Numb. 1126 Quelle Différence (plus Finis?)

HAD EAST vanquished WEST

had SOUTH conquered NORTH

what would be different?

Not much. Of course.

Winner or loser? It doesn't matter.

The result is ever the same.

Virtue prevails and evil's defeated.

Just ask the winners with skin in the game.

(NOT, mind, The BYSTANDER who stands aside,

cynically smirking, commenting snidely.)

Victors assure us, whatever their sins,

they are where they are because right always wins.

            FINIS?                    

TIME, we believe, to call it a day.           

At least, that is, for the moment.            

Will we return? That's hard to say.           

Depends, in a way, on who foments             

what, who loses the plot,                     

whether or not we go further to pot.          

Near daily near rhyming we can all do without.

Ergo, for now, BYSTANDER out …                

The Proprietor.         

 —30—                                         

Numb. 1125 Who Done It?

THERE HAS GOT TO BE SOMEONE behind it

whenever something goes wrong,

when it rains on your birthday,

when somebody sings THAT horrible song,

when your team — or your party! — loses (again!),

when the love of your life says, “Let's just be friends.”

For you to lose fairly is clearly impossible.

So when that happens, someone's responsible.

Someone's to blame. Perhaps even Adam.

It's a conspiracy. It DID NOT “just happen”.

Numb. 1124 Why Us?

WHY IS humanity such a calamity?

Why should our species persist?

We are the damnation of all creation,

It would be best if we ceased to exist.

Yes, children are cute.

As are lion cubs.

But both grow up.

Aye, there's the rub.

Lions, like us, gobble up grazers and kill other predators.

Aside from that, they don't do much harm.

We kill, we pollute … we do what suits us,

smarmily saying it's part of our charm.

Could it be (locally) we are Catch-22?

Our whole purpose is to destroy?

Were we deployed to end it all?

Or is it destroying is what we enjoy?

If we disappeared

would we be missed?

That's asked and answered.

Case dismissed with prejudice.

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Numb. 1123 A Question

WILL WE EVER get over magical thinking in re economics and God?

Conceiving conceits, at best, inconceivable, believing them true however odd —

at odds with fact and mathematics (which are not acknowledged by unlatched fanatics)?

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Numb. 1122 Heavin's Gaetz

What do the Fates have in store for Matt Gaetz

while all the while he anticipates

further encounters with girls half his age?

(In Epsteinean circles, such things are the rage.)

If they are in high school, juniors or seniors,

it clearly falls under le vieux droit du seigneur.

And if they are younger? Well, what of that?

Mattie's a Trumper, no prevert Democrat

that sucks baby blood to keep itself young.

Mattie's a reptile Republican.

One of us lizards from outer space

who know we are THE MASTER RACE,

madcap, irrational lying machines.

And, yes, by by all means this includes Taylor Greene.

Mattie, along with our Little Marjie —

the present and future of Honest Abe's Party.

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Numb. 1121 Taxes (or Submitted For Your Approval)

Three Amigos

I want to pay taxes. I love this country. — Irving Berlin

Stumbling and Mumbling

January 01, 2016

Irving Berlin on taxes

The New York Times reports on how some of the US's richest men are dodging taxes. Compare this to the response of Irving Berlin when his lawyer offered him a tax shelter:

I want to pay taxes. I love this country.

He even wrote a song expressing this sentiment.

He said: “I owe all my success to my adopted country.” Had he stayed in Russia, he might well have died in a pogrom or the civil war. And even if he had lived, he certainly wouldn't have heard the jazz and ragtime music in his youth that inspired him to become a songwriter.

He embodied - knowingly so - a point made by Herbert Simon, that we westerners owe our fortunes not so much to our own efforts but to the good luck of living in societies which enable us to prosper - which have peace, the rule of law and material and intellectual resources:

When we compare average incomes in rich nations with those in Third World countries, we find enormous differences that are surely not due simply to differences in motivations to earn. Laziness is not a principal cause of poverty. A more plausible explanation for the differences, in fact the explanation that is universally put forward, is that much greater resources per capita are available to some countries than to others. These differences are not simply a matter of acres of land or tons of coal or iron ore, but, more important, differences in social capital that takes primarily the form of stored knowledge...
When we compare the poorest with the richest nations, it is hard to conclude that social capital can produce less than about 90 percent of income in wealthy societies...On moral grounds, then, we could argue for a flat income tax of 90 percent to return that wealth to its real owners.

