Can you imagine that? If you did not have access or stomach to listen to Air America you may not know that Al Franken is every bit the equivalent to Keith Olberman when it comes to vile attacks and utter disregard for truth. When Al Sharpton ran for President on the Democratic Party ticket I thought it a bit humorous. But Sharpton, despite his chosen carreer as a racal opportunist, is somehow a likeable guy. He doesn't hate white people and is not out to destroy them. This Al is just a minor embarassment to the Democratic Party.

But the other Al is viscious. He dishonest in financial matters, google it. He slanders and does his best to destroy those not sharing his political persuasion. That a major American political party could nominate, support and elect a man like Franken to the US Senate is is a disgrace to the party.

 

Was there corruption? Yes, but it was not responsible for the fall. It came after the fall, in an effort to save the company. There is no widely recognized value for these esoteric instruments. They do not trade in a high volume auction market like common stock. AIG continued to value their derivative holdings at prior levels, not recognizing the depleted value on their books.

AIG may not have been squeaky clean but they certainly were not Enron corrupt.

Was taxpayer money required to bail out AIG ?

No, not one red cent. Polls showed the public recognized this but our politicians did not. In a properly functioning free market system Darwinism prevails. Governments do not infuse capital into companies that engage in failing practices, that’s intervention, not free market. Indeed, taxpayer money was used but it was not required. It was a choice made by elected representatives who, once again, failed to represent our interests.

You young'uns may never have been to a Square Dance. Try it. You might like it. It's early Rap where the audience dances in response to the Rap. At least Google it so you will know what dosado is.

Europe is coming into their election season now.

Germany moves Right. Merkel's conservative Christian Democrat party is leading the Social Democrats.

France moves Right. Sarkozy's conservative UMP party is leading in the polls, ahead of the Socialist Party.

Italy moves Right. Berlusconi's Freedom Peoples Party has a 2 digit lead over the Center Left opponent.

Britain's Labour Party is in deep doodoo, (not to be confused with dosado). They are given little chance in the next general election.

Greece and Portugal are leaning Left, but neither is exactly a great world power.

So that's Europe. Europeans were rebelling against what their Socialistic governments had wrought when they elected Merkel and Sarkozy. It's encouraging to see the trend continue.

Now the Russian press is laughing at us in print exclaiming that while they have finally recognized Marxism as a miserable failure the US is racing at breakneck speed toward it.

 

President Obama has elevated the art of national self-loathing to new heights, and seems to delight in prostrating the most powerful nation on the face of the earth before its critics and rivals, especially on foreign soil.”

 The Nobel Prize winning economic journalist Paul Krugman in a June first NYT op ed piece headlined “Reagan Did It” puts the onus for today’s economic debacle on Ronald Reagan. This begs the question, is brother Paul recovering from BDS only to come down with RDS.

Bright guy that Krugman. He knows who his real opposition is. Bush is no hero to conservatives, Reagan is. Bush is gone, Reagan lives. He lives in the hearts of conservatives everywhere, from middle Americans who love their country and its heritage to Eastern Europeans who have suffered the ravages of Marxism, the very antithesis of Conservatism.

The Krug’s argument is Reagan signed a Bill into law whose primary sponsors were senators Gann (R), St Germain (D), Schumer (D) and Hoyer (D). The bill passed easily through a Democratic controlled House and Senate. Krugman is correct in concluding it was deregulatory and had unfavorable consequences. But for a bright guy like Krugman to say “the prime villains behind the mess we’re in were Reagan and his circle of advisors” is beyond ignorance. It is disingenuous and that is a relative compliment.

The core difference is the goal.

Marxism seeks equal status for all. Capitalism seeks equal opportunity for all.

The two are not just incompatible, they are mutually destructive. Marx declared “from everyone according to their ability, to everyone according to their need”. To achieve equal status the fruits of a more productive person’s labor must be taken away from him and distributed among those of lesser achievement. Equal status can only be reached by unequal treatment.

