Do you remember the Cold War when people would talk about how things behind the Iron Curtain were nothing like as bad as the Americans said they were? Then the Curtain fell away and it turned out things were much worse.

(After this revelation most of the Marxists on this side folded up their tables and went home—just when they could finally have done something useful and helped to stop crazed Friedman fanboy “advisers” from the West do their best to actually make things worse than they were under the collapsing communist regimes.)

I yield to few in my (political) hatred of Margaret Thatcher, one of Friedman’s acolytes, yet today I find myself in the painful position of agreeing with every quote from a speech she made “against doctor’s orders” in New York yesterday. (The report is from The Times and my attention was drawn to it by Andrew Sullivan’s ‘Blog.)

Perhaps it was the stress of having to give my seminar to the rest of the HGMP-RC today a month earlier than I had planned?

Perhaps the Devil has finally come to collect my soul?

Middle age?

Oh, forgive me, forgive me…