Dr. Triangle On Baron Von Wurzelbacher

Obama's tax plans and spending programs have emerged as the key point of difference between the campaigns. And the Democrat's comment to Joe that he saw his tax policy as a "way to spread the wealth around" underscores the motive behind his program: to redistribute income. Obama might as well have told Joe, "I want to take the hard earned money you make fixing pipes and give it to other people." If the Republican Party concentrates its fire on the tax issue and the redistributionist impulse behind Obama's plans, it can close the Democratic lead point by point, day by day, until the election.

That is an amazingly unambiguous performance for a charlatan in Dr. Triangle's line, though thee will notice, Mr. Bones, that he does not actually promise victory to the militant extremist GOP:

Q. Will Wurzelbacherismus close the gap enough?
A. Who knows?

At any rate, tricky Dicky obliquely nails one weakness in the present M.O. of his Flyboy and his Party and his Ideology with "might as well have told." Wurzelbacherismus does indeed require to be verbally reformulated so as to ensure a wider sale.

Myself, I'd leap straight to "¡TAXATION IS THEFT!" But thee will understand why the Party of Grant and Hoover and Goldwater and Atwater will probably never care for that approach. If internal revenue were abolished altogether, how could the neocomrades afford to send money to really deservin’ citizens like Goldman and Sachs? Passin’ the hat at their Fœtus Cult rallies is not likely to be adequate. Not even half adequate.

Dr. Triangle manages to be a bit scatter-brained even as he deplores the scatter-brainèdness of J. Sidney and the hired handlers. For instance, can thee tell me, O Bones, what his openin’ sentence was supposed to mean?

Ronald Reagan's most important contribution to the American political dialogue was his ability to move the tax issue from an economic-populist issue into a populist, blue-collar one.

I had always thought "blue collar" was basically shorthand about economics, especially the Gospel According To Fred , but on that hypothesis St. Ronald’s alleged crownin’ glory would be tautology. If Dr. Triangle has concocted some elaborate malarkey about the non-economic aspects of "the tax issue," we might have a good laugh at it if he put it on public display. But if he churlishly keeps it in his pocket and won't pass it around for everybody to look at, who can stay interested for long? It is not as if one expects anything much from the direction of Outer Morristán, after all.

Now considering that we ourselves are quite as good Reagan Democrats as even Miss Piggy Noonan herself, sir, cast your mind back to 1980 and try to recall "the tax issue" as it then was. Or rather, try to remember what Governor Reagan’s issues were that caused him to defeat Jimmy Crater. I recall that the day after the election, the loser attributed his misfortune to "inflation and the hostages," wherein, as I recall, our common friend Miss Sappy [1] entirely concurred. "The tax issue" cannot have come in higher than third. Dr. Triangle is old enough to remember, so probably he is just twistifyin’ a little. As usual. The neo-crew that he has apostasized to want a Reagan imprimatur on whatever they do, evidently, and it is a bit pedantic to demand any accuracy from them in this regard. ("History is bunk!" "That was then, this is now!!" "Drill, baby, dril!!!")

On the whole, Samuel Josef, Freiherr von Wurzelbacher, is more interesting than Neocomrade Dr. Triangle, or at least far less stale. So let's talk about him instead. Him and the Fabulous Flyboy.

Would thee say, Mr. Bones, that M. le Baron is a profound student of the Tax Issue? Is he not more like an undergraduate MIT Dilbertarian, your typical burner of incense to Miss Rand of Petrograd and Mr. Nozick of Harvard? Somebody who read Atlas Shrugged before attaining the age of reason and swallowed the damn thing whole?

In brief, does not citizen Von Wurzelbacher take the view that taxation really IS theft? That fantasy is congenial to ideological adolescents in every age group, but not one Ronald Wilson Reagan need be saddled with. J. Sidney McCain can have it if he wants it, though pretty obviously he does not really want it, not himself personally. Bein’ surrounded by Big Management Party clowns and bozos of Dr. Triangle's general ilk, though, poor JSM is likely enough to want to touch Von Wurtzelbacher and Rand and Nozick with an eleven-foot pole, if he can find one. As with pretty well all the rest of J. Sidney's marks and dupes, Planet Dilbert would (will?) quickly be very, very sorry it ever had anythin’ to do with the Straight Arrow Express. Shafted will they be!

Thee and I are very fortunate, Mr. Bones, that we happen to find dumb mugwumpism intrinsically repugnant and may thus be entirely sure that, come what may, the new Commanderissimo of AEI and GOP and EiB (&c. &c.) is never goin’ta stab us in the back. It will be rather a pity if J. Sidney loses, after all: to watch all those Wingnut City shaftees grow aghast at what they have called down upon themselves! Dr. Triangle presumably would/will not be among the aghast, however, for he has surely never assumed that whatever snake oil and Peruna he may prescribe for his patients has any connection whatsoever with how they behave in office. "Use ‘Joe the Plumber’ and then ditch him" must be almost as self-evident to tricky Dicky as "2 + 2 = 4" itself. [2]

So, then, how shall J. Sidney McCain best deploy Baron von Wurzelbacher? One Big Party señorito analyzes (in part) on reasonably strict Tax Issue lines, as follows :

First, [Von Wurzelbacher] is a symbol of their belief that Barack Obama is going to raise their taxes, regardless of what Obama says about hitting up only those taxpayers who make more than $250,000 a year. They know Wurzelbacher doesn’t make that much, and they know they don’t make that much. And they’re not suspicious because they believe that someday they will make $250,000, and thus face higher taxes. No, they just don’t believe Obama right now. If he’s elected, they say, he’ll eventually come looking for taxpayers who make well below a quarter-million dollars, and that will include them.

(Master York's ‘they’ is the GOP base and vile as assembled at a Virginia rally for JSM, Saturday 18 October 2008.)

This does not seem to be quite what Dr. Triangle prescribes. By the NRO neocomrade's account, wealth-spreading and psocialism as such scarcely come in, the marks and dupes are merely defendin’ their own wallets against all comers. We may have a bit of weasel-wordin’ here, though, since "No, they just don’t believe Obama right now" might really be more about ACORN and Dr. Ayers and the Rev. Mr. Wright than about the Tax Issue.

Be that as it may, the señorito's second point is ganz anders altogether, nothin’ at all like the wisdom of Dr. Triangle:

The second reason Joe the Plumber resonates with the crowds is what his experience says about the media. Everybody here seems acutely aware of the once-over Wurzelbacher received from the press after his chance encounter with Obama was reported, first on Fox News, and then mentioned by McCain at last week’s presidential debate. Wurzelbacher found himself splashed across newspapers and cable shows, many of which reported that he didn’t have a plumber’s license, that he wasn’t a member of the plumbers’ union, that he had a lien against him for $1,182 in state taxes, and that he failed to comprehend what many commentators apparently felt was the indisputable fact that Barack Obama would lower his taxes, not raise them. As the people here in Woodbridge saw it, Joe was a guy who asked Barack Obama an inconvenient question — and for his troubles suddenly found himself under investigation by the media.

