EU chief deems Obama economic moves the 'road to hell'

Moneynews - EU Chief: Obama Plan is Road to Hell

The head of the European Union slammed President Barack Obama's plan to spend nearly $2 trillion to push the U.S. economy out of recession as "the road to hell" that EU governments must avoid.

The blunt comments by Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek to the European Parliament on Wednesday highlighted simmering European differences with Washington ahead of a key summit next week on fixing the world economy.

It was the strongest pushback yet from a European leader as the 27-nation bloc bristles from U.S. criticism that it is not spending enough to stimulate demand.

Shocked by the outburst, other European politicians went into damage control mode, with some reproaching the Czech leader for his language and others reaffirming their good diplomatic ties with the United States. The leaders of EU's major nations -- France, Britain and Germany, among others -- largely ignored Topolanek and his remarks.

What can we expect? For every time he seems to show some rationale for the U.S. that is successful, he either does something, or someone reminds us in strong and blunt terms, just how obstinate BHO can be. In light of this, too, the Openness-in-Chief, the "TOTUS" isn't reproaching world currency ideas flaoted out there, is he? Not that I have heard. How very disappointing.

It irks me, the reserve to defend what's American on so many counts, by this president. Write off the U.S. dollars' once and future (if there is a future!) strength... it's untoward to act like we're still stronger on all counts than any other nation and able to be caretaker of freedom and capitalism and markets. Let's just give it all up now, while WE HAVE THE CHANCE, in light of the deep recession. Is that the thinking? I hope not.

It is too soon for the Earth of Star Trek, with a world-governing council, planetary "credits", etc. Too many ideologues with deep desires to kill innocents for their god or their power. In other words, to keep with the Star Trek theme, Earth has its own Vulcans, Klingons, Romulans, who are interested in harming others, despite overtures to Iran and others by Ms. Clinton and friends.


- jR, aka AirFarceOne (Twitter)

Powered by ScribeFire.

Crist no likee gogo juice wastee, say Sun-Sentinel

Charlie Crist is not being up front about spending for private flights, in full. He is also being tight-lipped about it. Unfortunately, while my guv jetting around on my tax dollars (everyone's, whatever) I find foul, I suspect we're simply going to discover that it is GOPers funding these quick trips, thus making this a bit of a distraction, and a bit of a NON-STORY. Time will tell!

Who pays the bill when Florida Governor Charlie Crist flies? -- South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com

Crist's office would not reveal who paid for specific flights or answer questions about them, despite the governor's vow of transparency when he took office. "Our constitution requires that our government be open and transparent," Crist said in his January 2007 inaugural address. "And under my administration it will be like never before."

Years ago, as a state senator, Crist took aim at then-Gov. Lawton Chiles for accepting about 30 flights on private jets to watch football games or go turkey hunting. Chiles later reimbursed the planes' owners more than $7,000. "The whole thing smells," Crist said at the time, calling for elected officials to fully disclose private flights.

Now, as governor, Crist is mum about his own extensive use of private planes.

The Sun-Sentinel is, of course, quite good at their jobs, so this must mean something. This related story, however, means one thing while the headline, well, I don't know what it means....

Gov. Crist promotes polices to curb gases but trips leave big carbon footprint -- South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com

What kind of headline is "Gov. Crist promotes polices to curb gases but trips leave big carbon footprint," the headline I found for the second article as part of the "print edition" version of the article? Was that translated, poorly, from the Spanish or something? Was this originally an El Sentinel article? Perhaps they meant any of the following:

• Gov. Crist promotes police who curb gases from trips that leave big carbon footprint
• Gov. Crist promotes police's curbing of gases, then trips leaving a big imprint
• Gov. Crist promotes police, is to curb gases, trips and has to leave, offers big carbon footprint

I don't know understand how governor promotes polices to curb gases, but I am sure it for to mean somethings!

"We cannot afford to ignore that carbon emissions are contributing to global climate change that may put Florida's residents and 1,200 miles of coastline at risk," Crist said that day.While Crist has promoted policies to curb global warming, his own air travel has left a considerable carbon footprint. The governor has flown extensively on state and private planes since he took office two years ago.

