Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Donald Jessica Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

I desperately hope that, yet again, I am wrong.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

If you’re looking for someone who’s young and athletic, go watch a fucking movie.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

Republicans don’t trust women.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

You are here: Home / Economics / Austerity Bombing / Just Another DFH (Cocktail Hour Open Thread)

Just Another DFH (Cocktail Hour Open Thread)

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DougJ got the day started with yet more evidence that the Republican Party remains committed to a program of immiserating the miserable.

Hendrick_ter_Brugghen_-_The_Rich_Man_and_the_Poor_Lazarus_-_Google_Art_Project

I dug into my note pile to find yet one more DFH squealing his soft-headed liberal pieties in the face of such intellectual courage:

Is this improvement in the circumstances of the lower ranks of the people to be regarded as an advantage or as an inconvenience to the society? The answer seems at first sight abundantly plain. Servants, laborers, and workmen of different kinds, make up the far greater part of every great political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconvenience to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.

The liberal reward of labor, as it encourages the propagation, so it increases the industry of the common people. The wages of labor are the encouragement of industry, which, like every other human quality, improves in proportion to the encouragement it receives. A plentiful subsistence increases the bodily strength of the laborer, and the comfortable hope of bettering his condition, and of ending his days perhaps in ease and plenty, animates him to exert that strength to the utmost. Where wages are high, accordingly, we shall always find the workmen more active, diligent, and expeditious than where they are low.

Who wrote such bilge?

Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations, Book I chapter 8.

Over to y’all.

Image:  Hendrick ter Brugghen, The Rich Man and the Poor Lazarus,  1625.

Reader Interactions

83Comments

  1. 1.

    The Dangerman

    Where wages are high, accordingly, we shall always find the workmen more active, diligent, and expeditious than where they are low.

    Clearly, a toker, er, taker.

  2. 2.

    Trollhattan

    Here’s minister-philosopher-bass player Huckabee, today on the Big Gummint Threat to Guns(pbut).

    CALLER: I’m very concerned, it seems like there’s so many people who have not read and do not understand how quickly Germany was turned into, it was a democracy, then turned into a dictatorship by everyone having to register their guns and then they went door to door and collected them.

    HUCKABEE: People do forget that. And by the way, [caller] know, that when you bring that up you get people who get crazy on us, and they’ll start saying, “Oh there you go comparing to the Nazis.” And I understand the reaction, but it’s the truth. You cannot take people’s rights away if they’re resisting and if they have the means to resist, but once they’re disarmed and the people who are trying to take over have all the power, not just political, not just financial, but they have the physical power to domesticate us and to subjugate us to our will there’s not a whole lot we can do about it other than just plan to die in the course of resistance. It’s very true [caller], and I appreciate you bringing it up. I know that people are probably calling and saying you know you shouldn’t have brought that up. In every society and culture where dictators take over, one of the things they have to do is get control of the military and the police and ultimately all of the citizens and make sure the citizens are disarmed and can’t fight in the streets. Gosh I hope it doesn’t come to that.

    http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2013/04/03/1818211/mike-huckabee-obama-may-be-planning-to-grab-guns-and-launch-a-nazi-like-dictatorship/

    Gosh, Mike, you really think it might could come to that? Well, it’s a good thing the Iraqis had all been disarmed, huh?

  3. 3.

    lamh35

    I know there are other things to FP, but just an FYI for maybe an later open thread, but as you go about the rest of your evening, can we take time to remember, that 45 years ago today, Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated in Memphis, TN at the Lorraine Motel. Here is a an excerpt from his last speech, the “I’ve Seen The Mountaintop” speech. It was the last one he ever gave, he was assassinated the next day.

    “We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

    –Martin Luther King Jr

  5. 5.

    Davis X. Machina

    There’s got to be a master list of people who are name-checked all the time, but not actually listened-to, out there someplace.

    I expect there’s a famous Jewish carpenter near the top, together with a UCL-trained Indian barrister, and a B.U. GRS ’55 preacher and community organizer.

    But surely there’s a Glasgow University ethics professor up high on the list, too.

  7. 7.

