As IF Times

link Obama Adviser Returning to Chicago To Teach | NBC Chicago.

It pains me to do this, but to use the awkward narrative of the White House, if you lent someone your car and that person proceeded to smash it up almost right from the moment he touched the keys,  would it make sense to take driving lessons from this guy?  This is precisely what this story is all about.  Unable to make the theories of the ivory tower work in real life, Obama’s chief economic advisor Austan Goolbee  is essentially giving up and going back to teaching what is now obviously flawed theory to a generation of naive students.  ???!!! Exactly what is it that he’ll be teaching?  Unless it’s at the Opposite George University, why would anyone pay attention to his discredited notions?

This is all backwards.  What should happen is that people who’ve managed to do useful things in life should then be allowed to go to universities and colleges to pass on the valuable knowledge they’ve achieved.  Instead, we have the situation now where people with soft hands are put forth as experts to solve problems in real life in which they have no experience.  How many swim teachers do you know have never been in the water and teach only by theory?  Here’s an idea, long on irony:   Why don’t we disallow people to participate in government at all unless or until they have real life experience outside of government work.   In other words, no lifers.  College lecturers and organizing mobs in the community don’t count.  At the very least, this will eliminate the windbags who give elliptical answers in lieu of the simple yes or no to a question such as, “did you do it?” 

If the socialist ideas favored by liberals worked so well, why isn’t there a SINGLE instance of such a system working well  in the world?  The policies being favored by the liberal left are so fundamentally flawed because they go against the very prinicples that made America and therefore most of western society successful.   From a nation built on innovation, they want to turn it into a nation of regulation.  In modern ‘free’ society, there is very little a person can do without having it regulated or taxed.   Yet somehow, the cure all for that ails society is invariably more tax and more regulation.   This is like the cure they used to prescribe for a sick person in the middle ages; bleed them.

In some ways, the socialist economists are safer while teaching in their academic ivory towers: at least there, students have to pay to listen to their ideas.  Having them loose upon the real world in a government position, everyone pays.

link AOL INSIDER: Here Are 12 Reasons Why The AOL-Huffington Post Merger Is Going Down In Flames AOL.

Future business and culture students will be dissecting this for years.  In the annals of business combinations, this isn’t exactly merging chocolate with peanut butter.  As we have commented earlier,  http://asiftimes.com/2011/04/12/i-thought-we-were-friends/  the idea that AOL had to hitch their  name brand wagon, albeit a fading one,  to that of a cult graffiti blog was ill conceived at best and epic in stupidity at worst.   As this article seems to show, the only ones who couldn’t see this disaster coming was the guy running AOL, CEO Tim Armstrong.

Absent a bailout from government, this exercise will be a clinical demonstration of the mechanics of capitalism.  Someone comes up with a ‘brilliant’ idea, spends money to forward it and then, when it turns out to have no basis in business sense at all, collapses, or will collapse and everyone loses money.  That’s the way it is.  Of course, someone’s going to make some money out of this; someone always does.  There will be two conspicuous losers.  Obviously, the investors in the failed enterprise lose and secondly, the architect of the fiasco, Armstrong, who will likely have trouble convincing people that he can run a lemonade stand in the future.  Even now, his old business school is scrambling to take down any pictures and evidence of his attendance there and working on a public denial.  

Assuming there was a business model to be acquired beyond the siren call of Arianna Huffington’s annoying personality, the spending of over $300 million dollars of other people’s money must have accomplished something.  Turns out the simple answer is NOT.  Upon closer inspection,  the juvenile and crass scratchings of the Post scribers were not just part of the package, they WERE the package. Having a byline on the Post was the equivalent of flashing your breasts during Mardi Gras in New Orleans.  Discovering that the contributors to the Post had as much contempt and hatred for their fellow staffers as for sane people must have been a jolt however.   OH NO!!  Maybe Armstrong made the deal after the 4th martini during a 5 martini lunch when anything would have sounded reasonable.  I’m sure he now feels like the guy in the Vegas commercials who wakes up in the morning with tattoos and nipple rings on his body. 

Ironically, Arianna, despite her anti-capitalist and anti-American sensibilities has realized the quintessential American dream.  You can’t make this up.