11.28.07
“You don’t get that choice”
The most naked display of freedom-hatred to come out of an FHer presidential candidate so far in this campaign. It’s good that he did say it. Now the other FHer candidates will have to specify exactly how much choice, if any, they are talking about.
Mr. Dings said,
November 29, 2007 at 11:54 am
This is real Freedom hating, bombastic bloggie boy:
http://techdirt.com/articles/20071127/173344.shtml
“…law enforcement officials are often able to turn cell phones into real-time tracking devices without having to make the traditional showing of probable cause required for a search warrant. But it may be worth lingering a bit over the tortuous legal history that is being used to justify a form of snooping that is, intuitively, almost as intrusive as a conventional physical search. The problem is a series of precedents that, as legal scholar Richard Posner has observed, enable the government to do a two-step end run around the Fourth Amendment.”
Now give me your blogalese.
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
November 29, 2007 at 1:04 pm
Oh, please. Yes, there’s a long and arcane history of court rulings and technological developments that have implications for our ability to keep our private matters like our finances private, but it’s not like there’s some Big Brother government agency snooping on what you check out from the library or what you borrow from the bank. Quite frankly, no one in government – or the world, for that matter – gives a diddly. Now, I know the hard-core libertarians have their BVDs in a bundle over the Patriot Act, but that’s a different matter. Tracking the communications of terrorists is what thwarts their plans.
Nope, sorry pal, that can’t hold a candle to the freedom-hatred these clowns are talking about. They want to take the most basic choices out of the hands of individuals and families and give it to the leviathan state.
Mr. Dings said,
November 29, 2007 at 1:09 pm
I want to take it out of the hands of greed grubbing American business people who don’t know nor care about history, or us, and are selling us out. When it suited their fancy they gave the ship away to the fat, prissy crybaby labor unions, remaining decadent and country club themselves. Now, when they can get away with it, they cry the blues about health care costs, pay illegals, offshore and all that jazz. But, hey, that’s the kind of freedom you love. Try growing a certain leafy green substance in the basement of your “house” purchased with subprime dough.
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
November 29, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Let’s take your first statement. You want to take it away from “greedy grubbing business people.” To whom do you want to give it? Non-greedy business people? Or are you on board with what Edwards, Obama and the H-word creature are proposing?
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
November 29, 2007 at 5:52 pm
I’ve been thinking some more about your last comment.
Some responses come to mind:
1.) We’ve covered two of the things that bug you in various other discussion threads. One of them, greed, I even devoted a post to. As I said there, greed quickly gets elbowed out of the marketplace because prices set above what the market will bear don’t last long. The other is the business about marijuana laws. As I’ve said before, apparently there’s not a sufficient number of citizens who feel strongly about changing the laws for anything to get done about it. If you think you have a shot at changing public sentiment, no one is stopping you from working to get them changed.
2.) I’m not sure who you mean not caring about history. The majority of the nation’s doctors, perhaps? Hospital administrators? Insurance-industry people? That’s kind of an odd assertion. What history are you referring to?
3.) You’re right about management teams that have given away the ship to labor unions. It’s why the US auto industry has such a hard time competing with foreign carmakers these days.
4.) Of course corporate manages “cry the blues about health care costs.” They’ve been going through the roof because of socialist interference with the marketplace. But let’s get even more basic. Where is is written in stone that one’s employer should provide health care coverage?
5.) Not sure what “decadent and country club” means.
6.) Refer to my post on greed to freshen up on my postion on hiring illegals.
7.) Do not borrowers who enter into subprime loans bear some responsibility for their choices? And have not lenders suffered for having loaned money on such high-risk terms?
Mr. Dings said,
November 29, 2007 at 8:46 pm
1) You’re really an armchair warrior in the economic arena as well as the military one. On greed as for peace negotiations I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. Adam Smith’s invisible hand can spank and lobbiests wear special gloves. The other conceals a gun. As for marijuana laws, why change them now, the dealers and growers got a good deal going so, it’s really a greed thing now? The freedom thing, well, forget it. Just wait until they have to reinstitute the draft, though as I get hopeful about the course things are taking, you wax despairing, not even merely doubtful. Greed does not just get ousted quickly in the free marketplace. As long as we run our economic system like Vegas with its morality too (flash, flash and a piece of a__), just roll the dice, spin the wheel, winner takes it all, loser takes a fall. And we gotta stay one step ahead of the cheaters, though you might detest the idea of throwing the too too lucky (skillful?) ones out the door, but you would like that deal from the casino’s standpoint. Yep, sit in your armchair, cold toddy in hand and wax over the tao of capitalism. How it all fits. Big Pharma is as responsible as any “entity” for rising health care costs and a pile of their output is either unnecessary or even harmful. The doctors I know don’t know shineola about anything but their specialty and maybe golf. They are often not even very nice people, or at least that much approachable. Maybe I’m just too much of a feelie kind of emoter. Gotta curb that sixth sense, those gut reactions. Blink!