    Davis X. Machina

    @Redshirt: Won the gold medal for Latin in his last year at the Simbirsk Gimnazia. But then, FDR won one for best Latin essay at Groton.

    I like to think I’m equipping students to stand the world on its ear….

  8. 8.

    Mandalay

    Who wrote such bilge?

    Speaking of bilge, Jake Tapper asked Mark Sanford: Who are you to deny love between two men or two women, when you are somebody who talks about following his heart, regardless of the laws and traditions of the state of South Carolina? Why are you sitting in judgment of same-sex couples, when you have had the life you have had?

    A tricky poser, right? Not at all – Sanford just stole some word salad from Sarah Palin to make his views clear:

    Well, I think that it’s important not to redefine my view, which to an extent, what you just described, is. What I’ve said is, I indeed back in 1996, voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, I was a member of Congress, you know, just as President Clinton signed the bill into law, and just as President Clinton, and just as President Obama up until about a year ago allegedly believed and prescribed that same law.

    In other words: because shut up – that’s why!

  9. 9.

    Baud

    Republican economic policy has its intellectual roots in Social Darwinism. They don’t use the term anymore because (1) Darwin is a 4-letter word (even though he has nothing to do with Social Darwinism) and (2) they like to fool people into thinking their policies benefit everyone rather than only the “fittest.”

  10. 10.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Those Scottish Enlightenment folks were an interesting bunch. But why would you expect “free marketers”* to have read the fundamental text of their movement when their religious equivalents haven’t bothered to read the Bible?

    *Not intended to be an actual description of their real views.

  11. 11.

    MikeJ

    @Davis X. Machina: I learned how to say “the farmer’s daughter is pretty.” A Latin teacher equipped me to tell traveling salesman jokes in a form that very few people will understand.

  12. 12.

    ranchandsyrup

    @lamh35: A dickhead at lunch tried to make a joke about “James Earl Ray Day” being today. Did not go very well for him. As part of that conversation someone mentioned that the U2 lyrics “Early morning, April 4, Shots rang out in the Memphis sky” are inaccurate. Shooting happened at 6 p.m.

  13. 13.

    Trollhattan

    @Mandalay:

    I have zero faith in NC to decide on not sending this douche to congress. And let me add, Knockwursts like this Do Not Help:

    The Democrat who opposed Elizabeth Colbert (kohl-BURT’) Busch in the primary for a vacant congressional seat has endorsed her Republican opponent, former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.

    Ben Frasier got only 4 percent of the vote last month against Colbert Busch, the sister of political satirist Stephen Colbert (kohl-BEHR’). Frasier says that he’s a conservative Democrat and that Colbert Busch doesn’t represent the district’s conservative values.

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/colbert-busch-opponent-primary-endorsed-sanford.php?ref=fpb

  17. 17.

    The Moar You Know

    Bullshit. That’s not what Adamn Smith said at all, according to all the conservatives I know.

    ETA: whoops, looked it up on the Googles and turns out what the conservatives I know have been telling me are the lyrics from the Dead Kennedys’ “Kill The Poor”.

  18. 18.

    Chris

    Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations, Book I chapter 8.

    If only people actually listened.

    It’s an enduring belief of mine that the people who actually found belief systems (or simply intellectual, philosophical or political schools of thought, like Adam Smith, though those can devolve into belie systems pretty quickly) are usually not bad guys. It invariably seems to be the followers who pick up the mantle who take the fairly reasonable worldview, charge off to extremes that their originator never intended, and ruin it for everyone else.

    Adam Smith, like Karl Marx, Jesus, Mohammed… sort of an okay guy, right? But then you get the Ayn Rands, the Stalins, the Torquemadas and the Khomeinis and everything goes to shit.

    I’ve always thought that one of the worst things about being that kind of historical figure would be the knowledge that that would happen to your legacy.

  19. 19.

    Sly

    @Baud:
    And modern liberalism has as its roots the refutation of social darwinism:

    “When a well-clothed philosopher on a bitter winter’s night sits in a warm room well lighted for his purpose and writes on paper with pen and ink in the arbitrary characters of a highly developed language the statement that civilisation is the result of natural laws, and that man’s duty is to let nature alone so that untrammeled it may work out a higher civilisation, he simply ignores every circumstance of his existence and deliberately closes his eyes to every fact within the range of his faculties. If man had acted upon his theory there would have been no civilisation, and our philosopher would have remained a troglodyte.”

