Comments on The Belmont Club "When good people turn bad"

Liberals like to talk about "Stakeholders" using the word like one of those meaningless small filler words that you find in Southern German. It is supposed to denote some level of caring for empowering those with an interest but no actual stake in an enterprise in determining policy. It is an example of the substitution of politics for economics and the denigration of property rights. Good managers like Mr Mackay, unlike Left wing poseurs, actually care about their various constituencies. If you talk to a successful businessman they will usually want to talk about their responsibility to not only the customers and the stockholders but also to the employees. At work I was talking with one of our older workers about the disappointing work ethic of the younger staff. He is a presumably gay older man and a retired interior decorator. I mentioned that I believed his political allegiances were to the left of mine but that we tended to agree on the important issues regarding personal conduct. He vigorously agreed and pointed out that he had run his own business at 21 and had employed many people. He knew what worked and how people should behave in a workplace.

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Mad Fiddler,
Last I heard they were instituting vouchers. No vouchers for education but vouchers for gov't cash that ends up with the UAW. This sounds ready made to propagate a whole new crop of shady brokers with Chicago style ethics.
Now Bub youse jest sign right heahr to show that you has owned dis fine ah means this clunker automobile for the requisite time and my cousin over at motor vehicles will adjust those records with just a few strokes of his fingers, Good now that's alright. Wonderful things computers jest wonderful. Now here be your check for $1,000 and I will just take voucher for $4,500. Pleasure doing business with you, have a nice day and yes please do send your cousin around to see me.

Followed by:

Sal my friend of course I have the vouchers, right here in my hands. What will you give me for them? $2,000 each? That's fine, real fine Sal. I'll bring them right over. You say you need them today because the cars are being shipped out of the country tomorrow? No problem.

The articles expressing shock at these future events are like obituaries. They can be written in advance.

Remember, We're all going to get rich!

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PA Cat,
(who linked to this image of Nietsche and a lover)

Thanks for the image of Salome as she did not dance. She seems such a nice girl.
Perhaps this explains Friedrich's later compulsion to rescue an abused horse at his own breakdown?
Given a choice between a girl named Lou and Nietzche's sister it becomes a close call.

herb,
(who was offered edit links on another users comments)
Is this a warning sign of Multiple Personality Disorder?

I'm not schizoid.
Yes I am.
No I'm not.

Definition of an Ensign. Argues with himself. Loses the argument.

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JJRedfan and Alexis,
(who were comparing network news staff to "cheap whores")
This depends on what your definition of “cheap” is. I tried to do some quick searching on how much the news division swallows and excretes in pay. We are clearly talking about tens of millions of dollars here. You have to sell a heck of a lot of cars and insurance and whatever pays for network news (don’t ask me since I don’t watch it) to feed this baggage train and all its camp followers.

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In my small hometown I go once a week to Fairway, they have the best chicken pot pies at a decent price and the blintzes are also very good and competitive. Everything else costs more then similar stuff elsewhere and if you pay retail here they should deport you.

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Doug,
(who quoted a screed from the spouse of a gender changer)
Bet she takes advice from Arianna Huffington too.

bert,
(who compared the moral vanity of the Left to 17 year olds)
Well put, the voting age should be moved back to 21 or better yet return to the original "Head of Household" franchise. No gender or other arbitrary restrictions in the law but only the self sufficient should get to vote. In the meantime we need a law that prevents a husband from entering the booth to "help" his wife. Why should some jerk from Whackystan get multiple votes by showing up with his wife(ves) and family?

Trader Joe's does alright out of Manhattan and as I said we have Fairway here. Think I will go down to Union Square today and pick up a $2 tomato.

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As everyone knows, there are two types of people,
1) those who classify everyone into one of two types of people, and
2) those who do not.

I am in the second category.

Aug 15, 2009 - 10:06 am

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luddy barsen,
(who noted that 109 Americans were KIA in Vietnam during Woodstock)
Age shall not dim them. They are with us as long as there are those who remember and they are in the company of brothers.

The great divide coming out of Vietnam was between those who went into the military and those who went to Yasgur's farm. Sure there were a few like Kerry who infiltrated what they already saw as the other side but they did so knowing where the line was and on which side they belonged. Forty years later the enablers of Ayers have burrowed in and control the commanding heights. Through the subversion of the educational system they have prepared their heirs to follow in their footsteps.

The lesson that everybody understood was that LBJ made his greatest error when he attempted to fight a war while feeding The Great Society. Not just because the policies were wrong but because they promoted a sense of normalcy and relativism in which domestic experiments were equated with national security in demanding the Federal government's attention. Indeed they soon surpassed the scope of the traditional sectors of government. In so doing they gave employment and power to an entire army that existed not only separate from the agents of the traditional government in the internationally focused departments of DoD, DoS and Treasury but in rivalry to them. Partly this happened because LBJ sought to buy support with domestic spending and partly this was because of his frozen worship of FDR that drove him to attempt to emulate in 5 years what FDR did with the New Deal and WW-II over 13 years. The fact was that the New Deal, which was a failure, ended with the entry of America into the war.

Bush 43 repeated LBJ's error when he failed to mobilize the nation and attempted to buy domestic tranquility by throwing money at special interest programs that fed his enemies. FDR might have been a second class mind but his first class temperament made him know that you had to mobilize the American people for war. If we had Frank Roosevelt in charge in 2001 then we would have had Hollywood, PC be damned, cranking out cartoons, comedies and melodramas ridiculing Islamic culture. Further, illegal aliens and Saudis would have been rounded up and deported before Christmas. Finally he would have tossed half the university's faculties into uniform and bullied the rest into silence. FDR never entered a fight to engage in a process. Whether you liked him or not and whether you agreed with his policies or not, he fought to win.

Sometimes Conservatives get so wrapped up in our justifiable admiration of Winston Churchill that we slight the leadership and tough mindedness that FDR brought to the war. He employed many woolly headed ideologues whose progeny (Ickes for example) blight the landscape. It is my belief that he would never have spent political capital pushing for immigration amnesty in wartime.

Aug 15, 2009 - 7:03 pm

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For the record today in Union Square I saw Heirloom Tomatoes on sale for $4.75/lb and less prestigious cousins going for $2.75/lb.. Heirloom indeed, at those prices they should be bronzed and put in a vault.

Reminds me of the obviously old story of the businessman who returned to the head office after big trip. His buddy thought he looked ill so he tactfully asked how it went and the answer was,
Wonderful, marvelous, everything was great.
Really? Where did you go?
Didn't have to go anywhere, stayed in the hotel, the restaurant, the meetings, everything was right there.
That sounds nice and convenient. So the firm arranged a good hotel for you?
Good hotel? It was the best. Six star hotel. The card on the back of the door said it cost $200 a night.
Two hundred dollars! Was it a nice room? Did it have a comfortable bed?
I tell you everything was perfect. I never felt a more comfortable bed in my life.
Well I'm glad to hear that, at least you must have gotten a good night's sleep.
Sleep? Are you crazy? At those prices I didn't want to miss a second!

Aug 15, 2009 - 7:31 pm