Let's talk about the occupistas

I was watching the Occupy Wall Street movement, and there are quite a few things I wish to say about them. Luckily, plenty of people said a lot of smart stuff by now, so I will be mostly quoting them. All in all, the Occupy Wall street needs to ask itself a few questions...

Uncle Ed: You always have to question everything, don't you?
Billy Costigan: Maybe it would have done you some good to have some *questions* from time to time, you know? "Am I an asshole? Are my kids a mess? Is my wife a money-grubbing whore?" I mean, those are questions, right? "Have I ever been good to my dying sister or am I just now pretending to be?" Quote from the movie "Departed"

"The student activists are the comprachicos' most successful products: they went obediently along every step of the way, never challenging the basic premises inculcated in the Progressive nursery schools. They act in packs, with the will of the pack as their only guide. The scramble for power among their pack leaders and among different packs does not make them question their premises: they are incapable of questioning anything...

Their hysterical screaming still carries a touch of pouting astonishment at a world that does not respond to an absolute such as: "I want it". The three-year-old whim-worshiper becomes the twenty-year-old thug." Ayn Rand, "Return of the Primitive"

As is customary, liberal activists, people who often proclaim their own independent thought and mind, as well as courage to question authority appear to be nothing more than beggars, who want to be taken care of. Why should the working Americans take care of them? Well, I am glad you asked, since this young fella has all the reasoning worked out in detail. Nice dogie, he wants a bone. Which reminded me of an old quote: "Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock."

Mind you though, that not every one of those Occupistas are ignorant bums. Apparently, there are some very educated people among them. Here is one such diamond among the scum:
 

"Tracy Blevins, 41-year-old Manhattan resident, has a doctorate in biomedical science but lost her job as an adjunct professor at Touro College this spring. She's since been getting by on odd jobs; most recently, she acted as a cross-country driver for $2,000."

I honestly say that this info got me very interested, since someone with a PhD in biomedical science should have done much better than this. After all, biomed is not like "womyn's studies", there are jobs in the real world for those folks. So, I've looked a bit more and here is what I found on this Tracy Blevins....
 
Here is same Tracy Blevins in 2002, described as somewhat more than just a simple PhD in biomed. Here it goes:
 

"The first one I notice is a blond wearing almost nothing and holding a sign saying "Pot Whore" (the links are from her sign, I take no responsibility). Around her are several individuals who haven't bathed or washed their clothes or combed their hair in weeks, many of them are smoking, and appear to have been doing so constantly for the last 50 years. Everybody has a pamphlet (green party, free Palestine, animal rights..the whole shootin' match). Just to complete the party atmosphere, an odd looking fellow in a suit and suspenders is carrying a sign saying "corporate America feeds our children" and "meat-eating Republicans thank Nader for electing Bush".

Dr.Blevins responds to this post with a few corrections of her own, mostly protesting the author's claim that she had a pass. Apparently, Dr.Blevins' was doing her "second full week of performances of my one woman show on Wall Street." So, what else Pot Whore Dr.Blevins had to say? Well, back in 2002 she had a 10 point program for the NYC - an easy way to the world nirvana. Dr.Pot Whore, take it from here:
 
1. No Pot Arrests
2. 200 FREE Gifts
3. Teachers Fly Free
4. Family Nudist Colony NYC
5. Graffiti the Subway
6. Parks for the People
7. Red Light District
8. FREE Medicine
9. Geezer Disco
and
10. Let’s LIVE at the World Trade Center


 
All in all, this woman is clearly certifiable - and I am a bit surprised that the AP forgot to explain to its readers that Pot Whore Dr.Blevins is a nutcase.

And speaking of nutcases - it's quite amazing (although, not so much if you try to find out about the history of these movements) that the Occupistas managed to excite both the Nazis and the Communists. Apparently, both movements love them dearly.

