This show is made possible by members and donors who sign up at BestOfTheLeft.com and also

by GoToMeeting.com, green technology helping reduce the need for business travel.

And now welcome to the award-winning BestOfTheLeft podcast with Cups today from CounterSpend,

the Progressive, the Young Turks, the Rachel Maddo Show, the Colbert Report, and NPR with

a bonus clip for our iPhone app users from NPR.

When 33 Chilean miners were trapped in a privately-owned mine with a terrible safety record,

the private company washed its hands of the matter and the miners were rescued by the Chilean

government with the assistance of the U.S. government agency NASA.

In the topsy-turvy world of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, this all points

to one lesson.

Capitalism saved the miners, as deputy editorial page director Daniel Henninger's October

14th column was headlight.

His argument basically consisted of pointing out that the rescue operation used a special

drill bit that was developed by a private U.S. company.

He advanced the argument as a rebuttal to Barack Obama, who recently suggested that conservatives

believe that, quote, we put our blind faith in the market and we let corporations do whatever

they want and we leave everybody else to fend for themselves, close quote, rather than

saying that that's not what conservatives really think.

Henninger said, quote, yeah, that's a caricature of the basic idea, but basically that's right.

Ask the miners, close quote.

For their part, it's not clear that the miners are as enamored of the free market system

as Henninger is.

...