    I’d only add, “a troglodyte in a leather jacket.”

  22. 22.

    Amir Khalid

    @lamh35:
    I remember hearing that very excerpt from Dr King’s last speech on The X-Files, in the episode Musings Of A Cigarette-Smoking Man.

  24. 24.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @lamh35: If you ever are in Memphis, you owe to yourself to go to the National Civil Rights Museum. It is based in the old Loraine Motel building. Extraordinarily impressive place.

    Also too, the Stax museum.

  25. 25.

    kdaug

    Did you ever get the feeling that the story’s too damned real, and in the present tense?

  27. 27.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @Davis X. Machina:

    There’s got to be a master list of people who are name-checked all the time, but not actually listened-to

    Worse than ‘not actually listened-to’. Our name-droppers torture the very language we use until they can conjur those famous names in support of ideas 179.5 degrees removed from the intent of the original authors. We have always been at war with East Enlightenmentania. Just ask Jefferson, Madison and Smith. Don’t pay any attention to that funny fellow Voltaire, he’s just the hired gardener, and probably an illegal alien to boot.

    How many centuries did medieval alchemists fruitlessly spend searching for the secret of how to turn lead into gold? They should have been Movement Conservatives, who have the power to turn gold into lead, without any effort at all.

  28. 28.

    ruemara

    Any hints on how to recover a 2 terabyte drive that was functioning just fine a few days ago? Hoping not to have to take it to a recovery shop. Simply no money for that. But since it was my backup drive, literally 8 years worth of work and photographs and video projects are stored on it. And I think I may just give up on life if I lose all of it.

  29. 29.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    @Trollhattan:

    … but they have the physical power to domesticate us…

    “Go on the paper, go on the paper… Oh, shit, he’s got a gun!”

  30. 30.

    Mandalay

    @Trollhattan: I am wondering how much help Sanford’s new romance will be in the campaign. I don’t know if she speaks English, but she is certainly a beautiful woman.

    On the other hand, she is so gorgeous that she makes him look like an icky old creep with pasty, blotchy skin and yellow teeth.

    If I was Sanford’s campaign manager the first thing I would do is get his teeth whitened.

    ETA: Or make her teeth more yellow.

  31. 31.

    Bill Arnold

    @ruemara
    Not enough information. e.g. is the light on the enclosure lit or not, is the drive not spinning up, is there data corruption, or is the filesystem corrupted?
    What are the symptoms?

  32. 32.

    lamh35

    Robert Kennedy Jr was getting ready to address a crowd of mostly African American in Indianapolis and had to break the news of MLKJr’s assassination. As I understand it, the whole thing was improvised.

    http://youtu.be/MyCWV_N0EsM

  33. 33.

    Groucho48

    Here’s a site that has collected quite a few great quotes that I like inserting into discussions with libertarians and right wingers in general.

    http://world.std.com/~mhuben/quotes.html

    The capricious ambition of kings and ministers has not, during the present and the preceding century, been more fatal to the repose of Europe, than the impertinent jealousy of merchants and manufacturers. The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit of a remedy. But the mean rapacity, the monopolizing spirit of merchants and manufacturers, who neither are, nor ought to be, the rulers of mankind, though it cannot perhaps be corrected, may very easily be prevented from disturbing the tranquillity of any body but themselves.
    Adam Smith, “The Wealth Of Nations”, pg. 382

