Colonel Blimp’s New Rhetoric

Have you noticed how the neocomrades have reacted on the rhetorical front to things finally not goin’ altogether their way?

All of a sudden their stern self-indignation takes the form of apostrophe and ventriloquism; they can scarcely diatribe for more than a couple of minutes before draggin’ in Imaginary Enemies to bark and bellow at, or, as with our old acquaintance Rear-Colonel V. D. H. Blimp

in the scribble at hand, Imaginary Friends on whose behalf they profess to emit pretty much the same noises they used to emit for themselves alone.

This keyboard must infer that the motor-mouth neocomrades feel that their scope would be too limited if they spoke only for themselves and only to the actual audience. That, however, is only supply-side neorhetoric. What, if anythin’ thing, do the rank-and-file base and vile get out of listenin’ to Dr. Limbaugh address General Holder as if he, Holder, were already in the dock at the Rio Limbaugh Kangaroo Court? Or from listenin’ to Col. Blimp set forth the supposed grievances of "Mr. Battered American," a Charlie McCarthy that could scarcely resemble its Edgar Bergen less?

Blimp is (or was) of great interest insofar as scarcely anybody else in all the holy Homeland™ chants the liturgy of Mars and Bellona with that fervently sincere geistlicher Militärismus of his. On the other hand, now that AEI has rotted his brain, most of his scribbles, this one not excluded, could be cranked out by any extremist GOP niece or nephew with time on her hands and factional spirit bubblin’ up from her spleen. A great waste of a rare and precious commodity, is it not? (Yes, it is!)

No cloud without a silver linin’, though: the California pastoral element is new, at least to this keyboard. Previous allusions to the good colonel’s log-cabin background were few and far between and usually targeted the Wetback Menace. Now we get the mus pelosiensis menace. Au moins il est différent, though Blimp stickin’ his new-found antigreen thumb in here and now is a bit odd when there is, after all, Mortgagegate 2008 and the Crawford Crash still remainin’ to talk about. (Later on there is that curious detour to kick Gov. Richardson, which I suppose must also have a CA pastoral sort of explanation.)

But Blimp gets where he’s really headed at last, by way of the Sacramento Menace, so to call it. The æsthetic preferences of a cultivated despiser of the neocomradely community do not count for anythin’ worth mentionin’, obviously, but for what it’s worth, this keyboard would have enjoyed the scribble more if Col. Blimp had taken a leaf out of Dr. Limbaugh’s book and made the whole thing an imaginary speech for the prosecution at the Neopeople’s Court in the case of "Homeland v. Schwartzenegger." His Excellency will have much to answer for, come the Counterrevolution, no doubt about it!

Now of course even before the AEI viruses broke in to wreak havoc between his earphones, V. D. H. Blimp was no economist. It would have been very strange -- impossibly strange, even -- if he were, for who can truly adore and worship Mars and Bellona in the high-and-dry Old Prussian fashion without blaming Lord Mammon and his devotees for a long list of sins and softnesses? Mr. James of Harvard was, at the end of the day, a wimp and a chickenhawk, yet for chronological reasons he could still write up the afterglow of the Blimpian Vision rather well:

Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better avenue to plunder; but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the love of glory of his ancestors. Showing war’s irrationality and horror is of no effect on him. The horrors make the fascination. War is the strong life; it is life in extremis; war taxes are the only ones men never hesitate to pay, as the budgets of all nations show us.

’Plunder’ of course gives away that the morally-equivalent William James was not 100.0% sound on the AEIdeological side. (Oh, well, nobody’s perfect!)

In his peroration, Blimp piles apostrophe upon ventriloquism and asks the customer to fantasize Mr. Battered America addressin’ his POTUS. Though anythin’ but an economist, Blimp must (?) understand the traditional importance of "the bottom line" for purposes of oratory and sophistry. Blimp’s own B.L. bears repeatin’:

[N]o more of your team’s lecturing me about being patriotic in paying my taxes, and unpatriotic in not wanting to borrow more trillions that my kids’ kids will have to pay back.

The fiend Keynes must speak for himself, because this keyboard is not qualified to defend him or even to attack, but when it comes to lectures on Homelandic patriotism, why, any Homelander may play, nicht wahr? (Ja, richtig!)

There seems a gross disproportion here between stimulus (in the pathologist’s sense, not the economist’s) and response: the MonsterStreamMedia, though doubtless "in the tank" for B. Husáyn XLIV Obáma, do not in fact spend much time preaching that nonresistance to the Internal Revenue Service is right up there with emulation of Nathan Hale and Oliver North. Blimp’s ideological hide must be particularly thin at this point, no? To be sure, VDHB has, or used to have, his own patriotic snake oil to monger, the Spiritual Militarism shtyk. This product, however, was suitable only for a very narrow market niche, and, for that matter, Blimp had pretty well given up floggin’ it even before the Crawford Crash came along.

In these times even an ex- or para- or crypto-Prussian needs an economic gospel to hawk, does she not? (Of course she does!) Blimp does not announce any new product line of his own, but the plain implication of his bottom line is that "fiscal responsibility" constitues the New Patriotism™. "Away with Colonel North! Let’s hear it for the Concord Coalition! Yaaaay!!"

One cannot be certain from the evidence that "fiscal responsibility" is exactly what Rear-Colonel V. D. H. Blimp is up to at the moment, but it would be remarkable if it should turn out that he prefers some completely different brand of snake oil. If so, his most recent neopatriotism at least resembles the old-fashioned sort in callin’ for a certain measure of self-abnegation. If "fiscal responsibility" be where the neocomradely action is at nowadays, Col. Blimp cannot expect to be a major player, not ‘major’ in the way such a bozo as Neocomrade Dr. L. Kudlow is positioned to be major.

It is so rare to find an expensively educated person who does not think that the world secretly revolves around his own professional stuff that one hesitates to look this gift horse in the mouth. Nevertheless, magic amica veritas, and the present keyboard cannot help noticing that Blimp had self-abnegated already, because obviously geistlicher Militärismus has not been the axis of anythin’ in the holy Homeland™ in livin’ memory, not even if memory of 1910, when Mr. James of Harvard passed on, be accounted still alive. Indeed, militarism was traditionally un-Homelandic even then, else James would never have written the famous essay the way he wrote it.