I will let the Nazis say their first word (after all, they started the war):

As I have so often in the past spoke on - the White Working Class - is going PAST, the BOILING POINT, and is quickly reaching ULTIMATE EXPLOSION! THEY want ANSWERS! THEY want RESULTS! All of which this evil corrupt, decadent JUDEO-CAPITALIST SYSTEM is incapable of giving them. WHY? Because its BOUGHT and SOLD to the CORPORATE ELITISTS who are fast turning America into a "South American" style - THIRD WORLD WAGE-SLAVE STATE - ( complete with MILLIONS of BROWN illegal aliens willing to ACCEPT YOUR JOB for LOW WAGES and NO BENEFITS ) where, currently 3% of the population CONTROL 85% of the nation’s WEALTH! And the "GREAT DIVIDE" is GROWING each and every year that passes.


WE - the WHITE WORKING CLASS - have been LIED TO and totally DECIEVED - just the other day, the system APPROVED THREE MORE so-called "Free-Trade" deals. ALL of which mean that MORE JOBS are going to be SENT OVERSEAS - YOUR JOBS! Don't you CARE? Enough to DO SOMETHING?

NOW is the TIME! GET INVOLVED! IT’S YOUR FUTURE THAT WE ARE TALKING ABOUT.

YOU can DO - ONE of TWO THINGS - SUBMIT to the uncaring GREED of these CORORATE, WALL STREET THUGS and their SOCK-PUPPETS in GOVERNMENT. OR, - YOU can RESIST! I CHOOSE RESISTANCE for MY FAMILY and MYSELF!

And the American Communist party was equally delighted to see the proles (Is Pot Whore / PHD a bourgeois capitalist pig or a working girl?) rise up. Here is their communique...

The movement is the newest wrinkle in the all-people’s upsurge against the banks and corporations and reflects a new level of class-consciousness.


While there is a wide range of political and ideological trends, there is a consensus against corporate greed, getting money out of politics, taxing the rich and putting people before profits.

A big challenge for the CPUSA and left, progressive movements is to link these demonstrations with the labor led all-people’s coalition and help deepen understanding that the path to progress must be through electoral and political action including defeating Republican Tea Party reaction in 2012.

Of primary importance is linking it with the burgeoning fight for jobs and especially passage of the American Jobs Act.

We can also play a role in offering more advanced programmatic ideas like nationalizing the banks and socialism.

To have a positive impact, the CPUSA and YCL must be a part of the “Occupy” movement, participating at every level and building greater local support for the actions among labor and progressive forces.

Unlike the Nazi scum, the communist scum is a much better speller - and he does not overuse the capital letters. I believe it's partly because he is somewhat better funded than the Nazi scum.

And just for your entertainment you can enjoy watching a liberal activist (who is also a trust fund baby) reduce himself to tears. He does a perfect imitation of Keith Olbermann - so why is he not on the (p)MSNBC?

And what liberal anti-capitalist party can be successful without some antisemitism? It's not cool fighting the corporations and banks if you don't get to attack the Jews. Patricia Mcallister, the self- identified employee of the Los Angeles Unified School District, you can take it from here:

"Zionist Jews who are running these big banks... they need to be run out of this country"

No surprise that the Nazis and the Communists love the Occupistas - they too dislike the Jews and the Zionists, and the banks. Damn! What surprises me a little bit is that a government employee is so cavalier in publicly stating her anti-semitism. Sounds like the LA Unified School District is very tolerant of bigots and racists - which too is not so surprising when one remembers that LA is solidly under the liberal control.

Anyways, some of the folks in the "Occupy Wall Street" movement are not there to ask for more handouts or to kick them Zionist Jews out of US. American Government Public Media will explain it now:

Steve Asher hadn't joined the protests before, but this march brought him out.


Steve Asher: I live in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.

Vanek Smith: How did you get here?

Asher: Subway. And I had to count the pennies to make sure I could afford it.

Asher says he's upset that a New York state tax on millionaires is expiring at the end of the year. He lost his job in the non-profit sector last year and has been scraping by on unemployment benefits of $400 a week. That's 400 taxable dollars.

Asher: It is really irritating when I'm struggling, struggling to make that $400 go as far as it can, to hear of a tax cut for a multimillionaire.

Let's do some math - $400 a week - that's $20.857 a year. According to this site, that's more than what a US private with more than 6 years of experience is paid. I wonder why should government handouts in NYS give out more than what we pay the soldier spilling his blood in Afghanistan (or, as Obama would call it - "Overseas Contingency Operation")? I would really want to know the actual reasons for this obscenity.

