Blaming the prophets for things they never did.

That’s how the establishment responds to the prophesied Judgment Day: “It is all their fault”

Thus, the Slate rant. But you gotta love the irony:

The worst thing you can say about libertarians is that they are intellectually immature, frozen in the worldview many of them absorbed from reading Ayn Rand novels in high school. Like other ideologues, libertarians react to the world’s failing to conform to their model by asking where the world went wrong.

Yeah, I have been embarrassed to admit I read Ayn Rand novels, but that was before the G-Sax putsch started dramatizing passages from Atlas Shrugged, complete with high melodrama and bizarrely revealing villain names.

I’ve always wondered how so many people could continue to believe the lie that “Herbert Hoover did nothing in response to the Depression due to his allegiance to laissez-faire capitalism.” But if the political class and its minions are now, in the face of the web, youtube.com, and the alternative media, willing to say anything they need to do to assure you how much you need their expert care in order to have prosperity, I’m beginning to understand how it can happen.

But will it work this time? Is Newsweek going to be able to revise history so completely when Ron Paul is so popular on YouTube.com?

In the meantime, here’s what out guardians are doing for our economy:

Financial workers at Wall Street’s top banks are to receive pay deals worth more than $70bn (£40bn), a substantial proportion of which is expected to be paid in discretionary bonuses, for their work so far this year – despite plunging the global financial system into its worst crisis since the 1929 stock market crash, the Guardian has learned.

Staff at six banks including Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are in line to pick up the payouts despite being the beneficiaries of a $700bn bail-out from the US government that has already prompted criticism. The government’s cash has been poured in on the condition that excessive executive pay would be curbed.

Pay plans for bankers have been disclosed in recent corporate statements. Pressure on the US firms to review preparations for annual bonuses increased yesterday when Germany’s Deutsche Bank said many of its leading traders would join Josef Ackermann, its chief executive, in waiving millions of euros in annual payouts.

The sums that continue to be spent by Wall Street firms on payroll, payoffs and, most controversially, bonuses appear to bear no relation to the losses incurred by investors in the banks. Shares in Citigroup and Goldman Sachs have declined by more than 45% since the start of the year. Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley have fallen by more than 60%. JP MorganChase fell 6.4% and Lehman Brothers has collapsed.

And a new blog to watch gives us a sample of open and transparent government from the new wing of it we just created.  Nothing like “re-regulating” without oversight.  So who regulates the regulators in this so-called “open society”?

One final note: I have to apologize for what I said here.  I just watched the entire video series that begins here. It is not just “pretty good,” as I said.  It is fantastic.  I can’t decide which portion is better: the segment on farm subsidies showing how 1930s fascism continues unchecked in agribusiness, or the horrific censorship and political defense of incumbent representatives which has been made possible by McCain-Feingold and other types of “campaign reform” (The official definition of campaign reform is: laws empowering the wealthy to destroy anyone trying to deal in politics who does not have millions of dollars for a lawyer).  Please watch it!

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