So it becomes a nice problem in ethical adjudication to decide how much credit VDHB deserves for switchin’ from one form of acknowledged self-marginality to another. Off-hand, I’d say the thing to do is award the honourable and gallant no new points, but at the same time to recall with approbation the points formerly earned.

A strict objector might object that switchin’ to "fiscal responsibility" from the Bellona Cult is only more evidence of AEI-induced brain rot, since Blimp is now self-marginalized with thousands and tens of thousands of factional neocomrades instead of bein’ self-marginalized in a pigeon hole all his own. Yet the question is not quite that simple, when it can be taken as a humility on Blimp’s part to be only one small ancillary lemmin’ in the grand march of Fiscal Responsibility.

On the third tentacle, though, how ‘humble’, really, is a rhetor and neosophist who, himself unbattered, pretends to give expression to th inmost thoughts and druthers of "Mr. Battered American"?

But God knows best.

De Ignaviâ

(( Read it for theeself, Mr. Bones, I haven't quoted anything because I started out by thinking I'd send this scribble to Aunt Nitsy as a comment. ))


Obviously it is a whole different crew hangin' out 'round here than festoon Krugman and Brooks and Kristoff and Cohen (not to mention the avowed op-ed comedians) with assaults or applause from the port side.

I suppose if General Holder had left out the C-word, he'd have slipped past the Wingnut City radar unnoticed. So the question must be whether whether he *deliberately* set out to vex the sweet puppies of the Right by calling them craven.

The lefty blogger who "found his speech unremarkable and vague" and observed that the C-word was (formally) "a statement about the entire nation" is sound as far as he goes, yet plainly he does not grasp what an offense it is against the toxic self-esteemin’ rampant in certain quarters of the holy Homeland™ [*] that persons of liberalism who support affirmative action, amongst other shockin’ obamanations, should have the insolence to exist. (That one should have the insolence to preside over the Department of Justice -- words fail!)

So my guess is that the General did not quite understand what he is up against and did not expect to make such big waves.

As to the merits, to diagnose cowardice as the great fault of the sweet puppies in matters of race is only warrantable if one construes pretty loosely. If they were indicted on that charge in conjunction with their bein’ so self-terrorized of jihád terrorism, it would be an open-and-shut case. To make it out as regards affirmative action, however, requires noting explicitly that Narcissus Dexter, bein’ quite amazin’ly in love with his saintèd self, naturally decides that so wunnerful a treasure as Narky D. must be preserved at any cost. And then we are home, because to put self-preservation above all else is to be a coward. Everybody knows that.

However that is a rhetorical bridge too far for mass consumption. It would be more effective to attack Master Narky's narcissism head-on and not go after mere peripheral emanationes et pænumbræ thereof. That alternative plan strikes me as especially suitable for an Attorney General picking up Uncle Sam's smashed Rule-of-Law crockery in the wake of Hurricane Dubya. Though Addin’ton, Esq., and Yoo, Esq., and the ineffable Gen. Gonzales undoubtedly could be indicted for cowardice, surely it would be more obvious and straightforward to charge them with shameless self-exceptionalizin’, an offense not mitigated by a sincere belief in their own unique self-exceptionality.

Or even, perhaps, a belief in ‘our’ unique self-exceptionality.

Happy days.

___
[*] Blogger #1 is a prize catch, toxic-selfesteemwise. What a grand show to rewrite "Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I" as she does! Behold:

We have rejected our racist past more thoroughly than any nation ever has and we have done more to atone for it than any ever will. No people have ever afforded people of every race and creed a greater opportunity to attain their dreams and live in freedom than we have right here. None ever will.

Apart from a remarkable thorough knowledge of all future history, we meet once again that formal and phony ‘we’: even Gen. Holder is free to associate himself with Neocomrade Nostradamus Jr.’s political autoeroticism if he likes, though few things are less likely than that such an offer will be taken up. At Rio Limbaugh, though, I daresay few will mind agreein’ with the Attorney-General of the United States about the cowardice of Mr. Eric Holder, if not that of "the nation" more generally.

If Gen. Holder is going to make a regular thing of rattling the bars in the monkey house like this, he ought at least to improve his rhetoric a little. It would be more satisfactory to define his contextual WE in a thoroughly positive way and simply ignore non-correspondence to reality as blithely as Neocomrade Shack does. If he does not care to learn from the enemy, he might look at certain harangues of the late Mr. Lincoln of Illinois.

Annals of the Neocomradely Konstitution (II)

America's Moonpaper of 17 February 2009

[P]residential detachment from high policy decision making is dangerous in a White House that has so many czars and other senior players (the West Wing staff is reputed to be more than 130 -- about double the usual number) combined with emissaries and strong-willed Cabinet secretaries. It may well lead to what has been called (regarding another country's government) "the immanent structurelessness to [sic] the running of the state."

Neocomrade A. Blankley , a native of Airstrip One and immigrant to ChristoKorea (the capital of L@@NA), is not a product of the Harvard Victory School. Technically he is a shyster, but Neocomrades Addin’ton, Esq., and Yoo, Esq., and General Gonzales need not fear that little Tony will poach on their legal manors. In practice, he's only a Heritagitarian agitprop artist.

The neocomrade remains cliché-Brit enough to pretend to superior erudition even when he does not have it: that "immanent structurelessness" piffle comes from no source more impressive than here . ’Tis no grand surpise that His Sirship was talking about Chancellor Hitler's methods of government, concerning which it is a cliché not confined to Brits.

Nobody alive has had time enough to figure out what BHO's considered views on immanence and transcendence and structurality may be, so let us assume that Tony mostly just wants to be rude about his political enemies without takin’ responsibility for his rudeness by makin’ a stand-alone argumentum ad Hitlerum of his very own. Not just a brat but a sneak is little Tony.

Still, he would not have swiped that particular swipe if he admired the kaiserliche-und- königliche Schlamperei. One must assume that Tony wishes poor old laid-back Adolf had been rather a cliché-Prussian, more like Frederick the Great. Making a few judicious allowances for time and place, King Frederick II (d. 1786) was about as close as Old Europe can show to Neocomrade R. B. Cheney. Oddly enough, Emperor Frederick II (d. 1250) was rather Blankleyesque as well. Thee can take thee's pick, Mr. Bones, since both Freds were thoroughly in favour of the minimum or CliffsNotes version of the Unitary Executive™, i.e., "My way or the highway!" (MWOTH! is allegedly one of the management secrets of the Rev. Moon

as well, though I don’t suppose little Tony was ever actually admitted to the Cult of Himself.)

