Capitalism in Crisis?

Old Man Marx is (partially) being resurrected in Nouriel Roubini's, "Is Capitalism Doomed?" (at Memeorandum):

So Karl Marx, it seems, was partly right in arguing that globalization, financial intermediation run amok, and redistribution of income and wealth from labor to capital could lead capitalism to self-destruct (though his view that socialism would be better has proven wrong). Firms are cutting jobs because there is not enough final demand. But cutting jobs reduces labor income, increases inequality and reduces final demand.



Recent popular demonstrations, from the Middle East to Israel to the UK, and rising popular anger in China – and soon enough in other advanced economies and emerging markets – are all driven by the same issues and tensions: growing inequality, poverty, unemployment, and hopelessness. Even the world’s middle classes are feeling the squeeze of falling incomes and opportunities.



To enable market-oriented economies to operate as they should and can, we need to return to the right balance between markets and provision of public goods. That means moving away from both the Anglo-Saxon model of laissez-faire and voodoo economics and the continental European model of deficit-driven welfare states. Both are broken.



The right balance today requires creating jobs partly through additional fiscal stimulus aimed at productive infrastructure investment. It also requires more progressive taxation; more short-term fiscal stimulus with medium- and long-term fiscal discipline; lender-of-last-resort support by monetary authorities to prevent ruinous runs on banks; reduction of the debt burden for insolvent households and other distressed economic agents; and stricter supervision and regulation of a financial system run amok; breaking up too-big-to-fail banks and oligopolistic trusts.



Over time, advanced economies will need to invest in human capital, skills and social safety nets to increase productivity and enable workers to compete, be flexible and thrive in a globalized economy. The alternative is – like in the 1930s - unending stagnation, depression, currency and trade wars, capital controls, financial crisis, sovereign insolvencies, and massive social and political instability.

RTWT for the context. Roubini can't go all the way for the socialist revolutionary program (completely smashing capital), so he goes for a hyper-Keynesian quasi-socialist model instead. The end result is really the same: The complete obliteration of the individual into the maw of the state bureaucracy (and today's progressive thought police are the spiffed up version of communist totalitarianism's secret police, i.e., a new NKVD). And while Roubini merely cites Marx on the crisis, Stefan Stern (tweeted by Roubini), goes all the way for the proletarian revolution, "Marx was right about change":

Those who regard the recent actions of rioters in English cities as "criminality pure and simple" will not see any connection between Roubini's declaration that "Marx was right" and the decision to steal a 42-inch TV from a burning electricals store. But, for some, looting may have seemed a sensible (if illegal) response to the apparently continuous turmoil of the economy. If everything about your financial future seems at best uncertain and at worst desperate, why not carpe diem, or carpe television at any rate? Rational economic man (and woman) has finally been sighted, legging it down Tottenham High Street in a new pair of trainers.



Marx said that while interpreting the world was all very well, the point was to change it. If capitalists want to keep their world safe for capitalism, they need to face up to what is wrong with it, and change it, fast.

I agree. We need to change the ever expanding social welfare state, rationalize the economy with lower taxes and less regulation, and put people to work. The rioters in Britain's aren't remotely near the starving urchins of the British 19th century industrial revolution. They're mobs of yobbers outfitted with Blackberries. The state keeps them well fed and what do they do but burn down their cities? Socialism sucks. It creates ungrateful losers who kill the innocent and destroy productive capital. The left owns this crisis, all of it, and the politically correct spinelessness has only exacerbated the dislocation. ASFLs.

Professor Lawrence Connell's Hypotheticals

ICYMI, be sure to read my earlier entry, "Charlotte Allen: 'The Mess at Widener Law School."



