So Did Pharaoh Slay M. de Harírí et al.?

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit defended the troops at the Gaza border as guardians of Egypt and said they were capable of taking care of Nasrallah if necessary.

Speaking of our prescriptive betters, Mr. Bones, it appears that Lord Ann Arbour has taken steps to prevent the vulgar from scribbling their names and their silly notions on his precious pyramids.

But God knows best -- and further research will be undertaken.

Return of the Hambaker Humbugs

They’re baaack, Mr. Bones: better run for the hills!

The bipartisan community of Responsible Nonwithdrawal artists have translated their politics and knavish tricks into an inferior grade of PowerPoint® for the convenience of Barák Husáyn XLIV (prolonged be His shadow!):

[A] President Obama should consider: [A1] Meeting in his first months in office with top Iraqi leaders to underline his support for the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) and his commitment to supporting Iraqi institutions, so long as they meet reasonable expectations. [A2] Ensuring that high-level Iraq-related positions in the U.S. government remain filled without gaps. [A3] Making it clear that he is prepared to follow through on the 12-month withdrawal commitment in the SOFA if the July 2009 popular referendum on the SOFA fails.

To think of Judge Baker and Congresscritter Hamilton and all the lesser Hambaker bozos of the world leaves me feeling no holiday cheer worth mentioning. Nevertheless, as thee can see, Mr. Bones, from the alphanumerical apparatus that I have added to make them look a bit more pentagonny than they really are, they at least manage not to put themselves absolutely first: the Great Job Quest appears as only the second item.

The Great Job Quest being of scant interest to anybody musch beyond the circles of mothers-in-law and perp-school roommates, let us turn at once to [A1], and worry about exactly what the Heroes of Terror mean when they speak of their neocolonial clients "meeting reasonable expectations." Hambaker-class expectations of reasonable behaviour, naturally, but what are those?

A general disquisition on the Hambaker-CFR-Brookings-USIP criteria of rationality would be useful to have, but I cannot (reasonably) be expected to write one up from scratch ad hoc, now, can I? When they are feeling especially self-narcissistic -- which is to say, most of the time -- the Hambaker gentry pride themselves on their ‘realism’ and then stand there waiting for the applause of lesser beings to end. Could that notorious Realism of theirs be the same as their reasonableness? It will do no harm for us to assume so, I think: we can always start over if we hid a contradictio in adjecto, after all.

But I notice that I am being intellectually sloppy, Mr. Bones. Sorry. Before we discuss the materia of [A1], we ought to consider it formaliter, just as The Philosopher advised us. There appear to be two major formal considerations, one about the Form of the SOFA and the other about the Form of Commitment. So, then,

(A1a) Since the SOFA is very pointedly and proclaimedly not in the Form of a treaty, it must, I suppose, be more or less in the Form of an executive agreement, though presumably in a post-Cheneyite Form thereof, some Form which is inconsistent with the Fedguv Constitution as interpreted before the neocomrade invasionites turned up. Hence BHO can just cancel it if he likes, which would be an excellent idea, and not merely because a casual repudiation would shock the casablanca out of the Hambaker gentry. The International Zone neorégime might be taken aback a little also, though I do not see that Hannibal II of Da‘wa, or his quasiministers, or the I. Z. quasideputies, or anybody else at New Baghdád that comes to mind, has any standing to object to Uncle Sam complying with United States law for a change. I understand that Mr. Madison’s rules of procedure can cause foreigners a certain amount of inconvenience from time to time, yet if we are willing to put up with them when they take the trouble to act correctly and constitutionally, we may reasonably (?) expect them to return the favor.

Hambakerite Realismus will no doubt think I just said something especially fatuous, for I have solemnly pretended that the International Zone neorégime is exactly on a par with the world's One Indispensable Nation and Sole Remainin’ Hyperpower -- which is absurd. Hannibal II is a mere client and must do as his patrons direct, nicht wahr? Everybody understands what is really goin’ on. Even thee and I understand the ‘real’ correlation of farces, actually. We cannot, however, abandon our minds to Hambakerite Realismus without abandoning Aristotle as well, and that is a higher price than I care to pay for the dubious bipartisan mess of pottage in question. If one is not to be allowed to think of war and diplomacy and aggression and occupation as questions of Form primarily, there is not much to think about them materially except how best to grab what one happens to want to grab. Yuck. [1]

Sir? . . . No, I certainly do not think the Responsible Nonwithdrawal gentry want BHO "to underline his support for the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA)" in an exaggerated spirit of pacta sunt servanda, binding himself to save even bad pacts entered into by a bad Boy and Dynasty and Party and Ideology. You are just being silly, Mr. Bones. The gentry want BHO to support the Crawfordite SOFA because they themselves like it. They like it so well that they do not want to give the President-Elect any radical ideas about possible repudiation. I do not mean that they are against Rulalaw or against Mr. Madison and the Gang of ’87 "on principle," for the great point about Hambakerite gentry is that their Realismus prevents them from ever doing anything "on principle." Far exalted are they above such vulgar behaviour!

I see you've been reading ahead, sir. Well, it's no again -- I do not agree that slogans like "Restore U.S. credibility, prestige and capacity to act worldwide" have anything significant to do with "on principle" when deployed by Hambakerites. I daresay thee might dress up "U. S. credibility" verbally so as to make it look a bit like a genuine brand-name Principle® such as pacta sunt servanda, but thee is just wasting thee's time if thee expect to pull the wool over my eyes that easily. Slogans of that sort belong in Executive Summaries such as the one which thee pulled it out of, sir.

It is true that the gentry do seem to be slightly worried at [A3] that BHO might insist on hanging around in the former al-‘Iráq even after a plebescite begs him to go away. But thee must consider that that scenario, contingent in any event, is more than a whole Friedman unit off at the moment. The gentry will have plenty of time to change their minds about it when the time comes, and the odds are excellent that that is exactly what they will do. By a happy coincidence, this illustrates the unprincipled nature of "U. S. credibility": the Hambakerites can claim in December 2008 that poor Sam’s credibility will be diminished if we do not keep unconstitutional AEI-GOP-USIP-WSJ-EiB (&c.) promises to the I. Z. neorégime, but a year from now they will have changed their lyrics slightly and be singing in chorus that a premature and irresponsible withdrawal from ex-‘Iráq would do even worse damage to credibility. [2] There is not really any ‘there’ there at Credibility Barracks, sir. Kindly consider theeself so caveated.

In context, [A3] looks to me like a quid pro quo offered by paleface Realismus to the native and local I. Z. pols, whose political I.Q. the Hambakerites underestimate. They will promise to comply with a plebescite that is not going to happen and would not come out against them if it did, and in return, Hannibal II promises to do nothing that might be considered ‘unreasonable’ at Hambaker House. The gentry have not the slightest intention of spelling out their notions of rationality for the benefit of poor M. al-Málikí, however, since it will be much more satisfactory if he must ask permission before doing pretty well anything of the smallest significance to bipartisan invasionism. That makes for a lousy bargain as viewed from the ex-‘Iráqí side, but what with the celebrated Realismus and all, how could the bargain be very different? And of course it is not at all that the Hambakerites aspire to dictate every single little detail of administration and tactics to their hapless client: all they want is a veto, really. Only a veto -- but it must be their veto, for who can trust any native or local to decide what does or does not impair "U.S. credibility, prestige and capacity to act worldwide"?

(...)

No for a third time. Hambakerism is a strictly subphilosophical affair, sir, the gentry cannot possibly possess any formal or axiomatic definition of ‘unreasonable’ as "imparing the credibility or prestige or capacity of the Heimatland Gottes." They simply do not think like that, sir. Hambakerites are simply incapable of offering any general account of what it would be ‘unreasonable’ for Hannibal II of Da‘wa to do or omit. They are not just pretending that they cannot do that trick, they genuinely can't. But like Mr. Justice Whowuzzit with ‘obscenity,’ they will be able to tell you about any particular violation in thirty seconds or less from the moment they learn of it. Ergo the I. Z. collaborationist pols must always ask in advance to save unnecessary embarrassment all around. Though obviously subphilosophical, this nifty racket "makes sense" in a rough-and-ready way, does it not?


(A1b) Now as to the Form of Commitment, there is (A1b-1), the commitment of B. Husáyn Obáma, to be considered, but also (A1b-2), the commitment of the I. Z. collaborationists. Ideally this would involve two instantiations of one and the same Form, but in light of the celebrated Realismus at Hambaker House, we are not likely to see that. Deals between silly geese and virile ganders must involve a certain degree of asymmetry, commitmentwise: Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi..

And strictly de facto, the I. Z. pols need Sam lots more than Sam needs them. Everybody knows that. To elaborately pretend not to know it by expatiating on the Four Pillars of Piffle about the former al-‘Iráq -- her Sovereignty and Independence and Constitutionalism and Democracy -- can avail nothing against the celebrated Realismus. Either get serious or just leave the Hambakerite invasionites alone, wouldja please?


___
[1] I daresay there exists a Form of Opportunism, though, like that Form of Mud or Filth that Plato was forced at one point to worry about a little. If we were to start talking about that, Mr. Bones, would not the Hambakerite gentry fail to notice that we are talking about them at all?

'And would you be undecided also about ideas of which the mention will, perhaps, appear laughable: of hair, mud, filth, and other things which are base and vile?' 'No, Parmenides; visible things like these are, as I believe, only what they appear to be: though I am sometimes disposed to imagine that there is nothing without an idea; but I repress any such notion, from a fear of falling into an abyss of nonsense.' 'You are young, Socrates, and therefore naturally regard the opinions of men; the time will come when philosophy will have a firmer hold of you, and you will not despise even the meanest things. But tell me, is your meaning that things become like by partaking of likeness, great by partaking of greatness, just and beautiful by partaking of justice and beauty, and so of other ideas?'

Parmenides


[2] The famous Realismus takes for granted, I expect, that the Hannibal of Da‘wa will make sure that the wrong side does not win such a plebescite, should it even happen at all. Hardly any neorégime in history since that of General N. Buonoparte first discovered the plebescite shtyk has failed to get across that pons asinorum.

Neocolonial Unrealpolitik

As thee know, Mr. Bones, the WASP God Folk used to annoy politically grown-up Old Euros almost beyond endurance with their Gladstonianity, the solemn pretence that nobody had ever been Pharasaïcally in earnest about human events before their own immediate ancestors evolved. [1] This brain disease has survived the GOM and even, rather notoriously, come to flourish in the North American colonies. Hath not Graham Greene vouchsafed us The Quiet American?

Now nothing in the world brings out the shallow unrealism of the Gladstoniator than the following sort of misbehaviour amongst the LBW, Lesser Breeds Without:

... kicked and punched ... then the beating continued ... the torture included kicking and punching; beating all over the body with chains; cigarettes extinguished behind his ears; stripped of his clothes and doused in cold water; subjected to electric shocks ... lasted for 30 hours... evidence of that in the form of bruises, swellings and cuts all over ....