With his heart on Airstrip One and his mind in the Holy Roman Empire (or the Third Reich), little Tony's opinions about the Homelandic system of government cannot be worth much. He does, though, in passin’ acknowledge the existence of Mr. Madison’s Legislative Branch, sayin’:

Thus, as [the President] has identified the stimulus as essential to the recovery process, his willingness to let House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid design a bill that, even now that it's passed, Mr. Obama has continued to criticize as needing improvement (on bank executive compensation) leaves one puzzled as to why he didn't use his currently vast political clout with his own party allies to shape a bill more to his liking.

That passage would require some serious glossing if James Madison were expected to grok it: Neocomrade A. Blankley clearly supposes the Parteigemeinschaft of Obama and Pelosi and Reid trumps the formal arrangements laid down by the Gang of ’87.

He further appears to be ignorant of the authentic or Cook County meaning of the technical term ‘clout’: it refers to the extraction (or originally, the extractor) of goodies for constituents from City Hall, not having the whip hand over the rest of one’s own crew. But that error may not be little Tony's fault, since the social scientisers have apparently got their paws on it.

In any case, and no matter whence he dredges up his ideas of colonial self-government and his unattributed swipes, little Tony from Airstrip One plainly thinks the White House ought to be run along Cheneyoid lines, which is all that I am collecting him as an example of.

Annals of the Neocomradely Konstitution

The Muses and myself hereby announce, Mr. Bones, that from today we will start collecting evidence of how Hooverville and Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh misconstrue the Fedguv Constitution in that power-grabbin’ direction so dear to the late Neocomrades D. Addin’ton, Esq., and R. B. Cheney, and G. W. Bush, and Gen. A. Gonzales, . . . and J. Yoo, Esq.

This wrong direction one may call "the unitary executive" if one happens to find oneself in a seminar room at some Prussian-style graduate school. For use out of doors, well, thee can look up what America’s Otherparty used to bark and bellow against "King Andrew I" and Mr. Van Buren of NY.

Our first specimen comes straight from the heart (as it were) of Hooverville. It does not altogether "speak for itself," but it does most of the heavy liftin’ involved in specifyin' what makes the neocomrades' Konstitution be neocomradely:

Wall Street Jingo of 17 February 2009

"With the economy in this precarious situation, no one wants to put the automakers into bankruptcy, but can this much restructuring be accomplished without bankruptcy?" said one auto adviser. Ultimately, the government will have to decide how much to subsidize the auto industry, he added. "That's a critical decision that only the president can make."

(( Well, well, so that's what they do with an HTML header! Make a memorandum of it, Mr. Bones! To get the label right on top of the textbox, thee must have no line break following it in thee’s script. ))

But seriously, the essence of Planet Neo, for konstitutional purposes, is that pretty well EVERYTHIN’ of the slightest important becomes "a critical decision that only the President can make." Mr. Madison and the Gang of ’87 spent a lot of time on the legislative and the judicial, but it was wasted as far as neokonstitutionalism goes. Talk about "all sail and no anchor"! [1] The clown at the Jingo manages to collide with Mr. Madison almost head-on, for doth not Holy Writ clearly proclaim that "All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills" [I.7] and "The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts...." [I.8] ?

Now part of our purpose in making an anthology of Neocomradely konstitutionalism is to pin down its nature and its causes more exactly than we have yet managed to do without taking notes. However, we have already frequently expressed our preliminary conjecture that the Harvard Victory School MBA classes are the principal vectors of this brain disease.

The jeunesse dorée who have graduated from the former Allston (Massachusetts) College of Barbers and Chirugeons

with an eye to eventually becomin' like unto Neocomrade Ll. Blankfein of Goldman, Sachs [2] have been trained to keep their customers, and their hired hands, and their nominal directors -- and above all, the nominal owners of that ‘your company’ burbled about in the Annual Report -- in their place. How are credentialled Big Managers to bigmanage if they are continally distracted by petty annoyances like these? And of course at GS or GM or Warbucks Industries or ScroogeBank, the HVS MBA will not encounter any obstacles that correspond at all closely to Mr. Madison's Legislative and Judicial.

Thee will, I trust, have noticed a certain "deer in the headlights" look on the patients of that inquisition the other day that starred Mr. Frank of Massachusetts: the Avaricious Eight

simply had never run into that kind of obstacle inside the Sacred Private Sector.


___
[1] Lord Mac was talking about a different question in 1857, actually. He was only knocking popular sovereignty in much the same way that Gen. Hamilton used to like to do.

Naturally as an endarkened Sasenach, he was thoroughly neocomradised avant la parole. The ‘omnicompetence’ of Parliament is worse than Yooianity itself, or would be in the absence of subtle informal signalings amongst the local yokels at Westminster that this outsider does not profess to be able to detect.


[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Blankfein

"and hope no one notices"

This is the new GOP outreach. Find black, Jewish (and eventually gay) Republicans, move them up, and hope no one notices that they share none of the political views of their respective groups.

That won’t do. The militant extremist Republicans certainly want their own Party base and vile to notice that a few of them do not look like [R. B. Cheney’s or Judge Baker’s] America. And probably it is OK, even desirable, that swing voters notice the vast sweep of GOP diversity too. It is only incorrigible good guys over whose eyes they would like to pull the wool, but they are only bein’ dumber than usual if they expect to get that: part of being a political good guy is, of course, "dragon watch with unenchanted eye" over the doin’s of the Party of Clarence Thomas.

Mr. Justice Thomas is a much better place to begin the study of GOP tokenism than is Neocomrade Representative E. Cantor. To suppose that George XLI did not want his nominee’s non-WASP features to be noticed would be ridiculous. And similarly with Neocomrade General C. Powell and Neocomrade Secretary Dr. C. Rice (a twofer, tokenwise) and a few other individuals less distinguished.

Such folks of necessity must be few, precisely because "they share none of the political views of their respective groups." Over and above not sharin’ the views that one would expect of them in light of purely zoölogical considerations, the tokens must aggressively repudiate "the views of their respective groups" and do so noticeably, not to say ‘flagrantly’.

