On the Introduction of ‘Competition’ in Tert. Ed.

Tax Tuition dont-get-cute | Thu, Apr 26, 2012 2:24 PM EST People should pay tax to buy higher education and college degrees. Colleges are now exposed as evil corporations, overpaying their CEOs and star faculty, underpaying their actual workers, and overcharging their customers and the government, and blatantly misrepresenting the cost and value of their diplomas, and they pay no taxes, not even a property tax. Screw them! A nice steep progressive tax on tuition would curb the trend of ever-rising tuition costs, and take the money from the schools, not the taxpayers. Yes, the increased cost of the tax would cause people to either pay it if they could, or choose a cheaper school, but soon I think the tax would eventually be absorbed by the schools, who would immediately have to lower their tuition rates to continue to attract students, and so they would have to cut salaries and research programs and new building projects and land grabs. Ooh, and we should grab back some of that land, just to sell it to developers to make money, as per Kelo. We know where the money is, we can see all the new expensive buildings going up and see the Lexuses and BMW’s at the end of long perfectly manicured Cambridge driveways, we hear about needless research and programs they spend money on. If there is going to be a bail-out of student debt, and there should be, it should not be paid by the tax payers, it should be paid by the schools. Recommended by nopolitician

Tongue in cheek? I didn’t take it that way, especially since DGC has a history of “interesting” ideas. Some places, like Canada, have Good AND SERVICES tax so in general it might be worthy of discussion. However, my first reaction to the idea of taxing tuition specifically is, “You want to make tuition even LESS affordable?” That’s a service many non-wealthy strive to obtain! christopher @ Thu 26 Apr 4:05 PM

People can afford what they can afford Universities will still be competing for the same students with the same amount of money. So I’m arguing that to stay competitive and keep their enrollments up, schools would absorb the tax and lower their tuition by the amount of the tax so their students can still afford it. Make them be the villains if they don’t lower their tuition. dont-get-cute @ Thu 26 Apr 5:58 PM

Now 'tis all very well for the goodvolks over to the

(( WhightGuard Officers Mess ))

to take Competition as their latest wunnerworkin' Peruna, capable of copin' even with the bicycle-challenged perfesseriate.

Blue Blazers very naturally don’t see things quite like that, for "Educational Darwinism," so to christen the nifty new ideoproduct, would adversely effect, if perhaps not themselves, then at least people they know and would not care to see distressed. Circumstances under which mainstream B.B.’s would "make them (purveyors of Tertiary Educationalism) be the villains" are not easy to imagine, apart from a few obvious profiteerin’ nogoodniks like the so-called "University of Phoenix."

Tert. Ed. is special, one might almost say ‘sacred’, in the eyes of Blazers. To teach college is such a wonderful, heart-warming, Life-enhancing activity, so ganz und gar geistig, that it seems to Their Worships to be well worth doing even when it is done pretty bad.   Hence (as the present keyboard analyzes) the firm alliance between us supercerulæan H*rv*rds at one extreme and, say, Turtle Pond Community College at the other, an alliance that can never make a great deal of sense to the crude materialist. Why, ¡’tis as if all those pettybiz moms and pops out in Televisionland had, re verâ, no better and truer friend in all the world than Wal-Mart an´ Target and the rest of the retailin’ Godzillas!

Assuming, as Paddy does assume, that what we have here is basically a sort of afterglow from the former Christojudæanity, no doubt the ‘competition’ Neoperuna will find itself a comfy niche in the Tert. Ed. market sooner or later. ‘Later’, however, may mean whole decades and degenerations, centuries even, from here and now. The Numinous tends to have a long, long half-life.

Meanwhile, back in the Mess, perhaps Dr. Cuteless and like-minded WhiteGuardists can do a little to hasten the day when Tert. Ed. shall cease at last to be too hot to be touched.  American D*cl*ne, for instance, offers some promising possibilities: on the supply side, fewer and fewer Homeland™ers will have enough "spare change" to set up as even the most humble imitators of John D. Geckefeller--¡wunnerful man was he! [*]--and the University of Chicagonomics. All those AEIdeologues, and Catoholics, and Heritagitarians, and Hoovervillains of Palo Alto, &c. &c. may be in for less support from their Venerable Funders than they are countin’ on as well, though that is rather another story.

On the demand side, it seems pretty likely that the blessèd Jobcreationist Class will not be hirin’ a large number of the recent and future fruits of Tertiary Educationalism. Not the local fruits, anyway. Shanghai and Bangalore, I dunno about for sure. The general tendency of outsizin’ and downsourcin’ and baincappin’ does not look good for Tert. Ed., though I hesitate to presume to be a competent judge of such purely economic appearances as these. Still, compelled at gunpoint to specuvest on the economic future one way or the other, I would definitely *not* assume a completely price-inelastic attitude about the wunnerfulness of Uncle Sam disposing of a huge reserve army of overeducated (or, if you prefer, over-‘educated’) plebes and proles.

Though ¿Possibly if one were to conscript them into the real Army . . . ?

Happy days.
--JHM

_____
[*] John D. Rockefeller (by F. Frank Steigmeyer)
(3 verses plus chorus:)

John D. Rockefeller
Wonderful man is he,
Gives all his spare change to the U. of C.
He keeps the ball a rolling
In our great Varsity;
He pays Doctor Harper
To help us grow sharper,
To the glory of U. of C.

The "Total Lie" Problem, Viewed from the Virtual Outside

Dear Dr. Bones,

Anybody aspiring to labour in vaine could not do better than try to get our blue-hilled Classmates to think a little about how they look to proles and plebes and the Herald of Louisedayhicksville. Accordingly, I sing the next little ditty for the Muses and for you, sir:

Back in Ye Goode Olde Dayes,  (( fold here )) nobility and gentry and intelligènti, if we had any yet, used to speak French at table rather than the local vernacular so as to avoid this sort of spectacular show of Class unsolidarity. ¿What are the poor servants to make of their Betters going at one another hammer and sickle and "Only one problem ... it's a total lie"? In the blessèd name of Intellectual Foundation, Paddy McTammany implores Your Worships to take care. Think of 1789, of 1917, of 1968! ¡¡Think of 1994, for Pete’s sake!!

===
What Eye have written, I have written, but it does rather give the impression that I take ‘bradm’ for a proper Blue Blazer, a mistake that would be inexcusable after his freelordship went far, far out of the way to make it clear [*] that he is affiliated rather to the ever-victorious

(( WhightGuard Officers Mess ))

Happy days.
--JHM

_____
[*]

bradm From The BlueMassGroup rules: We have found that commentators who disclose their real names are in general more likely to be constructive than those who are anonymous. We encourage users to add their real name, profession, age, the jurisdiction where they vote, and conflicts of interest to their profile. My name is Brad Marston. My firm acts as campaign consultants to Republican candidates and am in my early fifties. I live on Beacon Hill. My congressman is Stephen Lynch. My State Senator is Anthony Petruccelli and my State Representative is Martha "Marty" Walz. My district City Councillor is Mike Ross. I ran against Representative Walz in 2010 and lost by a wider margin than Mac D'Allesandro lost to Stephen Lynch. Throughout the 2010 campaign I posted here at BlueMassGroup and while few here agreed with my positions, I was generally applauded for not only posting but actually engaging with people by coming back and commenting and discussing. I am a fiscal, small government conservative and social moderate who believes that abortion should be legal and that all citizens should be equally protected and have the same rights under our Constitution. My political and professional affiliations are listed below. Chairman - Boston Ward 5 Republican Committee Treasurer - Boston Republican City Committee Partner and Co-Founder of FourTier Strategies, LLC Person #7902: 1 Posts | Recommended: 0 times

"Yes, fine, sure -- but ¿where is the birth certificate?"

It kinda spoils one's sport to have the O. B. done for one, and boxed, and shrinkwrapped, like that.

Plus maybe there is a little too much of it. Paddy and Eye need only about thirty keystrokes, though of course as indolent moochers, we took the liberty of linking. His freelordship seems not to keep a blog all his own, but may be e-ncountered to some extent over to here.

