraft Country whether the major-league Republicanines with whom Mr. Sargent and "Fox-on-15th-Street" [3] are in contact down at Potomac River City warrant thus bein’ called liars flat out. Antecedently, however, and on the basis of our own off-and-on scrutiny of Massachusetts persons of state [4], we are certain that the vast majority of Otherpartisans below the very tippy-top of the iceberg really an’ truly believe that Barák Husâyn O’Bàma (¡ugh! ¡¡Ugh!! ¡¡¡UGH!!!) really and truly hates Business. Dr. Limbaugh has told the dittobrains so three (zillion) times, so ¿How could it possibly not be whight? Happy days. ___ [1] One does not, it appears, need to be a backwoodsperson to think and scribble in tired-blood media clichés. [2] ’Twas a wise move for Mr. Sargent to stick that ‘partly’ in. Even from remotest 02139 one can hardly miss that the marketin’ volks who flog the Governor Romney product line sincerely believe that His Excellency’s native flair, and dynastic breedin’, and especially, perhaps, his M. B. A. ’75 from the H*rv*rd Victory School, fit His Excellency to do much more than passively sympathize with the sad plight of Petty Business. Exactly what this "much more" may be could hardly be vaguer, but all the same, His Excellency would be a completely different sort of whight-wing pol if H. E. were continually oratin’, say, that one scarcely requires two pricey graduate degrees to be a competent practitioner of "¡Hands off the Secret Sector!" Mr. Sargent writes, too exuberantly for my taste, of "the Big Lie" and "lying relentlessly" and "larger falsehood" in conjunction with the recent doin’s of America’s Otherparty. Still, the Romney candidacy does involve a certain incongruity, let us call it, inasmuch as what the consensus of G.O.P. Geniuses sincerely know in their hearts and knavishly feel in their minds is very like "¡Hands off the Secret Sector!," that is to say, ’tis an unpolicy or antipolicy that Bozo the Clown could conduct successfully, were Bozo willin’ to huddle at once with Grover Freelord Norquist whenever anythin’ the least bit tricky-lookin’ turns up. I suppose it is possible to fancy that His Excellency knows and would implement special H*rv*rd or "case method" techniques of nonintervention and inaction and "¡Whatever is, is right!" King Log may have his special procedures of which King Stork knows nothing. Unfortunately, Paddy and Eye cannot imagine that pscenario in any detail, perhaps for the same reason we have never been able to grok the dogmatic mythology of Zen Buddhism. Be that as it may, there is no doubt at all that His Excellency is bein’ marketed as a special-techniques kind of guy, as somebooby who will think of ways and means of panderin’ to Big Management--maybe even to Pettybiz, at least a little--that ignorant lay sheeps like us would never think of in a million moons. Now if *we* was Eric Freelord of Fehrnstrom, this would be the Apotheosis of Cynicism: for complex reasons of Otherparty strategy an’ extremist AEIdeology, we would really and "in principle" prefer to elect the Bozo & Grover ticket, but find it expedient to back Governor Romney officially. Our primary self-justification would be that King Stork certainly *could* behave like King Log if His Majesty could be converted to Zen Whightism before the gold-standard days of good Willard XLV really get started. As a fall-back or "Plan B," we would console ourselves that even if His Ciconian Majesty gets in and then never does quight see the do-nothin’ whight, we can pretty well count on Congressional goodvolks like Johannes Freiherr von Böhner, and Erich Freiherr von Kantor, and Addison Mitchell Freiherr von McConnell (&c. &c.) to make sure that King Stork does not wreak much damage on the true long-term interests of the Sacred Secret Sector. All this would, as I said, be sheer cynicism on our part, cynicism of almost D. P. Moynihanian proportions. With the really existin’ Freiherr von Fehrnstrom, it is almost certainly not that at all, though admittedly Paddy and Eye cannot vividly imagine what it is that his freelordship believes in with total subjective sincerity. It could, perhaps, be no more that anybooby whom E. X. Fehrnstrom helps fund to the top of the greasy pole cannot possibly be all bad. [3] The expression is used by gracious nonpermission of Dr. Pressbeater and the all-prestigious Seeper Institution. [4] Since the now distant day when Comrade Governor Dukakis, running for President in his toy tank, declared that he would raise taxes "only as a last resort" and the Ailes / Atwater / Poppy Bush / Willie Horton crew promptly barked back that that was one resort H. E. would undoubtedly be checkin’ into, Paddy and Eye have taken a fitful interest in whether hack pols can seriously be accused of lying when they emit such noises. We decided then, and have never yet met anything to cause us to repent our decision, that in about 99.9% of the cases the dread Hellword is NOT strictly applicable. The other 00.1% pretty much consists of the late Neocomrade Senator D. P. Moynihan of NY, a "host in himself" in many senses, of which, however, the statistical or representative sense is not one. Since Dan Paddy’s ‘passing’, no one like unto him, clear-cold-cynicismwise, has arisen in Israël. Nobooby that we know of, that is, naturally. We have mentioned Grover Freelord Norquist. Not bein’ as exposed to mob view as hack pols proper are, his freelordship may perhaps qualify. Indeed, there would be a sort of poetic fitness if his freelordship did, in that the Bozo-Grover gruesome twosome we just invented or discovered would put America’s Otherparty in parentheses, as it were, between them, Bozo at the very bottom of the Party base an’ vile, his freelordship the very spiffiest of G.O.P. Geniuses, the only hound in the whole Republicanine pack bestembright enough to be a genuine cynic. This, however, is but daydreaming on our part. Much the better guess would be that his freelordship of Norquist, too, believes ever word that he barks with some sort of subjective sincerity, even though no decent political adult can make out what weird sort of neosincerity that would be.