The con game is best understood, I believe, from the point of view of the mark or dupe that it is aimed at, who is more or less Archie Bunker, i.e., somebody who looks like the America of DAR and GOP and EiB, but has never got very far on that account and probably never will. The presentable side of the Big Party marketin’ message is "THEY are not all as bad as you think!" But it is the flip side that really matters, even though it cannot often be spelled out, the part where Neocomrade Token says "And let me tell you, as only an insider can, exactly how bad the rest of THEM (of ‘us’) are!"

Given special interests, my own prime example of this sad shtyk is Neocomrade Prof. Dr. Fu’ád ‘Ajamí of the Johns Hopkins University, who establishes (1) that even an Arab and a Muslim can belong to the Party of Grant and Hoover, and, rather more importantly, (2) how really insufferable and impossible (the other) Arabs and Muslims are. Neocomrades Sh. Steele and Th. Sowell play the same hand for African Americans, Neocomradess L. Chávez for Iberian Americans, and there is quite a zoo of self-hatin’ defectors from the ranks of Female Americans.

The whole fandango would make no sense at all if nobody watched the show. What the Big Party hopes to slip by undetected is not the existence and identity of its tokens, but the tendency of its tokenism. It superficially looks as if the militant extremists were reachin’ out when they allow Thomas and Powell and Rice and ‘Ajamí and Sowell and Chávez to carry Party cards "just like anybody else." But the effect, and quite likely the intention, is to keep the Big Party itself lookin’ like America forever: no self-respecting non-WASP is going to sign up with that crew unless she gets something significant in return for declining to share the views of her respective group.

The supply of significant somethin’s for the GOP to hand out to its Pétains and Quislings is pretty limited: only a few can obtain nominations for public office, or acclaim in tertiary education and hack journalism for bein’ that nine-days-wonder, a black (or gay or whatever) Republican. The significance of these rewards is entirely a result of their scarcity, which gives away (as I consider) that the presidin’ GOP geniuses do not seriously expect zillions of humbler folk to walk in the footsteps of Mr. Justice Thomas and Prof. Dr. ‘Ajamí and the rest. It would be nice in their eyes, I suppose, if the lesser brethren and sistern voted Republican on the quislings’ account, but if that was the chief end of the GOP geniuses, they would get rid of the requirement that non-WASP holders of Party cards be twice as militant and extremist about ‘conservatism’ as the rank-and-file base and vile, plus three times as militant and extremist about the supposed deficiencies of whatever lesser breed they personally have broken with and risen above.

The good news, of course, is that if the bozos keep on in that direction, they won’t be winnin’ many future elections. So let us pray that they persevere.

Anyhow, there can be no question of "hope no one notices."

Happy days.

Concerning " ‘Sound’ Liberalism"

“Sound” liberalism is a kind of riot and revolution insurance, don’t you think?

Indeed, indeed. And who shall tell thee of Sound Liberalism™ if not the Commentariat, whose parents broke with unsound--no shudder-quotes, please, the neocomrades really believe it!--liberalism amidst the R&R, "riot and revolution," of 1968 and have been gradually degeneratin’ and denaturin’ themselves ever since?

" What went wrong? ", O neocomrades, what the [exp. del.] went wrong? If perchance your esteemed daddies once saved the holy Homeland from H. Horatio Hornblower and from the fiendish George McGovern, what does that avail now, now when ye have delivered us unto President Summers and Mr. Obáma?

Not at the moment to R&R, admittedly, but that will come when the weather gets a bit warmer. "Gonna be a long hot quadrennium, baby, . . . ."

Would the pioneer neocomrades of Richard XXXVII’s reign have been better advised to call themselves "Sound Liberals" instead of ‘neoconservatives’? To object that such a label would have been invidious about the soundness of others is not a neocomradely sort of objection, considering that the Venerable Framers of Kristolianity were far from bein’ such sweet puppies of the Right as one encounters nowadays, always moanin’ and self-sorrowin’ about "tip-toeing from the MSM this soon after the inauguration" or whatever.

For schimpflexikalisch purposes like this keyboard’s present, ‘neo-conservatives’ is almost infinitely superior to "Sound Liberals," one can liberate the prefix and use it to toxify anythin’ that seems to require a touch of, well, neotoxification. [1] If so small a consideration matters at all, I suppose it suggests the neocomrades should have chosen differently. There is not much for Demosthenes Jr. to do with "Sound Liberals" after she has pointed out how it amounts to shameless self-esteemin’ on stilts. But perhaps it is unfair to make such a comparison where one expression has had forty years head start? Even casually off-hand, this keyboard notices that "Sound-and-Fury Liberals" might be kinda fun . . . .

One digresses. One was going to point out that Neocomrade #12 has sagely keyboarded of "a KIND of riot and revolution insurance." What kind is that, exactly? The serious student of AEIdeology and the like must ever aspire to get at the quiddity of things. Also of neothings.

The e-Commentariat are left to read between the lines with their Leo-Strauss-Brand® Magic Decoder Rings that unqualified "riot and revolution insurance" would suggest something decidedly retro- and palæo-. [2] And so it would. Part of the self-degeneratin’ process already complained of above consists in emptyin’ all significance out of the neocomrades’ blessèd and mysterious prefix. You coulda bought "riot and revolution insurance" from the late Palæocomrade R. Kirk , [3] for Pete’s sake! Or mail-order the same product from Eddie Burke direct.

Back in the primitive age of the Kristolian dispensation, "The Public Interest’s golden days / When neocons no harm meant," did "riot and revolution insurance" figure on the Brave New Agenda at all? Well, maybe it did. The present keyboard was not in the holy Homeland during the annus horribilis, so perhaps some of ’em really were cowerin’ under their beds in dread of universal Watts from sea to shinin’ sea. However, working backwards on 1968 from 1970-2009, I have obtained a distinct impression that they were more worried about certain unseemly events in Harvard Yard than in Neocomrade E. Banfield’s "Rioting for fun and profit." It would be laughable to suppose that the neoterics have been a popular or mass phenomenon at any point in their factionette’s career, and even my own well-developed Schimpftreib hesitates to claim they were deliberately makin’ America fit for Archie Bunker to live in.

Still, unless I misremember, there was a distinct panem et circenses element present in Public Interest neoconnery that had already evaporated well before Weekly Standard neoconnery started takin’ money from Citizen Murdoch. The Venerable Framers were ‘neo-’ under Richard XXXVII at least partly because they had learned to live with what Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh and Hooverville would nowadays call ‘entitlements’. Though naturally the less degenerate neocomrades will have rarely or never put it as I do, yet was there not a certain Danegeld aspect to the implicit neotransaction, graciously lettin’ the lower orders retain their New Deal goodies in return for the lower orders not having TOO much fun rioting and revolting?