I've been thinking about the case and will have more later. Mostly, I'm trying to figure out Deans Ammons' animosity toward Professor Connell. Charlotte Allen notes:

Connell’s most egregious offense ... and probably the offense that brought down the full-bore wrath of Ammons upon him, was a series of classroom hypotheticals. The scenarios involved Ammons herself and Connell’s efforts to kill her (hypothetically) after she threatened to fire him (hypothetically) for parking his car in her parking space. In one of the hypotheticals Connell rushed into Ammons’ office with his .357 magnum and shot her in the head—except that the “head” turned out to a pumpkin artfully painted to look just like the dean. The idea was to ask the class whether under prevailing legal rules he should be tried for attempted murder—or not, since no harm actually befell her. Imaginative and macabrely humorous hypotheticals, often pitting professors against deans and other campus authority figures, are a standard feature of Old Law School pedagogy. The idea is that the students will absorb and remember the underlying legal principles better in a context of humorous narrative. Hypotheticals show up not just in law school classrooms but in exam questions and moot-court competitions. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan was repeatedly murdered in classroom hypotheticals when she was dean of Harvard Law School.

Indeed, as Professor Jonathan Turley indicates, "Widener Law Professor Suspended For Using Dean In Hypotheticals":

I must confess that I routinely incorporate the Dean at our school in the same type of hypotheticals as well as any contract professors. Indeed, my final every year involves some struggle between myself and the Dean and contracts professors. Absent something more, I fail to see the basis for such disciplinary action. Other professors have raises objections to the case on sites like Volokh.



In his letter, [Widener Vice Dean J. Patrick] Kelly accuses Connell of an “outgoing pattern” of misconduct, and cites his use of such hypotheticals, including “cursing and coarse behavior, “racist and sexist statements” and “violent, personal scenarios that demean and threaten your colleagues.” Without more, the allegations raise serious concerns over academic freedom and privilege.



I am most disturbed by the statement of Gregory F. Scholtz, associate secretary and director of the American Association of University Professors. AAUP is organization that is expected to defend academic freedom. Yet, Scholtz is quoted as saying “Education is all about pushing the boundaries, and it’s all about controversial ideas, but the question always is when does it cross the line. Given our modern culture and the violence that exists, you’re really asking for trouble when you talk about killing people.” Really? That is news to those of us who teach torts and criminal law. It is common for faculty to incorporate colleagues into hypotheticals as good-humored jokes. At my school, contracts professors respond by incorporating me into their own hypotheticals. I have never found it even remotely bothersome or insulting. It keeps the attention of students and adds a needed element of levity in lectures.

It's routine. And Turley has more on how chilling the Lawrence case is for academic freedom.



Also, at Volokh, "Interview With Lawrence Connell, the Criminal Law Professor Suspended for His Hypotheticals":

Q: Can you give me an example of a hypothetical you might have used in class, to which the students who complained might have been referring? Can you describe the context in which you would have used it?



A: Yes, here is one: The Dean has threatened to fire me if she comes to school one more time and finds that I have parked in her designated parking space. Upset about the possibility of losing both my job and the parking space, I bring my .357 to school, get out of my car, put the .357 into my waistband, walk to the top floor where her office is located, open the door to her office, see her seated at her desk, draw my weapon, aim my weapon, and fire my weapon directly into what I believe to be her head. To my surprise, it’s not the Dean at all, but an ingeniously painted pumpkin — a pumpkin that has been intricately painted to look like the Dean. Dick Tracy rushes in and immediately wrestles me to the ground. I am charged with the attempted murder of the Dean.



The hypothetical raises various issues about attempted crimes that might entail discussion that spans more than one class. Some of the classroom discussion in the first, for example, will address the two basic philosophical problems of why we punish attempts, which are failed efforts at crime, and why we punish attempts less than successfully completed crimes.



A retributive argument, on the one hand, is that the attemptor has demonstrated his moral culpability by his bad conduct, and the degree of his punishment should not depend on a fortuitous turn of luck. On the other hand, a retributivist might argue that punishment in the absence of harm is unjust. For retributive purposes, has Connell demonstrated his moral culpability by shooting what he believes to be the Dean? Or does the fact that he merely destroyed a pumpkin suggest that his punishment would be unjust?

It's obviously a powerful heuristic.



More on this tonight. I'm checking around for more on Deans Ammons' motivations to persecute Professor Connell.