Oh, so it was meant to be "policies" not "polices". I understands nows. Except for "gases". What did they mean there? Should that be "emissions", perhaps?

The Sun-Sentinel is not exactly a company that one can be proud of. The Sun-Sentinel Company refused, in a practice that they apparently were never castigated for -- for quite some time, according to people I know -- to pay underpaid salaried employees overtime. They did something so, foul, so greedily elitist, yet insist on accusing the governor of anything untoward regarding mere travel? That's rich!

The media hacks and that swath of willing managerial crooks at Tribune care about as much about anything but their own bottom line as Pelosi cares about getting average Americans jobs (if it costs her her precious "patriotic" illegals). Still, I want to know what Crist has to say about these expenses. And, historically, just how much tax money that could be going to schools, for instance, is spent on jet-setting by him and other state officials.


- jR, aka AirFarceOne (Twitter)

Powered by ScribeFire.

GOP comment: Rush's role as firewall

Have a look. Keep reading, hitting the link.

TheHill.com - Rush’s role as firewall

It is becoming increasingly clear that the success of Barack Obama and the success of our nation are mutually exclusive endeavors. Talk radio king Rush Limbaugh was the first to say it out loud, but far from the last. I, too, want Obama to fail. Because I want the United States to succeed.

While Republicans regroup to regain footing as strong voices for freedom, liberty and fiscal conservatism after the November election losses, Rush Limbaugh serves as a firewall against the unprecedented assault on our freedoms by Obama and the far left. Rush doesn’t lose his footing after an election, nor is he cowed by mainstream media attacks and those from (other) top Obama operatives. He is emboldened by them.

Cheri Jacobus appreciates the point to what Rush meant in his now famous and infamous (depending on how well your ears and mind work), takes no shame in accepting his actual point, as oppsoed to taking one sentence and demonizing him over that. She shows just what Rush is (willingly) putting up with, too.

Certain fight-eager, evasive and power-lusting "liberals" (ironic though that self-ascribed tag for the Obamatized may be in light of current statist activity) insist on puking misquotes of Rush, and the president, amazingly and quite humorously, is one of those. When the president personally cannot rise above such street fights, we're all in trouble. Every time it happens, it suggests we're in trouble (this president and past presidents). The likes of super-fake Katie Couric again and again prove by their response to it all of being biased liberals, further embarrassing the purpose of journalism in a free country (this is not Iran, or Cuba, or even France, and it is not going to be Obamastan, either).

Just one viewing of Couric's very recent visit to David Letterman's gabfest will show just how out of touch and disinterested she is with the true value -- barring her career-long far left liberal biases -- of her role on the news. (She's one of many, but one of the largest, at least in title and status, if not believability.) It isn't a news show with her on it, CBS Evening News is a propaganda hour for liberals and missing half of any relevant Obama-related news. She actualy invoked Keynes on the Letterman show, lending her belief in that big government, small free market view of business.

Jacobus is a GOP strategist.

- jR

Powered by ScribeFire.

If I had a dime for every time a socialist said this over the years...

If you think this is bad, wait till next year, says Russian scholar.

Russian scholar says US will collapse --next year (AP via Breitbart)

It wasn't clear how persuasive the 20-minute lecture was. One instructor asked Panarin whether his predictions more accurately describe Russia, which is undergoing its worst economic crisis in a decade as well as a demographic collapse that has led some scholars to predict the country's demise.

Panarin dismissed that idea: "The collapse of Russia will not occur."

But Alexei Malashenko, a scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center who did not attend the lecture, sided with the skeptical instructor, saying Russia is the country that is on the verge of disintegration.

"I can't imagine at all how the United States could ever fall apart," Malashenko told the AP.

It's pretty sad when, by contrast to the topic at hand, a contrary view after a Russian speech on the collapse of the U.S. gives me more confidence than my president!


- jR

Powered by ScribeFire.

So-called progressives' cry against AM radio: anti-free market rules are pro-free speech

The recent assault on talk radio by progressives (so-called) has also produced comments that moderate reporting, or non-biased to non-media people, is boring. That's just one of the little offshoots of this odd agenda being taken up right now.