    .
    .
    .
    No longer enslaved or made dependent by force of law, the great majority are so by force of property; they are still chained to a place, to an occupation, and to conformity with the will of an employer, and debarred by the accident of birth to both the enjoyments, and from the mental and moral advantages, which others inherit without exertion and independently of desert. That this is an evil equal to almost any of those against which mankind have hitherto struggles, the poor are not wrong in believing.
    John Stuart Mill, “Chapters on Socialism”, Collected Works, pg. 710
    .
    .
    .
    Personal property is the effect of Society; and it is as impossible for an individual to acquire personal property without the aid of society, as it is for him to make land originally. Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist, the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation therefore of personal property, beyond what a man’s own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes, on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came. This is putting the matter on a general principle, and perhaps it is best to do so; for if we examine the case minutely, it will be found, that the accumulation of personal property is, in many instances, the effect of paying too little for the labour that produced it; the consequence of which is, that the working hand perishes in old age, and the employer abounds in affluence. It is perhaps impossible to proportion exactly the price of labour to the profits it produces; and it will also be said, as an apology for injustice, that were a workman to receive an increase of wages daily, he would not save it against old age nor be much the better for it in the interim. Make then Society the treasurer to guard it for him in a common fund, for it is no reason that because he might not make a good use of it for himself that another shall take it.
    Thomas Paine, “Agrarian Justice” 1797

    That last is a particular favorite of mine whenever the right wingers bring up the Founding Fathers.

  34. 34.

    gratuitous

    Adam Smith is now officially a hack. Everyone knows nowadays that it’s only the captains of industry, masters of the universe who need top pay. Where would we be without the genius of men like Jamie Dimon or the London Whale, guiding our financial world with a steady hand on the wheel, navigating between the storms and the shoals?

    Paying the minions one penny more than the absolute minimum literally steals the yachts right out of the marinas for our wise overlords. The worker works best when he knows his job is on the line each and every moment of the day. A scared worker is a productive worker, by gum.

  35. 35.

    Trollhattan

    @lamh35:

    Perhaps RFK’s finest moment and a cruel reminder who and what we lost, a brief time later, in Los Angeles.

    I’ll go to my grave believing he’d have beaten Nixon in November, plotting a vastly different path for the nation.

    Also want to laud what James Brown did that same April night in Boston.

    Two very different, equally brave acts.

  36. 36.

    WereBear

    @ruemara: If you have nothing to lose, put it in the freezer overnight. And have another drive standing by to copy to.

    My heart’s going out to you. Hope it’s just a bad power supply or something like that.

  37. 37.

    Trollhattan

    @Mandalay:

    Excellent question. My guess is he’ll try to keep her completely out of the public’s eye, because you just can’t polish that turd (definitely not calling her turdish, BTW). He’ll try his hardest to dismiss the whole ridiculous affair, which would have resonated much longer had zombie Michael Jackson not blasted it off the front pages in its infancy.

    Noted on an ealier thread that a master stroke for Colbert Busch would be hiring the ex for the campaign. Not enough popcorn in all of Iowa for that.

  38. 38.

    Trollhattan

    @WereBear:

    Freezer, seriously? What’s the theory?

    (I axe because I had an HD crap out once, quite permanently…or so I thought.)

  39. 39.

    ruemara

    @Bill Arnold: Spins up, but it won’t mount. Lights flash, minor amount of “who am I, what is this, what do I do” whirring that indicates to me a corruption in the system, but not the clicking that I associate with a drive sector. If I still worked with techs, I could fix it. All I want is to get into the architecture and fix it without messing the files too much.

    @WereBear: I would devastated, but I think I’ve hit so much shit in the past decade, I’m calm and reassured at the fact that I did sell my soul to my employer for a loan so I could by a NAS and back up the photos and videos. Reviewing things, I’m about 80% on those, but my writing, scripts, and some of my first cartoons. And my full comic strip artwork. Ok. that is hurting.

  42. 42.

    Studly Pantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn

    @Trollhattan: Meh. If all he could garner was 4% of the vote, he’s probably a crank and definitely a nobody. A ham sandwich should be able to get more votes than that in a primary, even against a well-organized, well-spoken foe.

  44. 44.

    Mnemosyne

    @ranchandsyrup:

    I’m guessing that “early morning April 4th” actually scanned better. Either that, or Bono (born 1960 in Ireland) was projecting the time of day he found out onto the actual event.

  45. 45.

    Calouste

    @Trollhattan:

    Yeah, hardly anyone had weapons in Germany between about 1933 and 1945. They just overran most of Europe with a spork and a bunch of flowers. If the Germans had wanted to overthrow Hitler, they certainly weren’t lacking in hardware to do so. They choose not to, well, most of them.