Charlotte Allen: 'The Mess at Widener Law School'

At Minding the Campus (via Glenn Reynolds):

Old Law School culture revolves around a traditional curriculum—those torts and contracts courses—and the Socratic method of instruction, with its pointed and rigorous give-and-take between professors and students. Old Law School assumes that the process of training lawyers is training them to a centuries-old Anglo-American tradition of lawyerly thought, which rests on the careful crafting of legal arguments and the relentless challenging of those arguments, often by the professor in the classroom. Old precedent-setting cases may be supplanted by newer cases, and legal principles may shift, but the underlying methodology of close analysis of written court opinions and the arguments on which they rest, along with certain assumptions underlying the American legal systems—that human beings are generally capable of exercising reason and free will and thus should be held responsible for their actions—are Old Law School constants.



New Law School culture, growing out of the Critical Legal Studies movement that first surfaced in law schools during the 1980s, is quite different. In New Law School thinking, the law does not embody a rational system of justice—or even strivings toward such a system—but is essentially a political construct that has historically operated to keep the rich and powerful in their places of wealth and power and other groups—women, racial minorities, the disabled, and the poor—in their socially subordinate places. If this characterization sounds Marxist, that is because Critical Legal Studies—and its intellectual progeny, Critical Race Theory and Feminist Legal Theory—grew out of the New Left radicalism of the 1960s, which viewed American governmental and social structures as systems of oppression. It has also been influenced by postmodernist literary theory, with its assumptions that there is no objective truth or reality. In New Law School thinking, reason, free will, and personal responsibility are illusions, for all legal battles are actually struggles of race, class, and gender, in which power, not justice, is the ultimate goal. In New Law School scholarly writing, rigorous analysis of court opinions and the drawing of fine distinctions underlying legal arguments have been supplanted by “story telling": personal narratives typically involving the law professors’ own experiences as members of an oppressed group with the race-gender-class matrix that is the source of their oppression. Since a shift in the power structure, not justice, is the goal, any tactic that coerces the recalcitrant into conforming to the new power regime is permissible in New Law School thinking.

Continue reading. Especially good is Allen's discussion of Linda Ammons. I wrote briefly along the same lines here, "Widener's Dean Linda Ammons Goes After Law School Professor Lawrence Connell."



And from Allen's conclusion, she notes that Professor Lawrence Connell was exonerated of the allegations against him, yet Ammons still prevailed on her preposterous charge that Connell "retaliated":

What is appalling is that, despite both exonerations, Ammons appears to have gotten her way in the end after all, exacting sanctions against a tenured professor that are not only costly but humiliating (he is supposed to apologize to the complaining students. The charge of retaliation, based on a vague prohibition in the faculty handbook, seem especially flimsy. Connell’s e-mail to his students in December neither named his accusers nor referred to them in any way. As for the lawsuit, Connell never waived his right to seek redress in court against individuals whose false accusations have already cost him quite a bit of money and promise to cost much more. But that is the way of New Law School. It is perhaps only Old Law School, with its emphasis on fairness, reasonableness, and color-and gender-blind justice, that would find something totalitarian in Widener’s treatment of Connell and accordingly demand Linda Ammons’ resignation. In New Law School thinking, where power is everything, and the claims of grievance-bearing identity groups will always prevail over fairness, it is perfectly fine to strip your perceived opponent of his livelihood and to consign him to the ministrations of your own Nurse Ratched—and there is no such thing as abuse of power.

Anne Wilderspin, Sister of Murder Victim Richard Bowes: 'It is sad these rioters have not found a purpose in life'

Richard Mannington Bowes was murdered in Ealing as he confronted mob youths set to burn down the town.

Richard Bowes died from head injuries days after the attack in Ealing on Monday night.



He was pictured lying face down in a pool of blood after being assaulted while trying to stop youths setting fire to large rubbish bins across the green from the flat where he lived alone.



His sister said, "I feel sad that these rioters haven't found another purpose in life rather than just destructive violence."

Check the Independent UK as well, "Ealing reflects on the death of a 'shy, quiet, quirky-looking' man," and "Man arrested following Ealing riots death."



And since I've mentioned Irish commie Henry "erect cocks" Farrell, check the thread at Crooked Timber, where the commenters are fully down with the rioting hooligans: "London."

Ann Althouse Attacked at Wisconsin Capitol Singalong

This is generating some interesting discussion: "Attack on Althouse at the Wisconsin Capitol singalong" (found at Memeorandum).

