Where is "Storok"?

From time to time, I listen to Obama - and then I think - did he really say this? Like when he promised Americans that Obamacare would cut insurance premiums by 3,000%? Or when he proclaimed that "Here is what I will say, if four Americans get killed it is not optimal..." The closest to that is JFK telling German people "I am a jelly doughnut.  Today, Obama said something similar, although not that entertaining:

And when I went to Israel as a candidate, I didn’t take donors. I didn’t attend fundraisers. I went to Yad Beshef (ph), the Holocaust museum there, to remind myself the nature of evil and why our bond with Israel will be unbreakable. And then I went down to the border towns of Storok (ph), which had experienced missiles raining down from Hamas.
 

Apparently, the wooden-tongued Obama did not visit "Yad Beshef" or the "towns of Storok". He did visit  Yad Vashem, and the town of Sderot though. One can easily see how deeply he was influenced by these two visits - although one could suspect that the memory of that visit did not stay too long.

Independent fact checking the debate: aircraft careers and submarines

During the foreign policy debate, Governor Romney's criticised Obama's policy of unilateral disarmament:

"Our Navy is smaller now than at any time since 1917," Romney said. "The Navy said they needed 313 ships to carry out their mission. We're now at under 285. ... We're headed down to the low 200s if we go through a sequestration. That's unacceptable to me."

Romney also said the U.S. Air Force is "older and smaller" than at any time since it first flew in 1947 and that the U.S. has begun to move away from its traditional stance of being able to simultaneously fight wars on two fronts."

In his response, President Obama replied:

"I think Governor Romney maybe hasn't spent enough time looking at how our military works," Obama said, beginning a sharp assault on Romney's foreign policy knowledge.

"You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military's changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.

Independent Fact Check of Obama's defense of his military budget strategy
While it's true that today's American military ships are more powerful than they were in 1916, it's also true of the enemies of US also upgraded their navy. What's more important, Barack Obama sounded as if submarines and aircraft carriers are a novelty which dramatically change the naval campaigns in the 21st century. In reality, according to wikipedia:

The first military submarine was Turtle in 1776, a hand-powered egg-shaped device designed by the American David Bushnell, to accommodate a single man. It was the first verified submarine capable of independent underwater operation and movement, and the first to use screws for propulsion.

What's is more amazing is that submarines were used  even during the American revolutionary war. The first all-metal submarine was built in Russia in 1834, and it was equipped with rockets. Submarines were used extensively during WW1 and WW2. First nuclear submarine sailed in 1955.

The first aircraft carriers found their service in 1914 in the Japanese navy. Aircraft carriers were used extensively during WW2.

Independent Fact Check rates Obama's defense of his cuts to the military budget as MOSTLY FALSE and MISLEADING for his attempt to present aircraft carriers and submarines as relatively new military tools, which are changing the 21st century military priorities.


 

What to talk about during the debates

This is the last debate between Romney and Obama, and it may well determine the winner of the elections. I hope that governor Romney came prepared, and here are a few very late suggestions on the issues he should raise.

1. American ambassador to Libya was dragged naked through the streets of Bengazi. It's now apparent that he did not get enough security to protect him from the Al Qaeda terrorist groups. President Obama needs to explain who in his administration is responsible for this failure to protect our ambassador. Who decided that it was sufficient to have 5 Libyan guys armed with walkie-talkies to protect our consulate in the Al Qaeda infiltrated country?

2. During his discussion with Medvedev, president Obama promised him that he will have more flexibility to deal with strongman Putin after the American elections. President Obama clearly did not want to share his agenda with America people. Why is that?

3. President Obama's national security team publicly proclaimed that Moslem Brotherhood, a terrorist Islamist group is a "mostly secular group". It's apparent that this mistaken view is one of the reasons why Obama administration backed the Moslem Brotherhood starting with 2009 speech in Cairo. Will president Obama make sure that if elected, President Obama will surround himself with more competent advisers?

4. President Obama greatly increased US involvement in the Afghan war and thousands of American troops were killed. Yet, there is no indication that there was any improvement in the situation in Afghanistan. Does Obama take personal responsibility for his failure to win in Afghanistan?

5. It's been widely reported that the day after the murder of ambassador to Libya, president Obama left Washington DC, without meeting with the security team and travelled to Las Vegas to meet his supporters. Was it necessary for president Obama to do it?

A potpourri of stories, quotes and jokes

Jim Geraghty at The Campaign Spot reported:

Obama had always had a high estimation of his ability to cast and run his operation. When David Plouffe, his campaign manager, first interviewed for a job with him in 2006, the senator gave him a warning: “I think I could probably do every job on the campaign better than the people I’ll hire to do it,” he said. “It’s hard to give up control when that’s all I’ve known.” Obama said nearly the same thing to Patrick Gaspard, whom he hired to be the campaign’s political director. “I think I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” Obama told him. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.”
 

Barack Obama, November 21, 2007:

“Well, I truly believe that the day I’m inaugurated, not only does the country look at itself differently but the world looks at America differently. If I’m reaching out to the Muslim world they understand that I’ve lived in a Muslim country and I may be a Christian but I also understand their point of view… My sister is half Indonesian, I traveled there all the way through my college years and so I’m intimately concerned with what happens in these countries and the cultures and the perspectives these folks have. And those are powerful tools for us to be able to reach out to the world and when you combine that with my work on the Senate Forum Relations Committee on everything from nuclear proliferation to issues of genocide then I think that the world will have confidence that I am listening to them and that our future and our security is tied up with our ability to work with other countries in the world. That will ultimately make us safer, and that’s something that [the Bush] administration has failed to understand.”

Barack Obama, July 25, 2008:

"But Afghanistan is a war that we have to win. We do not have an option. We can't have a situation in which al Qaeda and the Taliban have created safe havens, that are potentially disruptive not only in the region but end up being the focal points around which terrorist attacks are planned, that could affect Paris or New York.

So we don't have a choice. We've got to finish the job. And that involves not just the military, it also involves economic development."

NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, October 23, 2008:

We’re beginning to get a sense of how Barack Obama’s political success could change global perceptions of the United States, redefining the American “brand” to be less about Guantánamo and more about equality. This change in perceptions would help rebuild American political capital in the way that the Marshall Plan did in the 1950s or that John Kennedy’s presidency did in the early 1960s.

Barack Obama, 2006:

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.

Barack Obama, 2009:

"Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

Of course, insufferable Andrew Sullivan, 2007:

What does he [Obama] offer? First and foremost: his face. Think of it as the most effective potential re-branding of the United States since Reagan. Such a re-branding is not trivial—it’s central to an effective war strategy. The war on Islamist terror, after all, is two-pronged: a function of both hard power and soft power. We have seen the potential of hard power in removing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. We have also seen its inherent weaknesses in Iraq, and its profound limitations in winning a long war against radical Islam. The next president has to create a sophisticated and supple blend of soft and hard power to isolate the enemy, to fight where necessary, but also to create an ideological template that works to the West’s advantage over the long haul. There is simply no other candidate with the potential of Obama to do this. Which is where his face comes in.

Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm [dumb ass wanted to say that the soft power went up exponentially. A logarithm is the inverse function of exponent, so Kristoff literally said that Obama would have very little effect. Of course, math is not for journalists]. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can....

Obama, by virtue of generation and accident, bridges this deepening divide. He was brought up in a nonreligious home and converted to Christianity as an adult. But—critically—he is not born-again. His faith—at once real and measured, hot and cool—lives at the center of the American religious experience.

Evan Thomas, Newsweek, 2009:

"I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God."

Last but not least - and probably the best yet: "Is Obama an enlightened being?" from the San Francisco Chronicle:

No, it's not merely his youthful vigor, or handsomeness, or even inspiring rhetoric. It is not fresh ideas or cool charisma or the fact that a black president will be historic and revolutionary in about a thousand different ways. It is something more.

Here's where it gets gooey. Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.

Obama, one of the most arrogant man of his time, willing and eager to use the full power of the state for his expansive purposes was elected president of the United States. As Obama himself said during his inauguration:

...I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth..

