If either of these guys wins the presidential election we’re doomed or, even worse, doomded.  The good news is that, at least according to current polls, neither stands a chance against a Democrat who can walk, talk, and doesn’t drool too much.  Naturally I’d like the less likely winner to run.  I think Big D is my man.  I’m backing him, at least in the fight for the nomination, 101%.  I’d like to go 110% but that’s impossible since 100% is an absolute maximum.  I think the extra 1% is within sampling error so I’m sticking with it.

I urge all like minded citizens to follow my example.

Wichita, KS

July 13, 2013

In a city that is Middle American both culturally and geographically there is a growing awareness that the city has been infiltrated by Canadian illegals with PhDs. Sources in city government who prefer to remain anonymous say that the official estimate of the Canadian illegal population is currently 350,000 and growing daily. One of the anonymous officials said, “It’s the Underground Railroad in reverse. The route established by John Brown and his supporters still exists. Now they’re using it come here from Canada.”

This reporter went to seven convenience stores selected at random from the internet and bought a 40 oz. bottle of malt liquor at each. All of the clerks pronounced the letter “O” in the distinctive Canadian manner and ended many sentences with a rising inflection and the word “eh.” Several of them wore plaid flannel shirts. Clerks were observed with copies of Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” and Spenser’s “Faerie Queen.” One was scribbling arcane mathematical equations in a spiral notebook. None of them would comment on their national origin. All of the stores had large amounts of hockey paraphernalia on display.

Other cities across the country are experiencing this phenomenon. Boise, Idaho landscape contractor Elvin Tappe said, “About six months ago I noticed that the groups of people waiting on the street corner I usually go to for casual laborers looked different. A lot of the guys weren’t Hispanic. The new guys spoke English too. They had kind of a funny accent but they weren’t nearly as hard to understand as my brother-in-law from Georgia. I decided I’d try a couple. They were pretty good. They took a half hour lunch and didn’t drink on the job. On one of my jobs we were building a retaining wall. A guy took a look at the drawing and said ‘I think this is way overdesigned. It doesn’t have to be nearly that thick.’  He did some quick calculations and, by gosh, he was right. I saved 50% on materials on that job.”

In Del Rio, TX this correspondent managed to interview a man we’ll call Brian who was working as a bus boy in a local Mexican restaurant. He said “I was a tenured professor in the English department of a respected university but there was something missing from my life. I hated wearing tweed and corduroy jackets with patches on the elbows. The pipe smoke burned my tongue. I was bored with the clumsy advances the female, and some male, students made in hopes of improving their grades. Then there were the Quebeckers. The gangs were especially bad. It was hard to walk around in many neighborhoods because of the bands of tattooed young men who wore berets in their gang color. These “garçonz,” as they called themselves, harassed passers by. There were reports of car break ins and muggings. One morning my wife and I were putting groceries in the car when a group of garçonz came up to us. One of them said ‘Votre maman souffle les ours morts. Elle les aime beaucoup.’ He leered and put his fingers up to his mouth in a V shape. He moved his tongue back and forth through the V while making libidinous noises. I was mortified. My wife found it strangely provacative. We discussed it and decided that the U. S. was the only choice.”

Nationwide, the population of Canadian PhDs and their families is estimated at upwards of 20,000,000. The unfortified borders of Montana and North Dakota are favored entry points. ICE refuses to comment on the issue. Spokesperson Walter Moryn said “We have received complaints about illegal immigration from Canada. We are investigating several situations. I’d prefer not to comment until we have some concrete evidence.”

Moryn advised that anyone who suspects that Canadian illegals are living in their town to contact ICE. He promised that every complaint would receive the agency’s full attention.

Part II-The Dean Interview

July 14, 2013

In this second installment of our series on the influx of illegal Canadian immigrants with PhDs we’ll take a look at some of the sociological consequences of the invasion from the north. Last week I interviewed Dr. Jerome Herman Dean, a senior fellow at the Rickey Institute of Social Behavior in St. Louis. Dr. Dean specializes in the dynamics of crowds. He recently published a monograph titled “New Trends in Group Behavior” in the Midwest Journal of Social Dynamics.

JF: I understand your monograph has caused quite a stir both in the academic community and among the general public. Could you describe your findings?