Plus, Althouse gets picked up at Breitbart TV, and from the comments there:

As they keep doing this kind of behavior on a near daily basis now, they do not realize that America has grown tired of this and their patience will eventually wear thin. Because the left is losing power and their true agenda is now exposed in the light of day for the Communist agenda that it is, they are desperate to achieve that ever elusive and imaginary Utopia their leader has promised. When in reality, all they accomplish by doing this is to unite the opposers to Obama's agenda even more.



Not to mention the fact that some day, probably soon, they will pick on the wrong person and find out what it feels like to have your ass beat, and good.

Well, yeah. All in self-defense, of course.

Protection Racket: 'Responsibility to Protect' Becomes a Doctrine

From Joshua Muravchik, at World Affairs:

The world has mostly enjoyed peace since 1945, but that owes nothing to the UN and everything to American power, exercised mostly in the form of guarantees to Japan, NATO, and other allies, rather than in shooting wars. In this era when violence within states is far more common than between them, cases of extreme abuse will sometimes cry out for outside intervention. But the traditional doctrine of humanitarian intervention, invoked by the United States and other democracies at their own discretion, is likely to offer a more usable basis for such action than the shiny new version called R2P, which places all authority in the paralytic hands of the United Nations Security Council.

It's a good piece. RTWT.



And recall David Rieff, at National Interest, "Saints Go Marching In."

African Indigents with Massive Erect Cocks?

Hey, that's not me, sheesh!



It's freak Irish commie Henry Farrell, at Crooked Timber, '“The Duty of Journalists is to Tell The Truth”.'



Henry "erect cocks" is alleging that the Irish Independent's Kevin Myers is --- wait for it! --- racist. See, "Feral rioters all have one thing in common -- a lack of father figures." (It's a good piece, but no talking honestly with the left's "elite" opinion police.)



Anyway, I left a comment for Henry "erect cocks," which is probably not likely to make it out of the moderation queue, naturally:

Oh, bugger off, Henry. You’ll change your commie leftist beliefs about as fast as Michael Moore trims down to a slim 180 pounds American.



And “African indigents with massive erect cocks”?



Quite a racist flourish there yourself. Sure would look great in the pages of, say, Foreign Affairs, eh?

RELATED: Melanie Phillips has some updates, thank goodness.

Blah, Blah ... More Progressive Hysteria About 'Broken' Politics

From Charles Krauthammer, at National Review, "The System Works."

Of all the endlessly repeated conventional wisdom in today’s Washington, the most lazy, stupid, and ubiquitous is that our politics is broken. On the contrary. Our political system is working well (I make no such claims for our economy), indeed, precisely as designed — profound changes in popular will translated into law that alters the nation’s political direction.



The process has been messy, loud, disputatious, and often rancorous. So what? In the end, the system works. Exhibit A is Wisconsin. Exhibit B is Washington itself...

Keep reading.



The terrorists broke it.

Mitt Romney Heckled in Iowa

This gets pretty heated, especially after 2:00 minutes at the clip:

See Legal Insurrection, "Obama campaign tactics against Romney already surface."



More at London's Daily Mail for the details, "Mitt Romney shouts at heckler as he remains in pole position for president nomination ahead of GOP head-to-head debate."



EXTRA: Robert Stacy McCain's on the ground in Iowa, "Mitt-Mania In Des Moines." Also at Memeorandum.

Prime Minister David Cameron Vows Crackdown on Rioters

Cameron wants to go after street thug anonymity, "Social Media, and Facemasks, Are Targets After British Riots." The full text of the prime minister's speech at BBC, "Riots: David Cameron's Commons statement in full."



Social media's not the problem. And amazingly, some folks are still debating the causes of the rioting, as if sheer hooliganism and evil needed further explanation. More at London's Daily Mail, "Unmask the thugs! Looters will no longer be able to cover up, says PM as he also promises a crackdown on social media AND cash for the rioters' victims."

'Descent Into Evil'

I had this at the blog-item finder, and now it's an essay at New York Post, from John Hinderaker:

What makes the present such a frightening time is that a number of nightmarish phenomena that we had thought consigned to the dustbin of history are reappearing. Rioters in the streets. Burning buildings. Plunging markets and the threat of depression. The scent of socialism in the air.