I have a serious problem with this. This is the worst of what liberalism, or progressivism, or whatever you call it, has to offer. It shows the broader goal they look toward: to run things without a care of free markets or consumer and market guided business. It's called overregulating. They are for it. I am against underregulating, but this is no better. Nooo better!

The playground rules of equal time at bat is now being pushed for radio. Have you ever listened to AirAmerica? I once listened to a ten-minute assault on Barbara Bush, back in January 2009, calling her mean and vicious and alleging all sorts of profane things about her. I think they actually referred to her as fat at one point. I mean, it was foul and just mean. Why? How appealing is it that these "radio personalities" go after the MOTHER of the current president! Little wonder this stuff dies in the free market! Crude, and more ironically juvenile than Pee Wee's Playhouse (or, for that matter, more juvenile than Glenn Beck's radio show some days, when he does the cynical, half-funny "America's favorite game show" segments)!

Since the free market does not exist for these pro-overregulation clowns, there's ongoing debate of 'conservative' radio vs. fairness doctrine for radio. Not papers & TV, but just radio! Would force far left liberal - oh wait, 'progressive' - radio on radio stations. For what? Their future economic success?!!

They call it a 'system' of companies. Bull. Air America not a company, then? It ignores the biz law of what sells ads, which certainly TRUMPS any 'BALANCE' LAW. Ask any struggling paper just how much ads determine their life or death! Or, any radio station! This smacks of collectivism, where the media would be controlled by the all-knowing, all-controlling hand of government. Period.

I would welcome more successful liberal radio, because the so-called progressives are being so oddly anti-business, anti-free market, and inferring communist ideals in their hassling of radio stations and their owners that it smacks of outright shameless envy and jealousy. They will apparently stop only short of cutting power sources to radio stations with this assault on AM radio. (I should avoid mentioning that some areas, such as Nashville, Tenn., have excellent FM talk stations.)

Think Progress » Dear Rush Limbaugh, Why Are You Hell-Bent On Protecting A Radio Market That Limits Free Speech?
(First of all, HAAA! What a headline! Can you guess where that's going? Duh!)

ThinkProgress asked the authors of the original report to respond to Limbaugh. Two co-authors, CAP’s John Halpin and Free Press’s Josh Silver, gave us this response:

Dear Rush Limbaugh:

We have a straightforward question, which we hope you will answer in a straightforward way: When a handful of major media companies control who and what is allowed to be broadcast on the commercial dial, how is that not regulation of radio content? When these same companies then push out one-sided, right-wing information 90 percent of the time, how does that uphold freedom of expression?

Those of us at CAP, Free Press and other public interest organizations do not want to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine and we definitely do not want to limit free speech. We want more of it. You and other conservatives seem more interested in protecting a system that does the exact opposite.

If Limbaugh wants a debate, let’s have it.

Go ahead and call him, debate it! Please! There's only a few of you who could manage to handle it! But debate? Good luck with that. Rhetoric as what comes from ThinkProgess will not play for success on this issue. I think it would bore his listeners if he waited until these closeted big govt freaks had the nerve to call him and offer something remotely close to a civil, topical argument about this subject.

In the piece they at once call these "commercial stations", yet bluntly claim that they "push" an agenda? How is it that they are making any money, then? Somebody must be advertising on the stations! So all the advertisers are conservatives, too, and there's some secret handshake of advertisers and listeners who support those businesses?

Their presumption falls on its face, it seems, and they surely must know it. How can dashing free market ideals for their version of a "free" (wink) media possibly pass muster under authentic public debate? These pro-controlled airwaves (oh, but ONLY radio!) people are tossing rocks, and keeping their distance, they are not offering a debate.

Liberals have most of TV in their back pockets. Viewership of news on TV is lowering, for them. MSNBC is the laughed-at geek among all TV news entities, and steeply liberal. It is rising generally, we learned recently from viewership reports, but MSNBC is comparably rising far less than FOX News. Fox News is of course another media outlet despised by liberals. This one is disliked for simply not being liberal rather than for its being rampantly conservative -- but don't try to tell any of them that, they're too busy calling it racist, fascist and owned by "the Man". These same liberals pan PBS and NPR for being too moderate, too. Shame. I like both of those, and appreciate their reporting. Funny, I thought reporting was meant to be objective as possible, but plenty of progressives -- and a few blow-hard counterparts on the far right -- call objectivity boring. So much for news reporting and "boring" old journalism!