Nowadays it is clearly "No more Mr. Nice Guy" on that front. Neocomrade #12 evidently feels himself in need of ‘insurance’ of a sort that Neocomrades I. Kristol and D. Bell were never in the market for. Indeed, E. Banfield himself was certainly not scared of the lower orders, bein’ rather a cultivated despiser of them than an alarmist about them. "Change and decay in all around I see ...."

’Tis always a mistake to let the dog detect that you are afraid of, it seems to me. Mais que sçay-je?

Neotericity in general is always around to be dumped on, so perhaps one should focus here on the Washington Post before it becomes mere conventional wisdom that the neocomradely crew have boarded and taken that vessel over.

Neocomrade #0’s little ‘translation’ shtyk gives the impression that she supposes Neocomrade F. Hiatt to be still an outsider to Commentariat and Weekly Standardiser circles. Is that mere Dubya-like misstatement or is it positive dezinformatsya? And there is a third possibility as well, for it may be self-protection, in the sense that once the Post is generally recognized as being what it has sunk to ideologically, it will be, by a vast margin, the most august and resplendent neopublication goin’. Naturally the mom-and-pop outlets of neo- resent a Wal-Mart movin’ into their neighborhood!

F. Hiatt is not yet a name to conjure with, and the biographical information in [3] casts no light on the individual specimen’s Geistesbildung. If one conjectures, for the sake of argument, that it has recently perverted to neotericity, another aspect of ‘neo-’ can be highlighted. Even at very beginnin’ with I. Kristol and D. Bell and E. Banfield, the present keyboard found the standard nomenclature vaguely ludicrous, thinking to myself "Begorrah, and ’tis as if St. Augustine had found it unacceptable to admit that he was just doing what Mommy had been nagging him to do for years and had insisted on calling his final religious preference ecclesia neocatholica! [4]

BGKB.

Happy days.

___
[1] ’Tis almost, but not quite, as good as neoconjugatin’ the militant extremist GOP verb with an apostrophe in honour of Neocomrade Governess S. Heath-Paling of AK and all her pseudopoppy ilk. Absolutely ideal is that ploy! It allows adverse judgment to be pronounced without adding even a single byte to one’s bandwidth abuse.


[2] Unless ‘insurance’ be very strictly construed to signify that the Sound Liberal® steps in to pick up the smashed Powellian crockery afterwards and has nothing to do with tryin’ to keep bulls and bullshit out of the shop in advance.


[3] Rhymes with ‘jerk’. At URL cit., notice that faint, far-off whiff of the neotoxic in "Cultural Revival." R. Kirk himself struck one as assumin’ (1) that all reaction is a mystic organic whole, from which it would be improper to disjoin Kultur in particular, and (2) that omnireaction is a philosophia perennis that no more needs (or admits of) ‘revival’ than peccatum originale does. But God knows best.


[4] One could maintain with a straight face that Gloomy Gus did indeed subsequently invent or discover ‘Neocatholicity’, but that is entirely a different story.

Politics for Popinjays

Let us begin, Mr. Bones, with the Washin’ton Neopost summatorial, filed under Slate :

The Los Angeles Times leads with its analysis of the implications of last week's highly partisan vote on the economic stimulus package. (...) The lopsided vote over the economic stimulus package proves Washington isn't ready for post-partisan politics and the LAT says the battle is just getting started. The paper argues that by voting against the stimulus measure, Republicans are betting that either the stimulus package will fail, or it will have significant drawbacks that will dry up its popular support. The article suggests that the fate of the GOP's 2010 comeback bid may rest entirely on whether the party guessed correctly about the stimulus. The paper says the vote sets up a precedent for similar party-line tactics for all of President Barack Obama's policy initiatives.

The summatorial scribbler is Neopostie J[esse] Stanchak, whom we have previously disgnosed as a borderline wingnut, mostly in conjunction with various overseas aggressions. Anyhow, look where the neocomrade got his "significant drawbacks" from:

[T]he Republicans seemed to bet the future on a daring gambit: [b]y unflinchingly opposing a popular president on the issue Americans care most about, they apparently hope to place responsibility for reviving the economy squarely on Obama's back. If his prescriptions fail -- or succeed, but carry unwelcome side effects such as inflation or higher taxes -- the GOP could say "We told you so" and bid for a return to power. If the president succeeds, or if the economy remains mired but voters decide Republicans placed partisan gamesmanship ahead of the public interest, the result could be long-term trouble for the party -- especially its conservative core, which has shaped the present strategy.

It sure looks as if both La-La-Land CA and Beltway City DC are full of hack journalists with incredibly little knowledge of High Mammonology in even its most elementary points. The chances that many customers will look at "inflation or higher taxes" and read the alone tertium quid between the lines are negligible. After a whole long degeneration of wombschoolin’ and neodumbin’, 1968-2008, it is a safe bet that scarcely a single neocomradess will mutter to herself: "Aha! The jackasses could also repudiate the national debt."

If the LAT hackess ("Janet Hook") had thought of repudiation, she would have stuck it in. Obviously she could not think of any less alarmin' alternative, for none exists, and so she leaves her corporation's customers clueless as to how she supposes i diavoli della Pelosi might manage to avoid paying back what we borrow in either real bucks or in Monopoly money. But J. Hook, bless her!, was obviously not sure that no ingenious gimmick exists -- maybe an MBS, or an MBA, or a NAFTA, or how about a G-20? -- that would allow the ungodly to do the impossible, so she keyboarded away blithely with the results exhibited above.

With all their faults, the Big Management Party neocomrades actually in the trenches on Capitol Hill are not plumb ignorant like J. Hook and J. Stanchak. They have consistently been barkin’ and bellowin’ about a pay-back in uninflated currency -- "burdenin' my grandchildren and my grandchildren's grandchildren with" et cetera. Understandin' about inflation may be rather an advanced accomplishment for members of that pack, but I daresay a few of ’em are up to it. Demonstrably a few agitprop neocomrades at Hooverville and Rio Limbaugh are aware, because for about every tenth or twelfth barbaric yawp about the grandkids, there has been one yawp or half a yawp about how the dollar will have ceased to exist well before Sonny Jr. gets mulcted for death tax on the Scrooge family conglomerate trust. It would be safest to assume that Neukamerad Obersturmführer von Cantor knows about the inflation card, but sees no point in playin’ it in the immediate wake of the Crawford Crash, when a few mammonologists are mumbling about deflation. But God knows best.