Of course, not everyone is like little Steve. There are people of principle among the occupistas. Welcome to Anne Wiswell, one of the courageous protesters.

Twenty-three-year old Anne Wiswell has been active in the Occupy Wall Street protests from the start. She says her family's reversal of fortune is why she's here. She was a student at the New School until last year, when her parents told her they couldn't afford pay for her education any more.

Hm. So, that's what happened to her - her parents could not afford to pay for her studies in the "New School". How tragic. What's the "New School", you may ask - why can't we just live with all the old schools, like MIT, Caltech, Columbia? I took some time to learn more about the "New School", and I found that it's quite a place to get your education - of course, you won't find a job with that education, but why talk about little things. Here is what this school says about itself:

The New School is a legendary progressive university comprising schools bound by a common, unusual intent: to prepare and inspire its 10,510 undergraduate and graduate students to bring actual, positive change to the world. From its Greenwich Village campus, The New School launches economists and actors, fashion designers and urban planners, dancers and anthropologists, orchestra conductors, filmmakers, political scientists, organizational experts, jazz musicians, scholars, psychologists, historians, journalists, and above all, world citizens-individuals whose ideas and innovations forge new paths of progress in the arts, design, humanities, public policy, and the social sciences.

A "legendary progressive university... bound by a common unusual intent... to inspire students to bring actual, positive change to the world". Damn! I wonder how much this shit costs, and I am curious what kind of thinkers this school prepares.  Answering the first question - the school estimates that a Full-Time On-Campus Resident is expected to spend $57,568 a year. And to answer your second question, here is what the "New School" student Anne Wiswell had to say when her parents could not afford her "studies":

It was this massive realization -- "Oh my gosh, I have to support myself. Welcome to the real world."

Damn, girl , I am glad for you. Finally that $57,568 that your parents spent to educate you did something good for you. It's a real world out there, and you need to learn to support yourself. This reminded me of an old Woody Allen's joke: "When I was kidnapped, my parents snapped into action. They rented out my room". So, what did little Annie do when she realized she was now responsible to earn her living? American Government Public Media, gives us the full story:

It was this massive realization -- "Oh my gosh, I have to support myself. Welcome to the real world." I need to get involved with government policy so that I can afford to live in this country and in this city.

Yes, Anne Wiswall, you need to... What?! Demanding for a government handout is not the same as supporting oneself, you idiot - it's quite the opposite, you dumbass. You dried your parents finances, and now you want to do same to the taxpayers? Girl, supporting yourself means earning your living, not running around and screaming "I need a handout, please give it to me".

I will finish my letter with two quotes, which succinctly summarize the Occupy Wall Street movement.If anyone objects to any of these quotes - I suggest you put together at least some explanation on what those Occupistas propose. Right now, they sound like spoiled ignorant children who want to be taken care off. That's not the movement of the working class - that's a mob of parasites and swindlers.

"Man's mind is his basic means of survival - and of self-protection. Reason is the most selfish human faculty: it has to be used in and by a man's own mind and its product - truth - makes him inflexible, instragent, impervious to the power of any pack or any ruler. Deprived of the ability to reason, man becomes a docile, pliant, impotent chunk of clay, to be shaped into any subhuman form and used for the purpose by anyone who wants to bother."  Ayn Rand, "Return of the Primitive"

"One of the painful signs of years of dumbed-down education is how many people are unable to make a coherent argument. They can vent their emotions, question other people's motives, make bold assertions, repeat slogans - anything except reason." Thomas Sowell, "Dismantling America".

Two articles, a few days apart...

"Rich people are being ‘demonized’ for flaunting their wealth. Poor dears!"

The latest group to claim victim status is the rich. Actually the super-rich, whose wealth ordinarily exempts them from pity. While they are not yet subjected to airport profiling (except for early boarding and club access), they sense that the public is turning subtly against them — otherwise how could President Obama propose raising their taxes? [How many liberals expressed sympathy for Obama - a man who lives richer than super-rich, and who has more security and privileges than any man on the planet?]

 Admirers of the rich, led by pundits and politicians on the right — from Laura Ingraham to Larry Kudlow — have long derided the victimization claims of African Americans, women, gays and the unemployed, but now they’re raising their voices to defend the rich against what they see as an ugly tide of “demonization.”