Who, as of, say, 1989, could have imagined that in barely 20 years, what was then known as the Free World could sink so far?



What we are seeing in London and other English cities is an outpouring of evil. To try to explain evil as the result of something else is almost always a mistake.

'I don't call it a riot... I call it an insurrection of the masses of the people...'

When the riots first broke out I checked over at a couple of the anarchist "occupy everything" blogs and it seems like a lot of them are silent, apparently frustrated at the slow development of revolutionary consciousness. But one needn't look too hard to find deep sympathy for the hooligans (at Comment is Free, for example). Hard-left progressives see in the micreants' criminal thuggery some long needed blows against the capitalist state, even if those were mostly just some deviant losers robbing the shelves blind of goods for which they actually had enough money to purchase. It's not deprivation driving unrest, but hatred of conventional goodness, nurtured by decades of socialist progressivism, manifest in the left's deliberate breakdown of the common family structure, which has left generations of "yobbers" free to destroy property and the sense of sanity in society. Jawa Report posted this video, of Darcus Howe, in which he calls the unrest some kind of dialectical historical moment, "London's Thuggery, Murder, Neo-Marxist, Socialist, etc., etc. Mahem + USDayofRage."

Not surprisingly, BBC is now apologizing for suggesting that the bloke might have been involved. See Telegraph UK, "London riots: BBC apologises for accusing Darcus Howe."



We are witnesses the Mad Maxification of society in the early 21st century.

More Mark Steyn Mania!

At Pundit & Pundette, "After Great Britain."



And at American Glob, "VIDEO: Mark Steyn Explains the UK Riots and More On Hannity."



BONUS: I've meant to post on Melanie Phillips as well, but Blazing Cat Fur beat me to it: "Melanie Phillips on the UK Riots."

Belladonna Rogers: 'Conservatives and Gay Marriage'

The piece is from a couple of weeks ago, and it's very well done, "Conservatives and Gay Marriage: A Guide for the Perplexed." That said, a lot of this is straw man argumentation, with a bit of hopeless defeatism thrown in. Also interesting is her endorsement of Jennifer Chrisler, of Family Equality Council. She's articulate and attractive, and has honed fear-calming to high art. Yet as I pointed out yesterday, these "nice" people are hunkered down inside the Trojan horse driving a radical LGBT agenda that would horrify a majority of Americans if the truth were known. It turns out Chrisler's spouse is Cheryl Jacques, the former Executive Director of Human Rights Campaign, the extremist gay rights organization that rejects the morality and goodness of a majority of the American people. Here's an interesting tidbit from the comments at Popehat:

The radical LBGT agenda is best defined by such a person as President Obama’s Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings program intended to sexualize school chidren. Kevin Jennings agenda would be held in high regard by the NAMBLA pedophiles. Closer to home Scott Brown replaced Lesbian Senator Cheryl Jacques who went to Washington to head up the LBGT Human Rights Campaign. The mission of the Human Rights campaign is to ram gay rights down the throat of the American people. Scott Brown in turn defeated Cheryl Jacques chief of staff Chief of Staff, and openly homosexual Angus, McQuilken. He is also the Chief of Staff of Planned Partenhood League of Mass. Funny how much of this ties together. I believe that we may be on the eve of a new revolution.

Chrisler's spouse is also discussed here: "The FISTGATE Report." No one is saying gays can't make a family. It's a lie though to entertain the notion the gay family values are mainstream. They're not. And gays activists must use subterfuge and thuggery to ram that agenda home.

Related: At Nampion, "Please Don’t Hurt The Gerbil – New And Improved 2011 Version."

Norway, Free Speech, and the Counter-Jihad

From Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, at American Thinker.

And fro Pamela's introduction at Atlas Shrugs:

Please read the rebuttal that Robert Spencer and I wrote in response to the scurrilous Norway blood libel made against us by media shills and Islamic supremacists. We submitted our piece to publications that damned us and others -- the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the New York Post, National Review, the American Spectator, the London Spectator, the Guardian, and the Wall Street Journal. Nyet. The notorious Guardian, the New York Times, and the Washington Post have published any number of articles smearing us, but would sooner strap on a homicide bomb than let us challenge their lies.