Liberals lay claim to the majority of large newspapers in the nation, and seem to be doing just fine with not forcing "balance" on those media. So, what gives? Not debate, that's for sure! Can you imagine if conservative talk radio hosts started insisting that such action be taken to level the playing field on television, or in major newspapers, what would happen? Can you imagine if someone allegedly legitimate tried -- seriously, not as a joke -- to petition HBO to have a counterbalance to the Bill Maher show?

How is it that AM radio, which is for some the mocked poster child for old technology, gets so much attention from these folks for abuse of free markets? Isn't this a bit like hilariously odd, like a liberal faction of our government demanding that we invade the Phillipines?

Perhaps they are doing this since they simply want to win the ubiquitous debate, not actually have one. You know, like Chavez holds elections, and supporters take control of gov't buildings while the election happens to show their support. They'll debate it, but only on their terms. "I'll debate you any time! Just submit the questions three days ahead of time, please!"

I really wish I could resist reacting to any particularly stupid fringe ideas for control, at either edge, but I cannot help it when they are conceptually bizarre and insincere as this is. Who'd have thought that AM radio was the chief threat to the First Amendment!


- jR

Powered by ScribeFire.

(rev. Feb. 24, 2009)

Bad policy, bad ethics, broken ideals, and the downfall of America's markets

Yet more clear reasons why Obama and the Democrats (if we can still call them that, and not Obamacrats) won an election based on the broadest of false claims, that the economics of laissez faire, of hands-off and low taxes, got us into this. It was not capitalism and free markets that hurt us, it was failure by gov't, be it Clinton, GW Bush, or many years of Congressional leaders, that got us into this mess. And yes, CRA and poverty mortgages got us into this!

This problem of the failing economy was PARTLY the fault of Republicans in Congress, since they make the LAWS, but not sure when GW Bush instisted banking regulations be all but forgotten. In fact, it seems the GOP leaders were basically assuaged -- or illicitly looked the other way -- and played along with crazy, fast-times-will-never-slow policies, in the case of the sour mortgages that turned into sour credit default swaps, which turned into a ruined U.S. economy.

In my thoughts, in reading about this economic crisis and how we got here, I am reacting against big government types, and socialists, and liberals, all who to some extent or another seem to be convincing people that the GOP did this to us. Ironic, then, that it was liberal mortgage ideas that got us here, right alongside a lack of regulations (which, indeed, is a small gov't thus GOP attitude) but not by way of GW Bush, but through Clinton-era Congressional diddling through the ever-expanding nonsense of CRA and ill-thought mortgage regulations.

Here's some hard work to that end, linked below, but diced into some small pieces, following:

Feds Re-Impose Loan Standards They Helped Undermine | RealClearMarkets

There is a great irony that Washington will now lead the way in imposing new, stricter standards, including a tougher income-to-payment ratio, because it was Washington, prodded by affordable housing advocates, which pushed mortgage lenders to dilute their traditional underwriting values in the first place. Federal regulators attacked those established standards as being “unintentionally biased” against low and moderate income borrowers and used a variety of laws and regulatory bodies to push often resistant lenders into programs based on these lower standards. The government and those who backed its actions assured lenders these lower standards were safer than they thought, even though there was little research to support that contention. Now that a huge chunk of the market based on these debased standards has melted down, the government is going full circle.

And those who were most easily "prodded by affordable housing advocates" are now running things, so this is quite quite ironic.

...a Freddie Mac program called Affordable Gold, which purchased loans from banks under looser underwriting standards, including loans which allowed a borrower to make a down payment with funds contributed from a third party like a government assistance program or a nonprofit, showed sharply higher default rates, up to four times higher than traditional underwriting standards.

...politicians in both parties made expanding the number of home owners in America a high priority, and the only way to keep doing that was to lend to people with increasingly riskier credit.