JHD: Over the last three years my research staff has monitored behavior in a variety of public places. They’ve noticed an odd shift in the dynamics of these situations. The incidence of fights among the spectators at hockey games has declined by 60% from 2004 levels. Customers at dawn Christmas sales have formed orderly lines and entered the store at a walk, one at a time when the doors opened. There has been a 25% increase in the use of turn signals. The incidence of people giving up seats to the aged and infirm on public transit has increased by 75%.

JF: Do you believe this indicates a trend?

JHD: Yes. For the last fifteen years we have studied the behavior of crowds in four areas: driving, entertainment events, shopping, and public transit. We’ve developed objective measures of crowd behavior. We’ve established a particularly useful metric which we call the “Rudeness Index.” In each of the four areas we’ve found a statistically significant decline in rudness since 2004. Furthermore the Rudeness Index shows a decline every year versus the previous year.

JF: Have you identified a cause for this shift in behavior?

JHD: Our current results show a strong positive correlation between the increase in the population of Canadian illegal immigrants with PhDs. The decline in the Rudeness Index since 2004 has tracked the increase in the Canadian illegal PhD population very closely. We’re now working on several studies to test our findings.

JF: So you’re not sure that the Canadian Invasion is responsible for the changes you’ve noticed.

JHD: This is science; everything is open to question. I believe in the soundness of our methodology and the statistical analysis of our results. So, yes, I believe that the increase in the number of Canadian PhDs who entered this country illegally is, given the current level of knowledge, the best explanation we have for the decline in rudeness. My colleagues in the profession are in accord with me.

Gerson’s argument reminds me of the baseball establishment’s reaction to the application of statistical techniques to baseball.  Baseball stats have been around since the dawn of the professional game.  In the 1940s and early 1950s general manager Branch Rickey used some predictive techniques that weren’t widely publicized.  In the early 1960s a storm broke when retired metallurgist Earnshaw Cook published a book called “Percentage Baseball,” which was the first attempt to subject the game to mathematical analysis.  Cook, like many pioneers, made some large mistakes.  He also was right about many things.  Baseball managers and executives railed against Cook’s ideas on baseball strategy.  One area where he was undeniably correct was that the bunt is generally a bad idea except under certain conditions when a team needs to score a single run late in a game.  Cook’s big mistakes were a method of  setting  a batting order that doesn’t maximize scoring and a system for using pitchers that, while similar to the way teams use pitchers today, is not compatible with the human body or the amount of pitching talent available on most teams.  The common theme in the reaction of the baseball establishment was that baseball transcended numbers.  Gerson said something very similar, “An election is not a mathematical equation; it is a nation making a decision.”

In the 1970s Bill James, Pete Palmer and others developed better methods of analysis and prediction for baseball.  James coined the term “sabermetrics” from the acronym SABR for the Society for American Baseball Research, a group that started out with a historical emphasis and broadened its approach to include the statistical analysis that was becoming more popular.  The book Moneyball, by Michael Lewis, and the recent movie of the same name chronicled the application of sabermetric techniques to running a baseball team.  The baseball establishment reacted to Billy Beane’s use of  math the same way it did to Cook’s book.  Beane’s Oakland Athletics became very successful because Beane used analytical conclusions to try to find the best bargains in player talent.  Other teams weren’t doing that.  Today most teams use some sabermetric analysis in assessing talent, considering the value of trades, etc.

Gerson laments the popularity of numerical analysis in political science today.  He talks about scholarly journals being filled with “a profusion of numbers and formulas more suited to the study of physics.”  He believes that politics is “mainly the realm of ethics — the study of justice, human nature, moral philosophy and the common good.”  One problem with the ethical focus is that people don’t necessarily consider ethics or justice in forming their political opinions.  Some vote their wallet.  Others vote the candidates’ appearance.  The Nixon Kennedy debate is a reminder that the electorate, as a group, isn’t quite as high minded as the average scholar.

It’s certainly possible that some of the journal articles attempt to quantify things that are difficult to quantify, especially when the subject at hand doesn’t have a precise, readily agreed upon definition.  That’s a common flaw in psychological research.  Where Gerson is wrong is in downplaying the significance of numerical analysis.  The outcome of elections is something people find interesting.  If the best results so far have come from black box techniques that ignore the actual decision making process, the predictive value of the techniques is both interesting and useful.  The canonical black box approach is the use of input to predict output without being concerned with what happens in between.  Stuff goes into the black box.  We don’t know what the black box does with it.  We do know that something comes out.  If we can predict the output of the black box on the basis of the input we know something.   Sometimes we can use that knowledge to open the lid of the box.