It is definitely not cricket that these people are playing! Even a heartless Old Euro could make that preliminary analysis, however. Gladstonianity proper only commences, in my judgment, when the analyst begins to flatter herself that these are not Cricket People, that ‘torture’ is an instrinsic part of the whole breed’s lesser withoutness.

If one is only concerned to laugh at the bozos, their ne plus ultra must be that "Gentlemen don't read one another’s mail" of 1929 from H. L. Stimson of the militant extremist GOP. No neocomrade, that specimen! On the other hand, his palæocomradely credentials are so exaggerated that they look kinda bogus even if they were not. It is impossible for this keyboard to believe that all the GOP geniuses, let alone all the Big Management Party’s base-and-vile under Engineer Hoover were anythin’ like as Britified as H. L. Stimson pretended to be. Presumably this is the usual syndrome according to which Saskatchewan and Kankakee attempt to rival Mayfair and wind up lookin’ silly because they lay it on far too thick. A trowel is Britwise acceptable -- the universe possesses M. D'Israëli's authority for that point -- but a dumptruck is too much.

Naturally the above scrimmage was not a game of any sort for the scrimmagers. What was going on?

Dr. Cartoonoclastes anthologises and twistifies as follows:

... one of the purposes of this torture was to extract from him a confession that he had been motivated to do this by one of the parties or one of the militias. They brought a video camera to record his confession of this. Under pressure of the torture, his brother asked them to [have him] sign a black [sic, perhaps for ‘blank’?] piece of paper, and they could then write on it what they liked. But Maliki's guards, who were supervising the torture, rejected that, and insisted on a videotaped confession!" Meanwhile, Aswal al-Iraq reported that "Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Sunday said that investigations [!] have revealed that a man involved in the “slaughter” of several Iraqis was behind the shoe-throwing incident, but he didn't say who or from what group. (The Iraqi government site quotes Maliki's remarks to journalists extensively. He said Zaydi had expressed his regret to him [Maliki] in a letter, and had named the person who instigated him to do this, a person Maliki said "is known to us as a cutter of throats..." Maliki talked about the Iraqi tradition of respect for honored visitors, independence of the judiciary, the need to avoid stirring up fitna, and so on and so forth). That isn't all. Maliki went on to say (according to the Aswat al-Iraq summary) that whoever encouraged or asked al-Zaydi to do this is "either an opponent of the political process in Iraq, or they are opposed to the new political situation entirely."

That silly bang [!] belongs to Cartoono the Magnificent, naturally. Far be such punctuation as that from the present keyboard! It marks the low-water point of his shallow Gladstonianity: the customer is solicited to suppose that only wicked sectarians would conduct themselves so unsportsmanlike under pretext of conducting ‘investigations’.

___
[1] I suppose the happy evolution must have been supposed to have happened in or around the year of religionism 1100/1688. Of course in reality the accession of Victoria would be far more like it.

BRAT BITES INVISIBLE HAND

"If we were to allow the free market to take its course now, it would almost certainly lead to disorderly bankruptcy and liquidation for the automakers. Under ordinary economic circumstances, I would say this is the price that failed companies must pay -- and I would not favor intervening to prevent the automakers from going out of business. But these are not ordinary circumstances. In the midst of a financial crisis and a recession, allowing the U.S. auto industry to collapse is not a responsible course of action."

The neocomrades’ 566/640 Kid is not especially good even at apostasin’ , is he, Mr. Bones?

Will the militant extremist Denkpanzer of OnePercenterdom -- their AEIdeologues and their Heritagitarians and their Hoovervillains, plus also the Catoholics, an Associated rather than an Allied Power -- now conclude their Party’s Dynasty Boy was really, really dumb all along? Was he up to graspin’ the dogmatic theology of Mammonism even in quiet times? To muster the level of sophistry (or cynicism) a loyal High Mammonian requires at the moment has always been off that little laddie’s scope by everybody’s account.

Now considering that the Learnèd Elders of Vanity Fair have never been so unreasonable as to expect their pols to understand what it is that they, the pols, are defendin’ when they defend the Protocols of the Chamber of Commerce, it would not be nice or edifyin’ if they turn on the 566/640 Kid too sharply. Should they want a hunk of pseudacademic flesh they can really get their teeth into, let them set to on Neocomrade "Doctor" A. Greenspan, whose rake's progress brought him at last to his Cannæ and Stalingrad and Waterloo and Grammarian's Funeral:

In Congressional testimony on October 23, 2008, Greenspan acknowledged that he was "partially" wrong in opposing regulation and stated "Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder's equity -- myself especially -- are in a state of shocked disbelief." Referring to his free-market ideology, Greenspan said: “I have found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is. But I have been very distressed by that fact.” Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) then pressed him to clarify his words. “In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working,” Waxman said. “Absolutely, precisely,” Greenspan replied. “You know, that’s precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.” Greenspan admitted fault in opposing regulation of derivatives and acknowledged that financial institutions didn't protect shareholders and investments as well as he expected.

Compared to the Archangel of the Apostasy detectin’ a ‘flaw’ in the theory of High Mammonolatry, it is no big deal that the Krawford Kiddies would rather leave some Legacy visible to hack journalists and junior-high-school textbook authors than receive the blessin’s of the LEVF, Learnèd Elders of Vanity Fair.

If there were any justice in the world, absolutely everybody would fling a shoe or two at the catafalque of Neocomrade "Doctor" Alan Greenspan as it solemnly progresses down Wall Street towards the People’s Recycling Center. But as thee know, Mr. Bones, there is no justice in the world, so don’t let anybody sell thee a ticket to that show -- not unless she will toss in a Brooklyn Bridge or two as well. Or possibly a used mortgage that belonged to a little old lady

who only drove it to conventicle on Sabbaths.

Better Aggression Through Chemistry

Mr. Obama apparently did not ask Mr. Gates or Admiral Mullen for specifics on withdrawals [from ex-‘Iráq], according to people briefed on the discussions. “There was not challenging or questioning of any particular timetable,” a transition official said. “There wasn’t a point on which there was any pushback from either side.” For his part, Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said that Mr. Gates had left the Chicago meeting feeling that “they had an excellent discussion, and excellent chemistry as well.”

Domenico Tojetti (1807 – 1892) was an Italian-American painter.

Born in Rocca di Papa, near Rome, the artist frequented the Roman circle of the Torlonia Princes, providing frescos in the ballroom of Villa Torlonia under the direction of his teacher Francesco Coghetti.

The artist provided also frescoes in churches of Rome, including the Basilica di San Paolo fuori le Mura and Sant'Agnese fuori le Mura. In this period he developed friendship with Constantino Brumidi, who moved to USA in 1852, and with Leonardo Massabò.

In 1867 Tojetti moved with his family to Guatemala, then in Mexico and finally to San Francisco, California, where produced paintings for churches, public and private buildings.

He died in San Francisco in 1892.

Ne Sutor Ultra Crepidam

If ever a human event

was unmissable, it is the public calceatio of George XLIII Bush by a demented neo-subject, but even so, the intrepid and, so to say, eagle-eyed Miss Lynx noticed it and gave it to Mister Badger, who dipped it in that dam pond of ideology and factionalism that so graces Mu’ámara Junction BC before passing it on to the honourable and gallant Dr. Cartoonoclastes, local squire and muftí of the manse in those parts, who decided to deploy it in the Mu’ámariyya's interminable War Against Juan:

The journalist who threw his shoes at Bush is Muntadhir al-Zeidi and he works for Baghdadiya TV. [Ellipsis the First] Juan Cole is not amused. He says, without citing any evidence, that the channel "supports the Sunni Arab insurgents fighting the Americans and the Maliki government". I thought he had switched to "Kutbist fundamentalists" for his main sectarian slur, but there you are. As it happens, Azzaman says the man works for several different TV stations, and hails from Sadr City. [Ellipsis the Second] [A]l-Zeidi in addition to the reported remarks, also said this: "This is from the widows, the orphans, and those who were killed in Iraq..." Obviously, as Cole says, a supporter of the "Sunni Arab insurgents".

Actually Don Juan recovered from his Qutbist phase promptly, thank you, thought not to the point, I presume, of forgetting how to spell it.

Poor M. Muntazir al-Zaydí [1] will doubtless rot in some I. Z. pesthole of domestic rendition for the term of his natural life. Unless, that is, he is quickly released and returns to his native place through a specially manufactured breach in the walls whilst choruses of (decently draped) young damsels recite Pindar and al-Muntanabbí in his praise. Plus then free lunch at City Hall every day for the rest of his life -- I believe that is the standard accomodation in such case.

Meanwhile, a bit closer to home, thee should notice, Mr. Bones, how little it takes to set grumpy old Cartoono off into slurrin’ other folks as slurmongers. Take "supports the Sunni Arab insurgents fighting the Americans and the Maliki government." The Guru of Mu’ámara Junction is not primarily concerned to claim that Al-Baghdádiyya is not really like that [2], he is shocked to his innermost casablanca that anybody uses such language at all.

Not only is that a slur, it is a very special kind of slur. It is defamatio chartonoclastica, so to speak, a rare hot-house flower of the lower sub-Arctic. Juan the Wicked is "slurring" some poor newspaper proprietor for doing exactly what Miss Lynx and Mister Badger and Cartoono the Grump think everybody in the world ought to be doing, supporting "the [lacuna here] Arab insurgents fighting the Americans and the Maliki government." The slur consists entirely in noticing out loud that Al-Baghdádiyya is guilty of "supporting while Sunni."

Then, leaping straight to the counterslur, the honourable and learnèd (and Magnificent) Cartoono makes Juan the Wicked out an ignoramus who supposes that the preferred religionism of the Natural Masters of Mesopotamia is adhered to only by flat-out faith-crazies, Wahhábís and "Kutbists" and Mawdy-Doodies and what not. (Perhaps he should toss in "Assassins" from time to time and see if any of his dupes and marks call him on it? And there are also the "Wallace Fard Muhammad fundamentalists" to muck about with for counterslurry purposes.)

A very strange hot-house flower is the Mu’ámariyya, Mr. Bones. A sort of vicarious Erastianism, perhaps. But maybe I attempt to make the specimen out rarer and more precious than it really is? After all, M. le Président Saddám would have been almost as upset in his time as Miss Lynx and Mr. Badger and Dr. Cartoonoclastes are in ours to have his Natural Mastery of Mesopotamia confused with his private religionism. And more upset still, should it be linked with his communitarian religionism. Our gleeful threeful cannot possibly want the Ba‘th back as such, yet if they ever get what they crave, certain resemblances to the Good Old Days before wicked ‘sectarianism’ was imported under Sultan Jerry would recur. The Thought Police would consider it fort mauvais for any political dhimmí to claim that his status as a second-class subject of the Baghdád régime was connected with his not being an Orthodox Mussulman. Or an ethnographic Arab. Obviously, folks with jet black skins and Oklahoma City culture and the theology of Mary Baker Eddy can be just as first-class Natural Masters of Mesopotamia as anybody else. All they have to do is . . . .