http://www.amazon.com/Blink-Power-Thinking-Without/dp/0316172324
Mr. Dings said,
November 29, 2007 at 9:06 pm
2) The state of education and what we shoot for, the knowledge we aspire to, is sorely lacking in this country, and we have exported that zeitgeist. Major in business, engineering, pre this and pre that, anything practical that brings home the bacon, but history, philosophy, literature, all the stuff that makes us think, helps us grow as human beings on this plane takes a back seat. All stuff, just repackaged stuff. Where are we going? Who the hell knows anymore where we’ve been. I think you will agree here, actually, historian, literary man, musician that you are. History. The big picture from the past. Cha ching! History, embodied in, simply the lost arts liberal. You say it’s the struggle for ideas and yours are best, but it’s really all about stuff because we still think we ain’t got enough. And, of course I’m more part of the problem too, aren’t you?
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
November 29, 2007 at 10:11 pm
Ah, okay, I see what you mean, and I don’t know if you’ll be surprised about this or not, but I agree with you on that point at least 100 percent. I see it as part of my overall worldview. We’re in good company, being concerned about this. The Closing of the American Mind by Alan Bloom sounded the warning bell 20 years ago. Then along came Dumbing Down: Essays on the Strip-Mining of American Culture, editd by Katharine Washburn and John Thornton. Of, course, the quarterly journal The New Criterion, edited by Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball (whose essays to which I’ve linked from this blog seem to have rankled you) is trying to stand firm in the face of the tide.
You’ll get nothing but agreement from me that we could use a lot more Thucydides, Milton and Debussy and a lot less Kanye West, Lindsay Lohan, NBA on the 27-inch plasma flat screen, and closets full of Abercrombie & Fitch.
Getting there has to be done in accordance with sound economic principles, however. Hayek explained in convincing detail why collectivist schemes always devolved into dictatorships.
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
November 29, 2007 at 10:30 pm
But bear in mind that a huge part of the problem is the takeover of the humanities fields in Western education by freedom-haters and perverts. Kids setting out to major in literature or history these days don’t learn anything remotely like what you and I consider lieterature and history.
Mr. Dings said,
November 30, 2007 at 3:17 am
3) Management, it seems, is often too self-interested. Look at the CEO compensations and, more, to their parachutes, even if they royally f everything up. To blame labor unions now is pots calling kettles black. You know who’s really paying now? Our children.
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
November 30, 2007 at 1:15 pm
CEO compensation is at a level set by the marketplace. The owners of an enterprise won’t stand for an overpaid CEO for long if they see it affecting the return on their investment.
Mr. Dings said,
November 30, 2007 at 3:48 pm
5) “Decadent country club.” Ever been to a country club bash? Stick around for the entire thing, sober. Or just keep your ears open in the locker room.
Mr. Dings said,
November 30, 2007 at 3:51 pm
6) No hiree illegals, no payee illegals, guess what, they go home? Like ‘Nam, Iraq II, and hopefully not WW IV, we made our bed, or “they” the decadent country club management, the slaveholders, made it for us, but we all have to lie in it.
Mr. Dings said,
November 30, 2007 at 3:55 pm
&) These sub-prime borrowers are all so hungry to get something and have the Great American Dream, and so uneducated as to the traditional ways of getting it, being so mesmerized by the mavens of persuasion, the nabobs of need, dumb and dumber as they are, saturated, bloated with created need, both from within them/without them, and so led, like lambs to slaughter by those of similar ilk, wanting, wanting, I want it all, we’ll just slap
‘em after they take the bait. Somebody else clean it up. It is not just the subprime lenders and their entire chain, selling/reselling/ wiping hands as they walk from what they made, that pay. We all pay. Economics is how it all fits. And starts. Fits and starts. Cops and robbers. And devils, all the way, no angels. Let’s play Pit!
Mr. Dings said,
November 30, 2007 at 4:16 pm
8a. Day 1:”No sir, with the divorce, child support, the car payment, you just don’t qualify for a loan.”
Day 2: “Hi, hey, I just found a way we can get you into a house. When can we meet to go over the paperwork.”
Mr. Dings said,
November 30, 2007 at 5:50 pm
Just out, 2 hours, 7 minutes ago. Some folks think this is (yet another) crisis? Freedom haters? Who’s threatened it now? Who knew. What is the sound of one invisible hand spanking? http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071130/ts_nm/usa_subprime_bush_dc_1
“Economists have become increasingly concerned about the impact of the mortgage crisis, centered on subprime loans extended to riskier borrowers, on the broader U.S. economy.”
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
December 2, 2007 at 6:06 pm
Dings, I just saw your response to No. 1 in “Awaiting moderation.” You’ll see it posted above.
Yeah, you may want to look at the feelie-emoter thing. It makes it hard to follow your logic. It doesn’t translate to well into policy postions or broad and consistent economic philosophy.