Wall Street: the new Catholic Church?

But there's the problem. Both parties are in bed with Wall Street and neither would ever allow a populist to lead them (as evidenced by Huckabee's and Edwards's poor showing in their respective parties' primaries). So, what's the solution? Beats me.

The politics of greed and entitlement has defined and will continue to define this. I predict that the next "populist" movement will be based on fear of loss, promises of renewed "prosperity", and new entries into the ever-present list of scapegoats.

Sanity will continue to be politically correctly defined as denial of the insanity of doing the same things -- under different labels -- and continuing to expect different results. As such, the American electorate will continue to get what they ask for until they hurt themselves enough to decide that they have been insane all along.

Politicians who eschew Wall Street arise all the time. They usually get knocked out in the first round of the primaries with commentators sneering about their inability to "attract funding".

The Republican Party IS NOT, repeat IS NOT going to “extricate itself from its love affair with Wall Street”. Wall Street and the large participants thereof are the major source of its candidates campaign contributions. Do you really think the GOP is going to bite the hands that feed it ?

Nota bene: the Democrats get many of their contributions from the same source. I don’t think Senator Schumer has a thing to worry about.

What will be interesting to see is what sort of efforts are made to redirect this “rage” that supposedly is going to be bubbling up. Contrary to Mr. Gerstein’s assertions, I don’t think Obama’s handlers are going to have any trouble at all spinning this to their liking. For the first two years, they’re going to blame Bush for everything. Beyond that, they’re going to claim that the modern-day version of “economic royalists” (subtly- and not-so-subtly linking said nefarious people to the GOP) are conspiring against them. This is what their base tends to believe anyway, so this is a natural move for them. In addition, Obama’s nationalization of the health-care system, done under the guise of “reforming the system to make it work for ALL Americans” is going to distract lots of attention from Wall Street’s issues.

It’s the old magician’s trick: make a lot of noise to distract the audience, then stash the rabbit in the hat with the hand that isn’t being watched.

As far as “populism” or third parties; don’t get your hopes up. The ballot-access laws in all 50 states (and the media’s rules for getting legitimacy by getting into the televised Presidential debates) are deliberately rigged to exclude anyone but a major-party candidate. The last fellow to get through those restrictions was “Rollicking Ross” Perot.

I think the underlying problem that isn’t being addressed is this: the American commoner populace has changed so much in the last two generations that they have come to see an expanding American Provider State as an essential part of the landscape. For the average commoner, the issue of bailouts is less one of “Why’d they bail out Wall Street ?” than of “Why aren’t they bailing ME out ?”

This does not bode well for the future of limited government in America. Or for the future of the country itself, for that matter.

Your servant,

Lord Karth

The scandals only serves as an excuse for those who already hated the Catholic Church. Who's complaining about the cover-ups in other institutions, like public schools?

If they are going to slam the RCC, at least get the criticism correct: The issue is not "peodophile priests" but dissenting, homosexual priests and the cowardly hierarchy, often also homosexual, who looked the other way and allowed the most innocent (almost overwhelmingly teenage boys) be raped.

Forget "conservatism," please. It has been Godless and therefore irrelevant. Secular conservatism will not defeat secular liberalism because to God both are two atheistic peas-in-a-pod and thus predestined to failure. As Stonewall Jackson's Chief of Staff R.L. Dabney said of such a humanistic belief more than 100 years ago:

"[Secular conservatism] is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today .one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt bath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It .is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth."

Our country is collapsing because we have turned our back on God (Psalm 9:17) and refused to kiss His Son (Psalm 2).

John Lofton, Editor, TheAmericanView.com
Recovering Republican
JLof@aol.com

The WSJ has sunk to a new low to reprint the anti-Catholic perjorative "pedophile priest." As was already pointed out here, the abuse was in 80-90% of the cases, pederasty committed by priests who suffer from a homosexual disposition. Pedophilia is the sexual abuse of very young children, while pederasty is the sexual molestation of minors who have already reached puberty. As the columnists Ann Coulter wrote during the media feeding frenzy:
"Despite the growing media consensus that Catholicism causes sodomy, an alternative view -- adopted by the Boy Scouts -- is that sodomites cause sodomy. (Assume all the usual disclaimers here about most gay men not molesting boys,...)
It is a fact that the vast majority of the abuser priests -- more than 90 percent -- are accused of molesting teen-age boys. Indeed, the overwhelmingly homosexual nature of the abuse prompted The New York Times to engage in its classic "Where's Waldo" reporting style, in which the sex of the victims is studiedly hidden amid a torrent of genderless words, such as the "teen-ager," the "former student," the "victim" and the "accuser."