... well, neither the Ba‘thí nor the cartoonoclastic positive theory of Virtuous Antisectarianism is familiar to me, so thee had better go google it up for theeself, Mr. Bones, exactly what it is that one has to do to satisfy the factionists and ideologues of Sunní Ascendancy, native and vicarious. Though perhaps we had better speak of [Lacuna] Ascendancy, sir, especially if we think we might want a visa someday. [3] BGKB.


___
[1] The scrappy lad’s Christian name goes like the surname of the evil Qommie Ayatollah Montazerí. This coincidence may (or may not) indicate that shoe-thrower and turban-bearer are both awaiting the same One.


[2] Cartoono's defense of the Sunninterní fishwrap’s rigorously impartial and unsectarian devotion to the once and future Natural Masters of Mesopotamia is a joke. They can't spend every issue singing Pindar to their own shootists -- or even praising such lesser breeds as may occasionally abuse the Hannibal of Da‘wa for the inferior reasons of inferior persons.


[3] "[Lacuna] Ascendancy may typify the See-Might Mind™," she jested. "Notice how they all leave the vowels out all the time, and how one pack of See-Mights will never mention Father Zeus by name. Reducin’ other folks to a condition of abject dhimmitudo is the crux of See-Mightism, plainly: ‘Look on Our Might, ye dhimmies, and despair!’ Mme. Bint Yeor’s esoteric researches have revealed many dark corners of the See-Might Mind™, yet I believe she has never yet come to grips with [Lacuna] Ascendancy, despite inhabiting the Tel Aviv statelet where the thing exists in a state of near perfection. The dhimmies of the T.A. régime, Gentile Palestinians mostly, may say almost anything they like about their Natural (neo-natural?) Masters as long as they do not go on about [Lacuna]. Hyperzionizers may oppress their patients because of an innate libido dominandi, or because they are scared and therefore conductin’ a Long War against Global Tourism, or perhaps merely because See-Might might can not be properly seen unless somebody gets visibly oppressed. But one is not to mention [Lacuna] in this connection. Conversely, one is encouraged, if not absolutely compelled, to countenance the notion that anybody at all could become a first-class Israëli subject, provided she . . . .

". . . leaving that bit lacunose in prudent self-defense, we may notice that present-day [Lacuna] Ascendancy at Tel Aviv and its counterpart in the jolly old Baghdád of 1908-2003 are not simply interchangeable. If Dr. Cartoonoclastes was shilling for Hyperzion rather than for his present patrons, we would not, I think, be hearing about "wicked ‘sectarianism’" all the time. In the Tel Aviv statelet, "sectarians" means various harmless bands of East European weirdos who usually disapprove of the whole [Lacuna] Ascendancy shtyk from beginning to end. Sometimes we hear it worried about that they are becoming too important in politics, but not often, and nowadays less frequently than formerly. Gentiles are Gentiles, they are not ‘sectarians’ in the meaning of the Act. Turks and Brits and Mecca Monarchs and Free Officers and Ba‘thís would all have been delighted to have the ideological leverage that the notion of "Gentiles" makes available to the [Lacuna] Ascendancy in the State of Israël. But "life is unfair," and they just plain did not have it. Tough luck, guys!

"Finally," she jested in addition, "everybody knows that for one lone sub-Arctic hothouse of virtual and vicarious fans of the Baghdád [Lacuna] Ascendancy -- plus also Prof. Dr. Righteous Virue out there someplace in North Denmark, admittedly -- there are tens of thousands of Tel Aviv [Lacuna] Ascendancy fans, nines of thousads of them centered right here in our very own Heimatland Gottes. The vicars’ and volos’ efforts at Lacuna Enforcement are unrelentin’ and heroic. Though not always crowned with success, and of course not officially organised as a Denkpolizeiamt, these efforts are formidable indeed. Ask Prof. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt to tell thee about it sometime, Mr. Bones."

(( Lady Pilate is not an absolutely reliable source, I fear, and in any case we have agreed that discussions of the Greater Levant in general and of the former al-‘Iráq in particular should not be held hostage to the Palestine Puzzle. A geopolitical dogma of Telavívestání Exceptionalism, so to call it, would be a hundred times better grounded than your run-of-the-mill Yankee homebrew counterpart is. Or, viewed from the Baghdád or International Zone end of the flight path, there is no reason why ‘Iráqí or post-‘Iráqí See-Mightism should specially resemble the See-Mightism of Jewish Statists.

(( The patrons that Cartoono shills for are also reminiscent of the late M. Slobodan Milosevic, whose credentials as an Indo-Germanic were, to the best of my knowledge, impeccable. A revived [Lacuna] Ascendancy at Baghdád would possess a ‘right’ to rule all of the former ex-‘Iráq (as it will then ipso facto be) pretty strictly analogous to Serbia's natural mastery of Kosova. The main ingredient in this mess of pottage is that Ms. Clio gets to trump almost any amount of degenerate modern nose-countin’. Since M. Milosevic's plans miscarried, one cannot be sure exactly what attitudes his Thought Police would have inculcated in the Kosovar dhimmies. On the whole, I don't think there would have been a [lacuna] about the fact that the latter are, and must forever remain, second-class Serbians because they are not Serbs -- ethnography pure and simple. The Balkans possessing perhaps even less éclaircissement than the Greater Levant, probably the Thought Police would have allowed their dhimmies to say what I just said, but knock them down if they "tried to make something of it." More or less the Ba‘thí plan, as far as the mere physical violence goes, but with much less mental wear and tear on the second-raters, who could quickly learn exactly what never to be caught saying out loud.

Should poor M. al-Málikí and the International Zone neorégime totter and fall, with a revived [Lacuna] Ascendancy acceptable to Messers Lynx and Badger and Cartoonoclastes and Virtue replacing it, the hillbilly dhimmies and the heretic dhimmies would be in tricky straits to navigate. They must not, of course, insinuate that there is anything the least bit ‘sectarian’ about their subjection to Natural Masters™, but exactly what expressions would the new Thought Police consider to so insinuate? Of all the words that twenty-four centuries of Pol. Sci. have made conceptual mud pies with, ‘nature’ and ‘natural’ take the cake. The patrons of Mu’ámara Junction very sincerely consider that an "al-‘Iráq" run by hillbillies and heretics is an affront to Ms. Nature, not really an al-‘Iráq at all. This view has the extraneous support of the militant extremist GOP, for to call anythin’ those stumblebums did or do or will do hereafter in ex-‘Iráq ‘natural’ would be absurd on its face. If alien aggression and intermeddlin’ be not artificial, nothing on Gore's green earth is artificial.

More distictly than Messers Lynx and Badger and Cartoonoclastes, Messer R. Virtue has made clear that he thinks the druthers that Prof. Dr. R. Virtue wants to see imposed on the former al-‘Iráq are exactly Ms. Nature’s own thoughts on the question.

And the moral of that, Mr. Bones, is that one can have a lofty IQ and a presentable PhD and still be a flaming jerk.

A seasonable moral for all seasons in itself, I trust, but at the moment I would have thee notice how ‘nature’ and ‘natural’ bring out the inner jerk in some folks. Who knows, maybe that was poor M. Muntazar al-Zaydí's problem? Throwin’ shoes at the nominal chief of the alien invasionite banditti who have wrecked one's country their way rather than one’s country’s own way can certainly be called "a natural reaction" -- unless I have forgotten my Chicagoland English altogether.

"The reason for this is that you never know"

Cartoono the Magnificent has outdone himself, Mr. Bones!

What we need now is someone like Sam Parker from the United States Institute of Peace to delve deep into American history and show how yesterday's historic fiasco was the inevitable reflection of the sectarian battle between the rust-belt Democrats in Detroit and the confederate creationist free-marketeers of the Old South. Because that, mutatis mutandis as we say, is what the suits and the corporate media have made of Iraq. Takes one to know one, I guess.

The specimen appears to have turned into what it hates worst in all the world, namely a carto caricaturist. It does not deploy words with reference to the meanings conventionally attached to them, it paints little pictures with the denotations. The Free Kurds™ are not a nation. They are not even a province, they are only made of words. They were manufactured from words last Wednesday afternoon, at about the same time when the thousand-year Pact of Steel between President Davis and Baron Zaibatsu was being finalized.

Most mutatis mutandibus fans would, I expect, feel a little embarrassed to find that their happy band has been increased by the unilateral and preëmptive self-addition of Miss Lynx and Mister Badger and the learned Dr. Cartonoclastes. With all due respect, would not Mutatio vincit omnia befit the Mu’ámara Junction gentry better? For behold, O Bones! Cartoono just said out loud and expressis verbis what he has been skulkin’ around mutterin’ since before we became acquainted with him. Once again, please, Sam!

... sectarian battle ... is what the suits and the corporate media have made of Iraq ....

Why, prior to the aggression of March 2003, natives and locals of the soon-to-be-former al-‘Iráq did not even have a word for at-tá’ifiyya, let alone the thing! ‘Sectarianism’ came in with Sultán Bremer and Khalílzád Pasha, along with cell phones and financial corruption and Domino Democracy™. Everbody knows that. (Everybody at Mu’ámara Junction)

Tripier tripe and more odoriferous neo-baloney than Cartoono purveys would be hard to find. One point about it I like especially is how it turns those "suits and corporate media" into Übermenschen and supercorps: less than six years ago, wicked ‘sectarianism’ did not exist at all in a Mesopotamia happily progressing under the (stern but) enlightened rule of her Natural Masters™; now, only about two thosand days later, wicked ‘sectarianism’ is as ubiquitous in ex-‘Iráq as kudzu in California or rabbits in Australia. What hath Wolfowitz wrought?

Lynx Badger Cartoonoclastes LLC would certainly not dispute the ubiquity, especially in the immediate vicinity of the International Zone neorégime. If poor M. al-Málikí be not a wicked ‘sectarian’, why, the very words "wicked ‘sectarian’" have no referents whatever and Núrí Kamál Jawád I, the Hannibal of Da‘wa, is, mutatis mutandis, a political unicorn and a square circle. Also black and white and re[a]d all over.

Speaking of ‘read’, sir, Dr. Cartoonoclastes should not be misunderstood as inculcating merely that the corporate media fiends have made the former al-‘Iráq appear -- to ignorant Homelanders and couch potato[e]s who cannot decipher cuneiform chickentracks as their betters can -- as if wicked ‘sectarianism’ rules the root. Wicked ‘sectarianism’ really does rule the roost. When a competent agitprop artist like Cartoono undertakes to shill apologise for a crew of Natural Masters™, there is bound to be at least a small pony of realism somewhere in the vast pile of poop that ensues. Natural Masters may be relied on to notice when their mastery is in abeyance and advise their hired (or volo) hands accordingly. Mutatin’ the given mutanda, the hired (or volo) hands may then type ‘sectarianism’ to mean "Unfortunately the Hannibal of Da‘wa has not yet been deposed." Or whatever.