Happy days.
--JHM

A Time to Choose

Dear Dr. Bones,

"Due to abuse" poor Paddy and Eye are "not permitted to post comments" to the ever-victorious Herald of Louisedayhicksville. So we shall dump our latest hand-crafted garbage on the Muses and yourself, sir:

N.Y. makes ad pitch to lure businesses Mass. sees waste of cash By Marie Szaniszlo | Monday, July 23, 2012 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Business & Markets New York has stepped up efforts to attract business to the state with a slick, two-year, $100 million marketing campaign that includes a new website and ads featuring celebrity New Yorkers, even as Bay State officials disputed the effectiveness of such campaigns. With one month down, “The New New York Works for Business” website alone, thenewNY.com, has had “roughly” 23,000 unique visitors and just under 26,000 page views, said Andrew Zambelli, counselor to Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The campaign also includes national ads featuring a voice-over by actor Robert DeNiro and the song “Empire State of Mind” by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys. “We think this campaign is a very important and exciting opportunity to tell New York’s story that it’s open for business,” Zambelli said. “We know it’s going to create jobs and strengthen our economy.” In a statement last week, Massachusetts Secretary of Housing and Economic Development Greg Bialecki dismissed the effectiveness of such campaigns, saying: “We have not seen any evidence that these sorts of ad campaigns actually drive business location decisions. It is not as glamorous, but we are putting our money into investments in education, innovation and infrastructure that create a sound foundation for business growth.” From June 1, 2011, to June 30 of this year, the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development’s website had 214,766 unique visitors and 1,728,693 page views, according to Google analytics. But Michael Greeley, a general partner at the Boston venture-capital firm Flybridge Capital Partners, called New York’s campaign “brilliant” and said Massachusetts “suffers from not looking cool enough.” Although actors such as Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Mark Wahlberg and Bridget Moynahan all grew up in the state, they no longer live here, Greeley noted. “Our celebrities are intellectuals; those are our rock stars, and we should play to our strength, which is that we solve really hard problems and work on ideas that matter,” he said. “We should be branding aggressively, (going) after our students because they’re already here, and we should be trying to keep them here.”

Well, there you are, Dr. Bones, you must make your choice and stand by it: ¿Do you wish to be governed still by John Winthrop and Secretary Bialecki, or would you prefer to swear neoallegiance to Flybynite Capital Partners LLC?

