quotes from ADLAI STEVENSON- American Statesman

Norm!

While you were being surgified.

Fred's car is stolen. He places a newspaper ad requesting his vehicle's return and adds “Will negotiate terms.”

Fred, none too swift, buys back his car from the thieves at more than it cost him.

Satisfied that his car is now returned relatively unscathed (except that the engine is gone) he refuses to press charges. Result: the thieves realize they are dealing with a complete imbecile.

Once again they steal his car. Encountering reality he protests. Don't they understand they had “a deal.” To impress upon Fred that pragmatism isn't the bulletproof guarantee Fred thinks it is - they steal his house.

It was Eastern Europe which first anticipated the demise of the Soviet Union. The reasoning was simple. Incompetence and corruption yield the same results – chaos, dysfunction and final collapse.

That new road leading to an impassable swamp does create “jobs,” stimulates 'local economic activity', does enrich local road builders, but in the final analysis there are always saner ways to spend money than on a project which ultimately is utterly worthless. In short it's billions of dollars for dozens of people while the rest eat their hats..

What East Europeans saw was that a corrupt and parasitic elite could be counted upon to enrich itself at the expense and sometimes destruction of the state. In days past it had been Monarchy which did the dirt, now it was ideology.

Norm, as you point out, bailing out thieves is both counter-intuitive and more than a little psychotic.
Whatever blissful expectations preceded the "bailout" they are now past the point of talking-point victories.

Yet instead of saving invaluable companies (and for that matter nation-dependent industries) we pop another ad in the press reading “Will negotiate terms.”

“Whattodoeth firsteth?" is not give the cronies who collectively torpedoed the economy another go at the same game.

Save the companies we need to prosper, not the world's worst managers.

I still would like to ascertain what sector this "financial bail-out" is supposed to help. I was attempting to create a trickle down list of "causal economic benefactoring". It starts with your own billfold, then maybe your condo association, your municipality, your county, your state, and FINALLY the feds...

Now, the feds "taketh and redistrubuteth"--why not now letuth the states "keepeth and figureouteth whattodoeth firsteth?"

I know, that was called the Civil War.

Southerners, why did they procrastinate correcting their sins as well as tragically underestimate about fifteen Yankee parameters? Damn, this immigrant Yankee has respect for 50.01% of their thinking...50.01% is sometimes all you get. If someone could explain how that war got so out of control for so long, I will retire my Grant and Lee desktop bobble heads..

I was also trying to keep up with the upcoming shenanigans of political appointees during my little surgical hiatus, and how did one go? Obama appoints a GOP senator (Big of Him), Then some back barnyard deal states the governor of which state? must appoint a GOP replacement senator for the deal to go through? Where in the H did that come from? The people/governor of that state elect/replace their senator constitutionally period!

Way down upon the Swanee Ribber...far, far away

cyman01,

Strange times. Funny too you should mention "Aquarius" and the alleged 'new age.'

Remember? It was supposed to sweep in majestically, spiritually, and provide all the things that aren't happening now and apparently won't -

harmony and understanding
sympathy and trust abounding
no more falsehoods or derisions
etc.

Harmony, understanding, sympathy, trust, all are gone. The GOP favors tsunamis of derision, is finally united in opposition against recovery of the state, with an unheard of (and still unchallenged) attempt to wreck the country merely to regain power. They want to play chicken with what's left of the economy and nobody calls them on it? What ever happened to the idea of a responsible and loyal opposition?

An example

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/05/gop-rep-we-need-might-an_n_164227.html

Who wudda guessed...

Can't see how cornonating the dead would work, but coronating the New Sedition Party for tanking us all may be the equivalent.

As to your and Norm's wife? Been there. Another clear application of Klein's 'Shock Doctrine.'

What can I say? With only one view allowed to hold sway, so much grief easily follows....

"In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant."

~Charles de Gaulle

Isn't he credited with the statement--If there are two sides to every question, why is there only one answer? Maybe my wife said that...Yes dear!

Small wonder Stevenson was considered "dangerously intelligent" and too out of touch with what H. L. Mencken called the "Boobus Americanus" mentality.

Mencken also predicted that routine Boobus' suspicion and prejudice against smarty pants people, combined with an underlying wish on the part of ordinary fools to see their ignorance spread, would result in a Final Democratic Idiocy - the election of a complete moron to The Presidency. And perhaps two full terms in office.

Prophetic...