And as the old saying goes - the mountain gave birth to a mouse. Now, to be fair, the sick still get healthcare, but good jobs are gone, the oceans are uncharged, and the war against Islamism is getting hotter and hotter.

Matthew 7:16 You shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

 After 4 years of bowing to dictators and apologizing for American sins, Obama was not able to improve American image abroad. In fact, the moslems are even less impressed by Obama than they were by Bush.


AP reports the obvious:

"WASHINGTON - Images of angry mobs in Arab cities burning American flags and attacking U.S. diplomatic posts suggest the Muslim world is no less enraged at the United States than when President George W. Bush had to duck shoes hurled at him in Baghdad."

People love Obama in Afghanistan

A Taliban attack on a coalition base in Afghanistan killed two U.S. soldiers and destroyed six Harrier jets, according to reports Sunday.

Insider Attacks Rise; U.S. Halts Training

In recent years, there has been a rise in attacks by Afghan forces against their coalition counterparts. The attacks, which the military calls “green-on-blue” or “insider” assaults, have heightened worries about how the coalition troops, who are training members of the Afghan Army and the police, can protect themselves while working at close quarters with Afghan forces.
 

In one of a series of recent steps, the military decreed that American and NATO service members should always carry a loaded magazine in their weapons, to save precious moments if attacked by Afghan forces. Another initiative, now a priority, is a program named “Guardian Angel” that calls for one or two soldiers to monitor the Afghans during every mission or meeting, officials say.

The “angels,” whose identities are not disclosed to the Afghans, must be prepared to fire on anyone who tries to kill a coalition service member.

 Obama loses Egypt to Islamists:

President Barack Obama says the U.S. would not consider Egypt an ally, “but we don’t consider them an enemy.” Obama said in an interview with the Spanish-language network Telemundo that Egypt is a “new government that is trying to find its way.” And he warned that if the Egyptian government takes actions showing “they’re not taking responsibility,” then it would “be a real big problem.”

Pakistan, exponentially warming up to president Obama:

The imprisoned Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA find Osama bin Laden's compound, Dr. Shakil Afridi, managed to make a phone call to Fox News' Dominic Di-Natale and describe the brutal torture he says he's been subject to since being arrested for treason last year.

 

He described how during his own interrogation, in which he was tortured with cigarette burns and electric shocks, ISI officers attacked him for assisting the U.S...

He was blindfolded for eight months and handcuffed with his hands behind his back for 12 months, he says. His treatment has left a debilitating effect on his eyesight and limbs...

“I tried to argue that America was Pakistan’s biggest supporter – billions and billions of dollars in aid, social and military assistance -- but all they said was, ‘These are our worst enemies. You helped our enemies.’” ... Afridi told Fox News he helped the CIA out of love for the U.S., and swore that he would help America again despite suffering crippling torture and psychological abuse during the 12 months he was held by Pakistan’s spy agency.
 

I am not going to talk about the state of the US economy, everyone knows about high unemployment, slow GDP growth, exponential growth of the federal debt - and anticipated return of recession in 2013, which is at this point is pretty  much unavoidable. But here is a story to make you smile.


Russian-American joke

A clerk from the Enviromental Protection Agency comes to a farm and tells the old farmer:

”I need to inspect your farm and make sure that you are not violating the laws protecting the wetland." "Okay," says the farmer, "but don't go in that field over there".

The man from the EPA says, “Sir, I have the full authority of the Federal Government. See this card? This card means I am allowed to go WHEREVER I WISH on any agricultural land in the country. No questions asked. Have I made myself clear? Do you understand?”

The farmer nods politely and goes about his chores. Soon after, he hears loud screams and sees the man from the EPA running for his life in the field, followed by an angry bull.

The EPA man sees the farmer and screams for help. The farmer throws down his tools, runs to the fence and yells at the top of his lungs, ”Your card! Show him your f@cking card!”

I am still waiting for the moment when Obama will show his "f@cking card" to the Islamists, the economy, the European Union, the Chinese, the Russians and the oceans - and make them all behave well. 
 

Behold the monkey

I was looking through this article, and it suddenly occurred to me - it reminds me of someone, someone very famous. Here is the excerpt from the article...


Spanish woman who disfigured painting of Christ lawyers up, wants money

Spanish woman who made headlines worldwide for her botched attempt to restore a 20th-century painting of Jesus Christ says she has hired lawyers and wants royalties from the fees church owners are charging visitors...The local artist, 80-year-old Cecilia Gimenez, initially defended her volunteer work saying she was restoring the decaying "Ecce Homo" ("Behold the Man") portrait because no one else would. The before and after pictures went viral across the globe and tourists began arriving in droves -- but very few were leaving donations according to Ars Technica. The sanctuary's owners, the Santi Spiritus Hospital Foundation, reportedly made $2,600 in four days from visitors wanting to see "Ecce Mono," or "Behold the Monkey" as it's now called, Ars Technica reported...

The story blew up on social networks and put the northern Spanish town of Borja and its population of about 30,000 at the center of an international joke. Gimenez said she suffered from anxiety attacks, according to El Correo, and sought privacy. With upcoming litigation though, she "apparently recovered from the anxiety she initially experienced and is now looking to get paid," as Gawker said.

Even before I finished reading the article, I realized that this is a perfect description of Obama handling of America. He thought it was decaying, he volunteered to help, and now he became an international joke. And yet, he is trying to get paid back - i.e. to be re-elected. If anything, this is the best illustration of conservative criticism of the Obama's policies. He took over America when she was in trouble, and completely screwed everything he touched - to the point it is no longer recognizable. "Behold the Monkey" indeed.

As if to underscore this point, the Obama administration decided to "improve" our national flag. The illustration below shows what happened to our national symbol under the Commander in Chief - from star spangled banner to Obama-centric propaganda tool now promoted by the Obama administration.

One easy piece about the mainstream media

I read an article today in yahoo.com and it made me giggle. I took a screen shot of the article in case yahoo decides to change it and pretend in never existed.

Romney Camp Breaks Precedent, Bars Press From Israel Fundraiser

JERUSALEM - In a precedent-breaking move, the Romney campaign said today it will bar reporters from attending a high-dollar fundraiser in Israel Monday morning.

The claim that Romney broke a precedent seems rather implausible - I intuitively knew this could not be true. Obama is known for being very secretive (and sleazy) about his fundraising - and this includes the fact that his team disabled all fraud protections in his credit card system of fundraising (both in 2008 and in 2012) - which in turn allowed untraceable contributions to his campaign.  I did a quick google search, and in 5 seconds found this article:

Obama holds DC fundraiser for re-election campaign

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/07/18/3712054/obama-holds-dc-fundraiser-for.html#storylink=cpy

      

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama is raising about $1.5 million at a Washington fundraiser to benefit his re-election campaign.

Obama met with 25 supporters at the upscale Mandarin Oriental Hotel on Wednesday, a day after several fundraisers in San Antonio and Austin, Texas. Tickets for the event started at $60,000 per person. The fundraiser was closed to reporters.

The Obama campaign says the proceeds will go to the Obama Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee of Obama's re-election campaign, the Democratic National Committee and several state Democratic parties.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/07/18/3712054/obama-holds-dc-fundraiser-for.html#storylink=cpy

Apparently, Romney was not breaking any precedent - Obama has barred reporters from his fundraiser only 10 days prior. The claim against Romney is obviously false - and it takes 5 seconds for anyone interested in the truth to refute the accusation.

While I was writing this, I suddenly remembered another funny thing - and I have a feeling that you probably don't remember it. During the Democrat primary fight of 2008, Huffington Post quoted Obama speaking at a fundraiser, and his now infamous talk about the American people who "get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment..." Here are some details which are less known about this quote. For starters, Fowler, the journalist who had access to the Obama's fundraiser, was initially very reluctant to report his words. According to the NYT:

"Ms. Fowler told me in an interview Sunday night that she was initially reluctant to write about what Mr. Obama had said because she actually supports him..."