    Besides that, you know who did most of the fighting in the streets in Germany in the 1920s? Yep, the Nazis. And you know who were mostly fighting against them? Not the Huckabees of the day, but the commies.

  47. 47.

    Mike E

    @Brendan in NC: I’ve been making calls to Warren’s constituents on a different issue and found out all calls in to his office were going to voicemail, an indication of the hammering he was taking over this “bill”. Good.

  50. 50.

    ranchandsyrup

    @Mnemosyne: Those were the two rationales we came up with. My co-worker suggested that Bono was drunk ’cause he’s irish. That joke went over about as well as the “James Earl Ray Day” one.

  51. 51.

    jayackroyd

    I don’t know why people don’t recognize Smith as the father of Liberalism.

  54. 54.

    PsiFighter37

    So apparently people are getting in a fuss about Obama mentioning Kamala Harris’ looks at a fundraiser. In context, it doesn’t sound bad at all (he mentions all her really good professional qualities before, and he says it off-hand at the end, from what I can tell).

    And she does look good, so he’s not telling a lie. Yet Jonathan Chait is lighting himself up like the firebagger he isn’t over this matter…wtf?

  57. 57.

    PsiFighter37

    @Baud: The good thing is that commenters on TPM and on Chait’s blog are recognizing it’s not a big deal. If I was Barack, I would be more worried about Michelle taking any kind of offense.

    That said, put Obama and Harris in a photo (like the one on the front page at TPM), and they do not look half-bad together at all. Would it be wrong of me to ‘ship that like a teevee show?

  58. 58.

    Hill Dweller

    @PsiFighter37:

    Speaking at a fundraiser in Atherton, Calif., President Obama diverged from his prepared remarks to praise the looks of the state attorney general, Kamala Harris.

    “She’s brilliant and she’s dedicated, she’s tough,” he said. “She also happens to be, by far, the best looking attorney general.”
    “It’s true! C’mon,” he added, to laughter from the crowd.

    The horror.

  60. 60.

    Mnemosyne

    @WereBear:

    I may read it this weekend while we’re on vacation — I always like to have some light reading on vacation. ;-) Seriously, I do end up reading the heavy books on vacations — I brought Nixonland to Hawaii.

    It’s between that and In the Garden of the Beasts, about Nazi Germany.

    Also, too, aimai highly recommended The Lost German Slave Girl, and now I can recommend it, too. The author manages to weave the personal story, legal history of slavery, and the history of New Orleans into a very readable book (I read it in one long Sunday, but I read fast). I think the author comes to the right conclusion to the mystery, but in some ways it leaves more questions than it answers (in a good way).

  63. 63.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Omnes Omnibus: I happened, by sheerest coincidence, to visit the Civil Rights Museum the day Coretta Scott King died. It made everything just that much more poignant.

    I was 25 when MLK and Bobby Kennedy were murdered. Politically I had been listing to starboard up until then but these two assassinations kicked me straight over to port and I’ve never looked back. The CBS Cronkite clip that lamh linked to brought me to tears. Again.

  66. 66.

    Chris

    @jayackroyd:

    They do.

    Then they go on to talk about small L liberalism and how modern liberals have betrayed it and if Smith and the founding fathers were alive today they’d totally be conservatives or libertarians…

  67. 67.

    dance around in your bones

    @lamh35: 1968 was such a crappy year.

    I remember Martin Luther King Jr. being assassinated and the riots and then Bobby Kennedy. It felt like the country was just falling apart on top of JFK getting shot some years earlier. Actually, I could add even more, but I think y’all know. Part of why I took off on the hippie trail to AFG and India and Nepal with my future husband.

    I was 16. Off to another reality!

  68. 68.

    cate

    Late on this, but here’s my favorite Smith, from the Theory of Moral Sentiments:

    This disposition to admire, and almost worship the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least to neglect, persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of rank and order in society is, at the same time, the greatest and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments

  69. 69.