A poor thing (but mine own)

Dear Dr. Bones,

So far, Paddy has not managed to think of a really good "manchild-bites-dog" joke, but ¿perhaps thie following will do you as a snack or appetizer while research continues?

Any LFOD goodvolks who would christen a daughter ‘Tory’ (( fold here )) are to be commended highly, it seems to me, for havin’ raised her up in the same ideology in which she was hatched. It shows a genuine "¡Life free or die!" abhorrence of all political correctness: ¿what, after all, can a mere twelvescore years maatter in the eyes of really SEVERE (to borrow an epithet) neoreactionaries? It might be interesting to hear this freedame’s principal, Governor Romney of MA, cross-examined about George III, and his own predecessor the late Gov. Hutchinson, and the job-creational value, if any, of the East India Company, and so on, and so forth: "¿Is the Master of Seamus also a Friend of the King? ¿How much does it matter--should it matter--that Queen Charlotte "never worked a day in her life"? ¡Colonists want to know! On the other hand, what with Hollywood and Foxcuckooland ever at hand, one must reckon with the possibility that ‘Tory’ was not the unit’s original nomenclature. As with "John Fund," the Wall Street Jingoe, a semi- or quasi-allegorical itch to improve upon Nature in quest of meretricious entertainment values could be at work here. Which is why it is so urgent that nobody be allowed to vote without presenting at least two birth certificates and a retina scan. Or vice versa. Happy days. --JHM

Happy days.

Yet Another Rejected E-dress

Dear Dr. Bones,

Kindly file this, too, under "Letters the editor was spared":

"Go it, husband! Go it, bear!" (( fold here )) ’Tis politics in stereo, begorrah, for Paddy McTammany to be able to venerate this rescript sent down from the unjoo-bito, or (( ´Gentlemen Who Dwell Above the Clouds’ )) at the very same moment I hear Howard Lawrence Louis Carr [*] goin’ on in the background as if (non-(voluntary overpayment)) of taxes were obviously a killer issue for Team Fratboy. Paddy is somehow vaguely reminded of an anecdote about the ex-Founder of the Party of Grant & Hoover & Goldwater & Atwater, as follows: As a politician, Lincoln made excellent use of his humorous stories. His long time political opponent Stephen A. Douglas complained that Lincoln’s jokes were "like a slap across my back. Nothing else—not any of his arguments or any of his replies to my questions—disturbs me. But when he begins to tell a story, I feel that I am to be overmatched." More than once Douglas and other political opponents of Lincoln’s saw their eloquently presented arguments forgotten by the audience after Lincoln followed up their speeches with a homely story or anecdote. At Alton, Illinois, during the last of the “great debates” with Douglas, Lincoln told a story that illustrated how he felt about a political feud that was currently raging between Democratic senator Douglas and the head of the Democratic Party. He said he felt like the old woman that, not knowing who was going to win a brawl between her husband and a bear, decided to cheer for both of them: "Go it husband, go it bear!" Massa Howie bein’ the bear, naturally. Paddy is a Demoncrat, though maybe not altogether a Lieberal one. Not strictly relevant, but definitely kinda fun is this (( ¿Huh? )) little trouvée. Happy days. ___ [*] Or possibly Howard Lewis Lawrence Carr. Paddy think to self, "¿Could we see the birth certificate, Howie?

In short, then, Paddy and Eye tend to prefer whichever of Perfesser St. Elisabeth of Warrenbuffet and Sen. Fratboy it was from whom we did not heard least recently.

The real McReject, by the way, is available over here.

Happy days.

"Only disentangle"

Dear Dr. Bones,

Wombschoolin’ and freedumbin’ down are far advanced: I mean ¡Just look at what this pro Kiddiemaster thinks he can get away with!

It occurs to me that maybe we should not get so struck by the neopastors that we slight their freelordships’ scattered sheeps in our analyses. Here, at any rate, in the Rev. Dr. Claving's peanut gallery, is an errant ewe with an interesting bleat that I do not think we have encountered before. Narcissa Dextra complains, in effect, tht she cannot think straight in the Wicked Moden World because there is SO MUCH NOISE [1].

The original of that is, expressed in the local dialect of Happy Pastures OK, runs "We [Daughters of Virtue & Sons of Wisdom, LLC] still can’t do a decent job of disentangling ... — precisely because leftists scream ... at any attempt to do so ...." [0]

Entangled the kiddies accordin’ly remain, though that may change before too long, when the gates around all those "gated communities" finally get their heads lifted up proud an’ proper. Plus of course there must be sandtraps, an’ mantraps, an’ Rotweilers, an’ AK’s-47, und Niedersturmabteilungen &c. &c. _quant. suff._

Poor Ms. Narcy’s exact condition will not, perhaps, be addresed directly by these measures. Gates, as such, afford very little in the way of sound damping. Moreover, some of those ancillary paraphernalia, _sine quibus non_, can generate an immense amount of racket at times. Perhaps Rear-Colonel the Rev. Klavan, or more likely a lesser rank, will be able to make her the occasional house call in his APC to point out that there is good (self-defensive) noise as well as aggressive BAD NOISE. Which latter Mizz Narcy herself, after all, has just specified as emanatin’ from ‘leftists’. [*]

Predicting the exact details of any one local neoparamilitary situation in advance is silly, but it occurs to me that the Happy Pasture Rangers, as it may be, may want to set up a buffer of "scorched earth," real, figurative, or somewhere in between, around the outside perimeter of their circled wagons. Mere distance can abate noise if there be enough of it, and in any case the other strategic, operational and tactical advantages of establishing a Freedumb of Fire Zone (FFZ) are immense. One does not have to be a grand theorist of Native Management like Dr. Gen. D. X. Petrolæus of Princeton and West Point to appreciate thee advantages. Indeed, Foxcuckooland as it exists already--more exactly, the backwater media taken collectively--could be understood as a sort of preliminary sketch for the more bricks-an’-mortar FFZ’s of the day after tomorrow, when the Age of Breitbartius shall have well an’ truly dawned.

Happy days.
--JHM

___
[0] Let us be gallant enough to hear Mizz Narcy out:

1. Akatsukami I believe that you are taking cover behind the same strawman that leftists have devised to shelter themselves. Leftists love to find a exception to the rule and proclaim that that exception justifies their schemes . Is it impossible to find a white supremacist who has attended a TEA Party rally? Is it impossible to find a family of Mexican illegals who are a net benefit to America? Is it impossible to find a person who cannot afford therapy for cancer and to whom no one will give aid? Do those things justify “hate speech” laws, refusal to patrol the Mexican border, and Obamacare? We have a disconnect in that “blackism” — the ghetto culture that glorifies illiteracy, violence, misogyny, and homophobia — is deliberately confused by leftists with African ancestry. In fact, African-Americans despise the term for the reasons I have given (and it won’t do you any good to be smiling if you call a West Indian “black”). Despite Herrnstein and Murray’s The Bell Curve, we still can’t do a decent job of disentangling ethnicity and culture — precisely because leftists scream “Racism! You’re a RACIST!!!” at any attempt to do so (and note that The Bell Curve ad subsequent efforts didn’t claim that a person’s intelligence is determined by genetics, but is influenced by it). To say that the outcome of a person’s life is determined by sheer luck is Rawlsian leftism. April 16, 2012 - 5:06 am Link to this Comment | Reply

It would be a pleasure to examine that precious contribution to the Kiddie Kriticism of Mr. Rawls of H*rv*rd, but Paddy and Eye have been scribbling long enough to prefer to return to our crypt now [04/17/2012 06:15] that the sun is rising.


[1] While I am thus "taking fortresses with my fingertips," as Père Joseph put it once to is Eminence, it occurs to me that once G-Day is behind us, with Freelords, Kiddiemasters, an’ Party base-‘n’-vile alike all safely neocommunitized--along with presumably some admixture of dubious Strangers, concernin’ whom measures will have to be taken that we need not envision for the other team--the rhetoric geography of Pork & Starboard will have to work a little differently. Instead of a linear ‘spectrum’ there will be a spiral galaxy. ‘Whight’ will the inward or "incomin’" neodirection, towards the centre of Hill City City. ‘Leff’ will be the opposite. Of course both these could be any bearing from 000 to 360 and back again if expressed in the pre-Gated system.