At a time when poverty is soaring, unemployment hovers grimly above 9 percent and growing numbers of Americans suffer from “food insecurity” — the official euphemism for hunger [actually, this is official euphemism for a situation, when people may not have stocked enough food to sustain themselves for 10 weeks] — this concern may seem a tad esoteric. At a time when executive compensation is reaching dizzying new levels [The article provides no evidence to support this claim - let alone explain why suddenly all rich people are supposed to be executives] and the gap between the rich and everyone else is growing as fast as the federal deficit, it may even seem a little perverse. [The more Obama spends, the bigger the gap. Maybe it's not a coincidence?]

But even beyond the taxes-and-deficits debate, in which wealthy Americans have been routinely characterized as yacht owners and corporate-jet fliers, the rich have indeed suffered a few blows to their self-esteem. Last year’s film “The Social Network” was unflattering to exemplars of both new and old wealth, and now two new television series are being hyped by some in the media as incitements to class warfare. In “2 Broke Girls,” a couple of young women struggle to survive — not as runway models or high-maintenance housewives but, shockingly enough, as waitresses. And Time magazine titillatingly describes ABC’s “Revenge,” set in the Hamptons, as “a target-rich environment of polo players and stock traders” in which a young woman stalks the singularly overprivileged people who, years earlier, ruined her father. No less a social commentator than “Revenge” star Madeleine Stowe has observed that “we’re dealing in a particular time right now in American history where I think the average American is going to want to see a takedown of the rich.” [In the 1930ies, an average German also wanted to see a takedown of the Jews - after all, Jews were responsible for the defeat of their country during WWI - or so the uneducated brainwashed idiots thought. The story repeats itself - now suddenly we are supposed to think that all rich people are evil.] 

You would never guess from all the talk of demonization that the rich enjoy perhaps the strongest PR machine on the planet, far beyond their entourages of agents, publicists and assorted image-makers. The mainstream media, for example, are not owned by collectives of busboys and taxi drivers, and even the “liberal” outlets among them are not pitched toward the impecunious. They may snicker when the occasional hedge fund manager is brought to justice, but they’ve been equally snarky about populist actions against the rich, such as the ongoing occupation of Wall Street, which is newsworthy if only for the levels of brutality it’s elicited from the NYPD. Or did you know that the Transportation Security Administration just won union representation this summer? Probably not, because that’s “labor news,” which has been all but supplanted by “business news.” [It would be interesting to compare who has a better PR - American blacks or rich. After all - when was the last time you've seen a report in the mainstream media that would equate all blacks with criminals, evil-doers and try to take them down?]

The article continues in the same fashion, on, and on and on, quoting a few stupid rich folks and somehow using these examples to prove that all rich people are evil. Well, let's compare this article with another article, published just a few days later...


Steve Jobs Dies: Apple Chief Created Personal Computer, iPad, iPod, iPhone

Steve Jobs, the mastermind behind Apple's iPhone, iPad, iPod, iMac and iTunes, has died, Apple said. Jobs was 56....
 
Jobs co-founded Apple Computer in 1976 and, with his childhood friend Steve Wozniak, marketed what was considered the world's first personal computer, the Apple II...


Industry watchers called him a master innovator -- perhaps on a par with Thomas Edison -- changing the worlds of computing, recorded music and communications...


The highlights of Jobs's career trajectory are well-known: a prodigy who dropped out of Reed College in Oregon and, at 21, started Apple with Wozniak in his parents' garage. He was a multimillionaire by 25, appeared on the cover of Time magazine at 26, and was ousted at Apple at age 30, in 1984.

In the years that followed, he went into other businesses, founding NeXT computers and, in 1986, buying the computer graphics arm of Lucasfilm, Ltd., which became Pixar Animation Studios.

He was described as an exacting and sometimes fearsome leader, ordering up and rejecting multiple versions of new products until the final version was just right. He said the design and aesthetics of a device were as important as the hardware and software inside.

In 1996, Apple, which had struggled without Jobs, brought him back by buying NeXT. He became CEO in 1997 and put the company on a remarkable upward path.

By 2001 the commercial music industry was on its knees because digital recordings, copied and shared online for free, made it unnecessary for millions of people to buy compact discs.