As thee know, Mr. Bones, what makes a cartoon be cartoonish is the style of the representation; correspondence or noncorrespondence to the things represented is nothing to the point. Thee are not to assume, sir, that Miss Lynx and Mister Badger and Dr. Cartoonoclastes actually believe in their own more factious and fantastic parodies. On the other hand, though, it is contrary to our own house rules to that the conspiratorialist gentry are cynics who clearly understand in foro interiori that their "wicked ‘sectarianism’" is merely a façon de parler, a clever twistification designed to move others with, themselves unmoved. [1]

More practically, I get the distinct impression that Cartoono has given up expecting that his native and local patrons in the former al-‘Iráq and the Universal Sunnintern are going to get their Natural Mastery™ back any day now. The Hannibal of Da‘wa may not be in like Flynn, but he looks to be tolerably well embedded. Accordingly:

"Just for the heck of it, I'm going to post occasional notes about Japanese coverage of financial issues ... The reason for this is that you never know." Thus Dr. Cartoonoclastes. Mr. Milton has it "Thus sang the uncouth Swain to th' Okes and rills, While the still morn went out with Sandals gray, He touch'd the tender stops of various Quills, With eager thought warbling his Dorick lay: And now the Sun had stretch'd out all the hills, And now was dropt into the Western bay; At last he rose, and twitch'd his Mantle blew: To morrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new."

Ah, so!

___
[1] Thee may further reflect, Mr. Bones, that Cartoono the Magnificent's favourite verbal toy, ‘sectarian[ism]’, already had an asymmetrical warfare side to it before it fell into the paws of the militant Mu’ámariyya. If anybody spontaneously refers to her own preferred brand of Superstition or Enthusiasm as "a sect," she and I have never been introduced. To conjugate the verb,

(1) I am a disinterested seeker of Truth and Justice. (2) Thee are a tad partisan at times. (3) M. al-Málikí is a wicked sectarian.

As regards the former al-‘Iráq, though it is in fact the case that many in Cartoono’s patron theocommunity refuse to believe that they -- non-heretical non-hillbillies, Arabophone Sons of the Sunnintern -- constitute no more than one-fifth of the population of the provinces in question, yet they could concede the merely arithmetical point without much loss. Natural Mastery™ is not to be ascertained by counting noses, sir!

In both Eslámestán and in the former Christojudæandom a vaguely quantitative factor does, however, enter in. ‘Sectarianism’ and at-tá’ifiyya would not have become the words that they are if soi-disant Reformed Christojudæans had heavily outnumbered Papist Christojudæans in about the years 925-1300/1517-1870, or if there had come to be five Twelvers for every Orthodox Mohammedan in 1430/2009 instead of the other way around. Both Schimpfwörter assume not just that the second-class human being inhabits a chip cut off from the block, but further that her abode really is a chip, i.e., a schismatic fragment much smaller than the One True Big Deal that it (got) broke off from.

But God knows best.

American Sieve Trampled By Deranged Elephants

... Mr McConnell, who did not have a particularly prominent role during the Bush presidency, finds himself at the heart of an increasingly ideological debate. “We’re at something of a tipping point on where we go next as American civilisation,” Mark Sanford, the Republican governor of South Carolina, told MSNBC on Thursday. “This string of bail-outs threatens the very market-based system that has created the wealth that this country has enjoyed.” Mr Sanford said the US had “two automotive industries”, comparing Detroit’s “excessive costs, payrolls, [and] union contracts” and “the rest of the automotive industry across America, which, in many cases, is doing much, much better; in some cases, even thriving”.

No, of course not, Mr. Bones, the Financial Times man did not actually say ‘deranged’. He said

Since Mr McConnell’s Republicans will command at least 41 Senate seats, he is set to play a big role in frustrating or facilitating the new administration’s legislative agenda. “Beginning next month McConnell is the leader of the Republican party in the US,” said a Republican aide. “But he is not an imposing personality and the party is confused about what to make of the economic reality the country finds itself in.” At present, many Republicans voice a mixture of confusion and regret on whether the $700bn troubled asset relief programme, backed by many of their representatives in the Senate, is effective or counterproductive. While the Senate has prided itself as a voice of moderation, President George W. Bush’s influence over the chamber has ebbed. Many Republicans from the south are also less sympathetic to Detroit. In such circumstances, Mr McConnell finds himself at the heart of an ideological debate.

That was written before the scalawag Solons actually shot themselves in the vast emptiness between their ears, but it is considerably better done than Aunt Nitsy's or the Wall Street Jingos’ strictly post mortem accounts from the scene of the crime. Possibly in a follow-up the FT will name names? If the New York Times Company is informed enough to scribble

"[T]he Senate failed to win the 60 votes need to bring up the auto rescue plan for consideration. The Senate voted 52 to 35 with 10 Republicans joining 40 Democrats and 2 independents in favor,

then the NYTC must be able to list the thirty-five Heroes of Destructive Creationism™ if it liked, despite the last gasp being a "merely procedural vote" from the parliamentary viewpoint. The ten traitors to the Party of Grant and Hoover almost certainly come from Rust Belt country, not very far from Lake Michigan.

What's that, sir? . . . Well, no, at this point I think it does not matter what the Serene House of Kennebunkport-Crawford wants or dreads. Destructive Creationism is most unlikely to be sentimental about its own lame ducks: "Toss ’em off the Sledge of Palin’ to the wolves!" seems to be the operative bumble-sticker at the moment.

Up in Wasillastán the Big Party kiddies may still think that automobiles grow on trees, though I suppose it does not matter what the kiddies think as long as automobiles still engender petroleum rents for the AK public sector. Anyway, Neocomrade Governess Sarah Louise Heath-Paling has not, that I know of, put in her two cents about General Motors and Chrysler. The elephants may be dyin’ of "a mixture of confusion and regret," yet they still know by instinct in their hearts, as their Neocomrade Senator B. Goldwater might have phrased it, that Neocomradess Heath-Paling’s notions on any grown-up subject are not worth solicitin’, quite as trashy as those of Neocomrade POTUS George XLIII, now that the latter is as good as out the door in a pine box for burial. As the Financial Times analyst analysed, Neocomrade Senator A. M. "McConnell is the leader of the Republican party in the US" now.

The Château Kennebunkport aspect of the ever-august Serene House is more to the point at the moment than its Rancho Crawford aspect. (At least Daddy had a brain to shoot out, for Pete’s sake!) The most obvious way to score last night’s human event would be "GOP 35, America 10." Since you just heard me demand a list of names of the loyal scalawags (35) and the treacherous panderers to constituents (10), I do not deny that that scoring system interests me. Nevertheless in the longer term some scoring like "Voodoo 1, Economics 0" is likely to be more significant. The Party of Big Management has decided that it no longer cares to be the party of General Motors. I presume everybody at the Union League Club of Detroit (or whatever they call it) must think she has fallen down a rabbit hole to Wonderland. And, needless to report, good ol’ Charlie Wilson rotates in his forgotten grave. The grave the scalawags just spit on.

So, then, it is to be Voodoo Redux with the Heroes of Destructive Creationism. "I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa" is out. Ring in "We simply cannot ask the American taxpayer to subsidize failure!" As Neocomrade Senator A. M. Mitchell of KY phrased it yesterday.

There is quite a lot of irony the picturesque in the neocomrade Minority Leader’s new voodoo. It would appears that thirty-five neo-scalawag pols at Washington City understand better what is good for GM at Detroit than the staff and management of GM understand themselves. If America’s party were to take that line, it would be only about half a second before Dr. Limbaugh and Neocomrade O'Reilly bark and bellow somethin’ fierce with the word ‘nanny’ in it. Since it is only America's Otherparty that does it, I shall have to wait a few hours to hear from the witch doctors of no spin. Obviously they will want to award Neocomrade A. M. McConnell some sort of virtual medal, but under the circumstances I cannot guess exactly how the citation will go. To bark ’n’ bellow "Our GOP Washington knows better than anybody's mere Detroit" presumably will not quite do.

To bark "Our GOP Tokyo understands the proper Big Management of the American automobile industry better than anybody at Detroit" would be even worse. Yet it would not be 100% fair to accuse the neoscalawags of havin’ sold out to the Japs approximately in time to honor Pearl Harbour Day. Lemme see, how did the Jingos of Murdoch handle the Oriental picturesqueness angle? . . . Hmm, no mention of it at all, unless "Markets reacted quickly in Asia. In Japan, the Nikkei 225 index extended mild morning losses after the proposal failed" counts, which it does not. [1] It appears that the staff and management at Osaka do not like the New Voodoo much better than their counterparts at Detroit like it. Still, the neocomrade and his scalawags may conceivably be consultin’ the long-term interests of Nissan and Toyota and Honda: a certain amount of turbulence is inevitable whilst the "Titanic" is actually sinking -- "the possible impact of the decision on the US economy and their own sales there" -- but after Destructive Creationism has done its bit, obviously competitors in the transportation industry will be better off. And so will their politicians. You don't have to be Neocomrade Senator Professor Doctor Ph. Gramm of TX to work out that sum in political arithmetic, by gum!

Perhaps the good folks at Osaka have not actually been consulted by the post-McCain crop of GOP geniuses, however? Voodoo bein’ what it is, I incline to suspect that neocomrade McConnell and the scalawag boys are just goin’ by what they think the Homeland -- nay, the Dixieland -- employees of the Osaka folks think Osaka is likely to think. The genuine Nissan and Toyota and Honda article are inveterate corporatists in something like Mussolini's sense, who would be very sorry to see GM and Chrysler go. (The salient magic word is zaibatsu, Mr. Bones, and I am amazed that I remembered it right. Take that, Alzheimer!)

__

A new age calls for fresh faces, and it has begun to sound as if Neocomrade Governor M. Sanford from Calhoun country is volunteerin’ to be

poster boy for Voodoo Redux: "This string of bail-outs threatens the very market-based system that has created the wealth that this country has enjoyed."

Well, somebody from the Party of Goldwater and Atwater was bound to say that, so why not Marky?

As long as the lad does not threaten secession in order to secure the yesterday's system of his choice, thee and I need not object to Marky, Mr. Bones. It would be interesting, though, if some MSM fiend were to ask him whether he sees no threat to his cherished Peculiar Institution in that fact that such bail-outs have become necessary. Or, if he insists, in the fact that so many Crawfordite cowpokers and Kennebunkport gentry and Wall Street Jingos and Osakan bigmanagers and Goldman Sachsites and Detroit Union League Club klutzes and assorted other persons not inveterately hostile to the Party of Grant have mistakenly come to think the bail-outs necessary.