Moving right along,

Whatever the ultimate outcome, the debate upended many Washington assumptions about what the Obama era would be like. Many political analysts expected Republicans to be cowed by the new president's popularity and loath to oppose him aggressively at a moment of crisis. They were not. Some Democrats worried that Obama would have trouble keeping his own troops in line, as past Democratic Presidents Carter and Clinton did when Congress was controlled by their own party. He did not. Some Democrats were also uncertain whether Obama's talk about bipartisanship would keep him from playing hardball. It did not.

Many Washington assumers should have assumed better. They did not.

The stimulus debate gave important hints about how difficult the push for comprehensive healthcare legislation will be. Fights erupted over health provisions in the stimulus bill that had been considered consensus items: creating a nationwide system of electronic medical records, and comparative research about which medical treatments work best. There also was tension -- even among Democrats -- about efforts to expand Medicaid, which critics said was a step toward creating government-run healthcare. "The lesson here is that in healthcare nothing is easy, simple or widely agreed," said Robert Laszewski, a health policy consultant. Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, predicts Democrats will have more success attracting Republican support if their initiatives are presented as individual proposals rather than sweeping packages like the stimulus bill. He pointed to the January vote to expand children's health insurance coverage, which garnered support from 40 Republicans. He expects a big bipartisan margin in an upcoming vote on a bill to require utilities to generate more electricity from cleaner energy sources. "As you take out each individual part, you get a response," said Markey. "People hate government but love the programs."

A sudden improvement in quality suggests to me that J. Hatch is actually interested in medicine, unlike economics. As to Representative Markey, I wonder if those sensible remarks can be taken to imply that he disapproves of the "fiscal responsibility summit" that is scheduled for next week (and that goes unmentioned by J. Hook despite its blatant salience.) Oh, well.

Over in the enemy bunker,

GOP leader McConnell left himself and his party an escape hatch, arguing that Republicans' strategy in the future will be dictated by whether Obama and congressional Democrats are more receptive to GOP views than they were on the economic recovery plan. "Obviously the president concluded it was easier to pick off a couple Republicans" rather than make big concessions to Republicans, McConnell said. "If he tries to go down the genuine middle, we're willing to engage."

Where Neukamerad Oberstgruppenführer von McConnell suppose "the genuine middle" to be located, who knows? Most likely he entertains thoroughly fantastic neocomradely and OnePercenterly ideas on the subject. In principle, though, it ought to be possible to line up all the Solons and Congresscritters from left to right and pick out the central fifty or sixty or howevermany percent of them that one desires to isolate for this or that specific purpose, and do it in a reasonably neutral or objective way. (Where are the social-scientizers when one needs them!)

Turning Nitsy On

Do the slaves of Sulzberger remember their undergraduate economics better than we humble? Could it be that, like us humble, they never had any undergraduate economics to remember? Oh, well, ignorance of technicalities does not inhibit the Wall Street Jingos and other clans of Baní Rupert, or the Heritagitarians, or the AEIdeologues, or (best monnickered for times like these!) the intrepid Hoovervillains! Not to omit the ever-unomittable Neocomradess J. Daley of the Daily Torygraph.

Aunt NYTC may be quite as clueless a lay sheep as those who bleat and bloviate for the Neocomradely Cause, Mr. Bones, for thee and I are in no position to judge her mammonological qualifications, yet we do know that her heart is on the left where it belongs, unlike . . . . Furthermore, today's unsigned nitsitorial is finally for once written about a situation that a decent political adult might describe as ‘worrisome’ with a straight face. [1]

So, then, what Nitsy likes about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 is the following:

... adequate increases in unemployment benefits and food stamps — generally the two most-effective forms of stimulus. Those items must not change appreciably. Aid to states is excellent stimulus because the money is funneled quickly (...) the child tax credit ... is robust stimulus because the recipients are likely to spend it quickly ... a $10 billion provision that would allow states to temporarily offer Medicaid coverage to uninsured people who are unemployed (...)

That seems to be about all the reinvestment (sic) measures that get praised unequivocally and do not need to be carefully disentangled from House and Senate alternatives.

On the worrisome hand,

... Tax cuts aren’t the best stimulus ... [like for example] $39 billion in tax credits for anyone and everyone who wants to buy a house ...

Talk about "a short way with dissenters"![2]

Still, it does seem to be really the case that Hooverville and Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh bark and bellow "Tax Cuts or Bust!" -- either for doin' nothin' at all or else for pullin'

a Rahm Emmanuel crisis exploitation caper of their own to get rid of (1) taxes on corporations and (2) capital-gains taxes on individual organisms and (3) "death tax" on the organisms’ offspring -- not temporarily for purposes of reinvestment, but in sæcula sæculorum amen. Yuck.

When it comes to political strategy, neither Nitsy nor anybody else needs credentials:

Odds are unfortunately high that even an $800 billion stimulus package will fall short of what’s needed to combat today’s downturn, and that more will be needed later. When the Obama administration asks for more, it will need to be able to make a compelling case that the first round was the best it could possibly be. It’s certainly not there yet.

Like a lot of other armchair Thurlow Weeds and Mark Hannas and Colonels House, Aunt Nitsy sometimes offers strategic notions that are a bit worrisome. Suppose the Crawford Crash aftermath still looks much the same eighteen months from now, why should That One™ be required to reassure Televisionland and the electorate "that the first round was the best it could possibly be"? Why should not the President claim, frankly or fibbingly, that American Recovery and Reinvestment™ would have worked out a lot better if only more than three -- 0003.000 of (188 + 39 =) 227 -- militant extremist Republicans had contributed? [3]

Happy days.

___
[1] As thee might have guessed, the W-word does not appear now that it respectably might. "The economy is too fragile. And the numbers are too huge" is not very close.


[2] http://defoe.classicauthors.net/shortestway/


[3] That comes to only 1.33% of the Grant-Hardin'-Hooverites in the Fedguv legislature.

