Happy Halloween - "Oh Crap, A Democrat"

Pelosi Satisfies Democratic Crazies

It may be a go, Pelosi has been going crazy lately trying to make America more dangerous so why not attempt to become President? She has moved the insane Dennis Kucinich's impeachment bill into the House Judiciary Committee. The Judiciary Committee is chaired by John Conyers, a man whose crazy wife Monica may very well end up in jail for corruption in their hometown of Detroit. Pelosi is number three in the line of succession to the Presidency so watch for Vice-President Cheney to go down first if she can pull off this nonsense.

ACLU to Protect the "Rights" of Machines

The people at the ACLU are planning to sue over the recent FISA legislation that protects the phone companies from being sued over the fact that they will help keep America open and protected from the murderous plots of fascist terrorists. If a terrorist in Syria calls a terrorist in Afghanistan directly without that call being routed through the US his call can be tapped to find information concerning terrorist plots but if that call is routed through a machine in the US then the ACLU wants the terrorists to be free to plot the murder of Americans. More interestingly if those terrorists call a telephone in Dearborn, Michigan that is set up with call forwarding (simply push *72 and hang up the telephone) and the telephone is set up to farward all calls to a terrorist in Afghanistan then the ACLU will be suing to protect the "human right" of that telephone. Rage Against the Machine indeed.

Pelosi and Dems Want to Control Free Speech

Again. Two years ago the Democrats wanted to force bloggers who write about congress to register with the federal government under threat of jail time. Today Pelosi and the Democrats want to replace unused rules by placing restrictions on what members of congress can say on pre-approved internet sites. Pre-approved by the Democratic majority. They want to control public opinion using fascist techniques. Pathetic.

More on the Democratic Party's Support of Narco-Terrorists

Yesterday in Pelosi Lied - Neighborhoods Died Flying Debris pointed out the disgrace of Democratic leaders secret communications with the narco-terrorist group FARC in Columbia. Unfortunately for the Democrats this news will likely continue to drip out, without much help from the western media, many of whom are in the bag for all sorts of unsavory tyrranical groups. As Powerline reminded us yesterday the contacts between the Democrats and FARC included assurances that the Democrats would stand in the way of a trade pact that would benefit American exporters to Columbia and that the next US president would be Barack Obama who would surely scuttle any trade treaty with Columbia (a treaty that would benefit American workers). The denial of the trade treaty has been an aim of the FARC narco-terrorists and the American Democratic Party has been supportive of those aims, to the detriment of Americans and Columbians and to the benefit of fascists everywhere. They're such good people.

Pelosi Lied - American Neighborhoods Died

No shock to those of us who pay attention but there is now more proof that Democratic Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi was in charge of the Democratic Party's alliance with the cocaine-trafficking tyrannical terrorist group FARC. Sure, many of her constituents are drug-addled idiots but the rest of us have not been pining for cheaper cocaine on American streets. Having lived in a few different Chicago neighborhoods I know first hand the scourge of crack and heroin and let me tell you, liberals don't care unless it affects them or they can make money off of the situation.

When I lived on Sheffield Ave. across the street from Wrigley Field there was a crack house in a garage right down the allley (also across from Wrigley Field) that was closed by the Chicago Police just in time for the Cubs Opening Day every year. The crack house would move to a less conspicuous spot around the corner until the final game of the season when it would again be open for business. No amount of complaining got the place closed down during the Cubs' off-season.

When I lived on Grace St., a block north of Wrigley, we had a problem with homeless junkies living on Cubs property after the baseball season had ended. The property in question is on Grace St. next door to a shelter for abused women and just maybe a bunch of homeless junkies and alcoholics isn't the best thing to have next to a shelter for abused women but hey, this is liberal Chicago. When I went to the alderman (Chicago's first outwardly gay alderman) his office wanted nothing to do with the issue and stated that they would not help our neighborhood because, get this, "the homeless have to live somewhere." Considering that back then I was paying nearly $10,000 per year in property taxes alone such a response from some liberal boobs (the alderman and his employees) did not go over well with me so I went to the Cubs and received the exact same response. It is notable that the Cubs are owned by the Tribune Corp. of Chicago and that they publish a sinking liberal rag called the Chicago Tribune. Back in the '70s the late great Chicagoan John Belushi described the Tribune as "that fascist newspaper from Chicago" on Saturday Night Live. The more things change...

