What produces RUTHLESS DICTATORS?

Okie - for reasons known to Walter (and possibly also to George OB) I've considerable hands-on expertise in the privatization following the communist East's collapse and have studied the previous privatization conducted by Hjalmar Schacht in the '30s. Do not venture into either domain, is my advice to you. See the nervous breakdown suffered by Old Europe when he attempted it some pages ago by way of warning - and he knows slightly more about the topic than you do

Old Europe didn't have a nervous breakdown, he simply pointed out that you are full of ****, and provided his sources. I can see why, though, you would want to characterize such an embarrassing exposure of your ignorance as a nervous disorder.

Hmmm, don't understand all of that.

Interesting right now, Walter Williams, economist, sitting in right now on Rush's show interviewing Thomas Sowell, also economist and political observer and commentator, they are making the observation about how many tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people killed or starved in Russia, China, etc. due to leftist policies. Interesting, they just grouped Hitler in that group and mentioned the 1939 Time magazine article. Williams asks, why do leftists today admire barbarians like Castro, etc.? Good question.

Sowell has just written a book and outlined the history of the housing collapse, tracing it to government intervention and corruption.

I feel good to be in such fine company with the great guys like Williams and Sowell.

don't forget Rush...

You're hilarious. What evidence do you (or Williams or Sowell) have that "leftists today admire barbarians like Castro, etc.?" (And while we're at it, who is the barbarian etc.?) That sounds very much like ipse dixit to me. I am not surprised, though, that you are tuning in to listen to those who will tell you what you expect to hear.

As far as I remember, a "barbarian" is either a foreign tribe (or tribe) whose first language is not Greek or a Greek (or tribe) speaking Greek not properly ...

not the pick up band with keith richard and ronnie wood?

I don't think she is that big of an anomoly in the Democratic Party today. You have to listen to the entire clip to get to her opinion of Castro: "He was one of the brightest leaders she had ever met."

Hmm, they weren't the cream, but after a hard day's night on the beach with the boys, driving in beatles and listening in the yard to the birds... who are the kings among those animals?

You too?

That's enough, Walter, close the doors or I'll call the police!

One swallow does not a summer make, Okie. Despite how depressed it may make you, there are millions of people in this country who merit being called leftists, even by the standards of the rest of the world, who see leftists as a very small proportion of our population.

So you've got one clip of one person--do you really think that is conclusive enough to tar all leftists with the same brush? This is exactly the complete failure of reasonable standards of evidence which lead so many people in this thread to find your entire thesis laughable.

It is important not to forget that Thomas Sowell is, as well as being a highly-regarded academic in the field of economics, a partisan ideologue who touts conservative values, while describing himself as a libertarian. One of his core themes in his writing is that empirical evidence is preferable to sweeping generalizations. So that makes this claim of Williams' about leftists even more suspect, since you come up with one you-tube video, and not any empirical evidence from Mr. Williams to the effect that "leftists today admire barbarians like Castro. By Mr. Sowell's standards, as repeatedly stated in his writing, Mr. Williams' remark is indefensible because he provides no empirical evidence to back up the claim.

You and people of your political persuasion have repeatedly labeled Mr. Obama as a dangerous socialist. More than 69,000,000 people voted for Mr. Obama, which at the least, by your "logic," makes them leftists. That sets the bar pretty damned high to sustain a claim that leftists "like" Castro. You'll need to show that tens of millions of Americans "like" Castro.

Good luck.

That's like - how do you French call it? - un désir noir par les chats sauvages et les garçons bouchers, or as we say in short in German: Ober Kampf.

Walter's on a roll . . .







. . . would that be a Kaiser roll?

Kaiserschmerrn it's in the alpine aboriginal dialect.

This is one of the most laughable posts I have ever seen made, even by some quasi-illiterate posters here and entirely pathetic coming from you, who can't even read a quarter of the bibliography (titles, not even actual texts) in the article posted by OE on which he tried to reach the opposite conclusion than the one made obvious by the facts, which are not in dispute by anyone.

Please take your obscurantist depression elsewhere, here you're just making yourself ridiculous.

Okie - possibly you're confusing Hitler's and the Nazi Party's plain old grab for power with actual leftism. Sowell is an excellent scholar, but if he now lists Hitler as a leftist I would appreciate very much seeing a reference to that statement.

I see--you don't have any more plausible argument to what OE posted than to say that he misunderstood it, and now you have descended to the point that you will sneer at the intelligence of anyone who disagrees with you.

You're pathetic, but OE put it best--pompous bitch.

I hope he doesn't take your advice HS and I'm inclined to think that he won't. I rather enjoy Set's posts and A2K would lose a modicum of its charm if he departed.

i can't imagine something like high seas could keep set from our fair shores

Spendius - he's actually quite good, and I also generally enjoy his posts, but on the subject of German privatisations, in particular, and public finances, more generally, he knows less than nothing. "Less than nothing" is the concept summarized in the old saying "It ain't what you don't know, it's what you know that just ain't so".

He usually has the honesty, though, to stop repeating mantras like "Bush inherited from Clinton a large budget surplus" after it's pointed out to him that this and other statements endlessly repeated by leftists are demonstably false. I'm surprised he would make idiotic statements on the subject of the German privatizations, though, and attribute it to some (passing, I hope) illness.