The Trouble with Aardvarkian PubDip

Pandering To Losers

On Sunday, 1 February 2008--Day Twelve of Year I of the End of Western Sieve as Wingnut City Knows It--Lord Fairbalance graciously granted an audience to Fedguv Senator Kyl of Arizona, who plays Tonto to the Fabulous Flyboy at the state level and to McConnell-san at Beltway City:

FAIRBALANCE: Senator Kyl, as the Senate begins debate on the economic stimulus plan Monday, how many Republican votes at this point do you count for the Democratic package as it stands right now? KYL: My lord, we haven’t begun our counting yet, but I can tell you that I see support for this legislation eroding. I think the more people around the country see of it, the angrier they get, because it’s very wasteful. It spends way too much money. By the way, if you throw in the interest, it’s over a trillion. It’s about $1.3 trillion. And it’s ineffective. I think the theory of it is if you throw enough money, somehow or other it’ll trickle down to people and that will help stimulate the economy. But the economists that we’ve talked to said that’s not going to work. I think the people understand that. And so I see support in the Senate actually eroding. [0] (...) Senator Kyl, recognizing, as you must, that your side lost the election and the Democrats won, what is the minimum that you would need to see in changes in this package to get significant Republican support? And is there a possibility that if you don’t get that that Republicans will try to filibuster to block this bill? KYL: Well, first of all, of course, Dick Durbin is right, there is a crisis in this country. Republicans fully appreciate that. People are hurting. And that’s why we don’t want to see this opportunity wasted. [1] We’re not talking about little things at the margins. We’re talking about over a trillion dollars here, and it would be a shame to waste that money. In the first place, we don’t have it. So there would be major structural changes that would have to occur. The centerpiece of this is a $500 rebate to folks, about 27 percent of whom don’t even pay federal income tax. That didn’t work last year. It’s not going to work this year. And so that’s not a good place to start. [2] It creates 34 new government programs. It sends $84 billion to the states when about $10 billion would satisfy the so-called FMAP needs that they have. [3] It wastes a ton of money. I mean, there are so many different things that you can make fun of in this bill. Let me just mention one -- millions of dollars to World War II Filipino veterans in the Philippines. Now, that may be a good thing to spend money on, but not in a stimulus bill. It doesn’t stimulate anything. [4] So I think you have to start from scratch and reconstruct this to -- start with the problem that created the entire cascade of events that have occurred here, the housing collapse. And Republicans, I think, will come forward with ideas to start with housing first, let people keep more of their own money, and in that way really provide some stimulus and better hope for the future. [5] FAIRBALANCE: Briefly, Senator Kyl, I want to pick up on one thing you just said and re-press my question. "Start from scratch"? I mean, you’re really talking about rewriting this whole bill? And secondly, if you don’t get those major changes you’re talking about, will Republicans filibuster to try to block this bill? KYL: I think that we would all agree there will be a 60-vote requirement for the bill. That’s the end result of a filibuster. [6] Our effort is not to delay the bill at all. We understand the urgency of the situation. And when I say “start from scratch,” what I mean is that the basic approach of this bill, we believe, is wrong. It may be that there could be some huge amendments that would redirect it, that would be adopted by our friends on the Democratic side. But every amendment in the Finance Committee was defeated. Every amendment we put forth in the Appropriations Committee was defeated. I don’t think there’s a real effort here. As Speaker Pelosi said, "We won the election, we wrote the bill." And I suspect that’s pretty much the way it’s going to end up. [7] (...) FAIRBALANCE: The administration is working on how to spend the $350 billion that’s left in the [TARP] program. And this last week, the president blasted Wall Street for giving out huge bonuses at the same time that the government -- or, rather, that the banks are asking for government bailouts. (...) Senator Kyl, there are reports now that the Administration may not impose tough new restrictions because of concerns that if they do, some of the banks that most need the money won’t end up accepting them. Is that a mistake? [8] KYL: Well, you do have to be careful about the kind of restrictions you put on there. They need to make sense. Nobody supports this -- the kind of bonuses that were given and so on. But I do think we have to be careful that we don’t try to create some kind of a devil out of the business community here. We’re not going to create new jobs unless we have businesses. And so let’s be careful about suggesting that all business folks are bad and they shouldn’t make very much money. The President seemed to suggest that it’s wrong for them to make a profit in these days. Well, businesses won’t stay in business. They won’t create jobs. They won’t hire people unless they think they can make a profit. Only 2.3 percent of the Senate bill actually provides tax relief to businesses in the hope that they can create jobs. That’s anemic. That doesn’t do any good. And the tax relief that Dick Durbin talked about last year that President Bush asked for -- well, it was a combination of Democrats and Republicans. It didn’t do any good. He’s right. And the same thing is not going to do any good in this legislation.

[0] The militant extremist neocomrade shows no sign of knowin’ anythin’ about economics, so it is mildly to his credit that he does not try to bluff. He also knows what he likes, though, and therefore positions his stereotypically Party-of-Grant druthers fair and square and right up front: "It spends way too much money." What public money is spent on scarcely matters (apart from obviously existential aggressions and occupations overseas, naturally): the great thing is simply not to spend so much.

NEVER to spend so much, actually. There is a little humbug about the times bein’ maybe just a little bit out of joint farther on, "there is a crisis in this country" et cætera, but Neocomrade J. Kyl only emits that sort of noise because the Great Hamiltonian Beast would get restless and balky if the GOP geniuses were to grantise and mckinleyate and hoover it with complete frankness. "Who knows not that to save the People one must often oppose them?" Everybody of importance further knows that it is advisable that the ignorant and unwashed savees notice the de haut en bas opposition of the Saviour Classes as little as possible.

Neocomrade J. Kyl handles that front rather well, I’d say, by assumin’ sans peur et sans research that the mob of salvation fodder agree with their betters already and do not need to be persuaded that "Hoover Was Right!" He "think[s] the people understand that." ("Je vous ai compris," observes M. le neo-général.) It would matter in only a minor tactical way, however, if the Great Beast did not understand at all. Indeed, in the light of the election returns, maybe on balance we beastly don’t really understand, and maybe the neocomrade Solon does not really suppose that we do.