"...she stewed for several days over whether to write about the comments about small-town voters. “There are no standards of journalism on the Internet,” she said. “I’m always second-guessing myself. Is this the right thing to do? Am I being fair?”
She said she initially decided not to write about them. “I thought I wouldn’t put it out there, this really might damage his campaign,” she said. “I talked it over with my husband, and like many people, he didn’t see anything wrong with the remarks. He didn’t think it was newsworthy.”

Another interesting detail was that Huffington Post which employed Ms. Fowler was also reluctant to publish the quote from the Obama's fundraising because they understood the negative implications for his campaign. Huffington Post journalists were forced to call Arianna Huffington (who was at that time thousands of miles away in French Polynesia, staying on billionaire Obama backer David Geffen’s 454-foot yacht) and asked her permission to make the quote public. Ms.Huffington was also reluctant to publisize this information and according to her:

“Roy (Sekoff) and I were on the phone multiple times. I agreed with how he and Marc (Cooper) decided to handle it, placing Obama’s thoughts in context and avoiding sensationalism.”

The article appeared on Huffington Post 4 days after Obama's speech. The reaction to the publication was swift - the liberal supporters assaulted Ms.Fowler for reporting Obama's comments. For example, Joseph Palermo, a professor of history, and a Huffington Post author wrote an article entitled "Faux Obama supporter Maihill Fowler sets up smears on Obama", which predictably ended with a familiar accusation of that Fowler was a racist.

According to the NYT, multiple commenters on the hard-left wing website dailycos could not forgive Ms.Fowler:

"If we let her go, others will do it... We’ve got to show the ‘journalist’ that they can’t manufacture dissent. This isn’t about Obama, this could easily be a story about Iraq or Iran. This is the type of disingenuous reporting that we have to stop. We need to make an example of her.”

Ms. Fowler herself conceded that

"Obama campaign had never objected before to her having written about fund-raisers (though admittedly, nothing much of interest had happened). And the invitations said nothing about being closed to the press."

 Still, according to Ms.Fowler:

We had a fundamental misunderstanding of my priorities. Mine were as a reporter, not as a supporter. They [the Obama team] thought I would put the role of supporter first.”

Does not this quote pretty much describe the Obama's relationship with the mainstream media today - that he sees and demands the media to be his supporter first?

The NYT article about Obama's unfortunate choice of words inexplicably becomes an article about Ms.Fowles, and whether she made the right choice reporting to the public the truth. Do not forget that NYT is a newspaper written by the liberals for the liberals, and some level of sincerity among comrades is expected. For example, Marc Cooper has this to say about the Obama's fundraiser:

 “It was indeed a fund-raiser to which the press was not invited. Or if you wish, it was closed to press. Therefore it wasn’t on or off the record. Off the record is when journalists consensually agree to witness or hear something on the condition they not report it.”

Note, that the tempest in the teapot occurred during the Democratic primary, and the media was divided between the hard-left supporters of Obama and the hard-left supporters of Hillary Clinton. It's highly unlikely that either of them would have given any ground or leaked any damaging information when Obama was facing McCain.

More interestingly, this past story puts today's firestorm about Romney's closed fundraiser in an interesting light - apparently, Obama had journalists barred from his fundraisers since 2008 - and yet, this never was an issue for the media.

What's more, Ms.Fowler was hardly the only one who recorded Mr.Obama's clinger speech, apparently, "The place was jammed with others using video cams and cell phone cameras. " But only Ms.Fowler took the courage to publicize Obama's comments. Still, Ms.Fowler, a self-described reporter did everything in her power to minimize the effect of the article. According to the NYT:

The important quotes were buried deep in the narrative, almost as if they were couched to soften the blow. She also said she thought posting on Friday would mean fewer people would see it.

In the end, this had little effect on the 2008 elections, and Obama became the president. But he learned his lesson, and today, no one is allowed to bring the cell-phones to his fundraising events. Apparently, Obama is trying to protect the public from learning more about his promises to his rich supporters.  Evidently, no one could recall any presidential candidate who would put so strict restrictions on the reporting, but the media is not reporting about this truly unprecedented development.

And speaking of foreign fundraising - just a few weeks ago same Obama held multiple fundraisers in Switzerland, Sweden, France and China. Not a peep from the media.

I cannot avoid the conclusion that the media will try to hide anything damaging to the Obama regime. Note how little attention was paid to the Fast-n-Furious program or multiple scandals with the taxpayer dollars being sent to the Obama's friends and fundraisers. Do not miss the non-story about Obama's bundler and a major Democrat politician Jon Corzine, who presided over the disappearance of 1.2 billion dollars - and who continues to collect money for Obama. Of course, it's impossible to forget how NBC had to break a story about Fast and Furious - only 1.5 years after it was reported by other media outlets. What was the reason why NBC was forced to break its silence about the Obama's secret operation to arm Mexican drug lords with automatic weapons? A bi-partisan vote in Congress to hold Eric Holder in contempt due to his refusal to provide sufficient evidence to the House investigators.

On the other side, mainstream media outlet are making wild claims against the republicans or perceived right-wingers, and these accusations often have no basis in reality. For example, the claim that Romney's decision to bar journalist from one of his fundraisers is clearly false as this article demonstrated. In recent months, the NBC was caught editing Zimmerman's recording to make him sound like a racist, while ABC launched an obviously groundless accusation that the Colorado shooter was connected with the Tea Party. Media giants like yahoo, NBC and ABC have multiple people hired specifically to check the correctness of the facts they publish, so it is beyond doubt to me that such "errors" have to be done on purpose.

Lesson #1: If mainstream media makes an outrageous claim about a Republican, it's very probable that this claim is untrue. The reader is advised to check the facts and find out if they support the accusations.

The good news....

Strange priorities of the federal government
Amid the talks about the deteriorating infrastructure, school closings, laid off teachers, policemen and firefighters, the Obama administration finally found that magic bullet that would fix the economy. In addition to the bullet trains (bankrupt California is planning to spend 68 billion dollars on the railway from nowhere to nowhere), the US military are now annually overspending 2 billion dollars on fuel - due to their reliance on the so-called "green fuel". While the regular fuel cost is $4 a gallon (Obama promised that under his plan, the energy prices will skyrocket), the US navy are buying the so-called "bio-fuel" which costs $26 dollars per gallon. There is no information yet on which Obama bundlers and supporters are involved in the bio-fuel "business", but it's beyond doubt that the regime is building up another giant Solyndra, while at the same cutting our military. Nothing spells "priorities" better than another a scheme to syphon military money into another Chicago-style program.

War against terrorism (Obama edition)
One year ago, the Obama administration launched the Global Counterterrorism forum. Here is what the State Department has to say about it:

...U.S. is committed to strengthening the global counterterrorism (CT) architecture in a manner that complements and reinforces the CT work of existing multilateral bodies. The Administration’s signature initiative in this area is the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF), which is intended to ensure the necessary international architecture is in place to address 21st century challenges.

The U.S. proposed the creation of the GCTF to address the evolving terrorist threat in a way that would bring enduring benefits by helping front line countries and affected regions acquire the means to deal with threats they face. It is based on a recognition that the U.S. alone cannot eliminate every terrorist or terrorist organization. Rather, the international community must come together to assist countries as they work to confront the terrorist threat.

So, who did president Obama invite his anti-terror forum? According to the State Department:

The 30 founding members of the GCTF are: Algeria, Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, Egypt, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Morocco, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

One pleasant (and unexpected surprise) is that president Obama did not follow the example of UN - so Iran, Syria and Sudan are not invited to join his anti-terror forum. On the negative side, it's rather disconcerting that while Obama decided to invite Egypt (currently run by the terrorist group "Moslem Brotherhood"), Turkey (controlled by Islamists and supportive of Hamas), Saudi Arabia (infamous for supporting multiple jihadist movements) and Pakistan (actively involved in terrorism against India, as well as Afghanistan), he forgot about the state of Israel - a country which is on the front-lines of the war against the terrorists. Apparently, Obama needed to make a choice - either to invite terror-supporting nations like Pakistan - or the terror-fighting state of Israel. And apparently, it was not even close, the Jews were kept in the cold, and terrorists were kindly invited in. Another disturbing fact is that both the U.S. undersecretary for civilian security, democracy and human rights Maria Otero or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton refused to include Israel in the list of the victims of terrorism  during the opening ceremony in Madrid this year.