It might help to imagine the wingnutettes an’ wingnuts blissfully circumambulatin’ their Greater Omphalos clockwise: "Kin side always on the in side," the Hiawatha of Mr. Longfellow of H*rv*rd might croon it, plus--¡as if especially for our Miss Narcy! [*]--"Shout side always on the out side." Assuming the Neosaints do not trip much over those Strangers, that plan ought in principle to keep ’em safely disentangled indefinitely.

That arrangement in place, all the aurally challenged will require is to be furnished with a single plug fitted for the port ear. Or make that two, in case one goes AWOL. As for the unchallenged, it need only be ’turf’bagged into them that whatever they hear from the leff is NOISE, whereas all that comes to them from the whight must _eo ipso_ be Music.

Freelords an’ Kiddiemasters will no doubt hear it that way without special care or trainin’. The PB&V, on the other hand, "Party Base an’ Vile," may not always appreciate this NOISE/Music distinction spontaneously as theior Betters do, but this is an old song for all Selfservatism, civil or ecclesiastical. Perhaps the oldest song of all. Ignorant lay sheep must consent to be guided by the Wisdom of FirstEstaters, as enforced by the Valour of SecondEstaters. To dissent from the one, or offer futile resistance to the other, is to unmask oneself as no better than a weasel in sheep’s clothin’, a Stranger amongst the Neoëlect. [**]

___
[*] "Thoughts beyond their thoughts / To those High Bards were given."


[**] At this point in most similar diatribes, the Rev.Torquemada or somebooby similar is wont to turn up to add "a block to be stumbled over, ¡a tare to be extirpated!" Present company can do without that. I only mention it to indicate that we have now arrived at the point in question.

"Waiter, there is a manchild in my intellectual foundation"

Dear Dr. Bones,

Did Poetic Justice but sway the world, sir, as obviously She ought, those who live by drool about "intellectual foundation" would die by ditto. Preferably with the same sort of lingering demise inflicted by those proverbial sadists who use saccharine as rat poison.

But already I digress. Their Worships the Blue Blazers, who really ought to get out more, are in a state of Casblanca shock about a ninth-magnitude provincial señorito from the Merrimack Valley who saw fit to scribble as follows:

Opinion | April 15, 2012 Column: Obama can’t be bothered to defend his positions Matthew May In his classic work "Rhetoric", Aristotle wrote "Persuasion is achieved by the speaker’s personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. We believe good men more firmly and more readily than others; this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely true where exact certainty is impossible and opinions divided." And then there is Barack Obama. (( ... )) Since his inauguration, Barack Obama has not deigned to put forth the effort to convince. He is emblematic of the postmodern pampered manchild, (( ¡gasp! )) fancying that his endless, awkward declarations as reason enough to demolish the citizen’s relationship to the government. He is petulant and wishes to steamroll dissent and transparency in word and deed. These are not attributes that Aristotle would have recognized as the characteristics of a credible man. Because Barack Obama is incredible, he is incapable of persuading those who believe in ordered liberty and republican government that his cause is just. • • • Matthew May is a contributor to _The University Bookman_ and the _American Thinker_ and is the author of the book "Restoration." He welcomes comments at may.matthew.t@gmail.com.

Now is the month of mayin’ / When Mattbo’ gets to playin’, / With a hey, an’ a ho, an’ a hey-nonny-O, / ¡Sweet wingnuts love the spring!

But seriously, sorta, Paddy and Eye think it pretty indicative that the unjoo-bito, "gentlemen who dwell above the clouds on the upper slopes of the Great Blue Hill, hard by the Palace of Public Television," should fling themselves into a tisei over ‘manchild’ whereas we, who have heard it a couple of dozen times already from Dr. Limbaugh an’ othervolks like thereunto, were vastly more struck to find little Bozoe tryin’ to drag in Il maestro di color ((¡N. B.!)) che sanno [1]. Then there is our joint surprise to learn that the said University Bookman has managed to survive the passin’ of Kiddiemaster Kirk-rhymes-with-‘jerk’. It had always seemed a strictly supply-side phænomenon, the Yoo Bee did. Ah, well, "¿Who’ ’a’ thunk that the higher braindeath has undone so many?" [2]

For the record (and possible future diagnoses) we had better preserve a specimen or two of what we understand by "Casablanca shock":

That uppitty "manchild" in the Whitehouse is annoying the Wingnuts again. methuenprogressive | Sun, Apr 15, 2012 8:43 PM EST The Lawrence Eagle Tribune has printed a Matthew May screed wherein he blows the dogwhistle LOUD – calling President Obama a “manchild.” Do you have a Disqus account? If so, please let them know what you think . . . . (( snip ))

Wow... Honestly, the whole column is amazing. Has anyone ever heard of this guy? The stuff on the health care law is truly laughable. david @ Sun 15 Apr 9:49 PM

Happy days.
_____
[1] Inferno IV:131

[2] op. cit. III:56f.

Something there is that does not love a [fence]

Dear Dr. Bones,

I have rather neglected our old ideobuddy

(( Dr. Pressbeater of the Seeper Institution ))

lately, probably because Baron Izatsu has retired, or fallen prey to cyberassassination, and no longer brightens the mammonological

(( dismal swamp ))

by raising urchinworthy doubts about His Imperial Majesty’s latest wardrobe propensities.

Returning after an absence of a week or ten days, then, Paddy and Eye were greeted by a virtual barbed-wire fence bearing the admonition "(Only one link allowed per comment)."

As you know, sir, I have always been a devotee of Mr. Thurber's maxim "Where there is a ‘will’, there is a ‘won't’." So here, without more ado, as is my wont, . . . :

Defending President Obama and the 1 Percent Saturday, 14 April 2012 08:14 There are plenty of reasons to bash President Obama and even more to bash the richest 1 percent of the income distribution, but it is possible to go off track. The _Post_ did so today in citing a study by that shows the top 1 percent got 93 percent of the income gains from 2009-2010. This is highly misleading because the vast majority of these income gains were capital gains due to the rebound of the stock market following its collapse in 2008-2009. Using this same measure of income, the top 1 percent suffered 49 percent of the income losses in the recession. While it is reasonable to include capital gains in a measure of income growth over a long-term (this is money that people have at their disposal), the short-term fluctuations give a very misleading measure of distribution of income. President Bush was not a hero to the bottom 99 percent because the stock market crashed under his watch and President Obama is not a >>> SOP <<< for the rich because it recovered while he was in office. (Now bailing out Wall Street is a different matter.) (( ... ))

_Ad quem responduisset Patricius Tammaniodes_:

"President Obama is not a sop for the rich" (( fold here )) A failed stab at ‘sap’, Internet Critic guesses that must be. If the consumer of prose were really being solicited to compare and contrast how the TopPercenters would be doing today, had J. Sidney McCain won the last election and handed his Classmates the whole loaf instead of half a dunked doughnut, there would have been some ancillary stage business. With the proposed emendation, no mindreading is required. Dr. Pressbeater would then be marching in the middle of a familiar donkey parade that stepped off when Comrade Carville wished he could ‘pass’ and be reincarnated as the Bond Market, so as to be able get a little of the President's attention. Less seriously, Mr. O'Bama's $800K of taxable take-home boodle may look like riches to an ignorant lay sheep, yet half was salary, one reads, and the other half literary royalties--nothing to do with capital gains and the dread B. M.

A certain ‘Paul’ glossed Comrade Pressbeater's latest as follows:

Obama Should Be Praised for the Stock Market Doubling in Value written by Paul, April 14, 2012 9:51 PM (( snip edifying quotation from St. Maynard of Keynes )) One of the strongest forces driving the increasing propensity to consume has been the massive rally in the stock markets which has now run more than 3 years and looks ripe for more gains. Since consumption increases are essential to our economic recovery, criticizing Obama for Wall Street's recovery is simply ludicrous. (( ... ))

I daresay it is my own skipping class that leaves me unable to decide whether this e-person is spoofing us or not when he refers to three years of "increased propensity to consume" as of the closing bell last Friday afternoon, 13 April 2012.