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side; Some great cause, God’s new Messiah, offering each the [Bloomberg] blight, Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right, And the choice goes by forever ’twixt that darkness and that light.

Happy days.
--JHM

Chick-fil-A (®) loves Bessie

None of the Blue Blazers or their parasites seem to have bothered (( fold here )) to look at the product rather than the propaganda. Having just done so, Paddy McTammany has to wonder if the Athens of Suffolk County is not being subtly spoofed or kidded: Chick-fil-A (®) does prole food.   It does prole food that would lower the sociogastronomic tone of Upper Revere Beach Drive. ¡If ever there was a case for applying that hoary jurisprudential maxim De minimis non curet Menino! My hypothesis therefore is that C-f-A made a deal with His Honor: they'd pretend to want to invade the Cradle of Liberty, and he'd pretend to be zealous to keep them out. Both parties look good that way to elements of their base (and possibly vile) constituencies, C-f-A with redstate liberal-haters and the Mayor with . . . well, you know. Neither side, as I conjecture, seriously wants anything to happen. Meanwhile we close students of the Boston Herald get a welcome break from "All Fehrnstrom all the time." Happy days. P.S. Especially suited to the Silly Season, is the noble and inspirational C-f-A Cow Campaign: In 1995, a renegade cow, paintbrush in mouth, painted the three words "EAT MOR CHIKIN" on a billboard. From that day forward, the burger-eating landscape would forever be changed. These fearless cows, acting in enlightened self-interest, realized that when people eat chicken, they don't eat them. Today, the cows’ herds have increased and their message reaches millions - on television, radio, the [I]nternet, and the occasional water tower. Needless to say, Chick-fil-A fully endorses and appreciates the monumental efforts made by our most beloved bovine friends.

Happy days.
--JHM

Superbia, thy name is Mittens Romney

Dear Dr. Bones,

In the ever-immortal words of

 (( Mittius Coriolanus Pompo ))

If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be ‘cause I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

That jive may sound vaguely familiar to you, sir, and there are good reasons why it should.

Exactly how the Daughters of Virtue & Sons of Wisdom (L.L.C.) baked the above poison pretzel are given in a piece the Talking Points Memo comrades have, with admirable restraint and impartiality, titled "Misleading Romney Ad Makes A Frankenstein Monster Of Obama Quote." [1]  The details of the TPM detwistification are not entirely satisfactory, but Paddy and Eye agree that to explain at a word-by-word level how one piece of prose was neo-travestied into another and do so in yet a third piece of prose is likely to end up with a product unreadable by anybody but professional students of rhetoric and agitprop.







Happy days.
--JHM

___
[1] That's by way of a funny as far as we are concerned, but Comrade Sarlin, the TPM scribbler, does indeed insist on sticking in a little deadpan fairembalance:

Selective editing has been a recurring issue for the campaign. (...) Romney has also been a victim of the practice: few, if any, Democratic attacks on his “I like being able to fire people” line noted that it was about being able to choose a health care provider.

Paddy and Eye do not read many "Democratic attacks," passing them over on the theory that we already know what we think and do not need to be reinforced by hearing a thousand other decent political grown-ups more or less agree. Whereas Republicanines and kiddie selfservatives say the darndest (and thus far more entertaining) things.

M. Coriolanus Pompo does not look very good, however, even given the benefit of every possible doubt about that exuberance. Very few patients this side of the nine-digit annual-income bracket can approach quacks and hospitals and medical-insurance salespersons as one who possesses full powers of hiring and firing.

Leaving Pompo aside, pretty well every whightist AEIdeologue who expects ‘competition’ to wreak wunners in this subsector forgets that patients often tend to be in poor health, and therefore not always at their best when it comes to comparison shopping for cancer spas and cardiac diagnosticians. Furthermore, many technically healthy persons also tend to start feeling a little sick and flustered when forced to think about quacks and quackery and sickness and d**th.