Anyway, FARC has been a notorious drug operation for over a decade and the American Democratic Party has embraced them, the Democrats are doing some of FARC's dirty work. Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats have made their stand against a free trade pact with Columbia despite the fact that it would not increase Columbian access to American markets but rather the treaty would increase American access to Columbian markets. Whether the Democratic Party is supporting the narco-terrorist thugs because of the cocaine or because so many Democrats are fascists is inconsequential, their policies have demonstrably increased the availability of cocaine and crack cocaine on the streets of America and in doing so they have been lowering the quality of life for all of us.

HAt Tip: Gateway Pundit - he has a great post on the latest news from the Democratic-Cocaine connection.

Chicago: the City That Works to Screw You

Photo Copyright: Flying Debris
Ticketed in Chicago for not having a front license plate after a city employee likely knocked it off after running into my truck.

This is an example of a city government run amok and not working for the citizens, it is a very minor example, yet it is illustrative of how city employees often work here in the Democratic utopia known as Chicago. I live near one of the offices for the City Revenue Department and their employees park on the street on my block, no big deal except for the guy who sometimes changes into his work clothes while blasting music at 5:30 AM. Well yesterday morning I happened to be out front at about 4:00 AM (I left a sprinkler running, doh!) and my truck that is always parked out front was fine and there was not a vehicle parked in front of it. When I left my house (around 7:15) there was a Lexus RS (a small SUV) parked in front of my truck and my front license plate and holder had been knocked off, they were lying on the street. Other than that the truck was fine. Not wanting to lose my front plate or get a ticket for not having one I went back inside, got the truck keys and put the plate in front window.

Now I find that situation to be an annoyance, if all you lose in a traffic or parking altercation is a few screws and plastic pieces then you got of easy. I didn't consider it a very big deal even considering that it was very likely that the person who whacked my car is a city employee whose job it is give out parking tickets. My problem started when I received a ticket today for not having a front license plate, the ticket was placed on the windshield over the front license plate (pictured above). That in a small way is how Chicago works, first they run into your car and then they ticket your car for having been run into. Welcome to Barack Obama's Democratic Chicago.

35 Seconds Over the World Trade Center - pt. 2

In this post from last year I commented on the then recently revealed information that the US had waterboarded 3 terrorist for about 35 seconds each. Some clown from CNN went on air yesterday to equivocate that action with the Khmer Rouge's (Cambodian) government's murder of 2 million Cambodians. Here is a simple math exercise for CNN"s Christiane Amanapour: the terminal velocity of a skydiver without an open parachute is about 55 meters per second and the two World Trade Center buildings were 415 and 417 meters high, the question for Ms. Armapor and her colleagues at CNN is simple, how many Americans hit the ground after leaping to their death from the burning World Trade Center in the time that it took to break the 3 waterboarded Islamic terrorists? Having watched CNN I think that I should help them with the math, almost 4 2/3 Americans were killed in the time that it took to break each of the three terrorists who were waterboarded. I will submit that outside of our nation's newsrooms (and Sharia law) there is no such thing as two-thirds of a person so it is reasonable to round that number off. Five Americans hit the ground of the World Trade Center Plaza in the time that it took to break each of the three murderous terrorists by making them uncomfortable. That is a total (non rounded-off) of almost 14 murdered Americans in the time that it took to break all three of the healthy, LIVING, briefly uncomfortable Islamic terrorists.



To paraphrase Davy Crockett, CNN can go to hell, I'm going to Texas.

Will the Mothers Who Left Their Children at the Blogosphere...

... Please come pick them up, they are beating the heck out of the newspaper business. Some blogosphere numbers here. Hugh Hewitt has a plan:

"Here's a plan: Hire more lefties to report anti-American stories, and whenever possibly, betray national security secrets. Cheerlead for Barack Obama and refuse to investigate obvious stories such as how many church services Barack did attend and what was preached those days. Avoid at all costs running columns by Mark Steyn and others with dedicated followings."

As to Hewitt's final point it is worth noting that the Chicago Sun Times did exactly that, dumping Mark Steyn while retaining racial, Wright and Obama apologist Mary Mitchell.

Hat Tip: Professor Reynolds at Instapundit.

Schoolgirls Arrested at Holy Name Cathedral

Photo Copyright: AP

Left to right: Donte Smith, 21, Ryane Ziemba, 25, and Ephran Ramirez Jr., 22 are three of the Catholic Schoolgirls Against the War. The schoolgirls now await their Monday morning bond hearing.