Got bad credit? No problem! Not only will you get a loan, but it will be with a low interest rate, too! We'll bend over backwards for our risky customers since Big Brother asked us to. After all, everyone deserves to lose a home at least once in their lifetime!

In a recent Forbes article Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute and Edward Pinto, former chief credit officer of Fannie Mae, point out that by 2001, 18 percent of Fannie Mae’s portfolio consisted of loans to people with credit scores below 680—the traditional definition of a loan to someone with riskier credit, who is also someone more likely to default.

Of course, with two huge federal agencies willing to purchase such loans, mortgage makers couldn’t churn them out fast enough, and private investors also began snapping up the loans in competition with Fannie and Freddie.

As if that is not insulting enough, and ironic that this all came to a head during GW Bush's time in office, when he was too busy waging war on Teararists to notice the economy was failing in a big way, there's this little nugget to chew on:

[Relevant experts] say federal programs were not the problem because many of the worst loans portfolios were created by non-bank lenders which are not even subject to the Community Reinvestment Act. But that’s an argument that ignores the much broader role that government played in watering down standards, including using pressure to force players across the industry to participate.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development under President Clinton, for instance, threatened to introduce legislation to make non-bank lenders, that is, mortgage finance companies, subject to CRA if these firms didn’t sign on to affordable lending goals.

So where were these blowhard, blame Bush, extended-stay Congress members during all of this, for two double-term presidents?!! Those sillies over in Congress -- can't do anything without the White House, it seems!

Who were some of the big fans of this fun mortgage idea? Countrywide hopped right into the cesspool first!

One of the first ... to take up the pledge was Countrywide, which pledged to introduce low-down payment loans with high income-to-payment ratios for low-income borrowers. Countrywide and its co-founder, Angelo Mozilo, ultimately became infamous as one of the first major mortgage lenders to melt down under the weight of its bad lending, but before it was notorious Countrywide was celebrated for its low-income efforts.

Today, the Obama administration acknowledges through its bailout program that those standards were unsafe. It’s a backhanded acknowledgement. ... I suppose that’s about as far as we can expect government to go in admitting the mess it helped to make.

I guess I don't get a bailout, since I was not getting any loans out. Oh well. I hope I can get a JOB at some point that isn't in CONSTRUCTION. Which I have zero experience in.


- jR

Powered by ScribeFire.

Chavez not dropping oil program, but the way to pay was questionable

Chavez says US heating oil program never suspended - Americas AP - MiamiHerald.com

At a news conference, however, Kennedy said Citgo made it clear the decision was not a cancellation of the program. "But at the end of the day, the tankers are not going to be in front of this building," he said.

Citgo Chief Executive Alejandro Granado later said in Boston that the company had found a way to continue paying for oil shipments.

On Saturday, Chavez poked fun at analysts who said he was cutting the assistance to make relations difficult with President-elect Barack Obama, saying they made him laugh.

"They build this analysis on a lie," he said.

I still hold to my anger that a U.S. oil company, and a nonprofit, and our country, cannot buck up and cover this and tell Chavez "thanks, but no thanks." As I wrote a few days ago in this post: Like, Totally Political, Dude!: Chavez dropping oil program for U.S. poor, who's to blame?

It seems rather unbelievable that the same thing was not possible through anyone else, that this was even an option for Chavez to use -- ironically, it did some good. I don't like the power-happy guy, as he's religiously self-lauding and stunningly arrogant, but I cannot dislike his doing as he did.

You should recognize that the oil for poor program is a perfect, and self-serving, way for Chavez to appear to be a benefactor to U.S. poor. It is only honorable on the face of it. If I rna everyone's lives, this is the least I would do. But I do not, fundamentally and wholeheartedly, believe in any system where one-party, one dictator rule serves the greater good. On the whole, it does not. It is a simple truth. Those who wish to live in such a system are welcome to. Don't even address it in this country -- this country is and God-willing will always be about ridding the world of stupid people with stupid ideas like dictatorships, fascism, communism, and socialism. People will still try, and it might make for insteresting reading (Karl Marx did well with it) but it isn't a system that can properly fix itself. Our is dangerously close to being an elitist-ruled country that cheats the poor for the good fo the rich, we can't fix that with socialism. Not the answer.