Jobs took advantage with the iPod -- essentially a pocket-sized computer hard drive with elegantly simple controls and a set of white earbuds so that one could listen to the hours of music one saved on it. He set up the iTunes online music store, and persuaded major recording labels to sell songs for 99 cents each. No longer did people have to go out and buy a CD if they liked one song from it. They bought a digital file and stored it in their iPod.

In 2007, he transformed the cell phone. Apple's iPhone, with its iconic touch screen, was a handheld computer, music player, messaging device, digital wallet and -- almost incidentally -- cell phone. Major competitors, such as BlackBerry, Nokia and Motorola, struggled after it appeared.

By 2010, Apple's new iPad began to cannibalize its original business, the personal computer. The iPad was a sleek tablet computer with a touch screen and almost no physical buttons. It could be used for almost anything software designers could conceive, from watching movies to taking pictures to leafing through a virtual book.

I fully realize that appealing to the liberal common sense is a worthless exercise. It's like reminding a Nazi that a Jew has saved his child's life. But still - I want every leftie who reads this post, every time when he rails against the evil rich folks - to imagine the face of Steve Jobs, and the great things he achieved in his life. He is the rich white male that you are demonizing - and when people like him are gone - your world will come to an end. The only reason why you live a nice house with electricity, drive a car to your work and watch TV is because of people like him. When you defeat the Steve Jobs of this world - you will bring death and destruction to this planet.

Pass this bill now?

As you may recall, president Obama recently demanded Congress to pass his "jobs bill" (in order to avoid any confusion, I will call if "Stimulus 2"). According to Obama, this bill will on one side spend about 450 billion dollars to stimulate the economy, and yet is fully paid for through tax increases and spending cuts. In his speech, Obama sounded convinced that the US economic is in dire straits [I love "Dire Straits"] and Congress must drop everything it is doing and "pass the bill". Here is the exact quote: "It [Stimulus 2] will provide a jolt to an economy that has stalled, and give companies confidence that if they invest and hire, there will be customers for their products and services. You should pass this jobs plan [Stimulus 2] right away.”


I say - "Amen, Brother". The GOP must announce that all of next week will be devoted exclusively to reading Obama's Stimulus bill and line-by-line discussion thereof. The White House is kindly asked to submit the bill (which must be passed "right now") on Monday, September 12, 2011, before lunch time. Any and all activity in Congress (House and Senate) not associated with Stimulus 2 is stopped for the next week, due to the urgent request of the president to pass his Stimulus 2 bill.

In the unlikely event that Obama's Stimulus 2 bill cannot be located by the end of this week, the House and the Senate will jointly send a letter of reprimand to president Obama for being such a narcissistic douche bag.

P.S. In all seriousness, we all know that there is no "jobs bill which is fully paid for", and as we all know, "CBO cannot score a speech". Obama behaves as an affirmative action student who wants professor to check his final exam right now and give him a solid A+++  - and he did not even bother to submit it. This is disgraceful. Obama deserves to be smacked by Congress. That's the only way to teach him manners.

P.P.S. Imagine that for the whole week, one congressman after another gets in front of TV and silently stands there for 10 minutes.
"What's he doing?"
"He is reading Obama's jobs bill."
"But I cannot hear anything."
"Well, that's cause there is not jobs bill, but I am glad GOP is trying to pass it anyways."

Obama and the Democrats have to ... make government work", Part 2

I don't think a single week goes by without some left-wing journalist/activist/economist making a heart-felt appeal to increase the government spending. And as is customary, one of the reasons given for such an increase is the need to rebuild our infrastructure - roads, bridges, sewers and the like. Even our president is asking for money to "rebuild the infrastructure". According to laprogressive, "He [Obama] says he wants an “infrastructure bank” that would borrow money from private capital markets to pay private contractors to rebuild our nations roads, bridges, airports, and everything else that’s falling apart." One strange thing though - Obama just spent 900 billion dollars on stimulus, which was also sold as a project to fix our bridges and roads - "the biggest government infrastructure investment since the interstate highway system was launched in the 1950s". And the folks on my second most favourite blog, Alexandria, got in the game and demanded more government spending for roads, bridges - well, you know the rest. Of course, building new roads is a major government spending (4 million miles of roads, 600,000 highway bridges, 117,000 miles of rail, 11,000 miles of transit lines, 19,000 airports, 300 ports won't come cheap), and the liberals require tax increases.