¡Internet Critic would definitely be kidding, though, if *EYE* said that!

It is possible, however, that the premiss of my hypothetical tomfoolery, viz. that ScroogeBank and the Goldman-Saxons and so on have long been just sitting on vast dragon-hoards of bucks, is mistaken. Whight or ’rong, I assume that the refusal of those goodvolks to disgorge a little is a major reason why there have NOT been any consumption propensities worth writing home about lately amongst the "small people."

(( ADDENDUMB. Before you start shouting that you detect no Bray State angle here, sir, let me quote a little more of the Urtext:

At one point in discussing Mitt Romney's record as governor of Massachusetts [some booby or another] tells readers: Average weekly wages for workers rose slightly more than they did nationally while Romney was in charge. In Massachusetts, wages went up 4.1 percent from 2002 to 2006, adjusting for inflation. Nationally, they rose 3.2 percent. Inflation in the Northeast was 1.9 percentage points higher over this period than for the nation as a whole. If the calculation of real wages used for this comparison simpl[y] used the nationwide inflation rate to measure the growth of real wages, then it would be seriously misleading. The regional CPI would imply that wage growth in Massachusetts lagged the nationwide average by roughly a percentage point, instead of exceeding it by 0.9 percentage points. (Of course, Romney's ability to influence wage growth in a 4-year stint as governor would be very limited in any case.)

Naturally œconomic ignoramuses like Paddy and Eye have no business agreeing or disagreeing with anything so pro and tech and wonk as that passage. Perhaps we may observe, however, that Dr. Pressbeater and the Seeper Institution do not seem

(( to give a hoot ))

whether our dear MA be exceptional or not. ))


Happy days.

Professor Kettel, allow me to introduce Dr. Pott

Dear Dr. Bones,

Here's another letter from Paddy the editor was (mostly) spared:

The Hire Learning (( fold here )) is in safe hands so long as lofty sediments like "third largest employer in the Commonwealth" prevail. (( your message here )) That the Funders of Fratboy, of all people, should fail to appreciate a consideration so exactly up their own alley is a little puzzling, perhaps, even after allowing for the fact that disproportionately few of the 02138 Third Herd will be supporting The People's Seatwarmer next November. (( Happy Days ))

Prof. Kettel and Dr. Pott are, needless to spoof, celebrity attendees at the three-hundred eighty-second annual Massachusetts Exceptionalism Jamboree.



And again I say,
Happy days.

Fratboy Hits Low Road

Lurking nside Comrade Poster’s reference is a possible example or two of what puts certain plainvolks off Her Beatitude. To some extent. On occasion.

"This (( "to simply forward a fundraising solicitation from Sen. Scott Brown" )) has been one of our most successful fundraising emails to date because Elizabeth’s supporters are sick of all Scott Brown’s negative attacks," said a Warren adviser. "It’s really a shame that he’s chosen to take the low road like this."

Paddy McTammany, who admittedly have a tendency to prefer my AstroTurf™ literary-side-up, would be better pleased if Comrade Operative had gone whole-hog with the ¡Qué lástima! _shtyk_. She, Operative, manages already to sound like Florence Nightingale trapped as invilgilator of an idiot school as it is, trying, pathetically, to embarrass Scottie from Southie into givin’ little Miss Muffet (a gentleperson of 02493) back that pencil out of which he just entrepeneured her.

So, then: ¿Why does she, Operative, not ‘simply’ pronounce it "a shame" that the Funders of Frratboy, along with all their dupes an’ all their marks, have not yet seen The Light an’ tasted the Sweetness an’, in a word, come out for St. Elizabeth of H*rv*rdy, as all genuinely rational creatures inevitably must?

Comradess Operative was, I fear, almost certainly not funning on purpose when she gave the impression that over at Light and Sweetness (® ™ ©) G. H.Q., the upper echelons, at least, are a little shocked and disconcerted that the Fratboy Funders an’ their hired hands have not come up with a more positive line of attackwear this season.

To forestall possible objection, I put it to you, Dr. Bones, that "positive attacks" only *sounds* like oxymoron. The trick, not a very mysterious one, is that the positivity of the attack must be detached from its main thrust. The F. F. could, for example, solemnly inform everybody that Warren, Esq., "would make a good Dame Mayor of Birmingham in a lean year." [1] Meanin’, of course, backhandedly that Her Beatitude would probably not perform so well as a warmer of The People’s Seat up here in blizzard-prone New Iceland.

The F.F. might even--nam fas est et ab hoste doceri-- borrow the ¡Qué lástima! insincerity itself, to bark out boldly with somethin’ affirmative, sorta, ’bout how splendid it would be not to have to deprive the greatest university in the county of Her Beatitude’s radiant presence, an’ steel-claptrap intellectual fundamentalism, an’ . . . an’ so on in that vein. The Muses and you, sir, and Eye would see in a flash that we are dealing with a crew of crocodiles, but then we are poor statistical samples of New Iceland Televisionland or the Mass. electorate taken at large. I betcha your middle-class devotee of the MacL@@han Tube would start to think that little Scottie Crocodile must be a nice critter, really, because, golly, ¡just look how he keeps askin’ his Funders’ hired hands to whisper sweet nothin’s ’bout Perfesser Warren! ¡¡Even when her hirelings gets a bit testy about him!!

Comradess Operative is quight whight to think that Team Crocodile are not takin’ that road. She cites only "‘the Hollywood Crowd’ and the ‘Far Left Juggernaut’," but Eye like the Urtext so well I think Sam should replay us more of it, with maybe a scorecard added to help keep track:

Dear Friends, I want you to know exactly what we are up against. Thanks to you and thousands of others, our campaign raised $3.4 million in the last quarter, but Professor Elizabeth Warren raised twice that amount: $6.9 million. How in the world could she raise so much? She is (0) a far-left ideologue and her liberal friends from across the country are helping her: She has the (1) Harry Reid Democrats, (2) the Hollywood Crowd, (3) the Far Left Juggernaut, (4) the Occupy Wall Street Bunch, and (5) the Massachusetts Machine raising money (6) hand-over-clenched fist. (( &c. &c. ))

Item (6) should perhaps be labelled (4a), as being a slur not sufficiently distinct. [3]

In any case, whatever the Team Fratboy crocs may be up to at the moment, it sure does not involve killin’ off Warren, Esq., with kindness.

As I wrote to you yesterday, sir, sudden deployment of a whole McGilla of cheapjack [4] vituperation suggest that the crocs must have been rattled a little by the latest pollin’. Their freelordships over at the WhightGuard Officers Mess appear to have resolved on ¡No more Mr. Nice Guy!, a decision which Paddy and Eye are puzzled by. We find the switch premature: ¿Why not leave it alone till the polls look so extremely unwhighteous that there is nothin’ left for Master Nicebo to lose, should nastiness perchance misfire?

Happy days.
--JHM

_______
[1] ¿Do Eye recycle my own silly stuff? Very well, then: ¡Eye recycles my own silly stuff! Multitudinous is my middle name.


[2] Paddy is at a loss to know for sure what the Fratboy Funders’ crocs have in mind when they sneer at clenched fists. I myself think first of Homage to Catalonia, but that is hopelessly far afield, _¿no es verdad?_, for the Plain People of Ire Land.


[3] Literary-side-up means that the cheapjackery of it concerns Paddy and Eye more than any inaccuracy, real or alleged. Actually, we would like Her Beatitude rather better than we can manage to if She and Her devotees were guilty as charged.

The audience targeted with such impious viennasausage by Fratboy’s Funders have heard it all before, of course: that is what the cheapjackery consists in. Kard-karryin’ Kiddie Selfservatives can get more of that product any day of the week from the Three Weird Sisters or the ever indispensable Herald of Louisedayhicksville. The goodvolks whom Fratboy’s agitprop crocs ought to be targetin’ first an’ foremost have also heard it all before, in a sense, but only as whight noise in the background that makes them want click to some other channel if they can.