Six self-described "Catholic Schoolgirls Against the War" (apparently the plaid skirts are optional) were arrested in Chicago's Catholic Holy Name Cathedral during Easter Sunday Mass yesterday. The Tribune has some video of their hysterics (including use of the ever-poular fake blood) during Cardinal George's Easter Sermon and let's just say that "schoolgirls" is an apt description of these children. Strangely one of them uses a moonbat argument with the wrong moonbat number, one of the "schoolgirls" claimed that America has killed over 400,000 in Iraq, somebody should tell the kid that the Officially Sanctioned Moonbat Iraqi Death Total is at least 600,000, although this kook had the total at 1,000,000.

Is Obama Blaming America For Cuba?

In response to some criticism from McCain the Obama camp has released a statement that McCain "would give us four more years of the same Bush-McCain policies that have failed U.S. interests and the Cuban people for the last 50 years.'' That is so inane I hardly know where to start. Do the Obama people know that John McCain is not the Vice President? Do the Obama people think that Bush has been President for the last fifty years? Do the Obama people think that Bush is also the President of Cuba?

More to the point, do the Obama people believe that the reason that Cuba, a former Caribbean jewel (with obvious ruling problems) has been turned into a third-world gulag is because of America's policies toward Cuba? That is stunning in it's ignorance. I guess that the Obama people are such leftists that they can't help themselves.

Jay Grodner - Guilty

This morning's Chicago Tribune contains another one of John Kass' fantastic columns, this one is on anti-American local divorce lawyer Jay Grodner, the guy who keyed the car of a local Marine, Sgt. Michael McNulty. McNulty was then preparing to report for a second tour of duty in Iraq. Flying Debris discussed Chicago lawyer Grodner here and here, Grodner keyed McNulty's car when he noticed the Marine themed Illinois licence plates on the car. As an adult American who has richly benefited from the protections given him by members of the United States Armed Forces Jay Grodner should be ashamed of his actions. He is not.

Mr. Grodner had his day in court last Friday over at Belmont and Western and the proceedings were well covered by the Trib's Kass who noted that the prosecutor and the Judge were both former Marines and that the Judge gave the following lecture to Mr. Grodner after asking the lawyer whether or not he knew why the court was packed with former members of the US Marine Corps:

"That's because there is a little principle that the Marine Corps has had since 1775," the judge continued. "When they fought and lost their lives so that people like you could enjoy the freedom of this country. It is a little proverb that we follow: No Marine is left behind."

"So Sgt. McNulty couldn't be here. But other Marines showed up in his stead. Take him away,"

And Mr. Grodner was taken away due to the fact that the judge had issued a warrant for his arrest for repeatedly being late for his hearings. Mr. Grodner plead guilty, after much hemming hawing and some stern questioning from the judge. His fine was $600 that will go to a Marine charity and if Mr. Grodner doesn't pay up within a month he will wind up in an Illinois jail for a year. Grodner told Kass that he is a "radical liberal" and that his local business is probably lost and that he would have to move. An adult who vandalizes has some issues beyond the whole "radical liberal" thing but it is interesting how the Internet made Chicago into a small town for Mr. Grodner, now we all know his business.

Obama on Mid-East: Let Them Eat Falafels!

This was originally posted on January 19, 2007 in reaction to local journalists and their slavering coverage of Sen Barack Obama (D-IL) and his then impending announcement of a White House run. The Tribune's Eric Zorn has continued that ignorant comparison between the great Emancipator and the Senator who would leave the Arab world under the thumb of tyranny in this silly article in this morning's Trib.

Obama on Mid-East: Let Them Eat Falafels!

Since he announced an “exploratory committee” for the Democratic Presidential nomination our local journalists have been pushing the theme that Senator Obama will officially announce his candidacy in Springfield, Illinois just days before Lincoln’s birthday in order to tie Obama to the legacy of Abraham Lincoln. President Lincoln has long been known as the “Great Emancipator” due to his dogged determination to end slavery in the United States. Senator Obama on the other hand has had ample chance to stand up for the freedoms and liberties of others; instead of grabbing that chance or simply demurring on the issue Senator Obama has chosen to stand steadfastly against any chance for the people of the Mid-East to experience the thrill of liberty. Obama’s supporters have even bragged that the Senator’s “let them eat falafels” moment came while he was still an Illinois State Senator.