It is easy to see how such inattention could be exploited to improve the productivity of health-insurance Corporations in particular, but pretty silly (or deeply self-cynical) to pretend that competition has much to do with it. Most likely the bewildered valetudinarian or hypochondriac will gross overpay the first huckster who actually gets at her so as to be able to stop thinking dark thoughts. Only one in a million would cheerfully go on to see eleven more hucksters so as to make sure that Competition can do her thing properly.

When Catoholics and Hoovervillains and Heritagitarians assure their dupes an' marks that Competition an’ the Magic Market will work in medicine the same way they work in consumer electronics, one can be hard put not to think that their freelordships are simply lyin' through their pricey dental work. Probably this is not the case, but to explain why not would not fit in the e-margin.

Life after Seamus

Dear Dr. Bones,

Romney: the buck stops … somewhere else [updated] david | Fri, Jul 13, 2012 5:43 PM EST (( ... snip body of post as irrelevant to the McPun, though not bad in itself ... ))

(( baincappin' in progress ))

If you’re looking for stopped bucks, (( fold here )) the the learnèd wikipædiatricians may afford some guidance: [T]he following jurisdictions are considered the major destinations for offshore finance: * BERMUDA, which is market leader for captive insurance, and also has a strong presence in offshore funds and aircraft registration. * BRITISH VIRGIN ISLANDS, which has the largest number of offshore companies. * CAYMAN ISLANDS, which has the largest value of assets under management in offshore funds, and is also the strongest presence in the U.S. securitisation market. * JERSEY is the most international of the British Crown dependencies, all of which can be counted as offshore centres. Jersey has particularly strong banking and funds management sectors and a high concentration of professional advisers including lawyers and fund managers. * LUXEMBOURG, which is the market leader in Undertakings for Collective Investments in Transferable Securities (UCITS, pronounced YOU-sits) and is believed to be the largest offshore Eurobond issuer, although no official statistics confirm this. * NEW ZEALAND, the most remote jurisdiction, has the advantage of being a true primary jurisdiction but with a tough but practical regulatory regime. It is well positioned for the Asian market but retains close ties to Europe. * SINGAPORE has recently risen in stature as a centre for wealth management and ranked fourth in the world in the 2009 Global Financial Centres Index. The state is a hub for hedge funds and its private banking industry is growing at a rate of 30 per cent annually. As a number of observers have pointed out, Switzerland has somehow fallen from grace with the One Percenters. It seems to me, possibly wrongly, that the Wiki volks are a good deal more sympathetic with buckstoppers and buckstoppin’ than one might expect, given that most references to them in our backwater media are bitterly factious and hostile. In addition to "List of offshore financial centres," referenced above, see under "Offshore financial centre" and "Tax haven." Happy days.

The unjô-bito or "cærulean nobility and gentry who dwell aloft on the Great Blue Hill, hard by the Palace of Public Tubavision

on Market Street in 02135" manage to have a really remarkable amount of fun kicking that thread around, mostly because they asked one of their pet parasites to the feast, call him "The Troll of Waltham."

The Troll takes the line (( @Fri 13 Jul 7:47 PM )) that "By Monday, this will all backfire and you will be talking about Seamus again."

Nothing is less likely, I’d guess, but in any case the really interesting question is whether Their Worships have all stayed home from the beaches, and the mountains, and even the Caramoor Music Festival at Katonah NY itself, to argue with Danzo the Clown.

Nowdays, however, the gentry could all be out in their murder vehicles riding the roads of Greater New Iceland, each texting superior insights about reality-basing from her own private cell. There is no way to tell that Paddy and Eye can think of.

¿But perhaps the Muses and you can suggest one, Dr. Bones?

Happy days.
--JHM

Swiftalysis 1.0 Now Available!

Dear Dr. Bones,

This one is so much fun that Paddy and Eye were almost, but not in the end quite, ready to pester the nobility and gentry with it as a from-scratch McPost.  I assume we'll be able to hang it on somewhere without being egregiously off-topic.

