Leftism

Vote For The EFCA Or Else…Nothing…

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I am on vacation in Florida, and sadly, I have decided to blog a bit.

While the wife gets the sand out of the kids hair and  whatever other areas they have sand packed in (we have had some seriously glorious beach time),  I have had the pleasure of watching a bit of the Ed Show, which has as its host far lefty loon  Ed Schultz.   As I was downing a couple of Yuengling’s I was amused so much that I laughed out loud.   And that is saying something for me…I need a Really Good Joke to make me laugh out loud, especially when watching the usual crap on TV.

So Mr. Ed was lamenting the fact that the EFCA  seems to be losing Democratic Senator support.   Of note, he crucified a senator from Arkansas and somewhere else.   Mr. Ed went on to say that the unions spent all kinds of money and that they were the real reason that Obama won the election, and also the reason that many Senators won their seats in the last election, blah, blah, blah.   But Mr. Ed never got to the logical end of the conversation.   Which is…what do the Unions do if the EFCA goes down in a ball of flames?  

The answer I was yelling at the TV in between my semi-intoxicated chuckles was NOTHING.   They will keep supporting Democratic Senators no matter what they do.

I apoligize in advance – I am going to pull a “Shannon” and probably ignore this post for a few days until I get back from this glorious weather.

Noble North Korea Celebrates Earth Hour Big Time!

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Earth Hour was a world-wide event which let  conscientious  environmentalists symbolically vote for preserving the  environment  by turning off their lights for an entire hour. No one, however, went to the heroic lengths of North Korea. Just look at this  satellite  picture comparing the indifferent, environment-wrecking people of South Korea versus the caring, Gaia-nurturing people of North Korea.  

Wait, it gets even better…

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Environmentalism and the Death of the West

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A comment on a New York Times story on the new Indian car, the Nano [h/t Instapundit]:

Somehow, we need to get the “developing” countries to quit copying our disasters in the first world. Showing real respect for the quiet life in villages would be a help. How about a Discovery Channel series on “The Truly Sustainable” – showing village life wherever it can be found, and not focused on “gosh, no plumbing”, but on – “this clan has lived here for 1,000 years…’ – and showing community dynamics.

Obviously, the writer has never had cholera.  The scary thing about this comment is that it showcases a school of thought more common than not on the far Left (25% most left).

Here we see the culmination of the Left’s evolution from technophiles to technophobes. Only a politically driven collective  delusion  could cause an educated person to believe that 1,000 years of cultural stagnation is more important than preventing the enormous suffering and death caused by sewage-borne illnesses.  

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Son Of Flubbers

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This article highlights the role the  Federal Home Loan Banks, aka Flubs, played in building the market  distortions  that led to the financial collapse. Read the whole thing.  

Key graph:

It didn’t have to turn out this way. In 2002 and 2006, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation attempted to take steps that might have discouraged the kind of excessive borrowing from FHLBs we’ve seen during the mortgage bubble and collapse. The agency proposed charging higher premiums of the heaviest borrowers.  The idea was simple: Normal insurance companies charge higher premiums when more money is at greater risk, so why shouldn’t the FDIC? During the current mortgage crisis, a bank with a large appetite for FHLB loans has been the equivalent of a Ferrari driven by a teenager. [emp added]

Normal insurance companies would be those evil free-market companies run by greedy capitalists. The Flubs by contrast answered only to wise, prudent,  altruistic  politicians.  

more:

“If you look at some of the firms whose names have been in the headlines, some of them were the largest borrowers in the FHLB system,” adds Mark Flannery, a finance professor at the University of Florida. “It suggests, with hindsight, that the ability to borrow that money might have been a factor” in the current wave of bank failures.

Gee, you think? Of course our wise and wonderful political masters understand that people play a lot more recklessly with other people’s money than with their own. They do, right? I mean, they would never create a system which used government money to induce reckless behavior, right?

I keep coming back to this central concept: The Federal government over the last 40 years has set out to distort the market in the direction of making risky loans. Now we have a crisis caused by making too many risky loans. Who do the leftists blame for the crisis? The free market.  

Really, we’re supposed to take these people seriously? The banking system did just what the leftists wanted it to do and now the free market is to blame?