One of the Sad Things About National Review...

Is that you run into not just the paid lying hacks of the Republican slime machine but also into people who have been raised in isolated caves without human contact and so have no idea of the world in which they live:

[Kathryn Jean Lopez]: WT.... ? On Drudge:

Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi said political leaders discussing idea of closing world's financial markets while they 'rewrite the rules of international finance'... MORE

Is anyone for free markets anymore?

No. Nobody--save Andrew Mellon and Casey Mulligan--has been in favor of "free markets" in a financial crisis for a long time. 1844. Or possibly earlier.

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Comments

[Robert Waldmann]

Also, and in particular, Silvio Berlusconi is not and never has been in favor of free markets. He is the richest Italian, because he ignored the laws which were enforced on his competitors,(said laws banned private TV networks while he built his) and because the publicly owned BNL loaned him unlimited sums. Notably he became super rich in alliance with the Italian Socialist Party. It had nothing to do with free markets (or socialism for that matter).

Disclaimer I have a conflict of interest. I was paid to do nothing as a BNL fellow for a year. BNL money for nothing to Silvio Berlusconi, Saddam Hussein and me.

[rea]

Ms. Lopez stands on the deck of the Titanic, as the band plays "Nearer My God to Thee," and the great ship sinks slowly by the bow into the icy North Atlantic, affirming with her last breath that the number of life boats to be carried on passenger ships is a matter best left to the free market . . .

[calipygian]

Rea -

Ms Lopez is not smart enough to get the references to the deck of the Titanic, "Nearer My God to Thee", icy North Atlantic, life boats or free market.

She thought Dubya would make a great high school government teacher after he left office. http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/07/department_of_crazy_notions.php

I honestly don't know if her ignorance is condescendingly touching or mind bendingly insane.

[raft]

there is psychologically something very deeply wrong with that women. Her posts on NRO are a cry for help.

[Tom Levenson]

Your error is in considering Ms.Lopez a member of the press corps. She is a paid member of a propaganda apparat. She and her cohorts on the Corner do no reporting. They are immune to facts (perhaps there is a vaccine that GOPAC uses to inject its acolytes?). They exist to form as large an echo chamber as possible in the hopes that volume will overwhelm content. It is the job of the real press corps to ignore this kind of stuff.

You could ask why the Right has evolved such a miserable class of hacks, but the faulure of conservatism is a topic for another day.

[Tom Levenson]

faulure=failure
duh

[howard]

tom beats me to the point, so i'll make a different one: apparently k-lo doesn't understand that "free market" never meant "a market without any rules whatsoever."