(( It appears that Detroit does not have a Union League Club. At least the City of Klutzes got that right! Now that the Party of Grant is become as Homelandic as pecan pie and Gone with the Wind, ’twere better not to remember when it was not: "History is bunk!" "That was then, this is now!!" "Palin', PALIN', PALIN'!!!" ))

___
[1] "The American dollar, and US stock futures for the Friday open in New York, all declined sharply immediately after the news , while Japanese automakers Honda and Nissan each fell more than 11%, not least because of the possible impact of the decision on the US economy and their own sales there. This set the tone for the rest of the trading day in Asia. The MSCI Asia-Pacific Index had fallen 3.5% by the close of trading in Tokyo, reducing its weekly gain to 6.9%."

Oh, well, you ‘extend’ ‘mild’ far enough, eventually you get to ‘sharply’, no doubt about it.

Losin’ Not Good For The Brain

Thee and Father Zeus already know, Mr. Bones, what a mistake Ms. Conventional Wisdom makes when she proverbially expects suffering to ennoble. Let it be my own contribution to point out that sufferin’ -- i.e., pain experienced by wingnuts and limbloviators and ‘conservatives’ of every stripe, red, white, blue or yellow -- is even less efficacious than suffering.

Today we have a little snippet in which both exotic neo-Muslim and ganz heimatländisch losers profit nothin’ from their loss:

... a Georgetown University professor ... argues that "prison itself -- which under Bush carried at least the prospect of being seen as 'living martyr' for al Qaeda -- would lose some of its status under an Obama administration." I'm inclined to agree with Andy McCarthy who writes, "What we don't yet seem to grasp, even after all that's gone on these last two decades, is that our politics and our law are of interest only to us. They matter nothing to jihadists. . . .[Mohammed] doesn't see Bush or Obama. He sees an American president. He sees a symbol -- the embodiment of a people and culture that are his mortal enemy." What Mohammed may actually see at this point is Route 1 to the virgins, at least until that military judge threw up a potential roadblock. The rest is detail. This is not to deny that President Bush has achieved "iconic status," but rather to suggest that he has achieved it mainly among Georgetown professors and Washington Post reporters. To them, if not to Khalid Sheik Mohammed, there is more status in being a prisoner under President Bush than under President Obama.

Mohammed of the Original Square Brackets is the "Khalid Sheik Mohammed" who has "confessed to planning 9/11."

Neocomrade A. C. McCarthy cropped up in our last thrilling episode. Master Andrew is the sweet puppy that goes with the doubly quoted barkin’ about “If we don’t suppress Iran, Syria, the Taliban, al Qaeda, and the Sunni terror funding stream in Saudi Arabia, we can’t win in Iraq.” By his own weekly standardisation thus expressed, Señorito McCarthy is a fivefold loser at the moment in the Middle East alone. For present purposes, though, his losses of 4 November 2008 will suffice.

M. Mohammed is a loser left over from 11 September 2001, whose losses consist precisely in being left over. Where, oh where, is Ms. Shaháda hiding when thee really want her?

The snippet was concocted as a neocomradely response to a Washington Post article of 9 December in which the customer is introduced to "Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert and professor at Georgetown University." Little Andy's factious venom makes clear that little Andy thinks Big Bruce was a winner on Election Day, but the honourable and gallant himself probably thinks he is just perpetratin’ Weberian value-free social science. Actually, Big Bruce's C.V. sounds distinctly neocomradely to me, especially "Scholar-in-Residence for Counterterrorism at the Central Intelligence Agency between 2004 and 2006." Little Andy may be singin’ them sans-peur-et-sans-research blues again. Still, Big Bruce’s Tendenz is not vitally important to this saga no matter what it may be.

Here is Big Bruce’s social scientizin’ insofar as it was vouchsafed to the Posties:

"[The defense attorneys are] trying to milk the situation for everything they can. For both sides, reaching some kind of closure after such a long struggle is undeniably appealing." (...) Bush, who boasted of tracking down al-Qaeda's leaders "dead or alive," has consistently sought the death penalty for high-value captives, while President-elect Barack Obama has, as of yet, no such record. An execution would be a propaganda boon for al-Qaeda and would be "infinitely preferable to spending a life in prison," Hoffman said. Even prison itself -- which, under Bush, carried at least the prospect of being seen as a "living martyr" for al-Qaeda -- would lose some of its status under an Obama administration, which would probably transfer inmates from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to ordinary prisons in the United States, Hoffman said.

Little Andy would be warranted in wonderin’ whether Big Bruce can really read the Arab Mind™ as blithely as that, but that is not what the señorito chooses to wonder. He accepts most of his neocomrade’s mentalism act, but then interprets it to suit himself. And pretty clearly Little Andy interprets it wrong.

Now I daresay it is not unlikely a priori that "our politics and our law ... matter nothing" to M. Mohammed and to most other militant extremist neo-Muslims, yet Big Bruce did not actually claim the contrary. The way the Postie reports it, one cannot make out where the alleged theological or theodical distinction between George XLIII and Barák Husáyn XLIV came from. If I had to guess myself, the prime suspect would be M. Mohammed's legal team, with "Joby Warrick, Washington Post Staff Writer" not far behind. Beltway City natives and locals like them will be reliable enough for the elephants-and-donkeys side, and they seem more likely to make up Arab Mind™ tripe and baloney to suit themselves than is Neocomrade Prof. Dr. B. von Hoffman, who ought to actually know at least a little bit about it.

From a Perry Mason viewpoint as opposed to a Neocomrade D. R. Pipes or jihád careerist viewpoint, the shysters perhaps selfishly want their client to plead guilty just to get it over with, for "reaching some kind of closure." (Naturally we are not spared a personal appearance by the tiresome and solecist C-word!) To recommend that plan to M. Mohammed, Perry Jr. may have pointed out to the faith-crazed fiend that "Bush ... has consistently sought the death penalty for high-value captives," whereas with BHO, well, who knows? Run-of-the-mill clients, those without Arab Mind™ or faith-craziness complications, would probably go for it, obviously thinking of themselves rather than of either The Brat or ThatOne™ first and foremost, maybe even thinking of themselves exclusively and altogether after the familiar manner of militant extremist Republicans.

M. Mohammed, quâ militant extremist neo-Muslim, may or may not think significantly different from a militant extremist Republican There is no way to tell how or what he thinks from Mr. Warrick's little pudding. (To be sure, it boggles the mind to fancy any of the Rancho Crawford cowpokers except -- just possibly -- Oilslick Dick Cheney pleadin’ guilty and committin’ suicide mostly to spite and inconvenience Enemies of the AEIdeology. Though equally neo-, the Party of Atwater crew are decidedly more courage-challenged than M. Mohammed’s pals.)

If Mr. Warrick concocted the donkey-and-elephant angle himself, his motive must have been to point a moral and adorn his tale with Obáma the Good radiantly outshining Dubya, the Texas Chainsaw Pardoner. Lots of fun, but not very serious. Should ThatOne™ in fact commute a death sentence on M. Mohammed, such a Greenspanoid exuberance of specifically Christian

Christojudæan charity would confirm almost beyond doubt that the man is a closet Mohammedan. Few things are less likely to happen than that thing, although it is likely enough that Mr. Warrick has not yet accurately triangulated the position of B. Husáyn XLIV on questions of foreign and invasion policy. Mr. Warrick has lots of company.

So at the end of the day, when Neocomrade ‘Paul’ [1] of Power Line is pleased to revile "Georgetown professors and Washington Post reporters," thee must acquit the professor at once, Mr. Bones, and scrutinize the evidence against the reporter very conscientiously. Mr. Warrick is not to be given the kangaroo’s rush simply because it is not absolutely impossible that he is guilty. What is good enough for Gitmo Groupies would be pitch and defilement for thee and me.

Merry days.

___
[1] ‘Paul’ appears to be the nom de guerre of Big Management Party Neocomrade P. Mirengoff, Esq., "an attorney in Washington, D.C. He is a 1971 graduate of Dartmouth College and a 1974 graduate of Stanford Law School. He has two daughters and lives with his family in Bethesda, Maryland. Paul supports Everton FC of the English Premier Soccer League, as well as the Washington Redskins, the Washington Wizards, and the University of Maryland basketball team."


(( What's that you said, Mr. Bones? . . . Me neither. By the way, sir, despite the above data on domicile, this prize-winnin’ e-coven operates out of Claremont College. Or possibly out of Wombschool Normal University, I misremember. ))

Ingrate Ex-‘Iraqis Meet Ex-Great Invasionauts

The defining legacy of the Bush presidency and the primary cause of electoral disaster for Republicans was the Iraq War. But the war is the one thing the conservative movement will not allow itself to question (...) AEI’s Frederick Kagan “deserved a medal” for conceiving and promoting the surge strategy (...) “If we don’t suppress Iran, Syria, the Taliban, al Qaeda, and the Sunni terror funding stream in Saudi Arabia, we can’t win in Iraq.” (...) “We should think about what we did there after the invasion” (...) “We have a fifth column in this country that is larger than we like to think” (...) The Bush doctrine [is] a practical guide to foreign policy, while the setbacks in Iraq [are in part to be blamed] on “ingrate” Iraqis. Instead of rethinking the scale of American military commitments in the face of limited resources, Kagan argued for vast increases in defense spending. To those who dissent from this line of argument he asked, “How did we get from 1929 to 1939?” (...) It would be too incriminating to question the justice of the Iraq War.

We have spoken before, Mr. Bones, about that curious gap in our Muttersprache which has only the single generic product ‘victim’ to plug it. Neocomrade A. C. McCarthy can call his Party’s neosubjects in the former al-‘Iráq ‘ingrates’ even as thee and I can call AEI and GOP and USIP and DoD and AIPAC and ... so forth ‘aggressors’, but the patients of ingratitude and aggression have no crime-specific name to call themselves, apart from one-time jokes on the pattern of ‘murderee’. I was toying with the notion of calling that particular militant neocomrade an ‘exgrate’ when it occurred to me that in New Homelandic one might spell the same noise "ex-great" and thus recur to the happy event of 4 November 2008.

As thee will see from the first sentence quoted, all these sweet puppies’ ex-greatness is a part of the scribbler’s own chosen topic, for in politics ‘legacy’ is mainly a matter of "Aren’t you sorrow now that you kicked us out, O holy Homelanders? Remember back in 2008 when things were bigmanaged competently by the Party of Big Management, unlike . . . ?"

Check back with me in 2012 about the rest of the unlikeness, sir, but meanwhile Neocomrade M[ichael] B[rendan] Dougherty is quite sure, and almost certainly correct to feel sure, that the bigmanagement of invasionism by the extremist Republican Party will be held up as a national treasure and a marji‘ at-taqlíd, "place of returning for emulation." Most of M. B. Dougherty's disquisition is about potentially disputed Bushevik legacies, whether the Homelanders will look back hereafter with longing to the steady adherence to the Fœtus Cult displayed by the Serene House of Kennebunkport-Crawford, whether the Homelanders were put off by the Serene House’s only-too-visible OnePercenterism, should the Elephant Folk flog mostly cultural reaction next time, or mostly economic reaction, or what.