Do the base and vile of the militant extremist Republican Party actually so resonate? I dunno, Mr. Bones, I really dunno. It is awfully easy to guess that Neocomrade B. York is mostly airin’ his own gripes against intellectually respectable journalism when he scribbles like that. At the same time, the resonation is so absurd that GOP marks and dupes could really be guilty of it. In the real world, of course, Von Wurzelbacher is goin’ta dine out on the day he met B. Husáyn Obáma for the rest of his life. To pretend to be sorry for him, or indignant on his behalf, is past my skill to make proper fun of.

The Fabulous Flyboy himself cannot possibly believe in or encourage that particular brain disease, though no doubt he considers that the attitude of the MSM has suddenly become fort mauvais of late. Any mugwump less dumb than J. Sidney is would have seen this alteration comin’, and, for that matter, non-mugwump neocomrades like R. Limbaugh actually did see it comin’. Still, the Witch Doctor of Democracy is in somewhat the same case as Señorito York: he may be worryin’ about a possible revival of the abominable Unfairness Doctrine in a fashion with which those who are not actual perpetrators of Wingnut City talk radio can never fully sympathize.


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[1] Sapientia conventionalis, "She who must be obeyed"


[2] Lady Rodham-Clinton managed to swindle Dr. Triangle personally somehow, but I have never even begun to understand exactly what happened between them.

"Can Joe the Plumber Turn it Around?"

Watch Baron Mike de Murdochville twist it around!

Can Joe Wurzelbacher, Joe the Plumber from Ohio, change the course of this campaign? That's one question that was raised at the third presidential debate. Wurzelbacher is the man who, in a moment caught on YouTube, confronts Barack Obama on his plan to raise taxes on people like him. Obama, sotto voce, replies that he wants to "spread the wealth around." In the third consecutive week in which the headlines of the financial crisis have prompted both candidates to denounce "Wall Street greed," the image of those whom Obama would tax higher was suddenly not an investment banker but a plumber.

Though "sotto voce" is the best tip-off that twistification in the path of Flyboy and Party and Ideology is in progress here, the part of the militant extremist iceberg lurkin’ under water and out of sight matters far more. Baron Mike of Murdochville wants it understood that all through the first two (‘consecutive’) weeks of Mortgagegate, the l*b*r*l j*ck*ss*s over in America's party were clamoring to lynch investment bankers. He wants that understood, but he does not venture to actually say it even under his voice, because (as I conjecture) he is well aware that he might be caught fibbin’ if he did say it. The way he conducts his suggestio falsi as regards "to denounce 'Wall Street greed'" can be recommended to apprentice rupertoids and amateur goebbelses without reservation.

Not quite so excellent, yet not bad at all, is the way in which this Machiavelli fallen amongst neocomrades copes with "those whom Obama would tax higher." Naturally it would not do for him to discuss details about the schemes for confiscation and larceny that the Senatorino has advanced. So naturally Baron Mike gives that patch a dab of suggestio falsi as well: the marks and dupes are to understand, without question or discussion, that citizen Von Wurtzelbacher would be sadly victimized by That One™. Would have been sadly victimized, I mean, of course, considering that Von Wurzelbacher will now be recycled forever in media circles familiar to Baron Mike himself, and never need to plumb again, unless it be for recreation.

This is not quite so excellent, falsesuggestionwise, because Baron Mike cannot hope that it will pass entirely unnoticed. How could it, when that is the end of the plunger that almost every liberal or Democratic publicist has chosen to pick this human event up by? "How much would Von Wurzelbacher have been robbed of by the Fedguv?" -- that is the question the headline crew like to raise, and plainly the question assumes (1) that ‘Joe’ is what he purported to be, and (2) that B. Husáyn Obáma will soon be elected POTUS, or rather, designated capo di tutti capi by his motley mob and zoo of zanies.

Nobody this side of Father Zeus has yet become privy to Von Wurzelbacher's business plan, if there is, or ever was, such a document, so the question as usually raised is entirely unanswerable -- who can say exactly what it is that the citizen originally purported to be? That puzzle, trivial as well as impenetrable, will not be discussed here.

Baron Mike has every right not to address the question either, for this silly goose claims nothing that she will not let virile and aristocratic ganders snatch possession of also. But alas, Baron Mike goes beyond not addressin’ the question and starts assumin’ the answer to it, which must be imputed unto him as a no-no. To set the record straight: Samuel Josef, Freiherr von Wurzelbacher, a.k.a. "Joe the Plumber," is the Ghost of Confiscation Future only at Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh.

Admittedly it is impossible to be sure exactly what ‘Joe’ is an image for, or ghost of, with the MSM fiends. Their portrayal has been decidedly blurry. Only the weakest of jacks and jennies go so far as to suggest that Neocomrade K. Rove, or some lesser villain of his ilk, must have stationed Von Wurzelbacher in the path of the Senatorino deliberately. That is mere paranoia and benefits nobody. From the main herd of "Drive-Bys," one derives a vague impression that somehow the militant extremist Republican Party are cheatin’ when they deploy their good ol’ ideobuddy ‘Joe’ -- but if you can make out exactly what the fiends complain of, your eyes are sharper than this keyboard's.

(( I have already indicated my own private take: S. Josef von Wurzelbacher, the spittin’ image of "The Man that Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo," pretty nearly the luckiest human being that ever lived! Governess Paling of Alaska may seem superficially similar, but the analogy cannot be pressed half an inch before it breaks down. After all, the wasillacuda had to take positive steps for herself before her mediocrity became a household word, whereas Von Wurzelbacher has been handed much the same celebrity as Miss Sarah's on a platinum platter, havin’ never done anythin’ more to EARN it than to keep on breathin’ and just be where he happened to be. [*] But this view is so off-the-wall that decency must hide it away inside double parentheses. ))

Baron Mike of Murdochville, then, is a bit too audible as he creeps through the woods towards his intended scalpees. He rustles a few leaves and snaps a few twigs in the matter of Barry H. Trotsky's economic plans. Naturally this slight personal clumsiness would have no effect on the value of his predictions, should he deign to predict. Equally naturally, in the light of polls, he is not such a fool as to make any flat-out prediction about the future. Instead of a declarative sentence, we get a political-almanachy kind of interrogative:

(...) Obama has shown that he more than meets the minimal standards for the office, as Ronald Reagan did in the single debate in 1980, and in a year like that one, in which most voters want the in party out, that will be enough. But the 1980 debate was on the Thursday before the election, and the decisive swing came over the weekend. Voters took almost every minute they could. Will they take more time this year, and give some thought to Joe the Plumber?