The Senator has announced his committee during the week of the anniversary of the inauguration of another charismatic Democratic politician, President John F. Kennedy. President Kennedy’s inaugural address was one of the great speeches of the twentieth century and one in which Kennedy threw down a moral gauntlet while stating “that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” The past forty-six years have seen the Democratic Party completely abandon that strong moral stand; whether it manifested itself in the refutation of the legacy of the late Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-Wa.) or making Congressman Zell Miller (D-Ga.) into some sort of apostate, the Democratic Party will no longer stand up for the freedoms of others. This immoral stand flies in the face of centuries in which mankind has gained personal liberty in the face of tyranny, the refusal to help others is quite simply a disgrace. In his wonderful inaugural speech President Kennedy reminded us that “each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty. The graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe.” The President was discussing the need for Americans to help others gain liberty because we have been given liberty by the actions of others. Senator Obama, like nearly all of the members of his party will not pay any price, bear any burden nor meet any hardship in order to help others gain freedom; unless the dispossessed are coming to the United States to cut their lawns. In short any comparisons of Senator Obama and President Lincoln are hysterical in all senses of the word.


Big Hat Tip: to Anne of the Backyard Conservative for inspiring me to re-post this piece, I had been waiting for an opportune time to re-post it and this is one of those moments.

Is This Fascist A Friend of Ellen?

If these reports are to be believed, and I currently see no reason that they should not be, one should wonder if the anti-American loser in question is a friend of Ellen of Ellen's Tenth... The man in question is a Chicago lawyer named Jay Grodner who has an office in Ellen's hometown of Deerfield, IL. Grodner & Assoc. has a Chicago phone number (available on Google) that has been disconnected so this creepy little man could not be reached for comment. In the past hour this goof has also taken down his law firm's web sites (unless it was hacked, which I doubt, after all there is no humor on the site, it is just gone) however here is a cached version of one of the sites.

Jay Grodner of Grodner Assoc. has been accused of vandalizing the car of an Illinois Marine who had Illinois license plates on his car that celebrate the military. This, ahem, adult "keyed" the Marines car, meaning that the pig has been accused of scraping his key along the side of Sgt. Mike McNulty's, car causing $2400 worth of damage. Grodner, a contemptible loser has said that he might pay the $100 deductible. This man went to law school? What kind of crap education did he receive? Hey Pythagoras, do you think that McNulty's insurance company would be okay with paying for your criminality? Sheesh!

Hey Ellen, what do you have to say about your fellow Traveler?

Mr. Grodner, not only am I only starting to write about your sorry ass but I come from a family of lawyers, meaning that I get free legal advice.

HatTip: Instapundit

New 10th District Democratic Candidate?

Copyright: Flying Debris
I recently saw this sticker on a post box near De Paul.

Here in Chicago we are used to the dead voting, up in the north suburban 10th Congressional District the Chairman of the local Democrats has turned in a nominating petition containing the "signatures" of dead "voters", and in last year's Democratic Primary the voters here in Cook County elected a County Board President who had suffered a stroke weeks before the ballot and has not been seen since; his incompetent son Todd Stroger was appointed to the ballot position and is now the County Board President.

No, as far as I know Elect the Dead is not the latest Democratic vote scheme nor does Elect the Dead have anything to do with the seminal jam band the Grateful Dead, known to their fans simply as the Dead. Rather Elect the Dead is the latest album from the former frontman for the alt metal band System of a Down, Serj Tankian.

Iran Dips their Toes into the Iowa Caucus

The world constantly changes and while the management here at Flying Debris constantly struggles to keep up with those changes (Paris and her friends aside) sometimes those changes stick out so much that there is a sore thumb somewhere here in Chicago. Usually that is when one of my sharper buddies will call me up (say, on the morning after Thanksgiving) to ask a level headed "what the ...?"

Yesterday morning one of my buddies asked about the following (relatively dull) part of a USDA weekly grain sales and shipment report from the week of Nov. 9-15 that was released Friday: (the following paragraph contains some of grain trading's minutiae and the necessary part is noted below, but if you must read the paragraph, remember, you've been warned! By "Increases" the report means increases in net yearly sales, thus the amount contracted for sale that week and MT stands for Metric Tons.)