An old song, and not one that appeals to the neocomrade scribbler, who seems to be your run-of-the-mill Buchananite wierdo. Like P. J. Buchanan, M. B. Dougherty thinks it hopeless to expect any of ’em to badmouth the Serene House’s bigmanagement of overseas aggression. The Ever-Victorious Surge of ’07™ in particular seems exalted above all detraction by card-carryin’ denizens of Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh. A hundred centuries hence, the Jerome Corsis of the day will still reverently recall George XLIII Bush as "Him Who Taught Us How To SurGe" -- unless, that is, Neocomrade Dr. Gen. D. H. Petræus of Princeton and West Point eventually manages to add "President of the United State of America" to his C.V., in which case he, not The Brat, will be revered as HWTUHTS.

The Brat, thee see, Mr. Bones, would in that case become an ‘exgrate’, a victim of misunderappreciation. As will Fat Freddy of AEI and a number of other neocomradely Rosencrantzen and Guildersterns from Century XV/XXI be in any case. Unquestionably Serene Houses get to grab the credit for their retainers’ doin’s. (If thee question that principle, sir, thee might as well vote Democratic and be done with it!) Freddy may get his medal someday, but his chances of long-term apotheosis as HWTUHTS are zero.

Bein’ a weirdo, by Wingnut City standards, M. B. Dougherty would prefer that the rest of his pack of sweet puppies had never been taught how to suRGe at all. Since it looks to me as if only other weirdos attend to The American Conservative, it seems natural that the neocomrade should excuse himself from explainin’ what is so wrong about a little high-spirited suRGin’ from time to time. Presumably there are whole issues of the TACky fishwrap explainin’ that point. The closest he comes to ætiology is the "vast increases in defense spending" phrase in my quotation, which is not enough to conclude with any certainty that M. B. Dougherty is a dedicated and conscious agent of the Concord Coalition, one who holds that the only thing wrong with aggression is that Uncle Sam cannot afford it -- "afford it" in the strictly financial sense. [1]

There is also M. B. Dougherty’s bottom line to consider -- once you find it, I mean, since he has whimsically made it the fourth sentence from the end: "It would be too incriminating to question the justice of the Iraq War."

In Buchananite covens and conventicles, to question the basic justice of the Freedom-Means-Peace Circus cannot involve the likes of the International Criminal Court. At least, I don’t think it can. Neocomrade M. B. Dougherty probably deployed the verb ‘incriminate’ only to establish that he is really, Really, REALLY! opposed, not because he wants indictments and prosecutions literaliter. Come to think of it, though, Concord Coalitionism itself might call the Freedom-Means-Peace Circus ‘unjust’, meanin’ no more, however, than that all those bucks that the Serene House has thrown at Afghanistan and ex-‘Iráq properly belonged to somebody else, probably the endlessly put-upon taxpayers of the Blessèd Middle Class. [2]

___
[1] Even when good guys argue like that, they argue neither well nor strongly. Prof. Dr. Stiglitz, for example, scribbled abusively and tendentiously in an attempt to rouse some rabble against his alleged Three Trillion Dollar War, yet in the wake of Mortgagegate 2008 and the Crawford Crash, what is $3,000,000,000,000.00 between friends?


[2] Taxation being one species of the crime of larceny, its victims too are in need of a specific designation. ‘Taxpayers’ will not do AEIdeologically, what neocomrades of the Political Capitalism factionette of the militant extremist GOP require is some expression featuring the passive voice. (Thee will notice, Bones, that ‘taxees’ is too like the common abbreviation of ‘taxicabs’ to work well.)

Cartoono Loves Núrí Kamál (not)

As I strongly suspected, Mr. Bones, poor M. al-Málikí still fails to commend himself to the Arctic impartiality of Ms. Lynx and Mr. Badger and Dr. Cartoonoclastes, being ineradicably tainted with s*ct*r**n*sm most foul:

But ... the Americans agreed not to give the Iraqi government the case-files [on TwentyPercenters kidnapped by AEI-GOP-DoD], the reason being to protect these people [from] the reasonable fear of being harrassed or killed by the agents of this sectarian government. So ... the question is what other separate agreements might there be that either invalidate parts of the published agreement, or add to it in important ways, replacing in this way the facade of bilateral agreement between sovereign states with the reality of sectarian manipulations, in which the US could now be bound up in new and undisclosed ways.

Did thee know, sir, that Master S. Hadley recently converted to the Ithná‘Ashariyya? And Dr. C. Rice? And . . . .

¡Cartoono Redux!

Radio Free Conspiracy has resumed broadcasting on pretty much the same old wavelength, and one still does not have to pay for one’s tripe and baloney. So things could be worse.

That gleesome threesome of Miss Lynx and Mr. Badger and Dr. Cartoonoclastes have no fresher hobgoblin to threaten us with. howebver, than poor old Joe Biden, the schizomaniacal enemy of all rigidly nonsectarian pro-Sunnianity:

Possibly the US finally gave up on the idea of "leveraging" Maliki to make concessions to the Sunni parties, and the US decided to help the Sunni parties on its own. Possibly this accounts for scuttlebut along these lines has surfaced in a couple of instances, both of them having a common feature: the spectre of US security support for Sunni groups in the western part of Iraq. Possibly. Because this is what Biden had been saying: Central-government accomodations are not in the cards; there have to be separate regions by ethnicity and sect. Certainly if the US is setting itself up to supervise such a process over the coming three-year period of time (or longer), that is certainly something that would account for the silence we are hearing from the Democratic Party policy-groupies. Brian, Colin, Sam, Marc and all of you: Would it hurt you to say it isn't so[?

(Personal appeals produced only unpleasant blowback last time around, but evidently hope springs eternal at Mu’ámara Junction.)

Cartoono is about the only guru in sight who supposes poor old plebeian Joe will be able to dictate foreign and aggression policy to Grand Duchess Rodham-Clinton. This may, of course, be due to the fact that he has no more idea than I do exactly where her ladyship stands on the issue of applying fiendish schizomania to the provinces of the former al-‘Iráq. HRC may not know herself, though doubtless she and Viscount Holbrooke and Countess Albright and Mr. Peretz of Harvard (&c. &c.) can make up something presentable rapidly enough. I'd guess myself that the crew of the USS Hillarious will prefer to have as little to do with post-‘Iráq as possible, mainly on "not invented here" grounds, although there must be limits to how far and how quickly they can disassociate themselves from Wolfie's Waterloo and set up a quagmire almost all their own over in darkest Khorasán. We shall see.

The LBC, Lynx-Badger-Cartoonoclastes, hobgoblin du jour is outlined in a bit more detail as follows:

The Obama policy-groupies had in recent months been outspoken in their criticism of the Bush administration for not exerting "strategic" leverage on Maliki to make political concessions to the Sunni parties. Suddenly the bloggish Obama people (Katulis, Kahl, Sam Parker, Marc Lynch and that whole group, not to mention the whole of Brookings, CAP, etcetera) have fallen completely silent on Iraq policy. What happened to their "leverage" argument? Putting the questions together: what did the Maliki administration come to understand about the coming Democratic Party policy that made him grab for the best deal available under Bush, even though key "concessions on sovereignty" such as supervision of US military activities, and criminal jurisdiction, were clearly exposed as a sham in the McClatchy story on the eve of the vote (points on which even Sistani is now showing signs of buyer’s remorse)[?]

Cartoono does not do question marks, it looks like -- that's the second one the present keyboard had to [insist] on. If thee will reflect a little, Mr. Bones, I believe thee will agree that this is a becoming and aimiable trait for conspiracy-crazies to evince, a subtle transitional insinuation that what they concoct to worry themselves about may actually be real. BGKB.

There is a bit of a puzzle, though, why Cartoono should suddenly take poor M. al-Málikí's point of view. Has the Prime Quasiminister switched teams, then, and started playing for the good guys? It seems a bit improbable, considering that His Excellency's credentials as a rigidly nonsectarian pro-Sunni remain as questionable as ever. Dr. Cartoonoclastes may have lost sight of his own ball, so to speak, or fallen for his own agitprop. A post-‘Iráq with a strong central International Zone neorégime that amounts to Núrí Kamál writ large would qualify as watan-nationalistical in the technical sense, but if Cartoono will settle for no more than that, he is not the factionist I took him for, the bitter-end factionist who sternly resolved that ex-‘Iráq must be handed back to its Natural Masters, a race to which no heretic or hillbilly can ever truly belong. Formerly the only heretics who could get the time of day from the Mu’ámara Junction gentry were the Sadr Tendency, whom they will have supposed a hopeless bunch of political sadsacks and juvenile delinquents that it would be easy for Natural Masters to think their way around. The Hannibal of Da‘wa is obviously not quite like that, not any more!

Regardless of whether thee roots for or against poor M. al-Málikí, Mr. Bones, it does rather look, does it not?, as if he sees his SOFA and his security agreement with Rancho Crawford as tending to reinforce the position of himself personally. The cartoonoclastic hobgoblin comes to the fiend Biden setting up the Natural Masters in control of the wild and oil-dry northwest provinces only, and not the whole Ba‘thí shebang. Naturally poor M. al-Málikí would rather grab the whole loaf, and so too would Lynx Badger Cartoonoclastes & Co. prefer to grab the whole loaf. Under the circumstances to say "They both want the same thing" is absurd, unless one -- also absurdly -- assumes that the thing itself is "the territorial integrity of the former al-‘Iráq" as opposed to "the whole loaf grabbed by US." The applicable proverb is either "Two of a trade can never agree" or "An two men ride of a horse, one must ride behind."

Conspiracy-crazies like Cartoono are perfectly capable of announcing absurd things, there is no surprise in that. Unfortunately it is not easy in the present case to decide whether the absurdity is believed in with subjective sincerity or merely put forwards in the hope that others will swallow it. The hope, as opposed to the conspiratorializing, may or may not be absurd. Thee must ever bear in mind, O Bones, that Dr. Cartoonoclastes sets up as an expert on Greater Levantine affairs and may therefore not reasonably hope to sell his dupes and marks various products that they would never dream of buying in markets that they know more about. The former al-‘Iráq falling prey to the knavish tricks of Gelb and Biden and Galbraith at this point in the course of the aggression must look very fishy to anybody capable of independent judgment. Yet how many of them are there?

Who Betrayed Blimp?

If one were to talk of party betrayal, it would involve supposedly conservative corporate elites who talk disingenuously of diversity and opportunity while they lobbied to ignore the law, and get their hands on as many illegal cheap laborers as they could to the callous detriment of the working citizen poor.

Thee cannot fairly complain, Mr. Bones, that Rear-Colonel V. D. H. Blimp refuses to call the shots as he sees em. Perhaps one might, though, subtract a few points for the specimen’s overawareness of its own frank and straightforward blimpicity,

I supposed one could cop out, and claim that there is truth in all three explanations . . . .