What is Obama expecting to achieve by abandoning US ally and playing to US enemies? Let's ignore for a minute the fact that Obama was the disciple of the rev.Wright school of anti-semitism and anti-white bigotry. Even if Obama's intentions were patriotic, his attempt to get sympathy from hateful moslem regimes by betraying Israel will be futile. The best analysis of this situation was done by D’Artagnan, when Cardinal de Richelieu offered him to join the his Guards:

...all my friends are in the king’s Musketeers and Guards, and that by an inconceivable fatality my enemies are in the service of your Eminence; I should, therefore, be ill received here and ill regarded there if I accepted what Monseigneur offers me.

In fact, this is exactly what is already happening now. The government of Pakistan is severely punishing its citizen who helped US to find and assassinate Osama ben Laden, while at the same time it delivered the American super-secret helicopter with China. The newly elected president of Egypt is publicly demanding that US frees the convicted terrorist with American blood on his hands. Turkey is extending its support to Hamas while threatening Israel with war. Indeed, the more Obama grovels to the terrorists and their supporters, the more he isolates Israel - the more brazen the Islamists will become. This is a universal truth, which is probably not known to Barack Obama. Of course, there is a possibility that he simply does not care.

What to expect from the "Arab Spring"
I did not know whether to laugh or cry when I was watching this video.  According to Jonathan Tobin, an Egyptian show imitating Allen Funt's "Candid Camera", invited three Egyptian celebrities for an interview with a German TV program - and suddenly announced to them that the show was actually produced by the Israelis. The reaction of Egyptian "intellectuals" was rather peculiar:

All three of the prominent victims of this stunt were outraged at the thought of even being in the same room with people they presumed to be Jews, let alone appearing on an Israeli program. Two grew violent, with one burly male even assaulting the young female interviewer.

After the hosts are informed that it was a joke, and they are being interviewed by their fellow Egyptians, both the guests and hosts became friendly again. The hosts even praised the art celebrities for being "patriotic" - i.e. expressing hatred for the Jews and the State of Israel.

It's undeniable that this short video demonstrates what is likely to occur in Egypt when the Moslem Brotherhood completes its take-over. It's also obvious that any attempts to achieve peace by pressuring Israel for unilateral withdrawals will not lead to progress. The problems in the Moslem communities are so deep that tiny Israel cannot solve them - even US is powerless. Maybe it's time for Obama to return his Nobel Peace Prize.

Obama's memoirs - a treasure trove

Some of my friends are liberals. And when we get together, we drink, joke and argue about politics. One thing that always amazes them is the fact that I actually read Obama's "Dreams from my father". What surprises me is that not only they did not read it - but that apparently no one has read it, at least if you judge by the fact that so few people discuss Obama's policies in liu of what he wrote about himself. And the most amazing thing is that even Obama's opponents are so shy of mentioning the racist/crazy stuff that our first affirmative action president proudly expressed in his books. And again, they probably don't quote his books because they haven't read them. Honestly though I don't blame them - it's a tedious book written by a narcissistic racist obsessed with his feelings and it's very loosely based on facts. But nevertheless, it's a pretty revealing book - and one day I believe Americans will be astounded when it is revealed what kind of man they elected as their president.

But let's not jump ahead of ourselves. For a few weeks, American people were subjected to reports about Romney's alleged bulling of a homosexual. Interestingly enough, even the family of the gay kid disputed the original article, and some witnesses apparently were misquoted by Washington Post. Even yahoo, the left-leaning media outlet noticed that the story stinked to high heavens. Last but not least, this episode allegedly happened in 1965, nearly 50 years ago.

So, while we are reminiscing about the past, I think it is only appropriate to look at Obama, and see what were the "funny" things he did when he was young - say, when he was a university student at the Occidental college. And since no one in the media is ready to do this, I guess the work is being outsourced to the Hyphenated-American.

For now, I will ignore all the racist ideas that Obama so proudly shared in his memoirs, and instead concentrate on one episode which an attentive reader (Nabokov's favourite term) would find rather revealing of comrade Obama. This one story that I picked for this post is told by Obama's close friend and roommate Reggie, and he is telling it to a girl named Regina. Here it goes...

"Let me tell you, Regina, Obama and me go way back. Should have seen our parties last year, back at the dorms. Man, you remember the time we stayed up the whole weekend? Forty hours, no sleep. Started Saturday morning and didn't stop till Monday..."

"I am telling you, Regina, it was wild. When the maids show up Monday morning, we were all still sitting in the hallway, looking like zombies. Bottles everywhere. Cigarette butts. Newspapers. That spot where Jimmy threw up..." Reggie turned to me and started to laugh, spilling more beer on the rug. "You remember, don't you man? Shit was so bad, those little old Mexican ladies started to cry. 'Dios Mio,' one of 'em says, and the other one starts patting her on the back. Oh shit, we were crazy..."

Regina, the semi-fictional character in the Obama's memoirs is upset at Obama and his friend and tells them both the obvious truth...

"You think that's funny?" she said to me. Her voice was shaking, barely a whisper. "Is that what's real to you, Barack - making a mess for somebody to clean up? That could be my grandmother, you know. She had to clean up behind people for most of her life. I'll bet the people she worked for thought it was funny too".

It later became known, that Regina, a Black consciousness that led Obama to light, was apparently white. The good news is that rev.Wright, the mister "White Man's Greed Keeps the World in Need" (that's too a quote from Obama's memoirs - back from the days when Obama was proud to be a friends of a socialist bigot) is still real and very much black - and upset about them evil Jews who are leading his favourite pupil comrade Obama astray.

So, there is your "president", a privileged man who messes things up, and then giggles at the poor women who are forced to clean up after him. And apparently, according to the memoirs, this was because of his "perceived injuries" from the evil white people - the injuries so deep, that he was trying to escape "the white authority" by discarding morality, honesty, hard work and diligence as a "white thing". Mind you, this crazy train of thought is claimed by Obama, a man raised by a family of privileged white people. According to the memoirs, Obama is later convinced by the fictional black girl Regina (as well as some unnamed blacks men) that being an honest decent human being is not necessarily a trap set by the evil white people - but this dramatic discovery does not come easy to our genius-in-charge. Here is the appropriate passage:

I had stopped listening at a certain point, I now realized, so I wrapped up I had been in my own perceived injuries, so eager was I to escape the imagined traps that white authority had set for me. To that white world, I had been willing to cede the values of my childhood, as if those values were somehow irreversible soiled by the endless falsehoods that white spoke about black.

Except now I was hearing the same thing from black people I respected, people with more excuses for bitterness than I might ever claim for myself. Who told you that being honest was a white thing? they asked me. Who sold you this bill of goods, that your situation exempted you from being thoughtful or diligent or kind, or that morality had a color?

All this craziness is in the autobiography of a "bright" young man - a man who was supposed to bring Hope, and Change, and Reconciliation to our nation. I wouldn't be surprised if it took decades for Michele Obama to convince her husband that washing one's hands after using the bathroom was not a white man's conspiracy to destroy black identity. Or maybe, he does thinks it is a white conspiracy - we will never know - unless the media asks him at this next press-conference.
P.S. The episode describing a drunk Obama and his friends messing up the room in the dormitory, as well as his discovery that honesty, integrity and decency are not necessarily the evil white man's inventions are on pages 109-110 of "Dreams from my father".

The opiate for the masses

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower.

Karl Marx

You fear the powerful eye of genius, that is why you encourage ignorance. This opium you feed your people, so that, drugged, they do not feel their hurts, inflicted by you. And that is why where you reign no establishments are to be found giving great men to the homeland; the rewards due knowledge are unknown here, and as there is neither honor nor profit in being wise, nobody seeks after wisdom.

Marquis de Sade

Their so-called religion acts merely as an opiate: irritating, numbing, calming their pain out of weakness.

Novalis


Religion is opium for the people. Religion is a sort of spiritual booze, in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demand for a life more or less worthy of man.