This rhetoric cannot be misunderstood by non-wombscholars: if those [expletive deleted] undecideds will only please take their time and think a little, then the already Commanderissimo of AEI and GOP and EiB and Heritageopolis and Hooverville (&c. &c.) must necessarily become commander-in-chief of US all. Huzzah!

Otherwise, That One™ wins. And universal darkness covers all -- but that's another story. [**]

De Murdochville's position is close to, but not exactly identical with, the proposition that "Joe the Plumber" ought to win this one for the GOPpers. [**]

Happy days.



[*] To dispute Wall Street bailouts or any other point of mammonology with Baron Mike of Murdochville would be misguided, but perhaps it may pass as his almanachy sort of political anecdote to recall that the late monster George McGovern once more or less predicted the Age of Von Wurzelbacher, though doubtless inadvertently and certainly not by name. (Who could guess that name?) After popular response to his campaign proposal in 1972 to mail every citizen a $1,000.00 check proved disappointing, the Senator wondered to himself -- sotto voce if you like to imagine it that way, I quote from memory myself -- "What, do they all think they are going to win the lottery, then?"

’Nuff said.



[**] "In deference to this our double sorrow / Sun shall not shine today nor shine tomorrow!" (S. Brown apud M. Beerbohm)



[***] Using Baron Mike's turf-based title reminds me that His Grace of NewsCorp is more open-minded (or less sure which way to jump?) than one had expected: the Times of Rúpertstán endorsed B. Hussein Obáma, Friday 17 October 2008: "Barack Obama has shown the character, intelligence and judgment to be president. He is the better candidate for the White House."

Will wonders never cease?

Still, with umpteen days still remaining, Baron Mike has plenty of time to ring up Kangaroo Centre and recommend that they do some serious rethinkin’ up there and do it pronto.

The obnoxious leader is mainly about foreign and invasion policy. It does not venture any closer to Wurzelbacherland than "Secondly, [BHO] has needed to show that he is not a captive of his party's Left." Brit Rupertarians are not in Baron Mike's class as rhetors, obviously: what an awkward way of announcing that That One™ has in fact discaptivated itself to the editorial satisfaction! Still, there can be no doubt that this is what they think.

On the other hand, when Sassenachs talk about ‘Left’ and even capitalise the four-letter word, they are on firmer ground than Baron Mike can ever be out in the provinces. It has been a century and a quarter since the words "We are all socialists now" were uttered at London. U. S. News and World Report notions about Psocialism are hopelessly outclassed.

Fouy? Pfui!

Analysis: McCain Jumps Around in Bid to Stop Obama By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS / Filed at 3:43 a.m. ET (( body of message )) EDITOR'S NOTE: Beth Fouhy has covered the 2008 presidential campaign for The Associated Press.

As the Master has taught loyal Aristotelians, Mr. Bones, Form trumpeth content.

Accordingly I complain first about the profile of all pieces from the Associated Press that begin with the word "Analysis" like this morning's specimen. Corporations as such are capable of being analysed; active analysis is far beyond their limited cerebral capacities. For the latter, rational animals are required, as for example "Beth Fouhy."

The AP is either run by mystical Platonisers who err in their First Philosophy and think that "Associated Press" can be the name of a real agent, ‘real’ meaning one that exists outside courts and books of law. Or else the racket is run by a self-infatuated crew of EDITORS who are determined not to give their peons credit for their work if they can manage not to. Either hypothesis can account for poor Beth getting relegated to a footnote at the end, which is where the names of AP wage slaves almost invariably end up. As I recall, a few, but not many or prestigious, newspapers rearrange the format and exalt Beth to the message preamble where she belongs, where anybody but this one crumby pack of NOTE-crazed EDITORs would have put her in the first place. (Naturally they upper-case THEMSELVES. How not?)

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That was kind of fun, Mr. Bones. We have not done any Traffic Analysis in many, many years. (Where are you now, Alexander Dubcek?) [1]

Of course if Beth gets her name on it properly, she has to take the abuse from us keyboards that do not find her stuff altogether satifactory. Lingering on the Formal side briefly, though, it appears that the Barber College of Journalism has successfully taught her how to do a topic sentence. Behold!

The misadventures of Joe the Plumber were just the latest stumble for Republican John McCain as he veers from one idea to another in a thus-far elusive quest to slow Barack Obama's momentum.

Veer on and stumble, O Fabulous Flyboy! (Or why not "Flee at once. All is discovered"?)

Miss Beth could teach the Barbers their own business: who needs a whole sentence, when one's topic fits in a single thesaurus entry? A severe taste might prefer to have either ‘veer’ or ‘stumble’ separately, however, and made more impressive by isolation, like that statue of Ozymandias. But never mind that: whether you happen to like the Form after you disentangle it is subphilosophical, if not de gustibus altogether.

It will be interesting if the sweet puppies of Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh take any notice of this scribble. After bein’ smacked in the kisser with Miss Beth's ‘Analysis,’ they would almost certainly take the line that she is bluffing -- she wants Samuel Josef, Freiherr von Wurtzelbacher, to be only another veer and a stumble and a swerve and a lapse and . . . and an aberration, but Miss Beth is (as WC and RL suppose) in fact scared that he is in fact nothin’ of the sort. Most of the sweet puppies are Lady Nixon's "cloth coat Republicans" who would never distress the more wombschooled neocomrades by attemptin’ an epigram, but some exotic wiseass señorito like M. Steyn or J. Podhóretz might conceivably rework Miss Beth's Stolpernmotiv into "John McCain has finally stumbled into the American Way: let him never depart thence hereafter!"

The puppies have never heard of Miss Beth, and probably won't now, but they do seem to like M. le Baron and account him, if not the greatest thing since sliced baseball and nightbread, at least the best Big Management Party product[ion] since Governess S. L. H. Paling of Alaska. Speaking of whom, Miss Beth really should have made more use of her, veer- and stumblewise. Her Excellency gets very scant attention indeed:

Policy proposals have been floated and postponed. Lines of attack have been launched, then abruptly changed. And Joe the Plumber, like Sarah Palin before him, was pushed onto the national stage without a complete examination.

Really toxic sweet puppies of AEI and GOP and EiB will maintain that the A.P. fiends must be scared of neocomradess Paling also and not want to give her any publicity. This hypothesis, however, is improbable. I think, Mr. Bones, we may take it for granted that Miss Beth and her EDITORS suppose the wasillacuda to have sufficiently self-destructed to be negligible on the national scene, though of course, like Von Wurtzelbacher, la Paling will be addressin’ covens and conventicles at Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh for the term of her natural life.