There has never been any good consistently carried through in a country that was ruled over by one person or one party. The USSR was a disaster. China is still, more than not, a screwy, impoverished backwater. Europe is full of nations that are struggling under the weight of their too-generous welfare-type programs, leaving not enough room for helping when a crisis hits. Why do we want more of that in the world?

One ruler nations run the great risk that individuals are limited throughout. Ass-kissers excel in dictatorships. I hate ass-kissers. We have lots of little dictatorships -- companies -- in America. I don't like that kind of company, or even one office of any company, and I don't like that kind of nation. Such systems are effective for killing inventiveness -- thus why many sectors in the U.S. lack ingenuity these days. It is that simple.

As for nations, any socialist leaders ever came to power through manipulation and exploitation of the poor. They pulled down the educated and many highly effective people, ultimately making the country, on the whole, less than it would be under a free society sort of leadership. Look at Cuba, for crying out loud.


Chavez is an ultimate arrogant politician. That is a simple fact. I am glad he is not the ever-loving-the-killing Pinochet or similar autocratic South American socialist-communist. He's only politically dangerous to a free, liberty-loving, democratic society. For now, at least.

But this shows the gritting teeth underneath the smile of the supposedly concerned oil and other wealthy leaderships of the U.S. They all ought to be put to task for leaving such a basic and obvious hole opened for Chavez to serve our poor.

I can't fault Chavez for this -- I fault us for being to uncreative to squash his ability to do this BY DOING IT OURSELVES.

Shame on the rhetorically wealthy oilmen in the U.S. who, along with their snob friends, choose to argue that the poor, uneducated, struggling and fundamentally overlooked in this country ought to just get off their duff or they deserve to freeze throughout the winter. Social conservatism fails completely when it enters the realm of choosing to not create a clever way to afford to help the tragically poor to get through the cold winters that half the nation faces


- jR

Powered by ScribeFire.

Chavez dropping oil program for U.S. poor, who's to blame?

Hugo Chávez shuts off discounted heating oil to U.S. poor - MiamiHerald.com

Chávez instituted the low-income heating oil assistance program in 2005 through the help of Joseph P. Kennedy II, a former congressman and a son of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. Kennedy heads Citizens Energy.

Chávez won cheers when he announced during a 2006 visit to a Harlem church that he planned to expand the program.

Critics have lambasted Kennedy for taking Chávez's oil. However, he has always been unrepentant.

''Some people say it's bad politics to do this,'' Kennedy says in a video on Citizens Energy's Web page. "I say it's a crime against humanity not to. Because no one, no one should be left out in the cold.''

Cannot argue with the logic of Joe Kennedy's comments, because, dammit, it's not right to let folks freeze. It seems rather unbelievable that the same thing was not possible through anyone else, that this was even an option for Chavez to use -- ironically, it did some good. I don't like the power-happy guy, as he's religiously self-lauding and stunningly arrogant, but I cannot dislike his doing as he did. That makes every other oil provider, including the U.S. ones, culpable for low ethical standards. If Chavez can do this, what the hell, other oil men? Get off your bloated asses and provide some act of good, however cynical it may be, to the world.

Chavez? He's simply bad news for anyone who even suspects that capitalism, when properly and ethically dealt, works, especially in the U.S.

But the bottom line is, the rest of the industry is to blame for Chavez using this to his very political advantage. Using the poor. Ahh, what a common theme among politicians. Disgusting. Who's going to help now? Not Exxon Mobil, huh? You are all a bunch of "oil-holes." You know what I mean.

- jR

Powered by ScribeFire.

Sean Penn: Mountain of questionable, umm, conclusions?