Vladimir Lenin


And now for something closer to today's American politics, a recent article from the New York Times:

WHO is happier about life — liberals or conservatives?... Scholars on both the left and right have studied this question extensively, and have reached a consensus that it is conservatives who possess the happiness edge. Many data sets show this. For example, the Pew Research Center in 2006 reported that conservative Republicans were 68 percent more likely than liberal Democrats to say they were “very happy” about their lives. This pattern has persisted for decades.

The article then goes into a long explanation of why conservatives are happier than liberals - but I propose a different point of view. Maybe the cause-n-effect equation is reversed. How about this hypothesis - unhappy people need the opium to dull their pain - and they turn to liberalism as a result.
Re-read the quotes I provided above, and substitute the word "religion" for "liberalism", and you will see an alternative explanation, an explanation which rings true to many.

 Everyone knows the stories of the children of rich people, who without any talents or skills turn to political activism. This happens so often, that the people invented the terms to diagnose this condition: "limousine liberals", "champagne liberals" and "trust-fund liberals". Also, one should not forget the second (and much more numerous class) of liberals - the so-called "victims" of perceived "racism", "sexism", "lookism", "agism" and all other types of discrimination.

In truth, it's undeniable that liberalism often acts as an opiate to many people, a meaning to otherwise useless creatures like Ted Kennedy, and an excuse for millions of failed human beings in the ghettos and projects. If we want our society to progress, we need to rid ourselves of the liberal illusions that cloud our minds. This is the only way to revive our nation.


P.S. In my post the term "liberalism" is used exclusively to describe a bizarre American left-wing ideology also known as "progressivism". There is no doubt that true liberalism, the ideology that was birthed in Britain by Adam Smith, Hume and others has very little in common with American "liberalism". In fact, I consider myself a classical European liberal - following the footsteps of  Adam Smith, Frederich Hayek and Milton Friedman.

Obamacare: The groundhog day

I've recently re-read an old novel by the very popular Russian science-fiction writers, the Strugatsky brothers. The name of the novel is "The details of Nikita Vorontsov's life". It's a story of a man, who keeps reliving his life over and over and over. You may ask - how is this different from the "Groundhog Day"? Well, for starters, "The details..." was published in 1984, while the "Groundhog day" was shown to the public in 1993. Secondly, Nikita Vorontsov has to relive his life from the age of 14 to 54. Unlike Phil Connors, who was busy taking piano lessons, eating dinners and seducing women, Vorontsov spent 40 years in the USSR - from the year of Big Terror of 1937, through the Great Patriotic War with Germany, another bout of Stalin's horrors after the war, the rule of Khrushev and Brezhnev. One can easily guess that Connors had a somewhat more comfortable, although shorter life. But more importantly, the Russian novel was written by the Russian authors - and that resulted in one important difference - the complete absence of American optimism.

I remember long time ago, maybe in 1989 or whereabouts, I was reading a review of an American movie in a Russian newspaper. I will try to quote the relevant portion of the article him my memory as closely as I can - but mind you, it was many years ago. It went something like this: "The main characters find themselves in a situation with no way-out. But it's an American movie, so a "situation with no way-out", simply means the main hero needs to work hard to find the way-out - while in Russia, "no way-out" means there is no way-out, and there is no point in looking for one."

The novel offers no happy ending to Nikita Vorontsov - he is destined to repeat his life over and over again, and there is no way-out for him. He is permanently stuck in the horrors of the communist regime for all eternity - and he has to relive the dread of knowing about the coming war, as well as the future deaths of his friends and close relatives. There are, of course, what you would call "romantic episodes" - which actually start rather early - a 14 year old boy with all the knowledge and experience of an adult is bound to wreak havoc in high-school, but it's not a happy story.

There was one episode in the book that made a particular impression on me. Nikita's high-school friend recounts that they were routinely bullied by a group of "youths", who would take they money and beat them up for sheer fun. This was going on for about 2 or 3 years. One day the "youths" meet them on the way from school - and suddenly Nikita Vorontsov (an adult who relived his life for thousands of times, and who is now trapped in a 14 year old boy), instead of escaping, turns around and punches the group leader right in the nose. The "youths" are startled, and Nikita kicks another youth in the groin, grabs the third one by the hair and hits his head over the knee. The attackers finally regained their composure and beat him up to a bloody pulp - but this was the day when everything changed. From that day on, Nikita would try to ambush the "youths" when they were alone and beat them up. And this time it was different - Nikita was not fighting as a boy, his goal was not to insult them with his punches or show his superiority. Instead, he was "working on them" - inflicting as much physical pain as humanely possible. He caught the group leader in the lavatory, and was beating him up the entire lunch break - after the boy fell on the floor he continued kicking him with his feet, punching him in the face - the whole nine yards. Even the kids much older than Nikita were too horrified to try to stop him. Nikita's friend said that "such an ice-cold cruelty I have only seen later in the gangster movies - no-where else".

And this brings me to Obamacare and the Supreme Court deliberations. For the last half a century (if not even longer), the liberal judges treated our Constitution as toilet paper. They made decisions according to their own personal preferences with zero regard for people's opinion, precedence or the Constitution. But today, the situation has changed, and at least 4 of 9 judges care for the Constitution, and one judge is a liberal Republican - which is a far cry from a conservative, but still, better than the liberal alternative. The Court is supposed to announce its decision on Obamacare in the next few days, and the liberals are whining about the need for "judicial restraint", to be "moderate", to "follow the binding precedents" and the like. Patricia Williams, a law professor at Columbia University, described it thus:

"In the face of seven decades of precedent, the Supreme Court’s grant of certiori to six cases attacking the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act is an astonishing display of judicial activism. The decision to do so seems alarmingly consistent with the extremist philosophy of Clarence Thomas, who flatly does not believe in stare decisis. That the federal government’s power to regulate commerce is even being questioned is virtually inexplicable as a legal matter: the law deals with the $2.7 trillion health insurance industry, in a country in which 62 percent of all bankruptcies are occasioned by medical debt."

It goes without saying that the statistics on connection between bankruptcies and medical debt is utterly bogus - but that is a small peanuts, and I don't expect that Williams, who would be flipping burgers had she not benefited from racial preference policies our of colleges, to know the details. But most importantly - she never attempts to explain how can a person doing nothing be legally described as engaged in the "interstate commerce". As is customary, the left wants the Obamacare to be declared constitutional, and it does not matter what the logic, facts or the Constitution says.

Barack Obama, the self-proclaimed "legal scholar", and arguably the dumbest president in the US after-war history publicly announced that "

Ultimately I am confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.

All in all, this is the good old rehashing of the Brezhnev's principle - "What's mine is mine, what's yours is negotiable" - and the precedents be damned.

When I am reading the histrionics of the liberal class, my first instinct is that it won't be enough for the Supreme Court to declare the entire Obamacare unconstitutional. What I want is a hard blow, an ice-cold cruelty to make the American left understand their place. A simple 5-4 decision, based on a long and reasonable explanation why the "individual mandate" cannot be possibly considered to be part of the federal powers to regulate the "Interstate Commerce" is not sufficient. I believe the smack down of the Obamacare must be short and to the point, written in the language that the liberal can understand. Here is something that I think would send a message to the liberal class:

The right not to buy a medical insurance is a fundamental human right due to the penumbras which result from the emanations radiated by words of the 14th Amendment's Due Process Clause as well as the federal enumerated powers listed in the United States Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3) which are the Constitutional limitations on the federal powers. It is the decision of this court that the individual mandate is unconstitutional and is thus declared null and void. The pro-ACA side acknowledged that the "individual mandate" is inseparable from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), and this Court has no choice but to declare ACA to be in violation of the Constitution and thus null and void.

If liberals thought that penumbras and emanations were a sufficient reason to declare abortions a Constitutionally protected right, if this sloppy legal reasoning is considered to be the binding legal precedent, then by God, conservatives must use the same argument to declare Obamacare unconstitutional. Obama is known for using violent rhetoric during his presidency. Here are just a few examples of his fascistic rhetoric:

“If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard.”
“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”
“I want you to argue with them and get in their faces.”
“We’re gonna punish our enemies.”
“Our job is, keep our boot on [their] neck.”