I fear I veer. ("I stumbled," she mumbled.) The point I was attempting to arrive at is that Miss Beth and her EDITORs probably ought to worry about Von Wurtzelbacher a little. Even if this specimen were no more sustainable than any of the Fabulous Flyboy’s previous binges and lunges, it is nevertheless the final one. (Unless Big Management resolves upon another aggression overseas, that is.) Von Wurtzelbacher's Warhol-designated fifteen minutes will last through Halloween and Guy Fawkes Day.

Miss Beth and her EDITORs disagree and must attempt to make out that M. le Baron is passé already. They do not do a very good job of outmaking, in my opinion. They go about it like this:

'When you run a campaign without a strategy and everything becomes tactical and your tactics don't work, you respond by finding other tactics,'' Republican consultant Ed Rollins said. ''Unfortunately, that's helped Barack paint the guy who is clearly better prepared to be commander in chief as erratic and not stable.'' McCain has always said he prefers to be the underdog, and he rolled out a feisty speech this week vowing a spirited fight to Nov. 4. But he has at times also seemed exasperated with the state of affairs. In an interview with a North Carolina television station this week, the Arizona senator said he didn't know when he would return to the battleground state. ''You know, my schedule lurches from day to day,'' he said, an edge in his voice. Republican pollster John McLaughlin said the McCain operation is undergoing an experience very common among campaigns in their closing days. ''It's the thrashing between the events you can't control and what the proper message for the campaign should be,'' McLaughlin said. ''In the past week, we've seen the McCain campaign thrashing.'' McCain aides, meanwhile, carry on their duties with an acute sense of grievance against the national media, a group the candidate once jokingly referred to as his base.

At a different level of ‘analysis’ that stuff could be the ace of trumps: "Why, the GOP geniuses admit themselves that they are lurchin’ and thrashin’! Your Honour, the prosecution rests." If Miss Beth and her EDITORs were to reprint the same scribble a month from now, Senatorino O'Bama having been swept up into the blessed state of POTUShood Elect with sixty-nine percent (69%) of the popular vote and fifty-three (34) of the fifty-seven (50[+1]) states in the Electoral College, the present keyboard would not trouble to carp about any of it save the last sentence. That bliss, however, will be then, and this is only now.

Considered as a now scribble, the difficulty is that Miss Beth and her EDITORs attempt to dispose of Samuel Joseph, Freiherr von Wurzelbacher, generically rather than specifically. The specimen is assumed without discussion to be only another lurch-thrash-swerve-stumble-bananapeel from those wunnerful folks who brought you "The Freedom Means Peace Show." Very likely that is the case, but recitation of these generalities has not much tendency to prove it.

Here is the personal attention accorded M. le Baron, in full:

Joe Wurzelbacher was supposed to be the Republican presidential candidate's ace in the hole -- an average, working-class Joe whose dreams of something better might be thwarted by Obama's plans. The Ohio plumber challenged Obama's tax policies and got the Democratic presidential nominee to say he wanted to ''spread the wealth around.'' McCain told Wurzelbacher's story at the final debate Wednesday in a bid to paint Obama as a tax-raiser out of touch with regular Americans. But Wurzelbacher's story didn't quite hold up under inspection: [h]e isn't licensed as a plumber in an Ohio county that requires one. He owes $1,200 in unpaid taxes. The dream purchase of the plumbing company where he works is a long way off no matter who wins the election. McCain acknowledged Thursday he hadn't ever spoken to the man he'd suddenly made a central figure in his quest for the presidency; McCain didn't speak with Wurzelbacher until Friday. ''Sorry, Joe,'' the Republican hopeful said Thursday on ''The Late Show'' with David Letterman for bringing Wurzelbacher a tornado of public attention he never sought.

That is a bit more than in full, actually, since the final slice of baloney belongs to the Fabulous Flyboy rather than to Citizen Von Wurzelbacher. A very silly lurch-veer-stumble that baloney is, too, when it is plain that Samuel Joseph will dine out on this fuss until the sun goes supernova or MurdochNews goes bankrupt, whichever happens first. "Sorry," indeed!

But turning to M. le Baron himself, Miss Beth and her EDITORs are under the absurd misapprehension that havin’ been discovered to be a scab and a scofflaw somehow discredits the gentleman. Of course in beautiful downtown Rio Limbaugh it does nothin’ of the sort. Au contraire. Good ol’ ‘Joe’ would not be half so wunnerful if he belonged to a (gasp!) union, or paid his taxes (sigh!) punctilliously. Organised Labour is all thugs, and taxation is theft. Every wombscholar knows that much, for gosh sake! Obviously it is Miss Beth and her EDITORs who are -- lemme see, how she say? -- "out of touch with regular Americans."

Not out of touch alone, to be sure, since the Big Managers have communications difficulties also. Probably worse ones. Nevertheless, two contradictory wrongs do not add up to right, they only add up to a whole lot of wrongness goin’ ’round.

Freiherr von Wurzelbacher is scarcely discussable at the level of decent political adults, where nobody scores any points automatically for trotting out "regular Americans" and "the middle class." The closest Miss Beth and her EDITORs came to that long-lost elevation of discourse was "The dream purchase of the plumbing company where he works is a long way off no matter who wins the election." That is not close at all, for the Saga of Joe the Plumber could serve equally well or badly to expose Barry O’Bama as Leo Trotsky if it were admitted to be all fiction from end to end. Pointing out that bits and pieces of it really are fiction is a complete waste of time and energy from every point of view this side of tertiary educationalism and "knowledge its own end." [2]

Meanwhile, Flyboy and Party and Ideology err in claimin’ that Von Wurzelbacher's privacy has been violated totally. No organ known to the present keyboard has yet printed enough details about M. le Baron's financial life to make possible a reasonable judgment about the impact of Trotskyite taxation/confiscation thereupon. A realistic novel with hard numbers about how much Von Wurzelbacher borrows and who he borrows it from and what usury is exacted, about how many wage slaves he hires and what wages they slave for, about how much of what his customers pay him to get their leaks stopped is considered to be ‘profit’ rather than ‘overhead’ by Uncle Sam and Aunt IRiS -- a fiction like that would be a hundred times more worth talking about than anything we have yet actually heard, factual or factional.

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More worth talking about economically, that is.

When Princess Posterity's court historians come to evaluate the Pípulagningarmannssaga [3] definitively, however, I suspect economics will be only a minor aspect, overshadowed by another to which Miss Beth and her EDITORs are entirely blind.

Fortunately for us doves and donkeys and decent political adults, the Fabulous Flyboy is quite as blind as they, to judge from his latest emission, in which Freiherr von Wurzelbacher figures exclusively as an enemy of Psocialism:

"Joe, in his plainspoken way, said this sounded a lot like socialism," McCain says in his radio address. "And a lot of Americans are thinking along those same lines. In the best case, 'spreading the wealth around' is a familiar idea from the American left. And that kind of class warfare sure doesn't sound like a 'new kind of politics.'"