Warren, Esq., v. Fratboy (Round 134)

Dear Dr. Bones,

Now that we have not St. Rick the Less to kick around any more, perhaps it is time to zero in on the ‘local’ talent:

How Party Neocomrade E. X. Fehrnstrom Licked the Massachusetts Machine (( fold here )) Not just once, but ¡Two times runnin’! Cultural Notes Le Radice d’Erba, by the young Esperanto composer Galeazzo Thorsdóttir Verdollino, received its New Iceland premiere at the Hasty Lizzard Club , 20 Quincy Street, Cambridge, last Friday evening, 401(k) Rajab 5772. Loosely based on a prose work of the Anglophone writer of Victorian Brooklyn (NY), W. X. Whitman, the title of which is sometimes translated as "Democratic Vistas," the libretto, composed in neomadrigals by the celebrated limericist Kim Well Sung, recounts the tragic destiny of a young professional woman who ... born ... OK ... TV ... greatest university in the county ... but then, in a passionate fit of ... designer carpet-bags ... betrayal ... disgrace ... ruin.

I trust you remember

Speron Sperone, thinking his ((Torquato Tasso’s)) exquisite work of Godfred to be too full of rich conceits, and more dainty than did become the gravity of such a work, said that it was a heroic poem written in madrigals.

"Massachusetts machine" is a more recondite allusion, unless you, most improbably, happen to be on the mailin' list of Funders of Fratboy, LLC. In that case you must already have laughed from

Dear Friends, I want you to know exactly what we are up against: Thanks to you and thousands of others, our campaign raised $3.4 million in the last quarter, but Professor Elizabeth Warren raised twice that amount: $6.9 million. How in the world could she raise so much? She is a far-left ideologue and her liberal friends from across the country are helping her: She has the Harry Reid Democrats, the Hollywood Crowd, the Far Left Juggernaut, the Occupy Wall Street Bunch, and the Massachusetts Machine raising money hand-over-clenched fist. This is the #1 Senate race in the country and our rival will have virtually unlimited money to burn. You have been a terrific supporter, (( ¿Eye have? )) but I wanted you to know what we are facing. Warren's fundraising is breaking every record! Will you help me again? Your online contribution will help stop Professor Warren's election to the U.S. Senate. WE MUST WIN (( &c. &c. ))

Paddy and Eye agtree that we could never top that effusion for sheer risibility, but Faculty-Lounge Lizzie’s operatives come pretty close with

(...) The Senator isn’t being a good sport about being outraised two-to-one in the last fundraising quarter. As you can read below, he’s labeling our supporters “insiders, celebrities, elites, occupiers, leftists” — and then makes some ridiculous excuses about why Elizabeth’s grassroots support is so strong. This email isn’t just an attack on Elizabeth — it’s an attack on all of us who are fighting for middle class families. We can’t make Scott Brown stop calling you names, but we can continue to outraise him. DONATE $50 RIGHT NOW TO HELP. Elizabeth didn’t just raise twice as much money as Scott Brown since January 1st — she did it with the support of tens of thousands of teachers, nurses, small business owners, students and retirees. The truth hurts ((&c. &c. ))

One laughs best, looks as if, at whichever of these crews one heard from last.

(( ADDENDUMB. Less unseriously, like all other references to "the middLe class" in Yank politics, that made above by the Little Friends of St. Elisabeth must be examined individually to ascertain just what the particular incompetent social analyst had in mind. Here we have a comparatively easy problem, though, because the grand mystery is in large measure resolved in the very next sentence. The Little Friends account themselves mediocre because they can afford to casually send fifty-dollar checks to the vociferously needy.

(( To be sure, an annual salary or gross net-worth cut-off point would be even better, but ¿Why complain, when most of the time one is left completely in the dark? ))

Happy days.
--JHM

¡Oh, That Eye Too Might Trickle Tradably, Like a Brooks!

Dear Dr. Bones,

Sounds a little ungrammatical, maybe, that does; but ’tain’t, not really: Eye refers to the one and only, D*O Volente, Don Davidito de Brooks y Podhòretz, well-known mid-level employee of the New York Times Company. One of the NYTC peanut-gallery peanuts says of the little laddie’s latest

Karen Garcia New Paltz, NY This column is one more attempt to keep the myth of trickle-down economics alive. It also celebrates Social Darwinism in a very genteel way. Why not just call Economy I the deregulated capitalism that it is? Why not admit that Economy I, in all its unmitigated greed, caused the biggest financial collapse in modern history? Why not come right out and say that Economy II should just get with the austerity program proclaimed by the plutocrats, instead of this nonsense about making "a bumpy transition" away from public schools and decent jobs to banana republic status? Why not just define Economy I as privatized profits at public expense?

That’s enough to make a start. Perhaps the freeyoungker’s "Two Economies" _shtyk_, blatantly ‘borrowed’ from D’Israëli Minor, should be set out in the original, though:

On the one hand, there is ((I)) the globalized tradable [*] sector — companies that have to compete with everybody everywhere. These companies, with the sword of foreign competition hanging over them, have become relentlessly dynamic and very (sometimes brutally) efficient. On the other hand, there is ((II)) a large sector of the economy that does not face this global competition — health care, education and government. Leaders in this economy try to improve productivity and use new technologies, but they are not compelled by do-or-die pressure, and their pace of change is slower.

There is more of it, but nothing significantly different from what you have heard a dozen times already, usually better grasped and more speciously expressed.

Comrade Garcia is not, I fear, one of Team America’s bestembrightest rhetoricians: a whole suite of variations on the theme "¿Hey, Davey boy, why don’t you just confess that you are a TopPercenter ratfink?" would require some fancy stylistic value added, in my judgment, to be pulled off successfully. Almost all of us know this particular señorito’s socio-economic standin’ in advance of reading what it scribbles, so it is hardly as if the comrade is conveying the results of cutting-edge research.

On the material side, the trouble with the glossatrix is that Little Davey did not say anythin’ ’bout "trickle down." Eye don’t see that it even implied anythin’. Rather the contrary, actually. Read the whole thing through, please, Dr. Bones, and then advise me whether the sound view be not that Don Davidito supposes its (or Freelord Dizzy’s, or Ch. A. Murray’s) "Two Econmies" already so separated that any significant quantity of intramural tricklin’ is ruled out. [**]

Eye should say that both the NYTC señorito an’ its e-heckleress alike aspire to practice some nifty neoscience of "qualitative economics" that does not yet, as far as Eye can detect, quite altogether exist. The traditional product, far less geistlich, ‘_espiritual_’, can safely be abandoned to the meaner intelligence of drudges like Comrade Krugman.


Happy days.
--JHM

_____
[*] That distinctly queer-lookin’ ‘trad[e]able’ is not, I presume, a genuine foreignism, only the señorito’s tin-ear way of referrin’ to stocks an’ bonds likely to be found in the portfolio of Papá or of Papá’s Classmates. On the other hand, ‘tradable’ really *is* an alien element here, one might say, insofar as Hire Finance is remote indeed from Don Davidito’s usual concerns. That explains why it does not mention--perhaps it is genuinely unaware--that nowadays Papá an’ the Tertulía Brooks-Podhòretz hold more paper issued by icky governments than by lean, mean secret-sector business corporations. A lot more, I betcha it was, before that recent happy recovery by the specuvestin’ clientele of NASDAQ and the gang.


[**] Guesswork about the background of literary effusions goes wildly astray so often that they belong in a footnote at highest. Still, Don Davidito must have read its Party Neocomrade Prof. Dr. Ch. A. Murray’s neohonourable an’ postgallant disquisition on the great gulf fixed between ‘Belmont’ an’ ‘Fishtown’.

Almost as certainly, it will have noticed the reviewers’ near universal lament that Neocomrade Murray was almost as determined to leave out the economics as to leave out all the c*l*ur. My guess, accordingly, is that little Davey decided that *it* may as well be the one to volunteer to put some economics back in. Not much economics, an’ not very good economics, for of course Davey caters to pretty much the same niche market as does the Freelord Prof. Doc. himself, a market that finds economics even dismaller than mostvolks do, possibly because the customers might think less well of themselves if they looked into banausic details. Still, there would appear to be an opportunity here.