The neocomrades over at the Goebbels School of Counterterror and Public Diplomacy are smart enough to have noticed that their Party’s "Hoover Was Right!" product is unmarketable to the mob at present without so much elaborate repackagin’ that they perhaps speak of ‘camouflage’ among themselves when nobody is likely to overhear. Like J. Kyl, the Party of Grant spinsters are tactically clever, or seem so to this keyboard, and they show it by concentratin’ their twistification on tryin’ to get the Great Beast to agree with their Party mammonologists ("the economists that we’ve talked to") that the New Deal was ruinously wrong and misguided, no matter what Dr. Hoover may have been. Presumably after another two or three decades of carefully controlled wombschoolin’ and Niederdümmung, the neocomradely factions will be able to inculcate their spiritual Peruna and Viagra straight-up and in the positive form. Soon enough President Roosevelt and the abominable Mr. Keynes will have passed out of living memory, leaving the world to darkness and to Kyl . . . .

But plainly the Party neocomrades are not quite arrived in Beulah Land yet. One might even paint the present state of our alien and bewildered world so as to make it look very unfavorable to the interests of Big Management. What if the Heimatland Gottes were -- even at this very late date, even after the End of Fukuyama™! -- to stray down some icky vonHayekian road to Psocialism and Pserfdom? It could still happen here!

Res gravis agitur. Neocomrade Dr. Limbaugh down in the gutter may or may not have been well advised to bark and bellow that he would like to see President Obama fail. At a more adult level, there is no doubt that it would be a catastrophe for the Party of Big Management should Keynesianism fail to fail. Neocomrade J. Kyl sneers boldly at the chief enemy of economic OnePercenterdom, "[I]f you throw enough money, somehow or other it’ll trickle down to people and that will help stimulate the economy."

Ah, but what if, contrary to all reasonable expectation and Chicago School dogmatic theology, throw-trickle-stimulate DID help?

NOTE. Student of AEIdeology and the Party of Grant ought to bear in mind that a neocomrade like J. Kyl almost certainly thinks that spendin´ (boo! hissss!!) is one thing, and tax cuts (huzzah!) utterly another. From the standpoint of the evil Fedguv the two can look very similar, but one would have to be evil oneself to look at anythin’ from that observation post. Anythin’ domestic, I mean: as noted, invasions and semiconquests and suchlike excellent adventures abroad somehow do not get counted the same way in neocomradely reckonin’s.


[1] Mr. Rahm said something very like that and got piled on by Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh. Notice that the honourable and gallant does not indicate what the Big Managers suppose their present ‘opportunity’ to consist in, and that he swiftly moves on to cast doubt on the idea that the opportunity really even exists: "In the first place, we don’t have" "that money."

Q. Did not havin’ the money ever impede R. Reagan and Dubya and Dubya’s Daddy?
A. What a silly question, Mr. Pilate!


[2] It looks as if the War on Untaxed Slackers™, originally declared by Rio Limbaugh alone, has now become the common project of all Homelandic reaction and neoreaction. If the Senator will trouble himself to root around in his factional garbage pails a little, I am confident he can do better than a measly twenty-seven percent.


[3] " The Federal Medical Assistance Percentages (FMAPs) are used in determining the amount of Federal matching funds for State expenditures for assistance payments for certain social services, and State medical and medical insurance expenditures."

Scrooge, Esq., wondered if there were no workhouses. J. Kyl, perceivin’ that he cannot be quite that straightforward now that FDR and the abominable Keynes have done their mischief, goes to work like this. Naturally it is not an accident or an oversight that Televisonland and the electorate do not know FMAP from Adam.

It may be statistically eccentric to follow in the wake of the unfabulous non-flyboy from AZ scooping up the Big Party poop for scrutiny, but there are rewards. Here, for example, we find a pretty contradiction with the usual neocomradely anti-health line, indeed, with the "Harry and Louise" line of yore: J. Kyl would never dream of sayin’ in so many words that state governments know better than doctors do what patients need, but he is not so very dogmatically opposed to the public sector that he cannot deploy it, suitably disguised and occluded, in the OnePercenters’ never-endin’ quest for spendin’ less.

Furthermore, one may take for granted that his unsourced ten billion bucks was an estimate somebody made BEFORE Mortgagegate 2008 and the Crawford Crash started puttin’ lots and lots of folks from the beastly mob out of work and out of health insurance.


[4] Nor are any votes lost by insultin’ the Lesser Breeds Without!

On the other hand, I am surprised that the neocomrade does not mention "Buy American" and its slimy heretical contempt for Absolute Free Trade.


[5] I.e., Big Management will think of somethin’ eventually, but has not yet actually done so as of Sunday morning.


[6] Kiddie Konstitutionalism is always fun, but the point of it is a little obscure in this case. I guess the neocomrade is tryin’ to avoid soundin’ too much like Dr. Limbaugh and prefers not to announce that he's prefer the damn thing just plain failed.

[7] More murk, although it is very likely that Neocomrade J. Kyl expects the obvious thig to expect, eventual passage with zero-to-derisory support from the Party of Big Management.

[8] "Leading the witness," that would be called in a Homeland court of law. Lord Fairbalance, though, is to be evaluated by the canons of Outer Murdochstan, with which I am regrettably unfamiliar.

The witness refuses to be led, oddly enough. Less odd is that he sees the political usefulness of grantin’ that Mr. Gordon Gecko really rather overdid his servicin’ of Lord Mammon.

At the bitter end, Neocomrade Senator J. Kyl all but deviated into accuracy, though he speaks cryptically enough that Televisionland probably did not notice anythin’ unusual. Cultivated despisers of the Big Party tend to claim that they never saw a tax cut they did not like, but, above the miserable Limbauvian morass, that is a misunderstanding of neorightism. Unless "tax relief" is relentlessly skewed towards the top five percentiles, at most, it will indeed not "do any good," as economic good is understood by AEIdeologues and Heritagitarians.

J. Kyl cannot afford to be a dogmatic AEIdeologue about the question, naturally, since if the GOP geniuses all did that, about 95% of 95% of the Homelanders would prefer America’s party in elementary self-defense. J. Kyl's crew, mere Big Party pols as opposed to the Owners of America, have to mumble stuff like "let people keep more of their own money" for purposes of their self-defense.

I am not sure whether or not the hacks are distinctly aware that it scarcely matters for the purposes of cocktail-napkin economics whether most people -- "the middle class" -- get to keep their own money or not. Perhaps there is not much distinctness about it, since that way it is easier for hacks like Kyl to believe that they believe what they are sayin’ -- what they indispensably have to say.

But God knows best.