Well, it's time for conservatives to get in the faces of their enemies and punch back twice as hard. That's the way of the world. The only way we can make liberal elites to be more "empathatic" for conservative causes is to make them live with their own sloppy arguments.

Ignorance is strength - 2012 edition

It seems that ignorance is a necessary condition to become a liberal activist. It's simply astounding how little some folks know about the government spending. A few days ago, I left a comment on a liberal site yahoo - and got a reply which left me speechless. In my post I pointed out two obvious things:

1. That the government (and American government is no exception) is very inefficient.
2. That our debt and deficit are mostly caused by an exponential growth of spending on the liberal holy trinity - Welfare, Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security.

The response from one of the liberals (code name WilliamM) was rather instructive. I will ignore the part where he claimed that the government run medical care would guarantee that every American gets the exact same treatment (an argument laughable on its face), and that the medical decisions would be strictly between the doctor and the patient (as if the government has unlimited resources). It's rather apparent that the liberal activist had no idea how the economy works. But what made me laugh out loud was his apparent ignorance of the federal budget (which was coupled with a profound arrogance and certainty that he was right). Here is what he wrote:

Social security, welfare and medicare/medicaid are not the biggest portion of the federal budget. The biggest expenditure is the Pentagon. About 150 billion dollars is spent supporting welfare programs like the ones listed above. Annually, the Pentagon receives 700 billion dollars, with 300 billion set aside specifically for war.

In reality, the numbers that the activist quoted are not even close. Here is the truth. I am referring to the 2011 budget. In order to put things in perspective, I included also the numbers for the entire US government, federal, state and local - and I did it so that people had some feeling of how much money is spent by the government.

Total Military spending: $878.5 billion.
Federal spending on health care: $858 billion.
Federal, state and local spending on health care: $1,073 billion
Federal spending on pensions: $776 billion. The Social Security portion of this is: $730 billion.
Federal, state and local spending on pensions: $978 billion.
Federal spending on welfare: 473 billion
Federal, state and local spending on welfare: $745 billion.
Last but not least - Federal, state and local spending on education: $876 billion.

The total federal spending on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and welfare is: $2,022 billion dollars.
Total federal, state and local spending on pensions, health care, welfare and education is:  $2,600 billion dollars.

In case you are wondering if I covered the entire government spending, I must ad there are still other items which I left unmentiond:
Protection (federal, state and local): $320 billion dollars,

Transportation (federal, state and local): $277 billion dollars
General government (federal, state and local): $110 billion dollars
"Other spending" (federal, state and local): $460 billion dollars


I believe the number of Americans who believe in liberal orthodoxy would decrease significantly if two things happen:
1. People start ignoring the the myths above government spending and instead find out the actual data.
2. People understand the Law of Supply and Demand.

One liberal article at a time, 03-19-2012

Have you guys heard about Paul Krugman? He is a left-wing "economist, worked as a consultant for Enron, got a Nobel award, and haven't heard about the Law of Supply and Demand. Yap, that Paul Krugman, the most dishonest columnist for the the New York Slimes, and that says a lot about him. The last time I've heard about him, he was into burning the effigies of different political leaders (or hanging them). In short, Paul Krugman is known as a person of moderate honesty and there are internet sites that delight in exposing his lies. He is a small target for Hyphenated-American, but this does not mean I can't have fun at his expense.

A few days ago, Mitt Romney had the audacity to give the following advice to a student about his university education: "Don’t just go to one that has the highest price. Go to one that has a little lower price where you can get a good education. And hopefully you’ll find that. And don’t expect the government to forgive the debt that you take on." Paul Krugman was so outraged by this apparently insensitive remark, that he wrote the whole column wailing and moaning about evil republicans who want to destroy American education.

"Ignorance is strength", Paul Krugman
The above remark by Romney made Krugman quite furious, and this article is his answer, his "J'accuse".
Apparently, Republican advice to a student to choose the college based on its quality and not the price (i.e., instead of choosing the most expensive university, he should choose the one with better education) drove Krugman into paroxysms of fury. Apparently, this is a bad advice - even though it's not apparent how anyone find wrong with it. Who in his mind would object to this?! Of course, a cheaper and better university is preferential to a more expensive and worse one. Here is how Krugman explains his view that more expensive and worse should be preferred (indeed, according to the Enron consultant, it's "callous and destructive" to think otherwise):

"For the past couple of generations, choosing a less expensive school has generally meant going to a public university rather than a private university."

I kid you not - this is the sole reasoning he is giving for calling Romney advice to choose cheaper and better colleges "callous and destructive". Apparently, public universities are getting more expensive (same is the case for private colleges, and government K-12, btw) - so somehow it's "callous and destructive" for people to choose cheaper and better colleges.

To be Continued Tomorrow.

One liberal article at a time, 03-18-2012

Sometimes I amuse myself by reading articles written by liberals. It's sheer fun to watch them start with a wrong premise, apply faulty logic and then arrive with an obviously mistaken conclusion - indeed so mistaken, that a  5 year old girl could immediately detect it if she were not busy playing with dolls. I believe it's my responsibility as an American citizen and a patriot to share this fun with the rest of the reading public. And thus, I created a new topic: "One liberal article at a time". I will try to publish a take down of one liberal article per day. There it goes, March 18, 2012.

"Economic pie grows, but workers' slice shrinks", Robert Reich
The content of this article is rather simple. Apparently, the US economy is growing. And yet, the working men and women are not doing any better. According to Reich, "most of the gains are distributed narrowly in the form of higher profits to owners and fat compensation packages to the "talent." That obviously cannot be good, because "If the trend continues, inequality will become ever more extreme." And if we don't get this inequality under control, then the economy will "face chronically insufficient demand for what the economy can now produce" and  our economy will collapse due to lack of "consumer demand". As a typical leftie, Reich believes there is only one true issue: "the real challenge ahead is to distribute those gains more widely".

What does he propose? His cure for inequality and perceived lack of demand is something that could have been written by Lenin in 1904:

...higher taxes on the rich, that go into wage subsidies for lower-income workers, combined with job sharing.
...better schools (from early childhood through young adulthood, followed by systems of lifelong learning) so everyone has a fair shot at a larger share of the gains.
...more abundant public goods - cleaner air and water, better parks and recreation, improved public health and better public transit.

Reality Check
It's best to start with looking at the actual numbers - and I will use the exact same base line year as Reich. In 2007, US nominal GDP was $13,580 billion. In 2011, it grew to $15,320 billion - an increase of $1,740 billion. On the other side, total government spending (federal, state and local) in 2007 was $4,923 billion. In 2011 it grew to $6,050 billion, an increase of $1,127 billion. This means that 65% of the nominal GDP growth from 2007 to 2011 was spent by the government.

If we re-do the calculation in real dollars, the result will be even more startling. The 2007 GDP in 2011 dollars was $14,666 billion, which makes the real GDP growth from 2007 to 2011 shrink to a paltry $656 billion. The same calculation for the growth of the government yields $733 billion in 2011 dollars. This means that 112% (!) of the GDP growth from 2007 to 2011 was spent by the federal, state and local government - or in other words, the increase in government spending was larger than the entire GDP growth!

 I think any attentive reader will be able to notice that these numbers prove conclusively that Robert's recipe for improving the lives on Americans was used with a vengeance during the last 4 years - and yet as Reich himself concedes, the working men saw nothing but misery. In short, we have already tried what Reich proposed - and it has already failed miserably.

This concludes my daily transmission.

The heart of stone

You would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh
Oscar Wilde

"This administration – I try not to pat myself too much on the back – but this administration has done more in terms of the security of the state of Israel than any previous administration. Whether it’s making sure that our intelligence cooperation is effective, to making sure that we’re able to construct something like an iron dome so that we don’t have missiles raining down on Tel Aviv, we have been consistent in insisting that we don’t compromise when it comes to Israel’s security.”  