If all that be anywhere near whight, then it makes sense that Don Davidito de B-P should simply borrow the fixity of the Murrayan gulf an’ make that an intellectual foundation upon which to erect its own lucubrations.

Ergo no trickle-down from Belmont to the Fishvillains. Q. E. D.

Monday Morning GBH Blues

Dear Dr. Bones,

Here is another Challenge-and-Response exercise for your collection that Paddy and Eye prefer not to bother the honourable and learned perp about to his facebook:

Here’s why the Affordable Care Act is constitutional. david | Sun, Apr 8, 2012 7:22 PM EST I’ve been thinking about this for a while, but haven’t had a chance to put pen to paper, to use a thoroughly outdated metaphor. So here it is: the Affordable Care Act is constitutional for two straightforward reasons that should have been obvious to the Justices, but that unfortunately were not laid out nearly as clearly and concisely as they should have been: ((A)) he health care market is unique and is profoundly unlike any other market in the U.S., for one simple reason; and ((B)) The “individual mandate” is not a mandate at all. (( Snip A altogether and preliminary skirmishing about B )) [T]he “mandate” isn’t a mandate at all. It’s a choice: you can carry health insurance according to the terms of the Affordable Care Act, or you can see your taxes go up a bit. That’s it. ((...))) [W]hen you see it in those terms, how is the “mandate” any different from any of the other numerous incentives that Congress has written into the tax code over the years in order to encourage behavior that it deems socially beneficial? If you hold a home mortgage loan, if you buy a hybrid car, if you replace your windows, if you donate to charity, even if you are self-employed and buy health insurance, that behavior affects your taxes. True, in the case of the Affordable Care Act, your failure to behave the way Congress wants you to means that your taxes go up, whereas in the examples I gave your engaging in the favored behavior means they go down. Is that a difference of constitutional magnitude? Frankly, I cannot imagine why it should be. The “individual mandate” in the Affordable Care Act is often compared to a state’s “mandate” that anyone who drives a car must carry car insurance. But the Massachusetts car insurance law shows us what a real mandate looks like (( Snip statute-book details and all the rest ))

Ad quem responduisset Patricius

Now if Eye was the Shyster Community (( fold here )) instead of only a lone-wolf lay sheep, I should excommunicate this ratf... ... this person at once. The Dignity of Jurisprudence is affronted by the notion that great controversies are to be resolved on the basis of sudden, hitherto unheard of brainwaves. That plan may suffice for Romantic poets, and hack pols on the stump, and penners of advertising copy. Indeed, my understanding is that that sort of ‘inspiration’ is rather a plus than a minus in those lines of work. Inside the Temple of Rulalaw, however, nothing could be more out of place. Worse, the Dignity of Jurisprudence is impaired as well as affronted. That is to say, the masses will not long retain their traditional respect for their litigation-forged Betters if we once get the notion into our silly little heads that Mason, Esq., is just making all that inscrutable techical stuff up on the spot as he goes along. By "inscrutable technical stuff" Paddy refers, inter alia, to the "THAT, friends, is a mandate" ploy. The volksy manner in which the ployster reaches up his sleeve to pull out his nifty new ace of trumps and take the trick, at least to his own self-satisfaction, gives away that what we have here is performance art, not Law [*] once known and revered here in the holy Homeland™.

Happy days.
--JHM

___
[*] Now that "intellectual foundation" is more often drooled of than quested for and built upon, it may be necessary to explain, for those of them at Rio Limbaugh and a few others, that Eye make this summary ruling with an Aristotelian gavel, as it were, with the gavel labelled "Form trumps matter." Counselor’s indecent volksiness would matter most to this ‘friend’, even were the substance of his argumentation drawn straight out of Magna Carta or the Discorses on Dávila.

The formal offense is aggravated by the circumstance that Counselor gives no clue whence his stuff is drawn. The passage referenced in the General Laws does not supply a definition of ‘mandate’, it only constitutes an alleged example of the thing. To make the allegation with a straight face, one must already have swallowed the nifty whizkid neonotion about the True Meaning of ‘mandate’; otherwise, there exists nothing in particular for the Davidian cleverness to be an example OF.

Alio modo: Counselor is in effect suggesting to the dread Five of Nine that they think of the Patient Protection Act the same way official Massachusetts thinks of operating murder vehicles without liability policy, bond, or security deposit. There is no harm in that that Eye can see, but also scarcely any merit, for the next shyster in the queue can suggest, with no smaller quantity of the "intellectual bottom" product, "No, don’t listen to him. Your Honours must think of Obamacare rather as official Wyomin’ thinks of cattle rustlin’, see Chapter so-an’-so of Section IV (4) (81)."

Or whatever. Sometimes an analogy is only an analogy. Certainly ‘mandate’ is no better than suggestive analogy when it gets brainwaved the way it was here.

What the Master would presumably call "The Form of Suggestive Analogy" fits in nicely with the professional requirements of a Giacomo Leopardi quâ poet, or of a Johannes von Böhner as hack pol, or of all the Willi Munzenbergs of Madison Avenue, but Perry Mason should probably leave it alone. If Perry does resort to this sub- or extra-jurisprudential poison gas, he should make very clear, it seems to me, that he knows what he is about. He might, for one possibility, say in so many words "Your Honours might want to look at it like this, ..," making it evident that he understands in advance that Their Honours very well might not care so to look at it.

Once the jolliness is over and the dust has settled a little, I daresay Mason, Esq., can scribble without impropriety on some factional website that Their Honours proved themselves legal heroes, by doing as he so poetically hinted that they might, or legal zeroes by doin’ otherwise. Nobody of any importance to public affairs is likely to mistake that brand of self-ventilation for a serious contribution to Rulalaw.

Got Eye Trouble Whight Here in Feverswamp City

Dear Dr. Bones,

¡Feliz neosábado, Señor el Doctor! And furthermore,

(( ¡Khristós Voskr’és! ))

’Ammâ ba‘da, "but seriously," . . .

. . . Party Neocomradess (fifth grade) M. X. Eagan, "the Colleen of Coolidge Corner," has, for some unguessable reason, decided to celebrate the Biggest Day of All by scribblin’ ’bout the Massachusetts Bay Torture Authority an’ the Deweyplatzbesetzer. Her freeladyship is not Paddy’s direct target, but you do have to know that it has seemed good to the Freeedame of Eagan and to the Holy Ghost--plus don't forget the Herald of Louisedayhicksville--to forge and utter the following:

A 30-cent hike on the T? Occupy Boston wants to go to the mat over this? (...) Before the November election’s here and their hour upon the stage is done, they need to find a reasonably savvy, charismatic, camera-ready young Turk, or Turkette, to run the show and stick it to the greed heads (_sic_) while the nation’s still listening. Otherwise, they’ll just fade away as could-have-beens, a perfect opportunity squandered.

To that precious effusion of keystrokes, which it would not hurt you to study the whole of, there have been, as is usual with her freeladyship, a number of not exactly laudatory responses from the general direction of LDHV. Freedame Eagan has, by the way, announced on ‘her’ radio circus that her freeladyship has long since given up readin’ such stuff for Lent all year ’round an’ every year.

I sorted the peanut gallery, as is my wont, by "Highest Rated," and the following two gems bubbled to the top of the drainage ditch:

BallBreaker "They had the 1-percenters shaking in their boots." Really Marge? You are out of your mind if you believe this. I dare you to name one. All I saw was the 1-percenters that were looking to exploit the Occupy movement (ie. Russell Simmons, Michael Moore, Jay-Z, etc.). Posted 14 hours ago (( subtract from 04/08/2012 14:46 ))

madmonk73 Marge, how many of these occupiers have thirty cents?? Or know what a job is?? You, who tell people to vote the big "D" for Devaluate and friends. I thought for Easter you might be picking on the Pope. Posted 12 hours ago

Notice how everybooby in Louisedayhicksville is still on a nickname basis with ‘Marge’. The ’hicks may bowl alone nowadays, but it still takes two to tangle, so ¿maybe there is hope for Gemeinschaft in spite of everything?