Corn: Net sales of 1,845,500 MT were 35 percent above the previous week and 46 percent over the prior 4-week average. Increases reported for Egypt (416,100 MT), Japan (332,400 MT), South Korea (252,300 MT, including 58,000 MT switched from unknown destinations), Taiwan (112,800 MT), Cuba (100,000 MT), Colombia (78,700 MT), unknown destinations (75,400 MT), and Iran (74,300 MT, including 71,000 MT switched from unknown destinations), were partially offset by decreases for Lebanon (24,000 MT). Exports of 1,376,600 MT were 9 percent below the previous week and 1 percent under the prior 4-week average. The primary destinations were Japan (268,400 MT), South Korea (262,000 MT), Mexico (130,300 MT), Colombia (90,800 MT), Taiwan (81,900 MT), Iran (74,300 MT), and Egypt (56,100 MT).

My friend's question was not a grain market question, his was a political question that involved the corn export sales report of "Iran (74,300 MT, including 71,000 MT switched from unknown destinations)" and the export shipments report of "Iran (74,300 MT) ". As you can see from this USDA marketing year report (ended Aug 31) for corn, Iran, which would be in the "Other Asia and Oceania" section, does not show up as a buyer of any American corn during the 2006/2007 marketing year, or in any sales carried over (contracted for in a previous year but not shipped until the noted marketing year) from before Aug. 31, 2006. Folks who deal with these issues are pretty jaded and we have long understood that America is shipping grain to countries like Iran, however Iran does not show up on our books either because the sales were listed as destination "unknown" or the grain was sold through a surrogate nation. In the case of Iran that surrogate nation was most often Egypt. Notice that the 2006/2007 marketing year report includes nearly 180,000 metric tons of corn that was sold to destinations "unknown."

Spurred on by my friend's inquiry I crossed the trading floor to ask a few of the guys who trade corn for exporters about the Iranian business and the general consensus was an extremely noncommittal, "well I guess that that the Iranians want to make a statement of some sort." That strikes me as a likely scenario. So something changed last week but as of today it doesn't seem perfectly clear what changed beyond the fact that Iran wants to be publicly known as a buyer of American agriculture products. Iran stated that they had bought food from the "Great Satan".

One reason that Iran decided to show up on the USDA corn export books could possibly involve some heretofore unknown negotiations in which the Iranians are making positive gestures towards the United States. Or it could involve the Iranians making positive gestures before the administration's upcoming Annapolis conference. However, I have a strong suspicion that the Iranian move towards more open agricultural transactions may be rooted in a move towards mimicking some of the Hugo Chavez political tactics that Venezuela uses in America.

Venezuela was a founding member of OPEC and thus far in fiscal 2007 they have sold an average of 1.1 million barrels of crude oil and about 250,000 barrels of refined petroleum per day to the 50 United States (likely limited to the lower 48). During the past few years Venezuelan nearly-dictator-for-life Hugo Chavez has been using Venezuelan oil as a political weapon against the Bush Administration here in the United States. Chavez once famously offered deeply discounted heating oil to homeowners in Philadelphia and even offered to sell subsidized oil to the Chicago Transit Authority, see this excellent Dennis Byrne column from last year. Just last week Mr. Chavez threatened to double the price of oil if the United States dares to take on the Iranian nuclear program.

Chavez has oil as a tool to make trouble in US political circles, and although Iran does export crude oil they are less able to afford to give it away and they do not have the refining capacity to even market petroleum products. However, Iran does import corn and although there is more than corn in Iowa, corn is the most important economic driver in the state. Any decent discussion of the politics of ethanol will hit on the fact that Iowa has both the first Presidential Caucus and more corn than they once knew what to do with. It seems likely that Iran is trying to soften their image by making a very simple switch in how their U.S. corn imports are purchased and accounted for. This switch was made less than forty days before the nation's first Presidential Caucus, in Iowa. I doubt that the timing is a coincidence.

Watch for Democratic rhetoric concerning the Bush Administration's "saber rattling and belligerence" toward Iran to increase in the coming weeks and if Iran starts to show up weekly on the export sales reports I would expect that fact to become more publicly known. Ironically this will matter more to urban Iowans than to farmers because the farmers know that they are already selling corn to Iran.

Hat Tip: Matt

Disclaimer: This post in no way advocates that any trading positions be taken in the corn markets. The writer currently holds no long or short position in the corn cash, futures or option markets.

Sid Viscous Working For Hilary Again!

