. . . hate speech is now a ubiquitous and often servile handmaiden to the powers that be.

Naturally.

"A good leader must have the steadiness to accuse any critic of undermining the Leader's efforts and aiding and abetting the enemy...

"Criticism of the Leader must be equated with treason...

...if the situation is there, the Leader must eliminate the critics...

Adolph Hitler

"All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

Hermann Goering

. . . you think I would have you locked up in jail and waterboarded? That I would have your credit cards cancelled and your pension scrubbed out? That I would have your children re-educated with proper American values?

I think you'd deny that you would, right up to the time you do.

And then, of course, you'd deny that you had.

We have seen this sort of thing before.

"But your Honor, she jumped on my knife herself, just to try to make me look bad."

"Forty-seven times?"

It sounds like an awfully expensive and inefficient way to deal with you.

I think I'd sooner just call Jack Bauer to deal with you in a tax-payer friendly manner.

Thanks for making my point for me, neocon.

Now that you've made it clear that you like having your political enemies tortured you can proceed with the death threats.

"Now that you've made it clear that you like having your political enemies tortured you can proceed with the death threats."

Come now Walter, just a bit of light neo-con humour. We neo-cons like to have a laugh every now and then.

We had already understood that neocons enjoy torture and mass murder as a recreational activity. Don't you think you guys could find a hobby that doesn't involve psychopathy? Or is that the whole point of doing it in the first place?

The markets have failed once again precisely because they are not free. Even if you believe in free markets, when it's doubtful there is such a thing.

When corporate types refer to 'free markets' they don't mean 'unfettered competition' or a 'level playing field'. They mean freedom to rig markets, or at least dominate them.

They mean a reduction or elimination of regulation, because regulation prevents them from rigging the markets. Markets invariably gravitate towards oligopoly and monopoly because capital organizations invariably seek to maximize profit, typically by increasing market share, which increases pricing power and control over vendors. The natural goal is to dominate a market, which makes that market 'not free'.

The only recourse to this market domination and oligopoly or monopoly is regulation, like anti-trust regulation. Regulation can therefore make markets more free, by reducing the dominance of the larger players. But such markets are still 'not free'.

And yet, corporate types also want bailouts when their practices result in unfortunate outcomes. This is how you can tell they're not really interested in 'free' markets at all:

Juicing the Stock Market

The Working Group on Financial Markets, also known as the Plunge Protection Team, was created by Ronald Reagan to prevent a repeat of the Wall Street meltdown of October 1987.

For one thing, it disrupts natural "corrections" which are a normal part of the business cycle and which help to maintain a healthy and competitive slate of equities.

More importantly, outside intervention punishes the people who see the weaknesses in the stock market and have invested accordingly. Clearly, these people are being ripped off by the PPT’s back-channel manipulations.

It’s astonishing to think that, after years of singing the praises of the "free market" as the ultimate expression of God’s divine plan, these same conservative ideologues and "market purists" favor a strategy for direct intrusion.

The actions of the Plunge Protection Team prove that it’s all baloney. The "free market" is merely a public relations myth with no basis in reality.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Mar07/Whitney04.htm

Paid for by taxpayers, of course.

Naturally, the obscenely rich insist that they be subsidized - and their wealth insured - by the poor and middle class.

"These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people, and now that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the people's money to settle the quarrel."

Lincoln

The fact is that the market isn't broken. It is working perfectly fine.

Go buy some stocks.

I dare ya.

But in the long run things will be fine

In the long run, capitalism as presently constituted can only fail.

Capitalism assumes that investment increases production and thereby increases economic activity, and can do so indefinitely. Which is preposterous, because it also must assume that population and resource availability can increase indefinitely.

In reality, the planet is quite finite. And we are already seeing the economic and ecologic costs of pollution, overpopulation, resource depletion, and habitat degradation. Human civilization is much like a bacterial culture that is starting to overgrow its petri dish.

That's the funniest thing I've read all year. And I've been following Republican campaign rhetoric.

If I were he, I might encourage the ladies to compromise and learn to share, and not be so greedy and competitive.

I should be so lucky. How does Hef handle these situations, anyway?

One of the things I observed from litigation and elsewhere is that what makes people angriest and most ashamed is when you use their own words against them.

It certainly works with the wingnuts on these boards. Eventually I expect them to go into apoplectic fits and spew death threats. So far I've only been threatened with torture.

Given the opportunity and a little encouragement they'll discredit themselves every time, and John 'Petty Satrap' King is no exception.

There's only one thing to do when one these slimeballs digs himself into a hole: hand him a bigger shovel.

And that you did.