Allow me to extend my deep thanks to the one fine and decent editor who had the integrity to run it, Thomas Lifson of the singular American Thinker.

W. James Casper H8® — Was That Wrong?

The jokes write themselves. After years of fully-documented and systematic stalking and harassment, hatemonger white supremacist W. James Casper H8® has written yet another comedy manifesto attempting to slither out from under his programmatic campaign of hatred and harassment: "Workplace Harassment - (btdt FAQ files)."



And actually, no need to even read the whole thing. Laughingstock Racist = Repsac3 is the blogosphere's George Costanza: "Was That Wrong?"



Stalking, sponsoring workplace intimidation, recruiting attackers against my economic livelihood, posting my college administration's contact information with directions to harass, and hosting commenters spiking the football after workplace contacts: Was that wrong? Oh no, not at all, if you've got the situational ethics of the progressive nihilists. ASFLs. These are the exact same kind of people who'll strip you to your shorts and rob you blind. Fuckers. Don't ever knuckle under to these asshats. Never submit to the mob.

Re-Education Camps

Progressives are calling for the camps. I kid you not. See Matt Welch, "If Only Americans Weren't So Goddamned Stupid We Wouldn't Have to Send Them to Re-Education Camps."



The camps. Progressives love the camps. The world knows what happens in the camps. And the left wants you to forget why they need the camps. Kevin Robbins ASFL wants you to turn away from the camps. Socialism kills. Now time for your reeducation:

Hat Tip: LCR.

London Riots Day 4: Manchester and Midlands on Fire

Criminal unrest continues in Britain as the government struggles to regain control. See Independent UK, "Riots spread north as London cools." And at Daily Mail, "Now it's Manchester and the Midlands' turn as London braces for FOURTH night of rioting." And also Telegraph UK, "London riots spread to Midlands and north-west on fourth night of trouble."

See also Amusing Bunni, "Save Our Streets," Daley Gator, "Would I be wrong to ask just one question concerning the UK riots?," JammieWearingFool, "Heroes of London: 'It Was Like Being in a War'," Right Wing News, "There’s Nothing Wrong With The Government Shooting Looters & Rioters Down Like Dogs In The Street," and Saberpoint, "Massive Rioting in the U.K., Black on White Violence: What's the Solution?"

Also, at New York Times, "Cameron Deploys 10,000 More Officers to Riots," and "London Riots Put Spotlight on Troubled, Unemployed Youths in Britain." (At Memeorandum.)

Joseph Fein Defends Pamela Geller

My friend Joseph Fein, who regrettably I haven't linked here in a while, made a very shrewd argument the other day in his post standing up for Pamela Geller, "History Will Look Kindly on Pamela Geller Not Glenn Greenwald." I'm not so focused on the commentary on Glenn Greenwald, who while I've slammed mercilessly in the past (he's a genuine asshole, frankly), I've also commended him for avoiding the herd Obama cult mentality (I recognize consistency when I see it). What caught my eye about Joseph's essay was this passage on ideological rationalization:

Glenn Greenwald wanted Gay marriage to be the norm in the United States. As a Social libertarian, I see no issue here. As a partisan, I see a weak person who won't even stay in his own country and fight for what he believes in. He expects others to do the heavy lifting. Speaking to partisans who think the same way you do on TV, radio and the Internet does not expand converts. (nor does sock-puppeting).



I voted No on 8; I support any two consenting adults to be happy. But every time Andrew Sullivan attacks Palin's family, I always have to rethink that vote.



Now, compare Greenwald to Pam Geller.