More important, though, is to notice that BB an’ MM, so to call these two kiddicons lest the horses take fright, have diametrically opposite notions of what they were up against when they stepped out of the great gate of South Station. MM thinks the Occupoopers all suffered from the dread scourge of Murrayan Dependency, unable to find a quarter and a nickle to rub together, whereas BB prefers to despise his boss’s Class enemies as TopPercenters out slumming. I believe Howard Lawrence Louis, zeroth Freelord Carr in the peerage of Foxcuckooland, has identified the social type as "trust-fund babies." [1]

This is not the place or time for us grave social scientisers to attempt to decide which opinion is objectively sounder. The topic before us is not, in fact, the ’poopers themselves, but rather the perception of them current at LDHV. And what strikes me is that, although it is possible to see them either way--here, after all, we have examples of a ’hick who actually does each seein’--Eye have yet to encounter a whight-winger who made the pretty obvious suggestion that some of the accused are authentic Bad Poors, while others were chauffered in from Weston 02493 every morning before sunrise.

I conclude, tentatively, that the race of Kolourblind Kiddies must suffer from other visual bugs (or features) beyond the eponymous one.

Some students of neocomradology, often not in possession all that much intellectual bottom themselves, can hardly get through two sentences about Selfservatism in America without dropping the word ‘simplistic’, a word which does seem vaguely applicable, I admit. But the degree of simplism involved would be staggering. And remember, Eye do not speak of kiddiecons who attempt, however badly, to analyze the Ocupooper Phænomenon, but of those who only report what they see.

Happy days.
--JHM

_____
[1] We may, however, owe this particular insight to Howard Lewis Lawrence. Paddy and Eye can still get confused about HLLC: "¿Where is the [exp. del.] birth certificate?"

Fruits of the Jay School

Dear Dr. Bones,

As you know, a few of the Blue Blazers take pains to pretend to be justvolks, members of the Plane People of Ire Land, as it were, rather than any sort of nobility or gentry. Here is one of Their Worships off on a tear through the e-slums

(( Fishwraptown Vistas ))

almost worthy of the late Toad of Toad Hall:

Boston Gloebbels Doesn’t Need Lawyers – Obama Too eb3-fka-ernie-boch-iii | Fri, Apr 6, 2012 2:15 PM EST I’ve noticed over the past year or so a disturbing pattern in the editorial standards of _The Boston Globe_. ((...)) Here’s some barroom lawyering for you: if you get arrested for OUI and you were shit- faced, failed every test, and you know it, then you should admit to it at arraignment. Get it over with. Take the standard deal. Save yourself $$ and stress. Do the program, arrange for some alternative transportation, and put it behind you. (First offense, no accident only.) I guess the Gloebbels skipped civics class at Andover or Groton the day this was covered. And I’d be surprised if this basic individual right is emphasized in journalism school. ((...)) Number two, and most important, is the complete lack of legal analysis within the local media explaining the problems with the underlying law and it applicability here. “Vague” is a legal term. Criminal law is not like pornography. None of this “I know it when I see it” bullshit. The Constitution doesn’t allow this. It is called “due process” and “equal protection”. Everything about the way Martha is applying this law screams out with due process and equal protection questions. Scot Lehigh’s column was borderline pathetic. Excuse me Scott, it would be nice if you chatted with some people who know what they are talking about before you hit the keyboard. Man, what a pompous ass! (( &c. &c. ))

"Complete lack of legal analysis within the local media" leaves Paddy McTammany wondering where Ernie-not-on-the-MTA lives, exactly. Here in 02139 there is the _Globe_ of Gotham Cuity, and the _Herald_ of Louisedayhicksville. And that's it. Unless you want to count that thingee the proles leave behind on the bus.

On laughing from "social calmative re-distribution"

Dear Dr. Bones,
Those who are content to speak loosely about the political unconscious of strangers in their pænultimate paragraphs

...[S]ocial Darwinism loosely speaking describes the political unconscious of most centrist liberalism as well, even or especially in its superficially atheistic versions, the main difference being that social liberals are more interested in softening the sharp edges of free market implementation and operation, or in appearing to do so, accepting the trade-off against market efficiency a la Saint Hayek, and taking it on faithless faith that enough of the social surplus will remain indefinitely relatively painlessly available from the winners for adequately social calmative re-distribution to the losers

will doubtless (?) be rewarded in that piecolour-skied World to Come held out to us by religionators.

Meanwhile, closer to home, a little judicious persecution from time to time ought to strengthen the breed by culling the herd. Speaking of cullable herds, it looks to Paddy McTammany as if Bozoe, zeroth Freedame Zombie in the peerage of Foxcuckooland, here aspires to festoon every other substantive she ever learned with "‘social’ qualification." ¿Do you suppose this odd neo-tic could be related to Tweetbook, & Faceless Facer, & a’ that other pious viennasausage the youngkers are into nowadays?

Speaking of Vienna, Freedame Bozoe is maybe a little disrespectful of Freddy, Freelord of Hayek, though she does not uncover enough of her own intellectual foundation to permit a satisfactory examination and diagnosis. She seems to be sneerin’ here that his late freemightiness assumed that the warm days, mammonologically speaking, will never end. This I guess poor Freddy in fact did in fact do, but hardly more than anybooby else unto whom his freelordship might sanely be likened. Whole-hog--or maybe make that "lean-kine"--Malthus groupies are not easy to find. I betcha a thorough search would turn up only a tiny percentage of ’em at any place or time you care to specify since ‘we’ first discovered (or, as the case may be, invented) Social Agriculture. Viewed from very far away, ‘we’ may all indeed look like witless Panglossoids, but it has to be from VERY far away that one looks.. West Neptune might do, or the court of Princess Posterity in, say, Anno Religionismi 2001-2563-6323.

Up to now, it has always been quight whight to bet against any really devastating set-backs, disasters to social acquisition so g*reawful that the subsequent Dark Ages would not be lit even by fire. As it were. The Rev. Mathus himself did not, as I recall, look forward to anything so socially challengin’ as that. Thus Freddy Hayek fans can always plead Communis error facit ius, "A mistake everybooby makes is not a mistake," if all else fails. Though should ALL else fail, probably the charges will be dropped anyway, in social effect if perhaps not officially.

Such is the plainest way to understand Freedame Bozoe, though ‘plain’ must be a bit of a sarcasm in the absence of any social glimmer of a reason WHY "the social surplus will" should not "remain indefinitely relatively painlessly available." The Muses, sir, and yourself, and Paddy McTammany too, are not bound by her freeladyship’s Party soundbark "¡History is bunk!" and may accordingly recall that back in Ye Goode Olde Dayes, First- an’ Second-Estaters had serious trouble defendin’ their lives, their social honour, an’ (above all) their Sacred Social Property against the undersurplussed mob on only the rarest of occasions. Such occasions are very prominent in the books, but only because they are not the least bit typical.

Typical is social-boring. I mean, sir, ¿Would you be all agog to read a new mystery novel called something like The Morning of Roger Ackroyd? [1] ¡Imagine the incomparably social-vivid climax, a second (¡!) plain croissant chez Dunking Doughnuts . . . !