The Society for American Baseball Research has never abandoned its historical and biographical work.  There’s still a great deal of interest in the human side of baseball.  Members write papers and books on baseball history and biography all the time.  The Society also has many members whose primary interest is statistical.  The  Society recognizes both approaches as interesting.  Gerson wants political science to ignore those whose interest is in quantifying and prediction and stick with the philosophical approach that he favors.  It’s reminiscent of the old mathematicians’ toast, “Here’s to pure mathematics.  May she never be of use to anyone.”  Of course, eventually someone almost always finds an application for the most esoteric area of mathematical abstraction.  If political science is defined the way Gerson wants to define it, there’s no place for numerical analysis or the prediction of political events, whether they’re election results or long term trends.  Admitting numerical analysis broadens the scope of the field.  It may not make pundits obsolete but it just might be able to illuminate punditry in ways that are different from the age old scholastic speculation that’s characterized the field.  Numerical analysis can never tell us everything we want or need to know.  It can tell us some things that other methods can’t.

Although Gerson probably doesn’t think so, this election was an occasion for celebration for pollsters and math modelers.  Almost all of the polls predicted the outcome correctly.  The math modelers did well too.   It’s true, the people who were concerned with predicting the outcome didn’t spend much time on the why.  That doesn’t preclude others from examining those questions.

Memphis Minnie was born Lizzie Douglas in Algiers, Louisiana on June 3, 1897. Her family called her “Kid.” In 1930  a record company A & R man named her Memphis Minnie. In 1904 her family moved to Walls, Mississippi, a few miles south of Memphis. Her first guitar was a Christmas present when she was 8. She attended school long enough to pick up the rudiments of reading, writing and arithmetic. In her teens she ran away to Memphis numerous times, coming home when she ran out of money. During WWI she joined a Ringling Brothers show that toured the south. From that point she was on her own as an entertainer.

In the early 1920s she worked with Mississippi blues artist Willie Brown, who also played regularly with Charley Patton and Son House. She and Brown played together for five or six years. Willie Moore, who often played with her and Brown said “Wasn’t nothing he could teach her… Everything Willie Brown could play, she could play and then she could play some things he couldn’t play.”

After leaving Brown she moved to Memphis and started working with Joe McCoy. In 1929 they were signed by a Columbia Records scout who heard them playing for tips in a barbershop. They recorded eight songs in New York including “When the Levee Breaks” and “Bumble Bee,” a song she was to record five times. The record company released the records under the names Kansas Joe and Memphis Minnie. The records did well. She dropped Kid Douglas in favor of Memphis Minnie. It was the beginning of 20 years of blues stardom for her.

She and McCoy settled in Chicago shortly after their records came out. They recorded frequently and played clubs in Chicago as well as the South and Midwest. Their sound was based on intricate guitar duets that combined a rural feel with sophisticated interplay. She played lead while McCoy played a bass line. Her vocals were simple and straight forward with an air of power and self assurance. Many of their songs had rural themes like Plymouth Rock Blues, a song about chickens, and Frankie Jean, a song that showed how to call a horse. What’s the Matter with the Mill combines sexual innuendo with a farmer’s regular trips to the grist mill. They recorded many double entendre songs with titles like My Butcher Man . Daily life was the theme for songs like North Memphis Blues, a commercial for a restaurant called the North Memphis Cafe and Memphis Minnie-jitis Blues, a song about a bout with meningitis that’s notable for its stark, elegant language.

Her biggest hit from this part of her career was Bumble Bee, which she recorded several times. It celebrated lust in a way that transcended the double entendre material she recorded so often. “I got a bumble bee, don’t sting nobody but me… ” she sang. In the second version she recorded, she sang “He had me to the place once that I wish to God that I could die.” The lyrics to each version of the song are markedly different.

Minnie and Joe McCoy split in 1935. Their last recording was a two sided duet called You’ve Got to Move on side one and You Ain’t Got to Move on side two. Joe did have to move. In the mid ’30s Minnie’s style took on a more urban flavor. For the next four years or so she usually recorded with a piano player, often Big Bill Broonzy’s frequent accompanist, Black Bob, to complement her guitar.