Now, songwriting is pretty much as individualistic an activity as one can find; But even songwriters require a conducive environment such as musical traditions on which to draw and a marketplace for their work. Berlin knew this: 1930s Siberia had no equivalent of Tin Pan Alley or Hollywood.

If even songwriters owe their wealth to social capital, how much more true is this of hedge fund managers.They would be nothing without wealthy investors or large liquid financial markets: how many billionaire fund managers are there in Burkina Faso?

Which poses the question: why, then, don't hedge fund managers have the same attitude to paying tax as Irving Berlin? It could be that they are more motivated than he was by personal greed. But there might be another reason - unlike him, they believe their wealth is the product of their own "talent" and so they are entitled to it. Some might call this neoliberal ideology - the idea that we are the architects of our own fate. Others of us prefer to call it an example of one of the disfiguring diseases of our time - narcissism.

Perhaps there's another explanation, though. Maybe hedge fund billionaires are greater geniuses than Irving Berlin who have contributed more to human happiness. But how likely is this?

Click

Numb. 1120 Futurity

WE SAPIENS [sic] can delay our extinction.

But is that a good idea?

Not that we can ever distinguish

good and bad, our record makes clear.

If acting on instinct we extinct our species 

what will evolve to replace us?

Whatever it is, will it speak English,

read the King James, divide into races?

(Bright shining faces, knowing their places?)

Will our replacements bring peace to the planet?

I call that unlikely since peace can not

exist where life persists. 

Life requires conflict, not prissy sissies.

Some other critter could do just as well,

turning the world into a hell.

There being nothing special about us,

I posit the Earth will go on without us.

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Numb. 1119 Andrea Doria Rhymes With Euphoria

OPTIMISTS SEEM to enjoy disappointment.

Which, to me, is perverse.

A pessimist realizes everything's bad

and tries to avoid making it worse.

Optimists wallow in magical thinking,

in wishing, in hoping, in prayer.

Rather than swallow “It'll get better”,

pessimists plead Candide by Voltaire.

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Numb. 1118 Write-in Voting Wrongs

IF YOU CAN NOT WIN by playing fair,

then you are entitled to cheat.

Knowing that you can never do wrong,

you do what you've got to to prevent defeat.

Whether you're Houston, whether you're Brady,

or an also-ran nag in some faded Derby

especially since you might have won anyway,

why choose to lose when cheating's child's play.

Under our system when people vote

everyone's vote counts the same!

How is this fair to millionaires?

Men who've got lots more skin in the game?

Poor people's votes must be kept to a minimum.

Convert Constitution to Condominium.

Whether you're naturalized or vote by birth,

your vote will amount to your net worth.

If you do not pay taxes — I can't be troubled! —

then, ipso facto, your vote will be doubled.

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Numb. 1117 Random Ideas For A Still More Perfect Union 2.0

ONCE DEMOCRAT PARTY is all outlawed,

we will never again gerrymander.

Every House seat will be perfectly safe.

(However, we'll still pander and slander.)

With voting limited to white men descended

from voters in our first election

and Johnny-come-latelies purged from the rolls, 

we will return to the Founders' conception.

What could be finer than war with China

while there's still a slight chance we could win it?

It's just an idea … but Kim's North Korea,

would be an ideal place to begin it.

As we read Ezequiel,

all else being equal:

Trump's second coming —

The Lord's prequel sequel.

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Numb. 1116 Protocols Of GOP Deadenders

WHEN CAN GOP again,

call climate change a China scam?

Burning coal and spewing gas

cannot wreck the world that fast!

Round about FOX channels go;

into poison'd discourse throw

“Linseed” Graham, “Dodger” Stone

to prove we've nothing to atone.

Boasts and lies swirl in the pot.

This we need to do, a lot.