The goodvolks who brought you swiftboating (( fold here )) have now gone on to invent or discover Swiftalysis (Pat. Pend.), which works like this: The Associated Press review of campaign finances looked only at the three months reported in the first quarter of 2012, which may well under report the total percentage of out of state contributions made to the Warren campaign. Breitbart News undertook an analysis of all itemized contributions from individuals (those in excess of $200) reported by the Warren campaign in the three quarterly reports it has filed from its inception until the end of March 31, 2012 – the end of the first quarter of 2012. Out of 11,505 such itemized contributions during this period, we sampled 397. Our methodology was simple. We looked at all those itemized contributors whose last name began with A. Of these 397, a total of 254, or 64%, were from outside of the state of Massachusetts, while only 143, or 36% were residents of Massachusetts. Additional mathematical analysis of Ms. Warren’s first quarter 2012 Federal Election Commission report suggests that, though she received a total of 30,000 donations from residents of Massachusetts during this period, she likely received an additional 40,000 donations from those who lived outside of Massachusetts. There is more where that came from, notably (A) a convenient, though in principle only temporary, explanation of why there happens to be nothing to methodologize against Senator Fratboy, and (B), in the last paragraph, a fine specimen of the output from Comrade Bernstein of the Phoenix’s "right-wing slime machine." (( "It is the dawning of the Age of Breitbartius, Age-of-Brightbartius, ¡Bright-BAAAAR-Tee-Yuss! ))

We did not make anything of the Bernstein scribble itself, but it may be worth mentiioning that it contains a snapshot

of the BoZo Skipper, eponym of all lysdexic eno-conservatives.

Moreover, the author of the above specimen is Michael Patrick, Freelord of Leahy, who also gets a mug shot chez Bernstein.

Happy days.
--JHM

Unnatural History Notes #13 & #14 for Silly Season 2012

"Lobsters, like snails and spiders and the Massachusetts Republican Party, have blue blood due to the presence of Crustacean Virtue."

===

Et sous les arcades, l'étrange visiteur cria bien fort : - Pas de z'homards… En quoi un z'homard est-il plus ridicule qu'un chien, qu'un chat, qu'une gazelle, qu'un lion ou toute autre bête dont on se fait suivre ? J'ai le goût des z'homards, moi. Ils sont tranquilles, sérieux, savent les secrets de la mer. Et ¡ils n'aboient pas!… Puis l'homme s'éloigna, bombant le torse d'une manière comique, pour dissimuler son ivresse. Oui, décidément, nous vivons dans une époque étrange ! Népomucène Trouilleux In : La gazette de Paris , dimanche 21 janvier 1855

Happy days.

"when Mitt Romney dumps Eric Fehrnstrom"

Dear Dr. Bones,

Nothing to worry about ... for now By Peter Gelzinis | Saturday, July 7, 2012 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists According to the numbers, I guess I’m supposed to be worried. As long as the unemployment figure hovers above [eight] percent, as long as a measly 80,000 or so Americans joined the workforce last month, the numbers say it looks bad for my guy ... my president and yours, Barack Obama. (( ... )) I’ll start worrying when Mitt Romney dumps Eric Fehrnstrom.

The parting sentiment would be nothing remarkable coming from somebooby who never had anything to do with Dr. Etch-A-Tax. Appearing in the very e-columns of the Fehrnstrom Herald, however, it’s breathtaking.

Though evidently in general a sane political adult, Mr. Gelzinis appears to have caught a bad case of self-altruism from his associates of the Tee Putty underclass.    I speak of that dotty-noble self-immolation by which a Bob Cratchitt prefers good old Ebb Scrooge’s economic interests to his own, the enhanced productivity an’ competitiveness of ScroogeBank (a Corporate Citizenness which Cratchitt is far too financially embarrassed to specuvest in personally) over patient protection and affordable medicine for his own flesh and blood.

I believe, Dr. Bones, that I shall now recycle my golden oldie about "biting the Invisible Hand," though in reality Eric Freelord Fehrnstrom is caught sight of rather too often for his Employin’ Dynasty’s good.

