Slapdash Chic

The AIG fiasco is perhaps one of the worst weeks in US Congressional history, proving beyond doubt that a large segment of that elected body is comprised of cartoonish knee-jerks (which is highly insulting to cartoon characters) whose collective opinion of the electorate is only slightly higher than that of a TSA agent. Tom Maguire has been an island of sanity during this whole sordid affair providing a perspective from the financial side of the coin. Just keep scrolling if you haven't already.

The right wing noise machine isn't alone on the story of course. Outrage is widespread, with Talk Left mentioning AIG suing the government (believe it or not) while LA Sunsett pointed out some lefty cannibalism between Dodd and the administration. HuffPo has been covering the AIG mob, reporting that "protesters" are heading to employee homes on Saturday. Matter of fact, here's a nice screenshot of an article mentioning death threats to some AIG employees, complete with a photo:

Notice the guy with a keffiya--what do the Palestinians have to do with AIG bonuses again? Anyway, the picture was not explained by the Huffposter but some light digging solved the mystery. Notice the placard's web address is pnlweb.org. Following it leads here (get ready):


Surprise--the same people who organized marches against the war(s). Ayers is on record advocating the end of capitalism as well, but he was only an old washed up terrorist who served on two boards with Obama to reform education but never really knew him. Oh well, Obama was on TV last night talking to Jay Leno's America about the mess Bush and the capitalists made:

And so what we're going to be moving very aggressively on -- even as we try to fix the current mess -- is make sure that before somebody makes a bad bet you say, hold on, you can't do that.

Risk taking is the essence of the free market. Not that there can't be regulation, but regulating out all the risk can only occur by eliminating the free market. Can we get confirmation on how far he's willing to go? Well, he knew Leno wouldn't ask so he continued apace:

Here's the dirty little secret, though. Most of the stuff that got us into trouble was perfectly legal. And that is a sign of how much we've got to change our laws -- right?

Some of that change he mentioned. Leno sat there in stunned silence even though words were blurring out here and there. Obama then provided some sage advice for our yoots:

Well, now what we're finding out is a lot of that growth wasn't real. It was paper money, paper profits on the books, but it could be easily wiped out. And what we need is steady growth; we need young people, instead of -- a smart kid coming out of school, instead of wanting to be an investment banker, we need them to decide they want to be an engineer, they want to be a scientist, they want to be a doctor or a teacher.

Yes, the dreaded 'paper money'. But the real dread is a president dissing an entire profession in this manner. It's like when Bush begged students not to go into the climate science field. Didn't he? Troubling. But there is no bonafide connection between any of these unrelated events, only vague feelings (the left would call them something else). Perhaps this explains it best:

If the majority of Americans come to accept the caricatures of business as true, then America is closer to the end of its life as a global leader, as a champion of markets and individualism.

As the smart people say, 'indeed'.

MORE 3/21/09

Sweetness and Light has much more on the synergies between the protest groups and ACORN, providing this moment of clarity:

But just to show how completely and utterly shameless they are, as we have previously reported, ACORN itself is now behind the protests against the very people who lent the money for these bad mortgages or who tried to insure these toxic loans.

For even on this very day executives of AIG are being harassed by ACORN foot soldiers in their very homes via ACORN’s front group the so-called Working Families of Connecticut.

All of these groups have a loathing for American capitalism and are most probably Marxist at core but what matters is their ability to significantly influence the media and popular opinion. Otherwise they're just another bunch of lefty fruitcakes. However, looking at what's coming from the White House lately they're not doing too bad at the moment.