(( The Commanderissimo of AEI and GOP and EiB (&c. &c.) is not merely blind to the better-than-economic Von Wurzelbacher, he manages to sound dangerously heretical about his own crew's mammonology, though who can doubt that he aims at rigid orthodoxy? Competent apologists for Big Management and OnePercenterdom, addressin’ the Chamber of Commerce after the dinner and before the orgy, do not come within a mile of opposin’ the idea of "spreadin’ the wealth around." They are all for that -- provided that the wealth is entrusted to qualified OnePercenters with MBA's from the Harvard Victory School, neo-gentry who understand how to do the necessary and desirable spreadin’ right. Diffusion of affluence is common ground here in the holy Homeland. Probably the Flyboy has spend too much time up in the wild blue yonder to understand the earthbound case for economic reaction properly. But God knows best why J. Sidney misunderstands. ))

To what are Flyboy and journalists blind, then? To this, from M. le Baron's heimatländisch fishwrap, the Toledo Blade

Judging by what he says alone, Wurzelbacher appears to lean even farther right than McCain. During the press scrum this morning, he seemed to lambaste entitlement programs and what he characterized as government paternalism. "Social Security's a joke. I have parents. I don't need another set of parents called the government," Wurzelbacher said. "Let me take my money and invest it how I please. Social Security I've never believed in, don't like it. I hate that it's forced on me." But hating government is not the same as hating the country, Joe made a point to note. "I want [my son] to live in an America that he's proud of. I'm tired of people downing America, saying that we're this bad country. I mean, that upsets me and my friends greatly."

There does not seem to be a proper transcript, and this keyboard is too lazy to prepare one from the picture show. The Duchessa di Sanseverino quoted a bit more of the baron's dilbertarianism on the radio yesterday, I believe, but Her Grace does not do transcripts either.

However, there is hope still for Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh! Samuel Joseph, Freiherr von Wurzelbacher, will be appearin’ on MurdochNews for the first two of his eventual 11,409 appearances this evening, Saturday 18 October 2008. If the Commanderissimo's hired handlers manage to perceive that "I'm tired of people downing America" is vastly more promisin’ for them electorally than eye-glaze about Trotsky v. Little Business, perhaps two-and-a-half weeks will be enough time for them to veer and stumble their way to the (pols' version of the) American Dream after all.

Miss Beth and her EDITORs cannot fairly be accused of attempting to murder this unpleasant possibility in the womb when they so obviously have not even noticed the pregnancy. And naturally if Von Wurzelbacher misbehaves with the Foxites, or remains overlooked by the McCainiacs despite behavin’ brilliantly, nothing will come of it.

So we shall see, and see pretty quick at that.

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[1] "Rational person versus decerebrated committee" would be one way of writing up the Prague Spring. On the other hand, that approach could easily end up boosting M. Václav von Havel, one of the greatest bores ever inflicted on Western Sieve.


[2] Not strictly true. Unfortunately detecting the fiction goes to swell the fatuous self-esteemism of a certain sort of liberal and progressive: "WE care enough to get the facts right, whereas THEY!" ("Yuck," he editorialised.)


[3] That is "pipe.layings.man's.tale," don't you know? Everybody understands Norse if you shout loud enough.

Not As Dumb As They Looks

Mr. McCain, like Republicans generally opposes sending more money to states and cities, maintaining that it discourages them from cutting spending.

And speaking of ‘squirrelly’

After a turbulent week that included disclosures about Gov. Sarah Palin and signs that Senator John McCain was struggling to strike the right tone for his campaign, Republican leaders said Saturday that they were worried Mr. McCain was heading for defeat unless he brought stability to his presidential candidacy and settled on a clear message to counter Senator Barack Obama.

Electoral Biology

Well, at least that is settled, Mr. Bones! ACORN

"John McCain and the Republicans are desperately trying to shift the blame for the economic crisis they caused with a philosophy of deregulation and indifference to homeowners. All the grainy footage and creepy music in the world can't cancel out some simple, basic facts, and the facts about the economy are not on John McCain's side."

is to be the electoral flora of 2008, and as to the electoral fauna, well, listen to this :

After a week of trying to portray Senator Barack Obama as a friend of terrorists who would drive the country into bankruptcy, Senator John McCain abruptly changed his tone on Friday and told voters at a town-hall-style meeting that Mr. Obama was “a decent person” and a “family man” and suggested that he would be an acceptable president should he win the White House. But moments later, Mr. McCain, the Republican nominee, renewed his attacks on Mr. Obama for his association with the 1960s radical William Ayers and told the crowd, “Mr. Obama’s political career was launched in Mr. Ayers’ living room.” The dizzying statements came on a confused day when Mr. McCain’s campaign pounded Mr. Obama as a “liar” in an incendiary television commercial about Mr. Ayers and as Mr. McCain abruptly announced another economic policy proposal, this time a plan to suspend mandatory withdrawals from 401(k) retirement accounts. The events reflected Mr. McCain’s frequently lurching campaign.

Lurchin' indeed! Clearly the Commanderissimo of AEI and GOP and EiB has gone squirrelly. The only issue remaining is whether the Fabulous Flyboy aspect of J. Sidney should be taken into account as well:

Happy days.

"this muddled answer"

McCain just seems to make it worse and worse," Mr. Barr said in an interview this week. "In the debate, he gave this muddled answer about increasing government purchases of troubled mortgages. This is a self-described conservative Republican urging the Department of the Treasury to buy people's mortgages."

Easy to holler back that Barr is the muddlehead. Easier still if one despises both dilbertarianism and H. Ross Perot.

Unfortunately the Fabulous Flyboy really did manage to be ambiguous on a key point. Despite his supposed love of town halls, the F. F. would do better readin’ from cue cards about everythin’ he does not thoroughly understand. (The weather and the grandkids and combat aviation are perhaps safe topics?) But he thought he could wing it, sayin’:

"You know that home values of retirees continues to decline and people are no longer able to afford their mortgage payments. As president of the United States ... I would order the Secretary of the Treasury to immediately buy up the bad home loan mortgages in America and renegotiate at the new value of those [house]s -- at the diminished value of those [house]s and let people be able to make those -- be able to make those payments and stay in their [house]s."

How much would the neocomrade secretary be authorised to pay for these junk mortgages? That is the question that threw Planet Dilbert off the track. Correctly recalling "at the new value of the houses," I took for granted that the bad paper would be purchased at twenty or forty or sixty cents on the dollar. However the F. F. did not in fact say that, he only said "renegotiate ... at the diminished value." Hired handlers have subsequently explained that the mortgages would be purchased by the Treasury at face value, "diminished value" or "market value" applying only before and after that transaction. (That now-you-see-it-now-you-don't sounds a little loony, perhaps, but one must remember that the objective is rather to make sure bankers have money capital than that human bein’s have shelter.)