Oh, well, nobody is perfect. Not even on the pseudocampus or in the hippocampus of the American Ideological Enterprise is everybody perfect, sir. Believe it or not! (And remember, thee heard it here first!)

The imperfection that more immediately concerns us, is the one attributed -- or perhaps one should say, attempted to be attributed -- to "supposedly conservative corporate elites." Though the SCCE doubtless have their petty and endearin’ faults, yet they are also fairy godparents to all those AEIdeologues and Hoovervillains and Heritagitarians and Catoholics that shed such radiant lustre all across our holy Homeland. I mean, is not the good neocomrade colonel rather bitin’ the Invisible Hand when he blusters like that?

Castle Blimp condescends to camouflage itself at least a little -- admits of "a fuzzy, kumbaya veneer" as VDHB calls the same ploy when America’s party does it -- to the extent of "If one were to talk of party betrayal." As if, that is, there was a merely abstract case to be put against the xenophiliac SCCE, a case that Blimp does not care to associate himself with personally, but mentions only because it were better the Party of Grant and Atwater heard about its problems first from a candid friend rather than a cultivated despiser or wannabe wrecker. Blimp’s own loyalty to the PGA is above reproach -- how should the faithfulness of a geistliche Militärist be other than stainless? Some of the neocomrade colonel’s weaker siblin’s, however, may feel perplexed, if not actually ‘betrayed’, by RiNO tolerance of crimmigrants.

The veneer is not laid on so thick that one cannot see through it. What the GOP geniuses ought to do about the Criminalien Menace™ to gratify their own base-and-vile is plain as day, it seems to me. Obviously there ought to be lots of loud barks and bellows against shiftless wetbacks occasionin’ scorn for Rulalaw in the negligible public sector, whilst over in the Sacred Private Sector, the SCCE should -- needless to spell this out! -- continue to dance the laisser faire fandango as usual. With the addition of some first-rate soundproofin’ interposed between the two unequal compartments, the problem should then be taken care of for a generation or two.

When Juan and Juanita eventually reach the tipping point where they can regularly swing elections, further steps will become necessary -- but that will be then, and this is only now. [1]

Blimp seems -- yet ’tis but a mere seemin’, I think -- positively to envenom his fangs before assailin’ the Invisible Hand: "to the CALLOUS DETRIMENT of the working citizen poor" is worthy of Neocomrade P. J. Buchanan himself. Golly! AEIdeology is in a sad shambles if its paladins have given up pretendin’ that the OnePercenters could hardly fail to benefit the good or workin’ poor if they aimed at that mark deliberately. Blimp barks of good workin’ citizen poor for obvious anti-crimmigrant reasons, but so would neocomrade Buchanan. Nevertheless, one can and should take PJB to really mean what he barks, whereas Rear-Col. Blimp is merely layin’ on another coat of shellac. [2]

The Criminalien Menace™ does not seem adequate in itself to VDHB, it requires to be fleshed out with le wourtzelbacherisme en Amérique along the following lines:

Wall Street zillionaires ... can hire costly consultants to find exemptions not available to most plumbers or electrical contractors. Even when they choose to endow favorite causes they prefer tax exemptions — either now with write-offs, or postmortem without estate taxes — and de facto have the taxpayer subsidize their particular take on proper policy. Unfortunately, the Republicans failed to even develop such an argument that the very poor and the very wealthy in cynical fashion [3] support liberal policies, while those in between who struggle in entrepreneurial fashion to do even better are caricatured as unpatriotic and selfish.

Thee will see at once, Mr. Bones, that Blimp proposes to recycle Lady Nixon's "plain Republican cloth coat."

Suppose we were to ask which fashion the good neocomrade colonel himself proceeds in when he vends his latest tripe and baloney. Is Blimp bein’ ‘cynical’, do thee think, sir, or is he rather bein’ ‘entrepreneurial’?

What’s that? . . . "So why can't he be both simultaneously?"? . . . Indeed, indeed, I can detect no antecedent inconsistency myself, not primâ facie at any rate.

Though additional research is required, perhaps it is safe to pronounce the entrepreneurial/cynical dichotomy odd or picturesque or something of that sort? And thee do gotta admit, Mr. Bones, that it is extremely unlikely that any other neocomrade has anticipated V. D. H. Blimp in devisin’ it.

Exactly how well devised the Blimpian ECD, "entrepreneurial/cynical dichotomy," may be is not for thee and me to lay down. Lord Mammon and Lady Market have a monopoly on makin’ those rulin’s, as every wombscholar knows in this blessèd and mysterious Age of Creative Destruction that we are so lucky to be still undestroyed in.

Nevertheless I suppose we humble may venture to scribble a gloss or two in the margins of The Big Book of Doom from time to time without being neocreativated to a crisp instantly and on the spot. I have mentioned le manteau de Pat Nixon already. Add to it l'avarice de Gordon Gecko, noting carefully that Col. Blimp has redacted the latter cliché slightly. Originally one understood "Greed is good," whereas, pursuant to the Blimpian ECD, the thrust should really be more like "Greed is sincere."

I take sincerity to be the common- or garden-variety antithesis of cynicism. VDHB may conceivably prefer some more up-market hermeneutic product at this juncture, but if so, he ought to say so unmistakably, even at the risk of bein’ accused of Elitismus and thus gettin’ autohoisted petardwise. It would be more edifying, I think, if Blimpian ‘cynicism’ did mean somethin’ a bit tonier than "self-servicin’ insincerity," for on that basis Entrepreneurianity pretty well has to consist mainly of a sincerity that services itself -- and thus we are conducted straight to Geckoville, without passing GO or collecting our two-hundred trillion dollar rebate.

Thee will recall my mentioning before that AEI appears to have rotted Rear-Col. Blimp’s brain, Mr. Bones, along with the brains of a number of other formerly distinguished neocomrades. I fear today he gives us more sign of it. In the absence of qualification and elucidation, the entrepreneurial/cynical dichotomy amounts to a total renunciation of geistliche Militärismus. Lord Mammon and Lady Market carry all before them, Entrepreneurianity can have nothin’ at all to do with Mars and Bellona when defined by the default that Blimp consigns them to. [4]


___
[1] As to when "then" will arrive, exactly, Mr. Mark Penn has fixed on the year of religionism 1473/2050. I presume that Otherpartisans will think their evil hour can be deferred rather longer than a Rodham Democrat thought his could be, hence perhaps 1504/2080. Or even 1525/2100. And God knows best!

Meanwhile the Otherparty should take all steps (that it can get away with) in the path of suppressin’ "so-called Hispanic" turn-out at the polls. An outsider scarcely has to teach ’em that lesson, however. They knew that already when Gen. Hamilton was a pup.


[2] The ‘kumbaya’ superveneer is not to applied to America’s Otherparty literally. Though quite as sentimental and hormone-based as Eleanor Roosevelt on a good day with the wind behind her, the neocomrades run to darker sentiments and hormones, to cowardice and greed and self-sorrowin’ and self-esteemin’ and the like. Students of rhetoric might examine how V.D.H. Blimp and other neocomrades deploys such terms as ‘callous’. One gets the impression that they think it really rather clear-headed and steel-claptrap-minded -- anti-fuzz and anti-kumbaya, so to speak -- of themselves to be ‘callous’ but then run into difficulties because the epithet has been collaboratin’ with the enemy for a long time.


[3] The neocomrade colonel may be makin’ a tactical misjudgment at this point. Would Big Management Party agitprop not be more effective if the enemies of the Otherparty were not all classified as cynical? The fiend Soros is undoubtedly well abused that way, but down towards the low end of the Great Chain of Chas. Murray, does it really make much sense to accuse a teenage African-American hooked-on-welfare queen of ‘cynicism’?

Furthermore, if we jackasses are all cynics, then we none of us can take fuzz and kumbaya any more seriously than card-carryin’ AEIdeologues take ’em. I suppose it would indeed be pretty jackasinine of us to keep on playing that charade when nobody has taken it seriously since about Wednesday 26 Jumádae l-’Awwal 1348, the former 30.X.1929, but if one recurs to the real world rather than to Planet Blimp, it is clear enough that the vast majority of jacks and jennies are kumbaya-fuzzable and not to be confused with M. le Diable de Soros by any serious investigator.


[4] Actually Blimp barks about foreign and aggresion policy at some length, but never to inculcate any loftier lesson than "We are all Surgists now." In the original, "On foreign policy and national security, the battle of ideas is already won."

Why is this señorito unlike the other señoritos?

I guess it must be because D. Brooks manages to be so extraordinarily señoritoly without actually possessin’ any Daddy to call its own.

"Kristol Minor," one thinks easily and naturally enough, "Pipes Minor, Podhóretz Minor, Buckey Tertius . . . ." The ever-august House of Kennebunkport-Crawford is slightly different from the pseudaristocracy of Neocognia proper in certain ways, but not on the fake-dynastic flank: our incumbent Brat not only had a Daddy, it had a Granddaddy too.

And so it goes over to starboard in Wingnut City, so it goes even with the current -- though doubtless not for much longer! -- Commanderissimo of AEI and EiB and GOP. The Flaky Flyboy is technically entitled to subscribe himself "John Sidney McCain III." I have no idea whether he ever actually takes advantage of opportunities to show off his Roman numeral. Any competent imaginer can, however, easily imagine JSM3 torn between two stools about it, whether to play at being I. Coriolanus Superbus Invictorianissimus or to play at bein’ plain Jack Maverick, Tonto to the Lone Ranger as played at by Governess S. L. Heath-Paling of Alaska.

Master Brooks is not like the others. Davey is like M. Tullius Cicero, novus homo, or even like unto Melchisedek, blessèd and mysterious Priest-King from Erewhon [1], sine principio sineque fine. Or sineque terminatione, as the case may be.

So what is our endless and beginin’less little laddie up to this morning? Why, it is expoundin’ the Deeper Significance of the Crawford Crash. (What would you expect it to be up to?) It starts rather tediously with some warmed-over First Estater tripe and baloney,

"Americans will learn to live without material extravagances. They’ll simplify their lives. They’ll rediscover what really matters ... [yada, yada] ...

, but after a while, around Paragraph VII, cheerfulness breaks in:

"It’s possible that the downturn will produce a profusion of Hugo Chávezes. It’s possible that the Obama administration will spend much of its time battling a global protest movement that doesn’t even exist yet.

That reflection may not make you feel particularly cheerful, but if so, you will no doubt be an adherent of the "Democrat Party" and maybe even an Obamatarian thug. Naturally at Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh unanticipated difficulties for ThatOne™ are almost as heart-warmin’ as apple pie and mooseburgers and even the Fœtus Cult itself.