Around 1939 she connected with Ernest (Little Son Joe) Lawlars, the love of her life. They lived together until he died in 1961. She and Lawlars did guitar duets that were similar to her earlier work with Joe McCoy but stripped down to deliver the rhythmic pulse that drove the blues of the late 1930s and ’40s. With Lawlars she recorded some of her best songs. In My Girlish Days, a deep blues about coming of age, ends with, “All of my playmates is not surprised. I had to travel ‘fore I got wise. I found out better but I’ve still got my girlish ways.” Lonesome Shack is about relationship insurance. She sings about a “lonesome shack” “out cross the hills” where she can go if her current relationship falls apart. Me and My Chauffeur Blues combines double entendre with fact. Although she owned a car, Memphis Minnie never learned to drive. Nothing in Rambling is another deep blues that contrasts security and life on the road. It begins with “I was born in Louisiana, raised in Algiers. Every place I go it’s the peoples all say ‘Ain’t nothing in rambling, either running around.’” Lawlars did the vocal on Black Rat Swing, a comic tune that features the refrain “gonna find my shoe somewhere near his shirt tail.” The song was released with the vocal credit “Mr. Memphis Minnie.”

During this period she began playing the electric guitar. Other blues players in Chicago like Big Bill Broonzy and Tampa Red started using amplification too. It was not a revolutionary development. At the time people used the electric guitar because it helped them be heard in noisy clubs. Record company publicity pictures from around 1940 show her with an electrified National arch top guitar.

She and Lawlars continued to record into the early fifties. Their last release came in 1953. In a 1952 session for Chess they were assisted by Little Walter on a remake of Me and My Chauffeur. While they recorded less frequently than in the previous two decades, they were a popular live act in Chicago in the early ’50s, working at well known spots like the Club de Lisa, Sylvio’s, Gatewood’s Tavern, and others. By the middle of the decade club work their fell off as the electric music she pioneered with Big Bill and a few others in the early ’40s matured and supplanted the music of the older artists. In 1958 she moved back to Memphis with Lawlars.

In Memphis they played music as long as their health allowed. They appeared on local radio with Sonny Boy Williamson and Robert Nighthawk and worked in local clubs. In 1959 they recorded an unreleased three song test for a local label. In 1960 Minnie had a stroke that put her in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Lawlars died in 1961. Minnie had a second stroke soon after. She spent the remainder of her life in a nursing home. She died in 1973 and was buried in Walls, Mississippi.

Suggested Listening

The best bang for the buck is the two 4 disc box sets on JSP, Queen of Country Blues 1929-1937 and Queen of the Delta Blues, Vol. 2.   Both are available at all of the usual on line CD sources for around $25.  Her entire recorded output is available on mp3 from your favorite download site.

Dr. Howard Lovecraft, noted occult expert, points out, “Ryan exhibits two physical characteristics long associated with the loup garou, a connection between his eyebrows and a widow’s peak.  It’s also significant that the debate is scheduled to avoid the next full moon on October 29th.”

Former long time Ryan campaign staffer Missy Hohenstaffel of Racine, WI says, “I worked for Mr. Ryan for many years.  I finally had to resign because I feared for my own safety.  Every 28 days, as regular as, you know, what happens with birth control pills, Mr. Ryan would stay in his office.  Lots of us heard strange noises like a wild animal or something.  I resigned when I saw strange looking men in gray jumpsuits delivering live goats and sheep to Mr. Ryan’s office.  The weird noises got louder after the deliveries.  Nobody ever saw the goats or sheep ever come out.  A day or two later, after Mr. Ryan came out of his office people from a specialized cleaning company, one of the ones that cleans up after floods and toddler birthday parties, would go into Mr. Ryan’s office and spend several hours there.  It made me very nervous.”

We haven’t been able to verify the rumors to our satisfaction, but we do think that they raise important questions that need public clarification.  We hope Mr. Biden, who’s known for his hard hitting debate style, will address this issue.   

Today Jerry Sandusky, erstwhile Penn State football coach and youth leader, received a 30 to 60 year sentence after his conviction for child molestation.  Judge John Cleland, not to be confused with the author of Fanny Hill, handed down the sentence.

Sandusky made a statement in court in which he proclaimed his innocence and vowed to fight for exoneration.  He advanced the theory that he was the victim of a left wing conspiracy.  The highlight of his statement was his endorsement of Mitt Romney for president.  He said, “Mitt and I go way back.  He’s one of the few who’ve stood by me throughout this ordeal.  He’s promised that when he takes office he’ll free me from prison on day one of his term, right before he repeals Obamacare.  I urge all right minded people who oppose this legal travesty and miscarriage of justice to vote for Romney and clear my name.  I believe in America. In your heart you know I’m right.”

We reached out to the Romney campaign for comment but, as of press time, has not received a response.