Butterfield was the first show I ever saw back in May of ‘67 at Princeton when I was 14. It was between East-West and Pigboy Crabshaw albums and Butter was breaking in a horn section featuring a young alto player named David Sanborn. Mike Bloomfield had left to start the Electric Flag but Elvin Bishop just smoked.

I was lucky enough to see BB open for Big Brother, Albert open for Tim Buckley and Big Brother the night the Fillmore East opened and Cream at a Catholic HS in Scotch Plains, NJ before I turned 15 when I saw Jimi at the Fillmore.

Needless to say, it was a magical time. I was just lucky enough to be born at the right time and live in the right place to see so many great shows between ‘67-’73. Old enough to see Hendrix and young enough to miss Vietnam.

I remember when I first read about Stevie Ray in Musician magazine back in ‘82 playing a Birthday Bash for Mick Jagger when the Blues was at a real low ebb, Pete Townshend claiming the guitar was all but dead and in the process of being replaced by synths and key-tars and Asia, Human League and a Flock of Seagulls ruled the charts.

SRV was a gift from above. The Blues will always be my thing.

John Galt must love it, eh?

Omigod, you do not even want to get me started on the evil that Ayn Rand brought to the planet in the name of morally bankrupt greed. Her spawn from hell, Allan Greenspan, spent half of his most recent book regurgitating the militantly selfish justifications for Fed policy and the other half describing how the cuckolded taxpayer was forced to clean up all the damn messes that Greenspan’s sponsors refused to be responsible for. That man should be tarred & feathered instead of being lionized as he is by the fraudulent financial press in this nation.

I thought Friedman was into the unrestrained free markets and got misty-eyed over the sublime wonderfulness of the unseen hand.

Friedman was a monetarist. He felt that control of the nation’s and the world’s money was the key to prosperity, at least for those who controled the money. In the U.S. that would be the private corporation called “the Fed” or Federal Reserve Bank. OTOH, libertarians are more akin to the older order called mercantilists. These people thought trade in goods and services was more important than the banking function in the economy. They officially lost the battle for control of the economy in 1913 with the creation of the FRB.

How could they give him the Nobel prize for crony captialism.

Well, of course they didn’t. They gave him the prize for his work on monetary theory. While it’s not a bodice ripper, Friedman’s book “Monetary History of the United States: 1867-1960” is actually a tremendously infomrative book.

I’ll certainly agree with you about the dismal quote. :’)

John Galt must love it, eh?

Beginning to appreciate RayDuran.

To some extent Naomi Klein’s book Shock Doctrine describes the empirical refutation of their economic policies. That shit just doesn’t work.

Respectfully, I disagree. Naomi Klein’s wonderful book is about the Bush style of “disaster capitalism” as she describes it, or predatory capitalism as I’ve come to call it. This is quite separate from the philosophy of libertarianism.

In the case of predatory capitalism, there is no liberty, there is utterly ruthless control by an oligopoly. This is discussed as “the Chicago School” of Eeconomics and Milton Friedman is their guru.

Libertarians prefer the views of Freidrick Hayak.

Think about competing think tanks. American Enterprise Institute versus the Cato Institute.

I know, I know. This is getting too abstruse and esoteric of a comment board.

But my main point is that Klein’s book isn’t about the Ron Paul version of economics. It’s about the crony capitalism of the GOP guys who are trying to crush Ron Paul.

Is the Republican Party disintegrating before our eyes? Someone posted this video of Ron Paul supporters chasing after and harassing Sean Hannity, saying “Fox News Sucks!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUXKddQvC1o
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Thanks Brother Rob,

That one made my day! The natives are restless. I love it.

I just sent the follow message out to my listserv:

While almost all Democrats seem to have successfully completed their anger management courses or at least gotten onto a good prescription mellowing agent, this group of enthusiastic Ron Paul supporters are doing exactly what I think the Left should have been doing for the past four years. Harassing Hannity. This is a hoot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUXKddQvC1o

OK, just because this looks like a blend of Krystalnacht and Grant Park, Chicago, ‘68 don’t accuse me of being a revolutionary. I’m just sitting here typing….. for now.