The Free Market system known as Capitalism inspires achievement because the achiever is given the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of his own achievement. Equality of opportunity is equality of treatment. Marxism, on the other hand, accepts inequality of treatment in order to create equality of status.

Equal status, equal opportunity and equal treatment cannot co-exist.

Winston Churchill said it well when he quipped  "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."

 By now we all know some corporate execs used their company jets to fly to DC.

This is a test. No, not a test of the Emergency Internet Online system. There will be no 30 second 60 cycle hum. And relax, it’s just a one question test.

While you prepare, permit me to ramble, an on topic ramble. Capitalism is about a free market system, not about capital. Hayek called it the “extended economy” because it was economic liberty extended to everyone. So who coined the term Capitalism? Oops, sorry! I said there would only be one question and that wasn’t it; so here’s the answer. It was Karl Marx. Presumably he thought “Free Markets” would not move the crowd in his direction as much as would the populist term “Capitalism”.

Stop relaxing. Tense up. Here’s the test.

I will give my answer in my next post. In the meantime what is your answer ?

Town Hall requires you to register to comment. It’s harmless, you only need to do it once and your comment will make me happy.

 

In plain English an annual increase of nearly triple the 2012 deficit, every year for 6 years

 

DAILY HEADLINES and HIGHLIGHTS

3/19/09

FNM to pay bonuses also

AIG – The other view

US of A and E ?

Connecticut’s Dodd changes story

From knowing nothing about language in his amendment to protect AIG executive bonuses to having put the bonus protection measure in specifically under pressure from the Treasury Dept.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/03/023107.php

Stimulus bill earmark of the day

$935,000 to pasteurize eggs.  Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D) MI

Do egg processors really need government assistance to pasteurize eggs ?

Aren't they doing it already?

The One has chosen Eric Holder to be his Attorney General. The editors at National Review Online have defined him as a horrendous choice. Here is a summary with some key excerpts from their editorial.

Holder was the Clinton administration’s last deputy attorney general, succeeding Jamie Gorelick in 1997 under Janet Reno.

He is convinced justice in America needs to be “established” rather than enforced; he’s excited about hate crimes and enthusiastic about the constitutionally dubious Violence Against Women Act; he’s a supporter of affirmative action and a practitioner of the statistical voodoo that makes it possible to burden police departments with accusations of racial profiling and the states with charges of racially skewed death-penalty enforcement

He favors ending the detentions of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay

He favors income redistribution to address the supposed root causes of crime.

Supported the infamous Clinton pardons including that of Marc Rich

In 1999, over the objections of the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, and prosecuting attorneys, Holder supported Clinton’s commutation of the sentences of 16 FALN conspirators [Puerto Rican terrorists]

Equally noxious were the stealthy pardons of Susan Rosenberg and Linda Evans, Weather Underground [members] associated with Obama’s friends Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, issued on the same day as the Rich pardon.

This is a very bad start indeed.

The B in Bavaria must stand for Beautiful because it certainly is. Prague is another story. It is Bohemia, you see it and sense it. Bohemia is the northern part of the Czech Republic. Unsophisticated wretch that I am, for years I thought Bohemia was, like Transylvania, found only in Bela Lugosi movies. As anywhere, many of the people were delightful, but if I were asked to describe the Czechians in one word  the word would be "rude".

More perplexing is the question, why did the US choose the Left turn? Do the voters realize they have chosen to elect the most Liberal government in the history of the country? Could it be the demographics have changed so much that this direction is now our destiny? Could it be due to the media having become so biased that it's the media that really determines the outcome? Or...?

Better yet, just hold Ctrl and click on this horrendously long URL

mms://a1503.v108692.c10869.g.vm.akamaistream.net/7/1503/10869/v0001/mlb.download.akamai.com/10869/library/open/features/monday_flag_350.wmv?media_type=wms&av_type=video&event_pk=486348&product=gen_video