THAT SMELL FROM D.C. ISN'T CHERRY BLOSSOMS

Something stinks in the former murder capital of the United States, Washington, the District of Columbia.

It isn’t just the usual greed, corruption, and hypocrisy which are hallmarks of our capital and of our congressional representatives. We should be accustomed to that by now.

Washington in the past week or so reeks with such a stench of socialism that visitors should be cautioned on all roads leading to it to carry copious supplies of Lysol and air fresheners and to invest in a sturdy face mask to ward off the rancid smell and floating bile.

This nation was founded on capitalism and rose to greatness and unmatched prosperity because of capitalism, that same capitalism which was the bane of committed socialist and Communist governments for a century and which resulted in either their dissolution or stagnation.

Russia, China, even Viet Nam wised up and smelled reality and incorporated elements of capitalism into their societies and they are now relatively prosperous. North Korea and Cuba did not and North Korean peasants are now reduced to eating the bark off trees in order to survive and Cubans still drive cars imported from the U.S.A. in the 1950’s.

Yet, despite any sane man’s recognition that socialism sucks the soul out of their bodies, our leaders are now preparing to institute the most humungous socialist undertaking in the history of the planet: the bailout of a private company, AIG, a capitalistic enterprise whose CEO’s and CFO’s and a slew of other major and minor chiefs basically screwed up. http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080926123140.jvg3mysz&show_article=1&lst=1

Despite all the D.C. bluster by both Dems and Republicans, those chiefs will skate or more precisely, float, if not via golden parachutes then on the millions they absconded with over their careers.

Know what, though? ...

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MAYBE ALFIE HAS SOME ANSWERS?

What’s it all about, Alfieeee?

Alfie Elkins pondered that profound question about life, sex, and love in a 1966 movie and today economic novices such as I and most of the rest of us are pondering the same question as it relates to what in the blazes is going on with AIG, Freddy Mac, Fannie Mae, and, mostly, what is going on in Washington.

There are a host of givens with this crisis. That many people are hurting is an obvious given. That many people screwed up is another. That politicians haven’t the foggiest notion what to do may be the worst.

Other givens are even more disturbing, such as mushrooming bank failures and word that the FDIC is sitting on a secret list of 117 more banks, big and small, that could go bust unless that bank insurer of last resort gets a quickie infusion of $125 billion: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601170&refer=home&sid=amZxIbcjZISU.

The reason for that secrecy? Revealing the bank names could cause a run on them which would result in mobs of depositors descending on them as they did on poor George Bailey’s Building and Loan.

Meanwhile, McCain and Obama debate whether to debate and gloom and doomers prattle on about the Crash of ‘29 and another Depression. Can mass starvation be far behind? No one is prattling about bank presidents leaping from tall buildings since their golden parachutes would guide them safely to the pavement, anyway.

Overseas, we can all but smell the glee emanating from European capitals over our multi-multi billion dollar fiscal crisis....

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THE ROOTS AND PROGRESS OF “FEMINISM”

What is it that the prototypical male pig Rush Limbaugh believes, something about feminism being created to enable ugly women to gain societal acceptance?

That’s rather harsh, unless one considers the founders of modern American feminism. By “modern” I don’t refer to the first wave of feminists such as the racist, abortionist Margaret Sanger or the anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre who, as fruitcakey as they were, at least were not offenses to the human eyes.

I rather refer to such people as Betty Friedan and Bella Abzug who, if they didn’t shatter camera lenses at least must have scared cameramen. Friedan especially fits the Rush profile, she of The Feminine Mystique, a title which has to be considered extremely imaginative since Betty could know about as much about feminine mystique as I could.

There were a few exceptions to Rush’s Rule, but not many, and those who were exceptions and who became Playboy Club bunnies, for example, seemed more motivated by a visceral hatred of the male of the species than by feminism itself.

However, appearances aside and since we know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it must be conceded that the second wave feminists caught on with women far more than the first. They established Women’s Liberation and the right of women to burn their bras and to have total control of their bodies.

The freedom of the bra-less look may have merely led to later-in-life breast issues for the bra-less. The “total control of their bodies” led to explosions in the rate of divorces, out of wedlock births, sexually transmitted diseases and, after Roe v. Wade, fifty million legal abortions in America, unless those explosions were purely coincidental with the advent of feminism.

Common sense dictates they were not. Women and girls...

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