The doctrinaires of Planet Dilbert care little what the neocomrade secretary pays, of course, for they are opposed to Uncle Sam bein’ in Trade at all. Ancient aristocrats like Sam do not befoul themselves with the lucre of Mammon!

Still, the Concord Coalition clowns are probably howlin’ more or less along Barr’s lines, though they can logically object only to the overpayment. Yet they have more reason than Randites and Nozickians do to complain about ‘muddle’: though the Fabulous Flyboy was not in fact attemptin’ to deceive anybody, if he had been, the Concordites would be his obvious marks or dupes. The payment was not concealed at all, whereas anybody who distrusts Cap’n M’Cain and dislikes unbalanced books might easily conclude that some swindle is under weigh when folks do not frankly say in advance that they propose to pay more than goods are worth. Plus then explain why they are neither demented nor corrupt.

Nobody admires the Fabulous Flyboy’s intellect less than I, yet, as with Walden Pond and the Dow Jones Average, there must be a bottom to it down there somewhere! [1] Probably JSM more or less understands what his handlers tell him about the latest Endkrise des Kapitalismus, including the true purpose of this gimmick. So the creature Barr is simply wrong about "muddle."

I've already let the F. F. off the hook about "swindle" myself.

Nevertheless, the F. F. is not exactly livin’ up to his own self-courageous profilism in this matter. Unless Dr. Alzheimer is involved, it is not just an accident that he did not spell out the overpayment side of his handlers’ proposal unmistakably. Obviously the Commanderissimo of AEI and GOP and EiB was willin’ to solicit some credit for ‘populism’ that he did not deserve and should have known that he did not deserve.

The proposal has attracted a great deal less attention than I expected, and doubtless the Flyboy Handler Community is disappointed as well. But the episode raises some question about their IQ's as well, because the overpayment business would have to come out as soon as serious people began to pay serious attention. Had they thought it through carefully, the handlers might have done better to save their gizmo for the third debate, so that the F. F. could never be forced to admit in public that he was proposin' it for the liquidity of bankers rather than to create the happiness of Wunnerful Wasilla.

As matters stand, it will most likely drop out of public discourse like a rock. (Will the Dow-Jones be in three digits by the time of the next debate? Stay tuned!) Neocomrade Secretary H. Paulson seems to think that he could do as the F. F. suggests with the blank checks Congress has already issued to him, but he has boldly resolved on somethin’ even more so, namely to buy shares in the banks directly. Unlike the Fabulous Flyboy and his handler community, Secretary von Hindenburg and Chairman von Ludendorff do not have to worry for even half a second about lookin’ like W. J. Bryan rather than Scrooge McDuck. The whole Mortgagegate show might be a bit less repulsive if the gruesome twosome did worry about certain appearances a little more -- though perhaps it will be better at the end of the day for everybody to see the Harvard Victory School MBA's naked? God knows best.


Meanwhile, back on Planet Dilbert, the creature Barr will not, I expect, be entirely happy with the way the Associated Press has dealt with it. Almost certainly it spent a great deal of time expounding its constitutional and ideological objections to Mortgagegate, only to find the A.P. interested only in its badmouthing of J. Sidney McCain.


_____
[*] And so there is: "... a low class rank (894 of 899)...." (Dixit Wikipedia)

McChaos

The Commanderissimo of AEI and EiB and GOP -- also of a few weekly standardisers and maybe a very, very few fellow mugwumps -- has admitted to bein’ no economist. Nevertheless, he knows what he likes, and he wasted very little time gettin’ his druthers onto the table in his Nashville performance :

As president of the United States, [sir], I would order the Secretary of the Treasury to immediately buy up the bad home-loan mortgages in America and renegotiate at the new diminished value of those [houses], and let people be able to make [the] payments and stay in their [houses].

That was J. Sidney's fifth paragraph, according to CQ Transcriptions, but they take him to be very short-winded indeed. Who knows how his hired handlers would want it punctuated? With the smidgen of policy material that came before, it constitutes a Three Point McPlan. Here it is, grammatically as was, but with numbering added:

Now, I have a plan to fix this problem and it has got to do with [I.] ENERGY INDEPENDENCE. We've got to stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don't want us very -- like us very much. We have to keep Americans' taxes low. All Americans' taxes low. Let's not raise taxes on anybody today. [II.] We obviously have to STOP THIS SPENDING SPREE that's going on in Washington. Do you know that we've laid a $10 trillion debt on these young Americans who are here with us tonight, $500 billion of it we owe to China? We've got to have a package of reforms and it has got to lead to reform prosperity and peace in the world. [III.] And I think that this problem has become so severe, as you know, that we're going to have to do something about home values. You know that home values of retirees continues to decline and people are no longer able to afford their mortgage payments. As president of the United States, Alan, I would order the secretary of the treasury to IMMEDIATELY BUY UP THE BAD HOME LOAN MORTGAGES IN AMERICA and renegotiate at the new value of those homes -- at the diminished value of those homes and let people be able to make those -- be able to make those payments and stay in their homes.

The Commanderissimo, like many another stand-up comedian, presented his list in reverse order of importance. Or so it appears. What he said about each item was longer than what he said about the one before, and above all, only Point III is the least bit new and pulse-quickenin’. He was very likely readin’ his stuff off a mental or virtual three-by-five card, and it is possible that the remainder of his first speech had originally been set down as part of Point the Third:

Is it expensive? Yes. But we all know, my friends, until we stabilize home values in America, we're never going to start turning around and creating jobs and fixing our economy. And we've got to give some trust and confidence back to America. I know how to do that, my friends. And it's my proposal, it's not Senator Obama's proposal, it's not President Bush's proposal. But I know how to get America working again, restore our economy and take care of working Americans. Thank you.

No matter how they formatted the candidate's verbiage, the hired handlers might, in my opinion, have done a better job, inasmuch as the above distinctly gives one the impression that most of the US disemployed are now to become mortgage adjustment specialists -- and thus we dig ourselves out of the bushogenic economic morass! Even JSM can not be so much of an uneconomist as to believe that.

What would a credentialled mammonologue make of the claim that the housing market must be stabilized first, and only after that can Jane Sixpack go back to work at the countin’ house or the hospital that fired her? I have no idea. The proposition is a long way from self-evident, yet after all, ’tis the pride and glory of all echte Wissenschaft to cause us lay sheep to admire and bleat "Who’d ’a’ thunk it?" Like when earth stands still and sun moves, don’t you know. So maybe one of President Truman's two-armed economics professors, the guys who can't park a bicycle straight but always get rich on Wall Street, has actually proved Erst kommt die Unterkunft, dann die Moral!. Or maybe she just thinks she proved it. Or maybe the Commanderissimo's best and brightest atwaterisers made the whole sausage up from scratch?

It does not much matter where the sausage came from, what matters is that here it is, behold it! And, as the Commanderissimo himself points out, make sure you notice what a very pricey sausage it is.