I've highlighted in bold the key sentence, but check the whole post for the context. I'd have to talk to Joseph in person to see how he'd vote on a gay marriage proposition next time around (if it's not decided at the U.S. Supreme Court beforehand), but the key is that Joseph would consider changing his position because of the ideological and political violence of the progressive left's pro-gay marriage ayatollahs. I cringed the other day when Andrew Breitbart announced he'd boycott CPAC over the organization's exclusion of GOProud. It's not so much that GOProud is either in or out at CPAC (I think the group's a Trojan horse but I'd let them compete in the marketplace of ideas rather than exclude them). It's that for all of Andrew Breitbart's super aggressive battles against the institutional left, he obviously doesn't get it on this issue. My sense is that he's got friends who are gay. Fine. So do I. But that doesn't mean one has to capitulate to the progressive barebacking agenda. It's bears repeating and repeating again: Gay activists are the most venal, vicious, and unprincipled political organizers going. It's like Rick Santorum noted the other day, when he suggested that gays enjoy "super rights." Progressive gay activists are the left's ultimate bullies. They are in your face, attacking anyone with the slightest inclination toward tradition as a "homophobe" and "racist." They browbeat, intimidate, and harass to get their way. They've threatened to destroy livelihoods over the simple act of voting on a proposition. They's lied and cheated in public forums, for example, with the mock judicial process that reviewed Prop. 8 in Federal District Court. Basically, they've raped the political process to leverage a disgusting and morally reprobate barebacking, rim-station sexual agenda that majorities of voters have consistently rejected nationwide. Fully thirty states continue to prohibit gay marriage across the country, but the tentacles of deathly progressivism have worked their subterfuge in the more left-leaning states, using all manner of deceit and duplicity to carry the day. Most of all is the sickening progressive discrimination that is the centerpiece of folks like the disgusting perv Dan Savage. I wrote recently on his sick bigotry and hatred of regular people: "Gay Sexual Abandon and the Perverse Inversion of Values by Same-Sex Extremists." The gay progressive program of ideological bigotry works because society has been beaten down by political correctness. No one wants to appear intolerant. No one wants to be attacked as anti "civil rights." The problem of course, is that gay marriage isn't a civil right, although regular people have been so brainwashed by progressive Orwellianism they don't know what is good and moral, and to even speak up for something decent is to be viciously attacked, with people's very lives being threatened. So this is why I think Joseph's rethinking of his vote on Prop. 8 is such an incisive opening on this issue. If it were me I'd leave it to the states, and if the voters choose full gay marriage rights so be it. But the process is hijacked by extremists and thugs, and it's not likely those rights would come around through a free and fair democratic process. And thus those folks so happy to call themselves libertarian on the issue just end up being fellow soldiers in the left's campaign to destroy decency in this country.

Stock Market Plunges

At USA Today, "Crisis of confidence leads to fears of bear market," and New York Times, "Stocks Plunge in Worst Day in Two Years." Also, at Wall Street Journal, "Downgrade Ignites a Global Selloff: Dow's Plunge Worst Since '08":

The downgrade of the U.S.'s credit rating sparked a global selloff on Monday, pushing the Dow Jones Industrial Average to its sharpest one-day decline since the financial crisis in 2008.



In scenes reminiscent of three years ago, selling accelerated as the day went on, and investors were forced to sell to meet margin calls from lenders demanding more collateral. The Dow ended the day down 634.76 points, or 5.5%, at 10809.85, its lowest close since last October. Trading volume of stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange hit the fourth-highest level in history.



It was the Dow's biggest percentage drop since December 2008 and its sixth-largest point decline ever. Other major stock indexes also fell heavily. Traders also dumped corporate bonds and industrial commodities.



Investors fled to the traditional refuges: gold, currencies of safe-seeming countries such as Switzerland, and, ironically, the very securities that Standard & Poor's downgraded on Friday, U.S. Treasury bonds. For most investors, Treasurys seemed a lot safer than stocks.



Tuesday morning in Asia, Tokyo shares opened lower, falling 3.4% in the first minutes of trading.



The Financial Stability Oversight Council, a group of U.S. regulators led by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, held an emergency conference call Monday afternoon to discuss the financial-market volatility, a person familiar with the call said.



"There's probably as much uncertainty as we've seen since 2008," said Eric Pellicciaro of asset manager BlackRock's Fundamental Fixed Income division, which has $612.5 billion in assets under management. "There's a general feeling that policy options are few and far between. There's a feeling that fiscal austerity is coming at the worst possible time."

Interesting how Treasury securities remained a safe haven. That can't go on forever.



I'll have more on this tonight.