Sid "Viscous" Blumenthal is back working for the Clintons. Mr. Blumenthal, a former Chicagoan is known as a very dishonest man. Mr. Blumenthal was even taken to task for lying to the Grand Jury investigating the Monica Lewinski case. Check this out:

And keep in mind he said all of this after he told the Grand Jury that Monica Lewinsky was a stalker. He said this after he had come out of the Grand Jury room and lied about what they asked him. The lies were good and convenient for columnists like Anthony Lewis and Frank Rich to solidify the case that Starr is an extra-constitutional monster or some other gobbledygook. But they were lies and even the Grand Jury foreperson said so to his face.

Back on June 25, 1998 Mr. Blumenthal appeared before the Lewinski Grand Jury for a third time when the Grand Jury Forewoman said the following:

“We’re very concerned about the fact that during your last visit that an inaccurate representation of the events that happened was retold on the steps of the courthouse.”

The fact that Hilary Clinton has hired a man who the entire world knows (those of us who remember anyways) is a contemptible liar is no real surprise, her name is Hilary Clinton after all.

Update: Let's not forget that Blumenthal was accused of perjury by his former friend Christopher Hitchens. Let's also not forget that Hilary has also hired the despicable Sandy Berger. Happy Days Are Here Again...

Cheney Spies on Kucinich From UFO!

Okay, the Vice-President did not actually visit the candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination, Rep. Denis Kucinich in a flying saucer but this story sounds like a moonbat's tale of being spied on by evil Republicans. Here is an excerpt:

Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich has seen a UFO, writes Shirley MacLaine in her new book, "Sage-Ing While Age-Ing." Kucinich, she writes on page143-144 of the book, "had a close sighting over my home in Graham, Washington, when I lived there. Dennis found his encounter extremely moving. The smell of roses drew him out to my balcony where, when he looked up, he saw a gigantic triangular craft, silent, and observing him. It hovered, soundless, for ten minutes or so, and sped away with a speed he couldn't comprehend. He said he felt a connection in his heart and heard directions in his mind."

Ahem, "He said he felt a connection in his heart and heard directions in his mind". Wow!

Hat Tip: Drudge

Many Thanks to the Wonderful Dr. Sanity for inclusion in her Carnival of Insanities again theis week.

Obama Responds?

Nearly two months ago I wrote to one of my US Senators regarding his party (the Democrats), their leader in the Senate (Harry Reid D-Nev) and their treatment of General Petraeus. Well Senator-On-The-Spot has sent a response and the Senator did not even respond to my concerns. He tells us that he is supportive of the troops, blah, blah, blah. He has also recently stated that our troops were killing women and children; so the, ahem, "genius" from Illinois is now supportive of those he considers baby killers. That is Presidential material right there!

Obama really says nothing new in his delayed response but on the plus side, he responded to the actual letter that I sent him in September. Responses to other letters that I have sent to Senator Obama were puzzling because they did not respond to the concern that I had written about, I guess that it helps to write Senator Obama about a concern that he considers a campaign issue.

"What Is Wrong With Those People?"

I have long felt that one of the most important lessons that I learned in college involved a combination of the madness of crowds and the desire of many to find meaning from a person they feel is superior to them. As a junior at Spring Hill College, a Jesuit school in Mobile, Al., I attended a lecture put on by the school's Philosophy Club. This was right up my alley as I mostly enjoyed the philosophy requirements (2 years) and I was friends with many members of the Philosophy Club; well on this one occasion the Club had a Yale Philosophy professor speaking on a subject near and dear to his heart, "isms". That's right they had some Eli in to discuss linguistics under the banner of Philosophy. I cannot remember the name of the Yale prof but I do remember that he arrived wearing a cape, that's right a cape. Personally I believe that capes should be reserved for superheroes and Halloween but he sashayed on to campus wearing a cape.

The gist of this gentleman's lecture was that man invented particular words and added "ism" on to other words to describe experiences that were new to him and the Yale professor had one example that was just downright hysterical. He claimed that capitalism started just a few years before it was described by Karl Marx in Das Capital. As a student of Economics this was simply too much for me to listen to seriously, this poor man appeared to be deluded by the mindless and dull writings of that German nebish Karl Marx. I will state now that even as a twenty-year old I had absolutely no respect for those under the sway of Marx, be they Jesuit Priests pushing communism through some silly theory that they called "revolution theology" or the run of the mill commie drunk at the end of the bar. Ironically the pastor at Barak Obama's "church" is big on "revolution theology", something that he says that he got from the Sandanistas.