"U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta urged Israel to get to the "damn table" in peace talks with the Palestinians, an unusually blunt comment that inserts him into the Middle East peace process. In remarks at a Brookings Institution conference, Panetta called on Israel to again start negotiations with the Palestinians. "Just get to the damn table. Just get to the table," Panetta said during the event in Washington. "The problem right now is we can't get them to the damn table to at least sit down and begin to discuss their differences." 

Leon Paneta, December 3, 2011.

Currently, PLO refuses to negotiate with Israel unless she forbids the Jews from building houses in the disputed territories. This makes Leon's demands to Israel all the more absurd - and damaging to Israel. All in all, he is now claiming that it is Israel that refuses to negotiate, and this issurely bad for Israel and is helpful for the PLO and Hamas. Is this what true friends do?

"Speaking Wednesday at a Jewish conference on anti-Semitism organized by the European Jewish Union (EJU,) Howard Gutman told participants he was apologizing in advance if his words are not to their liking...

A distinction should be made between traditional anti-Semitism, which should be condemned and Muslim hatred for Jews, which stems from the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, Gutman said. He also argued that an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty will significantly diminish Muslim anti-Semitism. The American envoy, a lawyer by training, is Jewish and played a major role in fundraising for the Democratic Party. He was appointed to the post by President Barack Obama. " Howard Gutman, US ambassador in Belgium, November 30th, 2011.

I assume the next thing we will hear is Obama's proclamation that we must make distinction between traditional Islamo-phobia, which should be condemned, and Jewish-Christian-Hindu hatred for Moslems, which stems from the ongoing conflict between the Moslem world and the rest of the planet. Obama needs to argue that the peace treaty between Islamic world and Israel, West and India will significantly diminish Jewish-Christian-Hindu Islamophobia. Oh, and last thing - if Moslems stop blowing themselves up, it would also help with the air-travel. BTW, do you feel a little bit Islamophobic, each time you need to go through the TSA? It's quite understandable, actually, according to the Obama administration. Ah, but I say this in jest - the Obama administration has no problems finding excuses for Anti-semitism - but Islamophobia is something it would never accept.

And now for something completely different

"Both parties came together to cut payroll taxes for the typical middle-class family by about $1,000, but that tax cut is set to expire at the end of this month. We can’t let that happen. We’re going to keep pushing Congress to make this happen. They shouldn’t go home for the holidays until they get this done."

 Barack Obama, December 3, 2011

President Barack Obama will be setting off later this month for a 17-day Christmas vacation in Hawaii with his family. The White House travel office said Obama has no public events scheduled for the trip, which is scheduled for Dec. 17 to Jan. 2.... The 17-day Christmas vacation follows Obama’s 11-day vacation to Martha’s Vineyard this summer. From Blaze

This takes the prize
I remember years ago reading Hayek's proposal for multiple currencies, and Thatcher's criticism of the EU currency. About 6 years ago, I've learned about the CIA's prediction of the imminent EU breakup in 2012. While CIA is not known for its predictive power, this intrigued me, and I started following the EU and I've learned about the euro-skeptics, the shenanigans with referendum (there is even a blog called EU Referendum) and the EU constitution  Lisbon Treaty. Of course, when famous Russian dissident, Vladimir Bukovsky compared EU with the CCCP back in 2006, I got even more interested. And most certainly, no story about EU would be complete without the issue of moslem immigration to EU. And now, we can see the European Union rapidly coming to an end - and no amount of American help can stop it. The project was doomed from the start - and what amazes me most is the fact that this was known to the EUs architects. I am curious if it is possible to file a civil lawsuit against those bustards.


"Euro doomed from start, says Jacques Delors"

The euro project was flawed from the start and the current generation of European leaders has failed to address its fundamental problems, Jacques Delors, the architect of the single currency, declares today....

Famous in Britain for his public clashes with Baroness Thatcher in the 1980s over closer European integration, Mr Delors says that he shares some of the concerns that were expressed by British politicians and economists about the euro before its creation.



When “Anglo-Saxons” said that a single central bank and currency without a single state would be inherently unstable, “they had a point”, he admits.

In summary - the European Union and the euro currency were launched by the left-wing bureaucracies and supported by the mainstream media in order to bring peace, democracy and prosperity to Europe. Today, both EU and euro are bankrupt and we are told that if euro is not saved, European continent and the entire world will be on the brink of economic destruction. Moreover, European people must immediately give up democracy and sovereignity to save the euro - there is simply no other way.

Amazingly, none of the EU optimists and promoters in the government and the media are in any danger of losing credibility. What's even more amazing is that most of the liberal ideas in the 20th century are faced with the same imminent threat of destruction as the EU. Walk down the memory lane and check out the liberal predictions about Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and welfare. All of those programs were supposed to solve our social and economic problems, cut the government spending (in the long run, of course), eliminate poverty and make poor people self-sufficient. Conservative predictions of the fiscal unsoundness of these programs (as well as the creation of a permanent class of people dependent on the government handouts) were brushed aside as mean-spirited. Today, our federal, state and local governments are on the brink of bankruptcy, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and welfare grew beyond the wildest dreams of the most ardent socialists - and yet, the American poor are apparently getting poorer and poorer. In case you are wondering, the total federal, state and local spending on Medicare+Medicaid+Social Security+Welfare is a staggering 2.6 trillion dollars in 2011 alone (and don't forget to add 900 billion dollars on education). And somehow, as the New York Times recently proclaimed: "Yet one old problem has not changed: the poor have rapidly gotten poorer." In summary, the US government is spending itself into oblivion trying to save the poor from poverty, and yet the poor get poorer. And apparently we cannot get rid of all those liberal programs, because this would destroy our country. The same programs that were supposed to bring the era of peace and prosperity to US are now threatening to bankrupt the nation - and we cannot get rid of them because that would cause the economic Armageddon. So let me ask again - was it a mistake to start these programs in the first place - just as it was a mistake for Europe to launch the euro? And why do the same people people who cheerleaded the euro and the Medicare-Medicaid-Social Security-Welfare sound so smug today?

As Oscar Wilde famously said: "You would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh". Indeed....




Barack Obama, November 30, 2011

Science - this is what people use to predict the future

Opinions differ. But if I have to express an opinion based on my education as an egineer, I would say that science is a method of analyzing the facts and coming up with a theory that explains them and allows to predict the future. No more, and no less. A theory or a suggestion is not a science - but a method which is to discover that theory and test it against existing and new facts is science. Albert Einstein is famous for proposing a "Special Theory of Relativity" - a theory that nicely described existing facts. What is less known is that Einstein worked very hard to develop a set of experiments that could test his theory. The great scientist refused to conclude that his ideas were correct until they were compared with the results of 4 rather complex experiments.

And this introduction brings us to Paul Krugman, probably the most talented and famous among the liberal economists.

The Comeback Continent, 2008, Paul Krugman

Today I’d like to talk about a much-derided contender making a surprising comeback, a comeback that calls into question much of the conventional wisdom of American politics. No, I’m not talking about a politician. I’m talking about an economy — specifically, the European economy, which many Americans assume is tired and spent but has lately been showing surprising vitality.

Why should Americans care about Europe’s economy? Well, for one thing, it’s big. The G.D.P. of the European Union is roughly comparable to that of the United States; the euro is almost as important a global currency as the dollar; and the governance of the world financial system is, for practical purposes, equally shared by the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve.


But there’s another thing: it’s important to get the facts about Europe’s economy right because the alleged woes of that economy play an important role in American political discourse, usually as an excuse for the insecurities and injustices of our own society.

In fact, however, tales of a moribund Europe are greatly exaggerated....


Since 2000, employment has actually grown a bit faster in Europe than in the United States — and since Europe has a lower rate of population growth, this has translated into a substantial rise in the percentage of working-age Europeans with jobs, even as America’s employment-population ratio has declined.

In particular, in the prime working years, from 25 to 54, the big gap between European and U.S. employment rates that existed a decade ago has been largely eliminated. If you think Europe is a place where lots of able-bodied adults just sit at home collecting welfare checks, think again.