There is also the remote possibility that Freedame Bozoe has not much use for Freelord Freddy because of his disreligion. If you will look at her freeladyship's ultimate paragraph, you will find "Satanic Marxist" keyboarded with (one must presume) straight face, an' blue nose, an' pursed lips. (Crucifix an' garlic are optional.) For some reason that would be worth figuring out, most Daughters of Virtue and/or Sons of Wisdom Classy enough to maybe qualifuy as ‘conservative’ ‘intellectuals’ do not appear to notice atheism in their factional heroes, provided Neocomrade Heroe be whighteous on every other point. Poor Freddy could hardly have his ‘Satanism’ plainer, and of course anybooby who supposes himself a Hayekian but at the same time upposes Darwinian Darwinism to be anythin’ short of a settled truth, is a booby indeed. The woods of Foxcuckooland are chock-full of ’em, though probably not one in twenty will be able to recite on Die Verfassung der Freiheit adequately cum vix Justa sit secura. [2]

So, then: if Freedame Bozoe has indeed noticed that Freelord Freddy was a heathen, she is bestembrighter than almost all of their Party neocomrades. However, since her freeladyship does not actually say this, I am not sure you should award the bonus points. It could easily be that her freeladyship simply does not care to say "Freiherr von Hayek did not, of course, believe in the Providence of Father Zeus" where the servants might overhear an’ maybe get ideas above their station in the present life. There is a lot of that brand of self-censorship goin’ on higher up the slippery slopes over around Castle Podhòretz

A sayer might (be whight to borrow the freeladylike pet epithet and) say that her freeladyship is "a social Antisatanist," as opposed to bein’ a dogmatic-mythological Antisatanist such as Master Wally Wombschool an' the lovely Cindy from Wasilla presumably are. [3]

Happy days.
--JHM

(( N.B. -- I know this letter has nothing to do with our deal old MA, but I am parking it here temporarily anyway to get the

Quote-of-Many-Colors

effect. Probably I will truss up all the bags and baggage and move to WordPress, but I have not quite decided about the details. Please advise. ))



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[1] Tot critici, tot sententiæ, to be sure. In this case, however, I am talking about you personally, sir, not about ‘one’. A person, that is, who has already agreed with Paddy to admire the late Rev. Chesterton’s remark "In fact, a baby is about the only person, I should think, to whom a modern realistic novel could be read without boring him."

On the supply side, though, a potboiler might find a niche market amongst Freedame Bozoe an’ her peeresses if you us "The Social Morning of Roger Ackroyd." Or for that matter, ¿why not "The Social Murder of R. A."?


[2] "Thank you, Mr. Justice Holmes"


[3] Paddy finds it a little challenging to imagine her freeladyship at once (A) a mythologically correct Christojudæan of some known sect or cult, and (B) a Malthusian or plus-quam-Malthusian who looks forward to a State of Postnature, as it were, that shall feature Nie wider Sozialüberschuss.

One might think the Rev. Malthus himself raises the same difficulty, but I believe not. You are to remember that Malthus expected "moral restraint" to save us from the very worst. That Malthus really did seriously expect that. Bozoe, Freedame Zombie, may have some comparable ace up the freeladylike sleeve, but there is no sign of it here.

Please Don't Pet My Project

Dear Dr. Bones,

Once again it is Letters-the-Editor-Was-Spared time here at Château McTammany. I suppose I’ll send the nobility and gentry a CliffsNotes™ version without any blatant signs of forelock thumbing.

The comments to the Bay Windows piece tell the whole story: "Wow. Good to know Senator Brown views my right to marry as a 'pet project.'" And this: "So the senator promises to create jobs... that we can then be legally fired from in most states just for being who we are. No thanks." And this: "Marriage is a major economic issue for LGBT people...not a 'pet project.'" Amazing that Senator Brown apparently doesn't realize the economic impact of marriage. - promoted by david How obnoxious can U.S. Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) be? In a guest opinion published today in Bay Windows, a Massachusetts LGBT newspaper, Brown tells us that: I don’t come before you with a checklist of items promising that I will be an advocate for you on each and every one of them. My opponent has already started down that road, promising to support everyone’s pet project. That’s not the way I have ever operated. [snip] I believe all people should be treated with dignity and respect. I recognize the liberty of every citizen to live as they choose, and it is from this diversity that we derive our strength as a nation. We are Americans first and must work together to fix our country’s real economic problems. So apparently working to pass ENDA (Employment Non-Discrimination Act) to ensure the basic civil right to not be fired from your job because you are or are perceived to be trans or gay is just someone’s “pet project”. It’s not a “real economic problem”. Getting the federal government to repeal the so-called Defense of Marriage Act and finally recognize same-sex civil marriages just like it recognizes every other civil marriage legally enacted under state law is a “pet project”. Does he really think that dumping this insulting garbage in an LGBT newspaper will win him votes? You have got to be kidding me.

Ad quam responduisset Patricius:

This is the first foolish mistake (( fold here )) (in Paddy's judgment) that the Funders of Fratboy have made. If their hired operatives were as clever as I used to think until about three minutes ago, there would have been a vague cloud of eulogies of Tree Freedumb that did not *obviously* exclude anybody in particular who may happen to feel herself restricted in this or that respect. If Fratboy is wingin' it, though, not takin’ the advice of the competent but goin' with his gut, he may have decided that "the Middle Class" [*] cares only about J*BS. Even that makin' the point clear is a way to make himself look like like a *moderate* Republicanine, a strictly economic reactionary who has nothin' to do with the cultural G-hods of Sen. Sanctorum et hoc genus omne.

Happy days.
--JHM

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[*] My own general rule is that all analysis containing those three words is ipso facto baloney, a guideline that cuts down the contents of the political IN box admirably. This is not an exception, for "a dumb move presumably based on a witless analysis" is exactly the present diagnosis.

Before they ran off the rails, the Fratboy Funders’ hired hands were makin' hay mostly with ‘cultural’ stuff. The contempt successfully disseminated for Warren, Esq., has not much to do with her real estate or her portfolio, after all, but with H*rv*rd and a’ that.

Rulalaw gives, Rulalaw takes away;

(( ¡Blessed be the Name of RULALALAW! ))

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Dear Dr. Bones,

Paddy wants me to mention that he is shocked, almost _Casablanaca_-shocked, to see that the purveyor of the antinomian subversion "[a]llowing five unelected political cronies to make laws for 313 million" is himself an Esq.

But let's have the whole m'gillâ, ¿shall we?

Strip searched for violating a leash law Bob_Neer | Tue, Apr 3, 2012 2:04 AM EST The Supreme Court continues to flex its unelected muscles. In their latest tour de force — perhaps a warm-up to stripping 35 million Americans of insurance protections enacted for them by the Congress and a President elected by 69 million people — five old men chosen, more or less, off the street, at least not subject to any official requirement other than tight insider political connections, declared they can have you stripped naked for whatever they jolly well please, from walking with an unleashed dog to driving a bicycle with a broken bell. As Lord Acton observed long ago, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The NYT explains here. Money quote: According to opinions in the lower courts, people may be strip-searched after arrests for violating a leash law, driving without a license and failing to pay child support. Citing examples from briefs submitted to the Supreme Court, Justice Breyer wrote that people have been subjected to “the humiliation of a visual strip-search” after being arrested for driving with a noisy muffler, failing to use a turn signal and riding a bicycle without an audible bell. Allowing five unelected political cronies to make laws for 313 million is a basic flaw in our current system of government.

Paddy is rather an optimist about our nobility and gentry, I fear, expecting more of H*rv*rds and Juris Doctores and of one's Betters gnerally, especially in the way of "intellectual foundation" [1] and categorical imperative, than Father Zeus has seen fit to kit them out with.

Happy days.

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[1] I means the sort of I.F. drooled of from afar over here.

Problems of Occupoopation (#318)

Dear Dr. Bones,

One topic can be counted on to bring out all that is, if not best in, at least most characteristic of, the Spirit of Louisedayhicksville, which is pretty much the Spirit of Foxcuckooland more generally.

Paddy and Eye hve noticed, though, that LDHV/FCCL analysts wobble oddly between identifyin' the accused as "losers" (thus Party Neocomrade "powersave,"

“We’re reminding people that we’re not going away,”... Translation: We're still losers, do not have jobs, and need to blame all others because of it.

--first in time, first in ratin's, first in the spleen an gall bladder of her fishwrappers--in one direction, and, in quite the opposite direction, as what Party Neocomrade H. L. Carr likes to call "trust-fund babies."

Not exactly the same thing.

Q. ¿Possibly the the _Herald_ ’hicks constitute the alone true, long-lost The Middle Class (® © ™ & Pat. Pend.) an’ as such despise everybooby equally who fails to be truly mediocre whether by excess or by defect?

A. Not likely.

Happy days.
--JHM