Moving whight along, ’tis a pity Mr. Gelznis does not drag ’Fingers’ Fehrnstrom in before the literal bottom line. His freelordship has more to do with the current state of W. M. Romney’s Gee-Had for TopPercenterdom than most scribblers, especially national ones, appreciate. Most of the hot grease in which any competent personnel manager would have Freelord Fehrnstrom boilin’ at this point comes of his freelordship payin’ way too much attention to Massachusetts. Had E. F. but taken his lead from the Master of Seamus (not to mention, of himself) an’ thought always of us humble as "¿Massa-WHERE?", why, the tax/fee/penalty fandangoe

would never have happened. The only point of it was to defend His Excellency’s conduct on Beacon Hill, which became an entirely superfluous project once the decision had been taken, I presume at Dynasty level, never to admit that the Gov. governed any place in particular, apart from maybe the pricier ski slopes of Deseret.

The previous etch-a-sketch exuberance was not obviously New-Iceland parochial and provincial, I admit, but there was a sort of far-off allegorical connection nevertheless. At any rate, Paddy and Eye like to think it was The Candidate who first mentioned the kiddie toy in question to the hired handler, several days before the fuss, no doubt explainin’ how one goes about turnin’ a Massachusetts into a ¿Massa-WHERE? in three shakes or less.  His freelordship, who certainly looks like the sort to have had a toy-free, algebra-stuffed childhood, didn’t quite catch the allusion, an’ wrongly supposed the point was to crank out a brand new Neoromney every week or so, as of course his freelordship an’ the b’hoys in the Hancock Tower had been doin’ all along.

Speaking of local landmarks, I wonder whether Mr. Gelzinis feels the same slight check of puzzlement that Paddy and Eye do whenever one of those out-of-commonwealth scribblers writes ‘Boston’ and means Romney Gee-Had Headquarters, that is to say, "his freelordship of Fehrnstrom an’ the b’hoys at Bain an’ Shawmut"? The accuracy is impeccable, but somehow it is overwhelmed by the oddity of a Yank pol campaignin’ for President out of a "home-state" jurisdiction which nobooby thinks he has the slightest chance of carryin’.

’Twere too much to expect, I guess, that the Governor should ship the Fingers of Fehrnstrom down to Grand Cayman to keep the Dynastic portfolioes company, an’ incidentally vindicate full disclosure, but why not to Manhattan Island?  Or Potomac River City?

Happy days.

Introducing CutelessCare

Dear Dr. Bones,

As usual Paddy and Eye disapprove of wasting a lot of time trying to figure out whether trendy neoreactionaries like Dr. Cuteless "really believe" in their own

McCain’s alternative was more honest, he should introduce it again dont-get-cute | Mon, Jul 2, 2012 1:46 AM EST So Romney can’t offer a credible alternative to the Affordable Care Act, since ObamaCare is based on RomneyCare. But there is a viable alternative that was proposed by John McCain, who beat Romney for the nomination in 2008 with this plan. People were up in arms against McCain about how his plan would “tax healthcare” because it would treat employer health insurance contributions as taxable income, which they totally are. But we can see now that McCain’s plan was way more honest about calling a tax a tax, and then spending to provide for the general welfare, by giving everyone a refundable tax credit to use with a regulated insurer on the national market, to buy as much insurance as they wanted, from a minimum of curable diseases and treatable injuries without subsidizing abortion or contraception or sex change operations. McCain’s plan also would have smoothly moved people to individual plans and allowed businesses to drop coverage and focus on their business, without screwing over their workers, who would all smoothly transition to individual plans for no cost. Warren knows that businesses are burdened by the present system, that was the main reason she advocated for Single Payer. But McCains plan accomplishes that without mandating coverage or moving to single payer, just by offering these individual plans to everyone free of charge and automatically. McCain should re-introduce his bill, he’s still a Senator. His bill was and is better, less coercive and offensive and expensive. Maybe Palin will pick him to be her running mate.

 Bologna und Wienerwurst.

This morning's delivery from the Wingnut Deli does, however, tempt us more than most to break our own regulations, given a Big Picture in which it seems quite clear that if America's Otherparty does manage to get all those patients disprotected again and their medical affordabilities squelched, that will be the end of the matter. The second bark of "¡Repeal an' replace!" is, for practical purposes, about as close to a flat-out lie as the Daughters of Virtue & Sons of Wisdom (LLC) allow themselves.