Let us gather together the other scattered limbs of the Commanderissimo's Point Three:

... [Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Barney Frank] ... we're going to have to go out into the housing market and we're going to have to buy up these bad loans and we're going to have to stabilize home values, and that way Americans like Alan can realize the American dream and stay in their home ... [Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, B. Hussein Obama] ... I think if we act effectively, if we stabilize the housing market -- which I believe we can, if we go out and buy up these bad loans, so that people can have a new mortgage at the new value of their home -- I think if we get rid of the cronyism and special interest influence in Washington so we can act more effectively.... [FM,FM,BHO] ... The point is -- the point is that we can fix our economy. Americans' workers are the best in the world. They're the fundamental aspect of America's economy. They're the most innovative. They're the best -- they're most -- have best -- we're the best exporters. We're the best importers. They're most effective. They are the best workers in the world. And we've got to give them a chance. They've got -- we've got to give them a chance to do their best again. And they are the innocent bystanders here in what is the biggest financial crisis and challenge of our time. We can do it ... you have to look at our proposals for our economy, not $860 billion in new spending, but for the kinds of reforms that keep people in their jobs, get middle-income Americans working again, and getting our economy moving again....

Not much of it, really, though on the other hand, why should there be? "Buy up these bad loans" is the whole idea, innit? Perhaps the Commanderissimo might have explained who will do the purchasin’ and how much is to be paid and where the money to pay with will come from. Yet perhaps those are matters that only the Sacred Private Sector (prolonged be the shadow thereof!) can determine. And maybe we are lucky he left these details alone rather than get into the dogmatic theology of "not $860 billion in new spending." [1]

The citadel of Big Management Party dogmatic theology has not yet pronounced, as of [10/08/2008 07:27AM]. I find it difficult to imagine the Panzerdenker likin’ their Commanderissimo’s latest brainstorm much. Mais que-sais je from AEIdeology? We'll see.

Meanwhile mere flâneurs et littéraires may attend to the Stephen Leacock side of the matter with some hope of not looking utterly like fools.

Dr. Leacock spoke once of the cowboy who "mounted his horse and rode off in all directions." The Commanderissimo of AEI and EiB and GOP (&c.) is not unlike that, it seems to this keyboard, for the Nashville performance also included a botched and truncated, but unmistakable, version of the Rio Limbaugh mythology about Fannie and Freddie and Barney and Barry. That is to say, the Commanderissimo evidently wants to make sure that Miss Jane Sixpack -- who is probably, amongst other unmentionable things, an unwed mother, possibly even a practitioner of (gasp!) fœticide -- gets to stay in that domicile that she should never have been allowed to get into in the first place. The "return on investment" issue raised in the footnote is bad, but the "moral hazard" issue is graver still.

But what takes the cake, gravitywise, is that Ms. Sixpack, being of course a thoroughly disgustin’ and un-Wasillan layaboutess, an obvious hunk of donkey fodder, is extremely unlike to vote for J. Sidney McCain and/or the Party of Grant under any circumstances.

To review the biddin’: J. Sidney dumps his Big Management sacred theology out the window in order to pander to pond scum -- and pond scum that is well nigh unpanderable to!

What on Gore's green earth can he be up to? Easy to call it "yet another Hail Mary pass," but this time McBozo is throwin’ the damn football off at a right angle, straight into the stands. As it were.

Ah, well: only twenty-seven happy days to go!

___
[1] The Commanderissimo is an odd and peripheral kind of militant extremist Republican, but even he, I presume, will call the sort of spendin' that he happens to like not ‘spendin'’ but ‘investment’.

Havin’ started down that road, though, he would have to talk about RIV as well, "RETURN on investment," and that will be a tricky matter with Point Three. I expect.

Once Jane Sixpack gets back home, she can go back to work; after she starts working again, she can make mortgage payments. So far, so good, but the whole exercise would become pointless if her house payments were to be so large she cannot afford them (and keep the house). On the other hand, if the payments are affordable for Jane, can they simultaneously be profitable to Sam’s Property Management and Overseas Aggression Inc.?

It would be interesting to know whether the hired handlers ran this part of the McSausage through a speadsheet program usin’ even the most guesstimated numbers. And that low thought leads one to wonder, even lower, whether the whole thing may not be a strictly electoral sausage. But God knows best.

Look Who Gets a Junior Partnership in Big Barbecue II!

Why is one not the least bit surprised? Bipartisan plunder is assured by President Summers being CFO to Senatorino Obama, head of the donkeys even should the Fabulous Flyboy's Oval Office sortie prove successful. "An obol for Belisar "Goldman Sachs Crimson America," anybody?"

"Mr. Paulson has relied on a cadre of former Goldman Sachs executives: Edward C. Forst, a former co-head of Goldman’s investment management business who is on leave from his job as executive vice president at HARVARD ; Kendrick R. Wilson III, formerly chairman of Goldman’s financial institutions groups; and Dan Jester, who was deputy chief financial officer at Goldman."

Dr. Jester will handle the public relations end, naturally.

Happy days. If possible.

The Case For Quote-Choice-Unquote

Barack Obama's core proposals on health insurance, trade policy and tax credits all seek to reduce an array of economic risks. John McCain's ideas on health, education and the tax code tilt toward "choice," or letting individuals make judgments about economic risk-taking. Most of the time, moral hazard is simply academic. Not after this week. Our presidential candidates should have a talk about it.

Neocomrade D. Henniger, ideoslave to Rupert Baron Murdoch, columnist in the Wall Street Jingo, does not speak up very loud on behalf of the Big Management Party’s Commanderissimo. What kind of a ringing endorsement is "tilts towards quote-choice-unquote," for Pete’s sake? Indeed, is not "quote-choice-unquote" primarily a technical expression of the Moral Majority Fœtus Cult, only very tenuously related to "economic risk-taking"? Inside the MMFC perimeter, ‘choice’ has somehow become the slogan of unspeakable l*b*r*l fiends and Demoncrats, which is why it requires to be shudder-quoted by the Wise and the Virtuous, the Friends of Al Hamilton™.

Cap’n M’Cain is definitely not in the late General Hamilton’s class, tiltwise, although perhaps one should examine the possibility that he specialises in a more naval sort of risk, something like the Risikostrategie of Admiral von Tirpitz? That Gothic monstrosity is even more mysterious than the risque moral that D. Henniger goes on about at length. The learned Wikipædiatricians start off Der Name ‘Risiko’ zur Bezeichnung des tirpitzschen Konzepts ist in doppelter Weise zu verstehen -- then and it is all uphill from there. However, it does appear that the Carl von Clausewitz of the briny deep intended to push the burden of quote-choice-unquote onto the imperial Brits and have as little as possible to do with it himself.