Let's look at this issue from a historic perspective. In 2010, the federal government spent 92 billion dollars on transportation, while the total government (federal, state and local) transportation bill was 271 billion dollars. As a matter of perspective, the federal spending in 2010 was 3,456 billion dollars, and the total government spending was 5,799 billion dollars. In other words, out of every dollar that Obama spent in 2010, only 2.7 cents went for transportation. For all levels of the US government, the number was only slightly higher - 4.67 cents on the dollar. In short, the spending on roads, bridges, airports and "everything else that has to do with transportation" is a minor portion of the budget - practically a rounding error. So, every time when a liberal tells you that he needs more of your money to fix the roads - show him this statistics.

Now, while the transportation costs are a minor blip compared to the entire government spending, these are far from being small if you put them in historical perspective. Here is a singular point of reference - the launch of Interstate Highway System during the Eisenhower presidency. During the first 5 years of the project (1956-1960), the federal government built 10,000 miles of highway. It was far from an easy task, according to this government publication:

High standards were adopted for the interstate highway system. Access to all interstates was to be fully controlled. There would be no intersections or traffic signals. All traffic and railroad crossings would be grade separated, requiring the construction of more than 55,000 bridges. Interstates were to be divided and have at least four wide traffic lanes (two in each direction) and adequate shoulders. Curves were to be engineered for safe negotiation at high speed, while grades were to be moderated, eliminating blind hills. Rest areas were to be conveniently spaced. Each interstate was to be designed to handle traffic loads expected 20 years after completion.

I've collected the information on the cost of this project during these 5 years, and the total federal transportation spending from 1956 to 1960 was 110 billion dollars (in 2010 dollars) - which is only slightly above the federal transportation spending for 2010 alone (92 billion dollars). In fact, in 2009, the federal government spend another 107.2 billion dollars for the transportation improvement. If one includes the fact that technology advanced considerably during the last half a century, it remains remarkable that president Obama was able to spend so much money on "roads and bridges", enough money to build 20,000 miles of the interstate highway - and yet deliver so little. For all intents and purposes I could not even find any publication which would tell us how many thousands of miles of highway the federal government built in 2009 or 2010 - and I strongly suspect that the actual number is probably measured in hundreds of miles, if even that.

In order to illustrate the absurdity of the current situation (and to demonstrate how difficult it would be for the Democrats to make the federal government work), let me show a comparison between two projects, 80 years apart.

Empire State Building

The Empire State Building is an architectural marvel, and one of the most striking attractions in New York City. The building itself was constructed during the Great Depression and is a living monument to that era and the city it so proudly illuminates... For 40 years after it was constructed, it held the record for being the largest skyscraper in the world. The building has starred in over 90 movies, and it remains one of New York City's most popular tourist attractions.

 At the time it was built, the Empire State Building was the center of a competition between Walter Chrysler, of the Chrysler Corporation, and John Raskob, creator of General Motors. The competition, appropriately enough, was to see who could build the highest building first... In the year 1929, Mr. Raskob set about this task with a group of very well known investors...

The excavation for the project began on January 22, 1930 and took only one year and 45 days to complete, or 7 million hours. The masonry for the structure was completed on May 1, 1931, significantly ahead of schedule. On that date, President Herbert Hoover pressed a button in Washington, D.C. to officially open the building by turning on the Empire State Building's lights.  

The total cost to construct the skyscraper was $40,948,000, including the cost of the land. The building alone was constructed with a little over $24,000,000.

According to this site, in 2010 dollars, the total cost of the Empire State building is 500,000,000 dollars (in my calculation, it's closer to 590,000,000 dollars, but I digress). So, on one side we have an "architectural marvel",  "one of the most striking attractions in New York City", which is 1,050 feet above ground with 102 floors and 6,500 windows. What have we got on the other side?


Columbia River Interstate Bridge

The Interstate Bridge (also Columbia River Interstate Bridge, I-5 Bridge, Portland-Vancouver Interstate Bridge, Vancouver-Portland Bridge) is a pair of nearly identical steel vertical-lift, through-truss bridges that carry Interstate 5 traffic over the Columbia River between Vancouver, Washington, and Portland, Oregon, in the United States...

