We now have a Socialist marketplace. I thought that the Democrats were the ones who would lead us there, but I was wrong. It is a Republican administration that has taken us down this road to ruin.

No longer does capitalism mean what it used to… that people worked hard to succeed, and determined their own success or failure. We had some government programs in place to help those in need when they were down on our luck.

Late this past week, the Milwaukee Public Schools board voted 6 to 3 in favor of “examining” the possibility of dissolving the district. This would be a sort of bankruptcy situation, and basically that is where the district is headed eventually. The teachers are so grossly overpaid and the administration is so excessively wasteful with taxpayer money, that the taxpayers simply can’t afford to let this continue.

Of course, MPS officials aren’t blaming themselves for being incompetent and having an awful school system:

It’s easy to blame short sellers for troubles in the stock market. After all, they make money when a stock’s price goes down. That’s bad, right? No, not really. It’s no worse than the longs holding stock and hoping a company has good news so they can profit from stock prices going up.

Are we really naïve enough to believe that the current financial crisis is the fault of short sellers? Government officials are promoting the idea that short sellers promoted false negative information in order to make stock prices go down.

Mike Masnick at Tech Dirt alerts us to a very important development in the U.S. Government’s continued searching of laptop computers at the borders. (They might even take away your computer or Blackberry or other computerized device!) Travelers have had to watch officials literally go through data on their computers, or in other cases, have their computers taken away for several hours while the hard drives are imaged. And no one knows what happens to this data later.

Business travelers have had to contend with Homeland Security searching laptop computers when they cross U.S. borders, and that has raised some serious questions about private information, trade secrets, confidential data, and more. It has even led to some travelers carrying special laptops devoid of all information, which are then set up with data at the destination. (And of course, there’s the obvious issue of the potential for your computer to be damaged if Homeland Security messes up.)

You read that correctly. Wauwatosa, WI teachers are upset that they got an across the board 3.8% increase, so they’re doing less around the schools.

Did you get a raise this year? How much was it? I’d put money on it that it was something less than 3.8%, but the teachers are still crying.

I watched Charles Gibson interview Governor Sarah Palin with great interest. Yes, I thought he was hard on her, and I wondered how hard he has been on other candidates. (Turns out not hard at all, when you compare the questions from a recent interview Gibson had with Barack Obama.)

Newsbusters did an incredible analysis of what was edited out of the Sarah Palin interview. Take a look at these snippets of the transcript from ABC. The bolded items were left out when shown on television.

This email I received does not really need any commentary from me:

Info-Sequence,

We have found that your shoptoearn blog operator is erasing 90% of all positive information in defense of Shoptoearn supporters. Their is a large group of people who belive in Shoptoearn and they recently were exposed to your business practices. We are asking for a email response to this as we are getting prepared to send this to several thousand lawyers across the United States. We are sure that they would love to pick this case up. Why? Because you are costing many small business owners and many people who have no choice due to being disabled or other ailments the opportunity to make a living from home. Many people do not feel you are being constitutional.

As I watched a few segments of the interviews Charles Gibson of ABC had with Alaska’s Governor Sarah Palin (soon-to-be VP of the United States), I had this nagging feeling that Gibson was being condescending to her. I brushed it off, thinking that I was being too sensitive to the issue.

Until Charlie tried to play a little bit of “gotcha” with Palin.

The 624,588 USANA (NASDAQ:USNA) distributors are ranked as follows:

I certainly respect the right of the Midwest Airlines pilots and their union to hold a rally. I respect their right to strike or otherwise express their displeasure with Midwest Airlines.

But I have to ask… To what end is this being done?

Like every other U.S. based airline, Midwest Airlines is in financial trouble. The airline is near bankruptcy, and they’re doing everything they can to cut costs and stay alive. Sadly, the changes have included cutting flights and laying off tons of employees. The cuts have been so drastic that some wonder if it even makes any sense to keep this business up and running.