During the question/answer period I stood up and asked how this Yale professor could state that Marx was describing capitalism as something new when the type of trading that we understand as capitalism had been going on for multiple millennia. The professor's initial answer involved slavery, I interrupted him with a reminder that slavery was still part of the world when Marx was sitting in the basement of the British Museum and that in fact it was still occurring that very day. Well this line of questioning flummoxed the Eli and he went straight in to "attack the questioner" mode. Here was a Yale philosophy professor stating that he could not answer my question because I was too dumb to understand what he had said. I repeatedly told this gentleman that I understood him just fine but would he please answer my very simple question. After putting up with more abuse from this caped nut case I asked whether or not the Yale professor had the intellectual wherewithal to even answer the question. At that point the entire room went up for grabs and some of my classmates demanded that I be ejected from the hall for asking a question that went to the heart of the lecture. Sadly, many of the Spring Hill professors present were also part of the lynch mob.

My lesson was that even some people who are very good students (or very good teachers) and who are outwardly intellectual can be very ignorant when they look up to the person spewing nonsense and if the spewn nonsense fits their intellectual bias'. This was an important lesson for me as I started to trade as the the trading world is full of big mouthed charlatan bullies and figuring out the charlatans can mean the difference between driving a Porsche and taking the bus. Over the years I have repeatedly been reminded of that lecture when I see people using those tactics in the political arena, those reminders seemed nearly constant during the Clinton administration.

Flash forward many years to the late '90s, I was attending the wedding of a very dear cousin who had worked for Hilary Clinton and others in the Clinton administration. Well during dinner I sat with a group that included one of my sisters and her husband, a group of couples who had worked in the Clinton administration and a fascinating couple who had been involved in planning the protests in China's Tiananmen Square. The Chinese couple were as fascinating as their story was horrifying. They had been student organizers and they were able to escape the square when the Chinese authorities attacked the protesters in Tiananmen. Many of their cohorts were jailed and some of them were likely slain, many had family who were dragged into the claw of Chinese repression including this couple. They were lucky enough to escape to Japan where they met my cousin's future husband as he taught English. They later moved to Canada and eventually to Minneapolis where they were both medical doctors. Their story was fascinating and I pressed them for some insights that I would not have gotten while sitting thousands of miles away and watching those events unfold on CNN.

This conversation was just way too much for the liberals and Marxists at the table who objected to the couple's utterly realistic descriptions of the Chinese government. Most of the people at the table told the Chinese couple that they didn't understand China, it's people or it's government. My favorite comment came from a Dartmouth graduate who had worked in the Clinton administration who stated that a cab driver in Beijing told him that the foreign representations of the Tiananmen protests and the aftermath were all western propaganda. Well this being a wedding I was drinking beer and having a good old time giving it to my table mates for being boorish and somewhat abusive to our new Chinese friends and frankly for not being very smart.

After taking part in some dancing I returned to my table and encountered the Chinese couple who came across the table to sit next to me, at which point the woman asked me a pointed question that I should always remember, she asked "what is wrong with those people?" As I searched for an answer the woman went on to say that the people at the table were all well educated, well dressed and well spoken, so how could they be so bizarre? I told both of them that I did not have an adequate answer, that I had seen such behaviors for years but that I believed that they simply had bad educations. By bad educations I meant that they are not well rounded. This answer was inadequate to all three of us but for me the experience was just one more strange quirk that I had observed in some of my liberal friends that I did not understand.

Years later I started to read the blog of Dr. Pat Santy, of Dr. Sanity and NASA fame and evenings like my cousin's wedding started to make sense. Dr. Santy writes quite a bit on the subject of delusion and what must be mass delusion. Those people at my cousin's wedding fit the bill so perfectly that the evening finally made sense. Those liberal Democrats should probably be described as Marxists and the mere presence of those two Tiananmen Square leaders was just too much for those people to bear. They had to deny and talk over the the two who bore witness to that typical communist disgrace because to acknowledge that communists are capable of murdering innocent citizens who were peacefully marching for freedom may out those people as not being exactly as good as they believe themselves to be. The Chinese doctors probably never imagined that a free country like the United States would contain so many people who don't innately support people who agitate for democracy so the evening must have been an eye-opener for them. The two good doctors recognized the behavior as some sort of illness whereas I had long before internalized my thoughts on much of that type of behavior as being along the lines of "well, yeh, they do that."

Update: Many thanks to the wonderful Dr. Sanity for inclusion in her Carnival of Insanities again this week. Go Read Her Blog!