    Mnemosyne

    @Hill Dweller:

    I’m not sure I’d like that — Jerry Brown is term-limited soon and it might be better to keep her here in California if she’s interested in running for governor.

  70. 70.

    GxB

    Since it’s an open thread, anyone see that Exxon has used the invisible hand to get a reach around from the FAA. Nobody allowed to see the mess they made in Arkansas. Judging from the dearth of “big news site” coverage most Merkins don’t even know about the spill itself let alone the cover up. Best gubbermint money can buy.

    Where’s the frigging Streisand Effect when you really need it?

  72. 72.

    MikeJ

    @GxB: It only applies to a/c under 1000′.

    BTW, here’s the NOTAM:

    FDC 3/9344 – AR.. FLIGHT RESTRICTIONS MAYFLOWER, AR.
    EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. PURSUANT TO 14 CFR SECTION 91.137(A)(2) TEMPORARY FLIGHT RESTRICTIONS ARE IN EFFECT FOR OIL PIPELINE RUPTURE ONLY RELIEF AIRCRAFT OPERATIONS UNDER DIRECTION OF TOM SUHRHOFF ARE AUTHORIZED IN THE AIRSPACE AT AND BELOW 1000 FEET AGL WITHIN A 5 NAUTICAL MILE RADIUS OF 345855N/0922642W OR THE LITTLE ROCK /LIT/ VORTAC 319 DEGREE RADIAL AT 22.4 NAUTICAL MILES TOM SUHRHOFF TELEPHONE 713-299-2572 ISIN CHARGE OF ON SCENE EMERGENCY RESPONSE ACTIVITY. MEMPHIS /ZME/ ARTCC, TELEPHONE 901-368-8234 IS, THE FAA COORDINATION FACILITY. WIE UNTIL UFN. CREATED: 03 APR 20:22 2013

    (sorry for the all caps, that’s the way the FAA does it.)

    I didn’t know they had renamed Adams Field in Little Rock for Bill Clinton. The ICAO code for the airport named for him is KLIT.

  73. 73.

    Robert Waldmann

    He wasn’t always so moderate. Smith also wrote “‘everything for me and nothing for anyone else” for such is the vile maxim of the masters of mankind” in the same book.

  74. 74.

    trollhattan

    @Mnemosyne:

    Jerry’s not term-limited until/if he completes term the fourth. His first two terms don’t count. It will be a point of particular interest should he, popelike, plunge into a 2014 campaign.

    The dude takes care of himself, so it’s certainly possible.

  76. 76.

    jake the snake

    @Groucho48:

    That is why there is a certain amount of irony in the term neoliberal. Smith’s intention was to liberalize the mercantile economics of his day, allowing international markets to determine value rather than tariff and embargo laws. However, he was fully aware of the problems caused by
    unregulated markets. Something most neoliberals are not.

  77. 77.

    jake the snake

    @Groucho48:

    That is why there is a certain amount of irony in the term neoliberal. Smith’s intention was to liberalize the mercantile economics of his day, allowing international markets to determine value rather than tariff and embargo laws. However, he was fully aware of the problems caused by
    unregulated markets. Something most neoliberals are not.

  80. 80.

    Hal

    I love that Chris Hayes opening panel tonight includes two fast food workers fighting for higher wages. You won’t see that on most shows.

  81. 81.

    Randy P

    I turned 11 in November of 1968. I was kind of politically conscious but not really. I remember being shocked when LBJ said he wouldn’t run. I remember seeing footage of RFK being shot, over and over, and how terrible I felt that the same family had been hit twice by political assassination. But something I’ve puzzled about is that I have no memory of hearing about MLK before his death, or about his assassination. I don’t know if that had to do with the news coverage or just that I had a very seleccted view of the news or what.

    I remember clearly the riots after he died. But I didn’t know what they were about. It just seemed like part of the “normal” scheme of things in that very terrible year.

  82. 82.

    Paul in KY

    @Trollhattan: If he had gotten the nomination, I too think he would have beaten Tricky in 68.

    He did have an uphill fight to get that nomination (since primaries were not used in most of the states back then & VP Humphrey had alot of allies in the Democratic party machinery).

    RIP, Sen. Kennedy.

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