Rather interesting results of the European elections. Most nations moved somewhat to the right -- the "right" in Europe being anything less than total state ownership of absolutely everything. So I'm wondering: Where is the love for Obama?
You'd think they'd all be jumping on the bandwagon for even higher taxes and government spending and all those other Obama-related things.
I guess you can love the sinner but not the sin. (sigh....)
Saw British MEP Daniel Hannon on TV tonight talking about this. Has anyone else noticed that he has beautiful eyes?
And wasn't Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg supposed to be a liberal? And yet she questions the wisdom of stiffing the secured bondholders in the Chrysler-Fiat deal? Seems this is such an extraordinary violation of property rights and the spirit of the law in the US that the honest people who remain in government just can't let it pass unnoticed. About time, isn't it?
Read a commentary on this deal on Bloomberg, and I'm sorry but I'm not sure who wrote it. The author noted, rather too quickly, that shafting the secured bondholders will have a chilling effect on the investment of private capital in American businesses. Gee, do ya think?
But we don't need no stinkin' private capital when we have Treasury bail-outs, do we?
(I always think of the Frito Bandito: We can just print more!!)
And it's all to support UAW retirees' health care benefits. Why can't they use Medicare like everyone else? Medicare already is such a drain on the economy, and it's already socialized medicine, I'm surprised that the UAW and those-in-government-with-whom-they-are-in-bed aren't jumping up and down at the opportunity to collect big-time on Medicare. Just to show us all how terrific the system is and that it's something we all want when we retire. Or hell, when we retire?? Why not right now?? For everyone!! You'd think it would be the UAW's civic duty.
But no-o-o-o, they'd rather go to the health care providers and insurers they know in the private sector. No hypocrisy there.
So Obama's trying to speed up the Stimulus spending. Not enough inflation yet or what?
Hm-m-m-m-m what else?
North Korea continues to rant and foam at the mouth. They just handed down a 12-year sentence of hard labor for two journalists arrested there for crossing the border. The journalists work for Al Gore's TV station. What the heck were they doing in Korea? Trying to measure the pollution? I mean, really.... Sorry for them, though. Apparently Kim Jung Il (or whatever his name is) is certifiably batty. Although I must say, I think it would be a hoot to just arbitrarily shoot off missiles whenever the mood struck.
I've worked with many Koreans. One guy, Jimmy, worked on a night shift with me and he took me out for a late lunch a couple times after we got off work. He was a nice guy, and I think looking for an American girlfriend. He was also all alone -- no family here. A Korean girl used to give me rides part-way home on yet another night shift job. I don't think I've ever met people who were harder working or more entrepreneurial. Or, actually, better-natured. No matter how many jobs they had, how exhausted, how crummy the company policy, they just kept plugging away. I wish I was so dedicated to my own goals.
'Course it doesn't do to generalize. Used to live in an apartment complex, and my family were about the only people there who were native English-speakers. On one side of the building was one Korean family who must have had about 16 people living in that apartment, all of them with three or four jobs. Their kids used to race each other down the hallway. They didn't speak really good English, so I didn't know them well, but one of the kids asked me once if I would write her a check for a college entrance application. She gave me the cash for it right away; she just needed a check to send in with the application. Hope she was accepted.
On the other side of the building was another Korean family. They had a daughter who was a complete lunatic. She was really a pretty girl, about 20 years old or so, and had a few boyfriends. Seems she was most attached to one who wasn't as into her as she was into him. They used to have these fights in the middle of the night right below my window, which overlooked the parking lot.
You'd hear this screaming -- and I do mean screaming -- then often her footsteps slamming up the stairs and down the hall, then a stream of objects flying out her window. In the morning the lawn would be littered with cans of hairspray, the odd cowboy boot, cassette tapes, etc. One night apparently her boyfriend was trying to simply go home, this accompanied by the raging and screaming. Then she threw herself down in front of his car. Someone else called the police.
So there go the stereotypes. That crazy O'Rourke guy -- wrote for Rolling Stone, now a conservative and very funny -- once said that Koreans were "the Irish of Asia." Maybe he had a point.
Don't know how I got here from where I started, but here we are....
But anyway, looks like the tide is turning as people all over the world are beginning to see what all this government-run crap is going to mean in real terms, and no more USA to carry the load for them.
Socialism is no longer a supposedly "high moral" platform from which to bitch and whine at those of us who are mere self-absorbed money-grubbers. Socialsim is starting to look a lot like the rough-shod looting of the productive. And that view is closer to reality.
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