To look on the positive (sort of) or flip side, the one thing competent whightist agitproppers say about public medicine that raises no question whatsoever about their subjective sincerity is that our holy Homeland™ already possesses "the Best in the World." One need not even specify the Best what, exactly, though naturally we shall here be talking about nondeductibles and hospitals and copayments and wunnerdrugs and quacks and all that healthcare jazz in particular. In that area, "¡We're Nummer One!" is laughably counterfactual just by itself, yet many whightists go farther, claimin' that Uncle Sam already has "the Best (medical) System in the world," thereby committin' themselves to the dotty fancy that under all the visible doo-doo prances a pony named System. [1]

As with Mlle. de la Main Invisible an' the Confidence Fairy, only the Pure of Heart (LLC) have ever actually beheld this marvelous critter. But that is quite OK, for, as whightist agitprop likes to remind us rather too often, Uncle Sam certainly does host the Best Dogmatic Mythology--the largest quantity of volks-religionism, that is--in the world, making the Homeland™ers far more likely to go along with "¡Shut your eyes and clap your hands!" than are cold and cynical Lesser Breeds Without. Paddy and Eye think one might even say that any self-described Americanoe who insists on actually seeing evidence for Our NummerOneness is a criminalien spiritually if not literally a wetback: ¡beati qui non viderent et crediderunt!, Ev. Iohan. XX, 29.

We go on about this angle, of course, because of the ever-immortal BBP, Boston Brahmin Principle.   If Our NummerOneness be one’s point of departure, well, there can be no point in making the trip. ¿Why should a dowager wingnutette like Dr. Cuteless travel for her health care, even with the posthonourable and neogallant J. Sidney McCain as tour guide, when, obviously, her freeladyship is already here? Shoud the freedame sail off into the sunrise beyond Hull anyway, Paddy and Eye trust we may be excused for guessing that her freeladyship has gone a-slummin' as, I fear, a few Victorian Brahminesses appear to have done also, sallying forth to inspect the shanties of the Irish and the cooking utensils of the Cannibal Isles chiefly to reassure themselves that the Athens of Suffolk County really is the hub of the universe. Or damnwell oughtabe.



___
[1] If it amuses you, Dr. Bones, to hold the kiddiecons’ noses to the AEIdeological grindstone more strictly than they do themselves, notice that the doo-doo in question would be better off without the pony. "¡Whatever is, is whight!" can be called a ‘system’ only by courtesy, and by a kind of courtesy that could get one incinerated back in Ye Goode Olde Dayes. To recommend anythin' that may come to pass in the Holy Market on any grounds other than that it did in fact happen carries one nine-tenths of the way down the slippery slope to Psocialism, theoretically, in the battin’ of a wing.

In practice, fortunately, whight-wing selfservicers are no great shakes at thinkin' what they do, let alone at watchin’ what they think. Like mostvolks, the Daughters of Virtue & Sons of Wisdom (LLC) are happy enough to buy an occasional copy of Selfservicement for Dummies in which True Whighteousness has been diluted down into a vulgar Peruna that features rules, and guidelines, and checklists, and neostandarized tests--hustled, that is, into bein’ precisely a System.

There are a number of ideoproducts of this general type available, adapted to a wide range of meanness of intelligence. At the top stand (we guess) the Classmates of Governor Romney, who is H*rv*rd Victory School M.B.A. ’75. At the bottom, Ann Baron Coulteress, say, or perhaps Don Jonasito de Lucianne y Steinberger, invincible bozoes. For Market reasons, presumably, such Otherparty potboilers cannot be entirely identical in their substance, meaning that from time to time one handy-dandy whightist checklist will differ from the next about the acceptable perimeters of selfservicement. At the moment, the Chief Justice of the United States is provokin' a remarkable variety of conflictin’ly ‘whight’ answers, all drawn from the back pages of one edition or another of Selfservicement for Dummies.