Double, double toil and trouble;

fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

FOX fillets of fake news make

THE SQUAD burn at the stake;

lies of Newt and alt-right blogs;

Covid bats and Lincoln logs;

Mitch's chin; Ted Cruz's “thing”;

Hawley's fist; Cheney's singing

form a charm of woeful trouble,

like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Double, double toil and trouble;

fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Despite the likes of Michael Wolff,

what we've done is bullet proof.

Incite a riot on a lark;

pillow talk of oligarch;

Stephen Miller, though a Jew,

a true NAZI through and through;

in perfect speech this past Jan. 6

from Donald's lips upon Ellipse,

“The outcome is still up for grabs.

In you I trust, brave Proudful Lads.

Grab ye must, or I'll be SAD.

Don't let Dems let brown kids in.

Brown skin is reptilian.

Double, double toil and trouble;

fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Cool it with antifa blood.

No harm done. Understood?”

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Numb. 1115 Data Day Decline

DATA TODAY grows exponentially.

More than enough each day for a century.

This explosion of disinformation,

disconnects effect from causation.

Everything's changing and everyone's leery

and tends to believe in conspiracy theories.

My fact to you is pure fiction.

As you'd expect, this causes friction.

Monster abounding 'neath all of our beds

force us to Reynolds Wrap up our heads.

You seek resolution? I'd not hold my breath.

The likely solution? A duel to the death.

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Numb. 1114 0 Man!

WOULD NOT it be best for the rest of “Creation”

were we to just to disappear?

That our “contributions” amount to subtractions,

news perused daily makes perfectly clear.

Hamlet says we're a “piece of work”,

though his intent, I expect, is ironic.

The Prince is, himself, a bit of a jerk.

Unlaconic. (Plus messianic.)

Good night chronic pests of little distinction.

Retired fleets of jets wing thee to extinction.

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Numb. 1113 How They Gonna Keep Us Down On The Farm

MANKIND EVOLVED to live in small groups.

A family, a tribe, or a clan.

Cities, towns, not even villages

were ever a part of the plan.

Nor was living among other animals.

(Where we would all share diseases.

Bad enough that “cousin” next door

never covers her mouth when she sneezes.)

It was unheard of to live in herds of

tens and hundreds of millions.

And crazy nuts to give up our huts

and pack ourselves into pavilions.

It's as if some single-cell master

noting how ants took up “farming”,

said, “What the hell, we might as well

gather these critters (delicious and warming),

pack them together so we can inspect them,

tighter and tighter so we can infect them

and when we're hungry we can select them

to feed upon and breed upon,

be they breathing or carrion.”

This may not be true, but I am suspicious.

We could be the livestock in their agribusiness.

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Numb. 1112 Lines Must Be [With]Drawn

WHAT IS THE POINT of having borders?

What do lines on a maps mean?

Okay, they may mark mountains and waters,

but, if they don't, they cannot be seen

as anything other than arbitrary —

something to note in obituaries:

“a lifelong resident of this or that place,

a credit/demerit to this or that ‘race’”.

(Another mistaken classification —

imagining an ephemeral “nation”.)

Yes, there ARE differences which are really real,

but things like these are not a big deal.

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Numb. 1111 From The Aynie Randy Handybook

WE DO NOT CARE what happens tomorrow.

Except at the end of the quarter.

If profits are up over previous year's,

that is just how things ought to be.

When they are not, it IS NOT our fault.

It's lazy workers and government meddling.

Each of us is a piece of John Galt,

we shrug off defeat and demand “happy endings”.

Aynie assures us we are the best.

How can anyone question her genius?

She couldn't be better, we guess, unless

in secret she grew a penis.

Not, of course, that we've read her.

At least, not since high school,

Reading! Come on! Who has the time?

(Except for Forbes, the Capitalist tool.

For a whore spanking, THE paradigm.)

Have a quick fuck. Make a quick buck.

Let tomorrow bring on whatever.

Just stack the deck, then say it's luck.

Admit being modestly clever.

Cheating's allowed. (DO NOT say that out loud!)

Everyone does it. (Or they get plowed.)

Never do good when you can do well.

NEVER be celibate. Celebrate hell.

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