Sean Penn: Mountain of Snakes

Sean Penn is a writer. Why is he a writer? I can only guess it is because he is a celebrity and a fan of communism versus capitalism. Because he is part and parcel of the Hollywood elite. Here's a quote from this article that I suspect explains how Sean Penn has been entitled to speak for America, and specifically, American liberals (poor liberals): "...the fact is,[sic] that our most respected, call that mainstream media, in print and on television are, in part, conscious manufacturers of deception." I bolded the important words so the commas and garbage wouldn't get in the way. What is it? And why is he writing it? Why him, and to what end? Am I required to read this entire piece of bunk to "get it"? Sorry, I have to have a life outside of being mystified by celebrity writers.

So glad that's OK with you, Mr. Penn. Liberals, oddly, have not been bothered by propaganda in journalism, perhaps, is his point. It is certainly loud and clear in the example of MSNBC and TIME magazine. So why does Penn have an issue with it? One can only interpret his broad point, since that sentence, his words generally, make no sense on their own.

Here's another piece of valuable commentary, perhaps it is his self-centeredness that is driving his exposure of the media: "Meanwhile, I challenge anyone to hunt up the few pictures that were taken by the random photojournalists who'd stumbled upon me, and find a single one that would've passed the test of my own narcissistic scrutiny."

Dear Sean Penn: Nobody with a good reason to live cares about your self-adulation. But, in that topic, I should note that it doesn't mix well with your liberal white guilt (see 'Milk' interview by Penn with Charlie Rose).

Please, Mr. Penn, please continue writing. You are good entertainment for those who know how to write, for real.

Despite multiple assassination attempts by the CIA on his older brother Fidel, the destabilization tactics of Robert F. Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs, The Platt Amendment with the taking of Guantanamo Bay, and even despite an endless and unjustified embargo (in effect: blockade) on Cuba by the United States, here we were in 2008, and Raul Castro said flat out that if the American people, who today stand with candidate Barack Obama, continue to stand with President Barack Obama, then "meaningful and productive advances could be achieved in Cuba and the world."

He must have accidentally left out the Mariana Boatlift, in which Castro sent his worst -- WORST -- criminials to American shores. That must have been America's fault, too.

Says the economist, Penn: "Free market capitalism and greed in the hands of humans are, in fact, a marriage that never rids itself of the demon. They are of one body."

"In the hands of humans"? As opposed to under the hooves of jackasses? What's the need for that phrase? Wait: Is that a terribly naive question? Yes, it is, considering the topic inspiring the question.

Well, the real impression for me here is this: Can it get any better than this for Americans with a clue? I mean ones who are not socialists or communists, of course. If you buy into socialism -- the Bolivarian type -- and Castro's governing tactics. But real Socialists and Communists, not to be confused with far-left Democrats. They do pose as far-left Dems, like Penn here does, clearly. He is clearly confusing freedom with popular oppression. But that's throwing stones.

I guess Sean might take after his dad the accused communist. While Joe McCarthy's un-American committee was not right, neither is Sean Penn's obfuscate attack on the system that netted him, too, tons of cash. TONS. Did I mention that Sean Penn is rich thanks to the system he hates, and seems far from loathing himself for it? If his dad was a communist, that certainly rubbed off on Sean, even judging this writing liberally; if he was hypocrite, then Sean didn't fall far from that tree.

The Huffington Post is desperate for writers, enough to put this garbagge on their site? I find that hard to believe. They must be simply desperate for the inclusion of far-leftist celebrities who are willing to write odd little mementos from far-leftist countries.

- jR

Powered by ScribeFire.

Finance, credit cards and capitalism: Free trade or a free-for-all?

Is this what we call free trade, or is it just a free-for-all?

That credit cards, and the whole gamut of lenders, can do the things they have been doing, to everyone's ruin, is wrong. It is not merely unfortunate, nor unfair, but immoral, amoral, and capitalism in its crudest, egregious form. How such behavior can possibly be considered a free market is euphemistic at best.

A free market could be mistakenly defined, in finer print, as one that takes advantage of the poorest and [those who are] the hardest working for the lowest wages: that is capitalism at its worst. If that is free trade, then give me something BETTER than that. A free market would be one that considers all the rational and positive facets of the word "free": free to trade, free to live, free from illicit deception, etc. Free market ought not be defined as one party is free to do any damned thing they please no matter the result on others (including, as in the recent financial disaster, the results that impact all others).

Powered by ScribeFire.