One spoofs Neocomrade D. Henniger’s organ as the Wall Street Jingo for a reason, naturally, for the same reason that leads one to refer to a certain barbers’ college at Allston MA as "the Harvard Victory School." Imperial Big Management comes out from under General Hamilton’s greatcoat quite as much as out of the vest pocket of Hamilton, Esq., attorney at law. Moreover, Al's current set of Friends have, in the last degeneration, decided to break with the legal profession, which leaves them all the more to be analysed in terms of the violence profession. [1]

At the broadest and bullshittiest level, is not the violence profession the spiritual home for mateurs of Risiko? At the narrowest and most journalistic level, before the Harvard Victory School MBA’s recently sabotaged the Greater Texan economy, they spent seven years Kiddie Krusadin’ all over the map with approximately the same degree of Big Managerial skill and success. [2] Their special qualities get far more attention, and get it far quicker, when Big Management victimises holy Homelanders rather than Lesser Breeds Without, but the qualities are much the same.

One risk Neocomrade D. Henniger runs personally is that customers of the WSJ might reflect that he is for, not against, the great Princeton-Harvard-Goldman-Sachs Bailout Bill. His neocomrades at the palaces of the former investment bankin’ are certainly not to be abandoned to the consequences of their quote-choice-unquote. Quelle idée!. Perhaps that is the tiltin’ part, though -- the Wise and Virtuous, the Friends of Al Hamilton, do not apply rules witlessly and mechanically, they weigh as well as count. [3] (Hath not Plato explained these things in the Politicus?)

Though not exactly a risk, it is decidedly an inconvenience for the neocomrade’s Big Managerial polemic that nobody can detect a dime’s worth of difference between Senatorino B. Hussein Obáma and Commanderissimo J. Sidney McCain as regards the PHGSB scheme itself. BHO may not ‘tilt’ often enough to suit the Baní Murdoch, or he may not ‘tilt’ in exactly the Murdoch community direction, or he may not ‘tilt’ instantly when instructed to by wise and virtuous Friends of Al Hamilton, but it would be absurd to claim BHO does not know the tilting trick at all.

The consequences for rhetoric and polemic are grave, should they be noticed. The neocomrade makes a great pother about "Now, with big banks dropping like flies and Wall Street vaporizing amid a mortgage meltdown" &c. &c. -- but it is all irrelevant to his own immediate marketin’ project! To grasp why the Commanderissimo of AEI and GOP and EiB is a far sounder choice, the Jingo customer has to turn her back on all that and look at either (1) "health, education and the tax code" or (2) "health insurance, trade policy and tax credits." [4] As far as the substance of this scribble goes, it could have been written a month ago. If D. Henniger cares about his literary glory, I suppose he would defend this procedure by pointin’ out that the phrase "moral risk" has only become trendy thanks to the Goldman-Sachs Scandal of September 2008. In rebuttal, let the prosecution whether "moral risk" is really, in fact, all that trendy as of Thursday morning 2 October.

[E]very corner bar and hair salon is filled with experts on the perils of moral hazard. Everyone gets it: [c]ut risk down to next to nothing and some people do crazy things.

Like a good deal of Big Management Party agitprop, that claim is sufficiently at odds with experience and reality that the phrase "lying through their teeth" comes to mind. Yet there is no need to question the subjective sincerity of Neocomrade D. Henniger, it suffices to assume that he very rarely frequents corner bars and hair salons and feels free to work out what goes on in such trailer-trash dives à priori. Furthermore, either the neocomrade's spinsterly technique is on display, or else what he knows à priori coincides marvelously with what Big Management would like to think Televisionland and the electorate think. What the HVS MBA's would like to MAKE Televisionland and the electorate think, even. [5]

As spinster, DH overshoots the mark, however. If EVERYBODY craved a decently stimulatin’ level of risk in her life generally and in her finances specifically, Sen. Obáma's standing in the opinion polls would be utterly unaccountable. As would J. Sidney’s support for the bailout plan, for that matter. [6] Alas, peccatum originale is still with us, even in the holy Homeland; quite a number of folks remain so craven and unspiritual as to prefer safety to (joy and) sorrow.

=

Most of the time, moral hazard is simply academic. Not after this week. Our presidential candidates should have a talk about it.

Much more fun, and nearer at hand, would be for the vice-presidential candidates to talk about it. If Governess S. L. Heath-Bailout (sp?) of Alaska can talk sense about "moral hazard," I might revisit my own à priori notions about those corner bars and hair salons. Few technically possible things are less likely than that one, though.


___
[1] Neocomradely presentations of the typical lawyer of 2008, slanders such as the Guru of Rio Limbaugh is accustomed to bark and bellow, make them all out ambulance chasers, more or less. If that were the case, the legal profession should be eminently of concern for D. Henniger’s brand of Risikotheorie -- they "all seek to reduce an array of economic risks." That is to say, they are all spiritual Demoncrats, so of course the Friends of Al had to break with them. And furthermore, B. Hussein Obáma personally used to be editor of the Harvard Law Review, a fact which shrieks for itself!


[2] That generalization is a bit unjust to Neocomrade Dr. Gen. D. H. Petræus of Princeton and West Point, admittedly. Still, as this keyboard has many times insisted, the Petræo-McNamaran COIN is at best only remedial, it has only restored us to where we thought we were before the Crawford cowpokers came along and started makin’ their dumb HVS MBA mistakes. Furthermore, the braniac himself would insist that COIN is different from mainstream violence professionalism, and so it is. One big difference is that the Risiko element is far less prominent. The exsuRGency experts are almost a special species of ambulance chasers, as it were: they "all seek to reduce an array of [security] risks."

But not to go overboard, please! Senator Biden was mostly just funning when he claimed that all ‘our’ quote-success-unquote and quote-victory-unquote in the former ‘Iráq has been due to Petræus of Princeton havin’ unconsciously adopted the Obáma Plan.


[3] A case could also be made for "They weigh quite as badly as they count."


[4] Evidently BHO has nothing of interest (for D. Henniger) to say about schooling, nor JSM about Absolute Free Trade at the international level. The verbal parallelism invites curiosity, but if it means anything, this keyboard cannot work out what.


[5] D. Henninger may conceivably be engaged in sorcery, operatin’ on the theory that if he repeats "All Americans endorse the Gospel of Moral Hazard" often enough and vigorously enough, reality will finally accomodate him, if only in order to shut him up and get some sleep. I would not bet on that proposition myself, however.


[6] Even Lord Mammon’s whizkids could be represented as risk averse, if one (very inadvisedly) takes them at their word about what that $600 trillion of ‘derivatives’ are all about. These scraps of paper are alleged to be a form of insurance. On that theory, they would very unrespectably "seek to reduce an array of economic risks."

In reality, of course, ‘derivatives’ are a matter of Enrichons-nous! and Fâites vos jeux!