Still, Señorito D. Brooks has never been half as much interested in the Lesser Breeds Without as most of the neocognaçois gentry are, so it swiftly reverts to the near side of salt water and moves straight to its own topic of topics, "Suburbia in Central North America, 1928-2235." (Sicut canis, qui revertitur ad vomitum suum, so David Brooks -- if you will pardon my very rusty French.) Once it gets properly revved up, it manages to remain pretty cheerful even in the act of decantin’ whole litres of cold water into other people’s soup:

It will be the loss of a social identity, the loss of social networks, the loss of the little status symbols that suggest an elevated place in the social order. These reversals are bound to produce alienation and a political response. If you want to know where the next big social movements will come from, I’d say the formerly middle class.

Lots of fun at Finnegan’s wake! Unfortunately the laddie dishes out only the plainest sort of tap water. [*] Stale tap water at that, since everybody instructed beyond wombschool level has heard Master Davey’s Soc. Sci. tune before, the one with the catchy refrain Und morgen die ganze Welt!

Surely Miss Clio will not repeat herself quite as unimaginatively as Señorito D. Brooks imagines? Farces are supposed to be funny, I believe. Although perhaps one should not rely on the late Dr. Marx’s sense of humour too heavily . . . .

But seriously: why on Gore’s green earth is a political response bound to be produced? What prevents the Holy Homeland’s alien and bewildered couch potatoes from, for instance, sinkin’ ever deeper and deeper into some Oblomov- or even Quayle-like stupour of couchpotatoedom? Alternatively, might they not advance beyond the familiar Bowlin’ Alone® product in the same general direction, perhaps with a hand-held e-gizmo that can bowl for them virtually?

Or feel free to roll your own! "There are more things in heaven and earth, Davidito, / Than are dreamt of in your psociology."

Happy days.

___
[1] "But all the tribes and all the peoples will speak the truth who are receiving from you yourself, O Melchizedek, Holy One, High-Priest, the perfect hope and the gifts of life. (...) [H]e is from the race of the High-priest, which is above thousands of thousands, and myriads of myriads, of the aeons. The adverse spirits are ignorant of him, and (of) their (own) destruction.

And so forth and so on: like little Davey’s own psociologisin’, a little of that rotgut brew goes a long, long way.


[2] A truly stop-at-nothing rhetor might, however, speak of "Vichy water."

The Ministry of Bright Lines

The LEKC, learnèd elders of Kennebunkport-Crawford, have met in secret conclave and resolved upon a whole new Protocol (Number CVIII) that nobody ever heard of before. In the face of yet another Endkrise des Kapitalismus and, more significantly, yet another electoral Dolchstoß from the direction of their General Hamilton’s "great beast," it has seemed good to Boy and Dynasty and Party and Ideology Spirituique Sancto to lay down the following "bright line" [1]:

[Beast fans] have decided to follow an earlier $25 billion loan [to GM/Ford/Chrysler] with a $50 billion bailout, which would inevitably be followed by more billions later, because if these companies are not permitted to go bankrupt now, they never will be. This is a different sort of endeavor than the $750 billion bailout of Wall Street. That money was used to save the financial system itself. It was used to save the capital markets on which the process of creative destruction depends. Granting immortality to Detroit’s Big Three does not enhance creative destruction. It retards it. It crosses a line, a bright line. It is not about saving a system; there will still be cars made and sold in America. It is about saving politically powerful corporations.

Thus Señorito D. Brooks expounds Protocol CVIII.

Farther down the Great Scale of Wingnuts, the thug esteemed neocomrade C. Krauthammer extemporizes from what can only be the same LEKC talkin’ points as follows:

Finally, the outlines of a coherent debate on the federal bailout. (...) Now clarity is emerging. The fault line is the auto industry bailout. The Democrats are pushing hard for it. The White House is resisting. Underlying the policy differences is a philosophical [sic] divide. The Bush administration sees the $700 billion rescue as an emergency measure to save the financial sector on the grounds that finance is a utility. No government would let the electric companies go under and leave the country without power. By the same token, government must save the financial sector lest credit dry up and strangle the rest of the economy. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is willing to stretch the meaning of "bank" by extending protection to such entities as American Express. But fundamentally, he sees government as saving institutions that deal in money, not other stuff. Democrats have a larger canvas, with government intervening in other sectors of the economy to prevent the cascade effect of mass unemployment leading to more mortgage defaults and business failures (as consumer spending plummets), in turn dragging down more businesses and financial institutions, producing more unemployment, etc.

Neither of these ideokiddies can think its way out of a paper bag economically, which backhandedly explains why the vulgarian C. Krauthammer is a good deal more perspicuous than Master Davey, the amateur sociologue. The former, knowin’ its own limitations, has not ventured to diverge nearly so widely from the Urtext of Protocol CVIII as handed to it by the agitprop arm.

Anyhow, the essence of Protocol CVIII is plain enough in both versions: Finanzkapital has been superofficially declared to be a ‘utility’ whereas manufacturing is something other and something lesser. And a ‘utility’ will have been superofficially defined as (approximately) "Whatever General von Ludendorff at the Federal Reserve and Marshall von Hindenburg at the Treasury decree to be worthy of Ausschöpfung."

Though the Big Party thug C. Krauthammer speaks -- asinus ad lyram! -- of philosophy, neither he nor little Davey can have noticed that the true locus of discrimination is located more in the Hindenburgo-Ludendorffian internal forum than in the former real world. Sound Aristotelians like thee and me will notice that point, however, Mr. Bones, and thereby avoid waste of time on any future verbiage the neocomrades may churn out about the Platonic Idea of a Utility. Let Elder Bernanke and Elder Paulson play that parlour game, a game which really makes sense only inside OnePercenterly covens and conventicles. The rest of the Crawfordite pack will not, of course, be wantin’ to admit even to themselves that they have abdicated all responsibility, and shoved poor Kaiser Georg XLIII into a broom closet, and bowed their own necks to the Hindenburgo-Ludendorffian Juggernaut. So there must, for the comfort, be some pretence that the salvatores Borussiæ do not just dictate what ‘utility’ is now to mean in the holy Homeland.

Decent political grown-ups can dispense with that folderol, apart from pointing out to one another that a strong odour of Goldman Sachs is likely to pervade whatever the gruesome twosome come up with. Possibly we might also congratulate OnePercenterdom upon developin’ a clear chain of command, even if they fuzz things up for themselves by confusin’ it with a bright line of discrimination. I daresay the lemmin’s could call that chain a ‘utility’ too, if they like: it is certainly very useful to know for sure who must be obeyed.

This brings us to a rather crude but important question, namely, "What is to become of Protocol CVIII once the politicians preferred by the ninety-nine percent take over next year? Hindenburg and Ludendorff can get their broom-closet Emperor to veto all anti-utilitarian schemes for another ten weeks or so, but what then?"

The thug C. Krauthammer, who sticks to his talkin’ points as issued, says nothin’ about that issue at all, from which one may infer with reasonable confidence that the Urtext of Protocol CVIII does not mention this disagreeable and alarmin’ subject.

Little Davey Brooks tapdances around it with reminiscences of Pol. Sci. 101 that do not seem very pertinent, let alone persuasive:

... [T]he larger principle is over the nature of America’s political system. Is this country going to slide into progressive corporatism, a merger of corporate and federal power that will inevitably stifle competition, empower corporate and federal bureaucrats and protect entrenched interests? Or is the U.S. going to stick with its historic model: helping workers weather the storms of a dynamic economy, but preserving the dynamism that is the core of the country’s success.

Mussolinianity will ensure, of course, only if Obama Pelosi Reid et Frères are permitted to bail out non-utilities. Thee notice, Mr. Bones, that their little laddie at the New York Times Company is dressin’ up in sheep’s clothin’ again, pretendin’ to be a Century XIX/XII populist who wants to make ‘corporation’ a naughty word once more, and ‘competition’ the God word to end all God words. Not an impressive shtyk, but it does seem to be Davey’s own. I cannot think of any reason why Goldman and Sachs and Hindeburg and Ludendorff should take any interest in it.

Master Brooks natters about "creative destruction" a little, but his heart is located a good deal farther back in yesteryear than the vogue of CD and VD, "voodoo economics." Davey is a very old-fashioned corporation flack who wants the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 restored as the cuttin’ edge of Modern Times.

Well, his private-sectorian project possesses at least the merit of quaintness. Of course even if the holy Homeland had elected the Flaky Flyboy with 80 Big Party Solons and 400 Big Party Congresscritters, we would certainly never have reverted to the bucolic daydreams of Neocomrade D. Brooks. There is no point in digressing further in that silly direction.

When it comes down to how the Learnèd Elders of OnePercenterdom are actually goin’ to throw monkey wrenches into the Mussolinitarian schemes of Obama Pelosi Reid, little Davey has no more to say about it than the thug Krauthammer has to say about it. Both kiddies give a sort of free preview of comin’ attractions, the first reverberations of how they themselves will be barkin’ and bellowin’ in the months to come. But unless we madly suppose that the mere emission of such Otherparty noises will cause America’s party to grind to a halt and bring back Hindenburg and Ludendorff, the kiddies have no practical notions of any value tactical, operational or strategic.

Was Protocol CVIII intended to have any such practical value?

There is no way to tell, really, since we do not have the actual text, nor even the text of the suggested Bernanke-Paulson talkin’ points. One can, however, say that it is extremely unlikely that Protocol CVIII will have much practical effect: one envisions King Canute down at the beach firmly advising the Atlantic Ocean about the newly promulgated superofficial definitions of ‘ebb’ and ‘flow’. Or the original H&L twosome attempting to redefine their way to a Hun victory on the Western Front in 1918. Fun stuff, but not exactly serious.

Members and well-wishers of the Ninety-Nine Percent Club can wallow in unserious Schadenfreude about the intellectual absurdity of the Goldman Sachs bozos and their paid apologists pretendin’ that Finanzkapital is a Platonic utility, whereas transportation does not make the cut, and manufacturing anything concrete EGREGIOUSLY does not make the cut. But there is nothing tactical or operational or strategic in that either, not when nine Homelanders in ten are prevented by their Big Management Ideology wombschoolin’ (or by some other brain disease) from taking any interest in so high-falutin’ a question, and then, of the remaining ten, only one ten-thousandth of one Homelander is sufficiently free of toxic partisanship to attend to both sides of such a debate fairly and deliver a verdict strictly on the merits. [2]


___
[1] The senior neocomrades have decided to relabel their ‘protocol’ product line for marketeerin’ reasons we need not go into here.


[2] There is perhaps some scant smidgen of a nonexcluded middle ground, as for instance the reflection that this ‘utility’ of the cuttin’-edge OnePercenters is a movin’ target rather than a proper Idea of Plato. ATT used to qualify, and more than qualify -- telephone service was once the very model of a warrantable moden monopoly. Yet Change and Decay have befallen Ma Bell, which rather makes one wonder if anybody can be altogether safe.

(( "Remember: gold has NEVER been worth zero!" What could be more utilitarian than that? I ask thee, Mr. Bones! ))