I wish the Democrats wouldn't leave this stuff to the comedians. It's about time they actually stuck a fork in this dumb "the market will take care of it" business. I see the Republicans don't want to help out people facing foreclosure because the "market will take care of it" and that would send the wrong message. Just "jump start" the "market" they say, and the housing market will all be better, and everything will be for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Of course, thousands and thousands of people will be out of their homes, but that's the "market" for you. Dr. Pangloss would approve; Adam Smith wouldn't.

*

Wow, I got to see a mhr comment before it was deleted!

>"adjective is islamic before passenger. "

Ah yes, 'islamic'... to differentiate from the airliner blown up by the Cuban ex-pats currently living free in the USA?

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando_Bosch

I got to see a mhr comment before it was deleted!

Kinda like a bigfoot sighting.

mhr,

I sentence you to watching the movie "Airport" three times. Be thankful I didn't sentence you to reading the book. I may be cruel but even I am not that cruel.

After you've paid your debt to society I will allow you to watch the movie "Airplane" but only if you promise to be a really good boy.

And watch out for those white Christians who blow up federal buildings...

I got to see a mhr comment before it was deleted!
Kinda like a bigfoot sighting.

More like seeing dog poop before the dog's owner scoops it up.

David in NY - Lucky for the Republicans (or any other friends of the banking business) they get to LOOK LIKE they are helping out the homeowner's when in reality they are helping out the mortgage companies from having to foreclose and hang on to those properties that have lost value. In the mid 80's I had one of those rediculous negative interest loans and lost my job. When I reloctaed and tried to sell my house, the balance on the loan was so high that my house was overpriced by about 20% just to break even (becuase the once booming housing market had taken a dive.) Nobody bailed me out. I had to suck it up and deal with the situation (or pay the price, depending on how you look at it.)

Regarding the current adminstration's lack of oversight, Ruth Marcus has an excellent article in this morning's Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/08/AR2008040802900.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Posted by: mhr on April 9, 2008 at 11:24 AM

(over loudspeaker) Wet cleanup in aisle 1.

[Soon to be] mhr: "*".

Don't worry, folks. It was moronic even by mhr standards.

The self regulating market? Given that the Republicans in most states have limited tort liability what incentive is there for the "market" to self regulate? The "captains of industry" all fly in private jets. Folks we are living in a rigged environment.

Dr. Pangloss would approve; Adam Smith wouldn't.

Whoa! David in NY, better watch out with your "hyper-sophistication"; you might make some of the trolls feel insecure, and that would be bad for morale.

If memory serves, the first-ever intentional plane explosion was some vanilla white kid who wanted to blow up his mother for the insurance money.

I'm just ribbing the trolls; wasn't it Fred Kagan or some other mf'er who wined about "hyper-sophisticates" (first time I've ever heard that poor attempt at a mind-fuck) the other day in the course of making some lousy argument about the Iraq war?

Bruce, I dunno what was first, but I do know this crash occured in 1962, and it was a white businessman setting off dynamite in the lavatory and taking down an entire plane to kill himself and his mistress because he was about to be exposed and ruined. The plane came down a county to the west of where my grandparents farmed, and every now and then when I was a kid it would be mentioned on the news or in the little local weekly paper that another piece of flight 11 had been found.

"hyper-sophisticates"

Yeah, what do Republicans have against people who know something? Used to be, when my dad was a Republican, they prided themselves on being the down-to-earth, commonsense, main-street types who understood how things really worked. Now they're all faith-based metaphor. I mean, you can "jump-start" your battery, but "jump-start" a market?

(And these are the members of a party that used to object to what was called "pump-priming"!)

The nice thing about Swan's posts being so moronic is that you never have to read past the first five words or so to know it's he. Swanny, time for meds. We have tater tots for lunch today. Your favorite.

The "jump-start" metaphor makes me think of the cardiac defibrillators that doctors are recommending be placed in public places. Republicans seem to imagine that once the "heart" of the economy is jolted with a cash infusion, the economic doctors' job is done. No need to examine the arteries for clogs or the system for birth defects, and fix the cause. Treat the symptom and carry on as usual, with no surgery or lifestyle changes. Mother Nature will take care of it, right?

I hate tater tots!

Bruce, Blue Girl --
You know it's only terrorism when scary brown people do it.

David in NY: You're intelligent and will appreciate this refutation of the "free market solves all problems" argument.

Al: never mind.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/13935

Well, this was the position of the high priests of Egypt and Babylon for thousands of years; don't worry about the floods. The market will fix the problem.

Ultimately, civilization wasn't established until they got off their heineys, and learned to predict seasonal floods, (and in the case of ancient Babylon, build levies).

. . . and WOW, once they understood that the Free Market won't fix seasonal floods, that something has to be done on a civilization-wide level, rather than on an individual "cry over ruined crops" level, they were able to build successful civilizations. How about that?

yeah, OBF, and since that day, we've had to listen to "Let my market go!" in, like, a brazillion languages.

In health care we can't have self regulating "free markets" and government sanctioned 20 year long patent monopolies. It's an oxymoron.

www.medicynic.com

Oh, kenga. You get like three cases of Jujubes for that one.

One of the incredible characteristics of authoritarians is there ability to hold multiple conflicting ideas in their compartmentalized minds.

For example they'd have no problem at all supporting a law that made support for that law illegal. They would see no contradiction, no paradox, no circular reasoning, nothing. They'd see "support the law" and that was it, even if it meant they themselves would go to jail.

You can't reason them out of it. They been trained to NOT reason. That's how they can support free speech absolutely while banning speech. Thats why to this day they still think we found WMDs in Iraq.

They think that we went into Iraq to find WMDs, we got rid of a terrible dictator (which is a good thing) and because we did a good thing we must have found WMDs.

They think that the statements

a. All fish live in water
b. Sharks live in water

proves that

c. Sharks are fish.

Because they know that sharks are fish then the reasoning must be sound. If you'd point out that clams are not fish and clams live in water they'd say that, as you said, clams are not fish. Sharks are fish. Everyone knows sharks are fish and clams are not fish. Why are you trying to confuse them?

Their attempts at "reasoning' are absolutely incredible.

I like the Jason Jones bit after Stewart's comment.

Sharks are fish. Dolphins aren't.

John McCain - nice slogan. I like the bumper sticker "Bush's legacy, no child left a dime."

I didn't make an error in my example. Sharks are fish. I didn't mean to say dolphins.

All of us know that sharks are indeed fish but we also see that the reasoning given above doesn't prove that. For authoritarians much of what they know is correct too. The problem is that what they know has not been reasoned out. It does not need to make sense for them to believe it. They have been taught very very well to blindly accept trusted authority figures. They are taught to be gullible and hence are vulnerable to cons.

Sharks are fish. Dolphins aren't.

All of us know that sharks are indeed fish

Sharks are, in fact, not fish. They're Chondrichthyes--they don't have a backbone (cartilege only).

Sharks are fish. Dolphins aren't.

All of us know that sharks are indeed fish

Sharks are, in fact, not fish. They're Chondrichthyes--they don't have a backbone (cartilege only).

Therefore, Republicans are Chondrichthyes???

rea, sharks are, in fact, fish. Take it from a zoologist. They're aquatic vertebrates with gills and paired fins - therefore, fish. They have a backbone, too, but it's just not made of bone.

Well I stand corrected.

All of us do NOT know that sharks are indeed fish.

On the other hand I'm trusting a self-proclaimed authority figure so I'm using my authoritarian reasoning here. Help me. I've fallen and I can't get up!