I don’t want to exaggerate the good news. Europe continues to have many economic problems. But who doesn’t? The fact is that Europe’s economy looks a lot better now — both in absolute terms and compared with our economy — than it did a decade ago....

What’s behind Europe’s comeback? It’s a complicated story, probably involving a combination of deregulation (which has expanded job opportunities) and smart regulation. One of the keys to Europe’s broadband success is that unlike U.S. regulators, many European governments have promoted competition, preventing phone and cable companies from monopolizing broadband access.

What European countries definitely haven’t done is dismantle their strong social safety nets. Universal health care is a given. So are a variety of programs that support families in trouble, helping protect Europeans from the extreme poverty all too common in this country. All of this costs money — even though European countries spend far less on health care than we do — and European taxes are very high by U.S. standards.

In short, Europe continues to be a big-government sort of place. And that’s why it’s important to get the real story of the European economy out there.

According to the anti-government ideology that dominates much U.S. political discussion, low taxes and a weak social safety net are essential to prosperity. Try to make the lives of Americans even slightly more secure, we’re told, and the economy will shrivel up — the same way it supposedly has in Europe.

But the next time a politician tries to scare you with the European bogeyman, bear this in mind: Europe’s economy is actually doing O.K. these days, despite a level of taxing and spending beyond the wildest ambitions of American progressives.

Learning from Europe, 2010, Paul Krugman

As health care reform nears the finish line, there is much wailing and rending of garments among conservatives. And I’m not just talking about the tea partiers. Even calmer conservatives have been issuing dire warnings that Obamacare will turn America into a European-style social democracy. And everyone knows that Europe has lost all its economic dynamism.

Strange to say, however, what everyone knows isn’t true. Europe has its economic troubles; who doesn’t? But the story you hear all the time — of a stagnant economy in which high taxes and generous social benefits have undermined incentives, stalling growth and innovation — bears little resemblance to the surprisingly positive facts. The real lesson from Europe is actually the opposite of what conservatives claim: Europe is an economic success, and that success shows that social democracy works.


Actually, Europe’s economic success should be obvious even without statistics. For those Americans who have visited Paris: did it look poor and backward? What about Frankfurt or London? You should always bear in mind that when the question is which to believe — official economic statistics or your own lying eyes — the eyes have it.

In any case, the statistics confirm what the eyes see.

It’s true that the U.S. economy has grown faster than that of Europe for the past generation. Since 1980 — when our politics took a sharp turn to the right, while Europe’s didn’t — America’s real G.D.P. has grown, on average, 3 percent per year. Meanwhile, the E.U. 15 — the bloc of 15 countries that were members of the European Union before it was enlarged to include a number of former Communist nations — has grown only 2.2 percent a year. America rules!


Or maybe not. All this really says is that we’ve had faster population growth. Since 1980, per capita real G.D.P. — which is what matters for living standards — has risen at about the same rate in America and in the E.U. 15: 1.95 percent a year here; 1.83 percent there.


What about technology? In the late 1990s you could argue that the revolution in information technology was passing Europe by. But Europe has since caught up in many ways. Broadband, in particular, is just about as widespread in Europe as it is in the United States, and it’s much faster and cheaper.

And what about jobs? Here America arguably does better: European unemployment rates are usually substantially higher than the rate here, and the employed fraction of the population lower. But if your vision is of millions of prime-working-age adults sitting idle, living on the dole, think again. In 2008, 80 percent of adults aged 25 to 54 in the E.U. 15 were employed (and 83 percent in France). That’s about the same as in the United States. Europeans are less likely than we are to work when young or old, but is that entirely a bad thing?

And Europeans are quite productive, too: they work fewer hours, but output per hour in France and Germany is close to U.S. levels.

The point isn’t that Europe is utopia. Like the United States, it’s having trouble grappling with the current financial crisis. Like the United States, Europe’s big nations face serious long-run fiscal issues — and like some individual U.S. states, some European countries are teetering on the edge of fiscal crisis. (Sacramento is now the Athens of America — in a bad way.) But taking the longer view, the European economy works; it grows; it’s as dynamic, all in all, as our own.

So why do we get such a different picture from many pundits? Because according to the prevailing economic dogma in this country — and I’m talking here about many Democrats as well as essentially all Republicans — European-style social democracy should be an utter disaster. And people tend to see what they want to see.

After all, while reports of Europe’s economic demise are greatly exaggerated, reports of its high taxes and generous benefits aren’t. Taxes in major European nations range from 36 to 44 percent of G.D.P., compared with 28 in the United States. Universal health care is, well, universal. Social expenditure is vastly higher than it is here.

So if there were anything to the economic assumptions that dominate U.S. public discussion — above all, the belief that even modestly higher taxes on the rich and benefits for the less well off would drastically undermine incentives to work, invest and innovate — Europe would be the stagnant, decaying economy of legend. But it isn’t.

Europe is often held up as a cautionary tale, a demonstration that if you try to make the economy less brutal, to take better care of your fellow citizens when they’re down on their luck, you end up killing economic progress. But what European experience actually demonstrates is the opposite: social justice and progress can go hand in hand.

In the real world, the European paradise appeared to be built on sand. Apparently, Paul Krugman's theories are proven wrong - the European continent, instead of coming back, is taking it in the backside - and rather hard. Here is just the latest news about Europe...

Europe's Crisis to Overshadow U.S. Data in Coming Week, 2011

U.S. investors will return from the Thanksgiving holiday weekend to face continued uncertainty over Europe's debt crisis.

Since spiraling into chaos in the early summer months, Europe's debt crisis has confounded policymakers' attempts at containment.

As Americans were gorging on deep-fried turkey and stuffing on Thursday, European officials from Italy, Germany and France were busy shooting down proposals that might have helped put the eurozone on the path toward fiscal stability.

Among the rejected proposals was the creation of eurozone bonds. Meanwhile, European Central Bank policymaker Jose Manuel Gonzalez-Paramo said eurozone nations should not rely on the central bank to resolve the debt crisis, confounding observers who contend more ECB action is needed.

By Friday, Italy was forced to pay record interest rates at a government bond auction in order to raise a planned 10 billion euros. Italian 10-year bond yields rose to 7.32%, considered too high to be sustainable. Economists are doubtful that Italy, which faces a debt pile equal to 120% of its gross domestic product, will be able to escape trouble purely through fiscal austerity measures.

Pessimism surrounding Europe's debt dilemma remains persistent, with analysts anticipating a worsening of conditions next week. A report from Barclays Capital on Friday predicted Europe would slip into a recession in the fourth quarter as Italy and Spain were forced to seek financial aid from outside sources to prevent a collapse.

Does Europe circa 2011 look in any way like the Europe that Krugman described in 2008 or 2010? If I were cruel, I would say that Krugman's prediction of Europe's future is only matched by his marvelous ass kissing of Enron in 1999 (after all, he was Enron's paid consultant). But I want to be fair now, and I must concede that one of Krugman's statements was undeniably correct and struck into the heart of the European economic model: "...what European experience actually demonstrates is... : social justice and progress can go hand in hand."

In reality, social justice and progress always go hand in hand. There are no "ifs" or "cans" - one follows the other, like the seasons. If YOU take from the man who earned, and give it to the man who did not - YOU commit the social injustice. And when economic progress comes to a screeching halt - don't ask who caused it, because YOU did it, it's YOUR fault. We cannot achieve economic progress without social justice - and Europe abandoned all the pretense of the standards of justice when they decided to build welfare socialism. And now, the bell tolls for you, Europe - and for all the pseudo-scientists like Krugman. And if America does not wake up and abandon the road to serfdom - this country will be next and follow Europe into the abyss. Economic science had long discovered it - which is why conservative, libertarian and objectivist economists knew that Europe was about to fail, while liberal economists like Krugman were blind to this eventuality. If Krugman were a scientist, he would be brave enough to concede that welfare socialism was a failure. But Krugman is not a scientist, he is a left-wing ideologue who does not a crap about science. The poor shmuck is paid to to give left-wing spin to whatever news NYT chooses to publish - which is why he was never able to develop a theory consistent with the facts observable in real life. And this why nothing that he writes can be used to predict the future. The end.