The bridge is frequently a bottleneck which impacts both traffic on the freeway, as well as on the river. The Oregon and Washington state departments of transportation are jointly studying how to replace the bridge. Initially, the estimated cost for a replacement bridge was around $2 billion, but that number has climbed steadily to around $4.2 billion.

On one side, this bridge is no "Empire State Building", not even close. The Oregon architects also don't need to buy the land in Manhattan to build a architectural marvel. And yet, note that the estimated cost of replacement is nearly 8 times the cost of the Empire State Building. But that's not all - there is more.... According to the official site:

1. How much have we spent on the project [rebuilding the Columbia River Interstate Bridge], what do we get from it, and where did the money come from?

Since 2005 the project has spent a total of $127 million. It has been funded about equally by Washington and Oregon, with additional contributions from the federal government. The current phase of the project is wrapping up this year. Since 2005, the funds have been spent on engineering, project management, transit planning, public involvement and communications (required by the federal NEPA process), and environmental studies, including preparation of a Draft and Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). The majority of the money spent to date in all project areas supports the current project design, including the bridge type.

After spending 6 years deliberating on how to replace the Interstate Bridge (3 times longer than it took to build the Empire State Building - from a concept drawn on napkin to the actual building open for customers) and spending 127 million dollars (more than 20% of the total cost of the Empire State Building project), the governments of Oregon and Washington still could not decide on what they wanted to build. According to another official site,

The Columbia River Crossing project team is currently refining designs for each of the project’s components based on public and local partner agency input.

In case you are wondering, the governors of both states, Oregon and Washington are hard-core liberals.
 
So tell me, dear leader, what are the chances that Barack Obama and the Democrats will answer Joan Walsh's plea to make the government work? Don't answer all at once, comrades...

"Obama and the Democrats have to ... make government work", Part 1

A very recent article in Salon proclaimed that Obama needed to "make the government work" in order to create new jobs. The exact job-creating mechanism proposed by the author Joan Walsh is, as could be expected, is solidly liberal and includes three major paths to prosperity:
1. More government spending
2. More government spending
3. More government spending.

I am not sure if anyone following the current discussion on job creation is surprised by the breath-taking diversity of proposals by Joan. She surely gave a lot of thought to the current economic situation, and worked out a very serious plan to cut unemployment. It clearly demonstrates that liberals are ready to deal with a serious crisis of confidence of the American people towards the bankrupt American government. After all, what is more likely to convince our struggling nation that liberals take federal debt seriously - than spending another gazillion dollars on some community bulding project. "If only Obama spent more on stimulus", whisper some economists - "we would have a perfect economy by now".

Apparently, the idea is that when the government spends another trillion dollars, the economy rebounds due to an increase in the never-defined "demand". Of course, it's rare that anyone of those famed economist explain where that trillion dollars is supposed to come from - apparently it just magically appears in the hands of the government (the Santa Claus school of economics). An economist of the Austrian school though would contend that the government must first withdraw that trillion dollars from the economy before it can spend it - so in the end, there is no net stimulus to the economy - there is only transfer of money from private economy through IRS and into the hands of the government clients. The other two options for the government to get a hold of a trillion dollars are equally troublesome -  government borrowing from private investors (which also means less funds would be available to the private businesses) or money printing (which means the government robs anyone who holds cash).

In short, the argument between the Austrians and the American Santa Claus liberals reminds me of a rather similar discussion between two characters in a famous Russian cartoon.

Feodor: We are broke, we need the money.
Dog Sharik: How about we sell something we don't need?
Feodor: In order to sell something we don't need, we have to buy something we don't need - and we can't afford to buy anything because we don't have the money.

The position of a liberal economist is virtually indistinguishable from what Sharik proposed - but then, Sharik was a very nice friendly character - which is not something you can say about professional liberals. In fact, if you disagree with a liberal journalist/economist/politician on this subject - he is likely to call you a "terrorist", a "jihadist", "Hezballah", "Taliban" - and the only thing that is stopping him from biting you is his cowardice.

Double dip recession

The most unexpected thing about the Obama recession of 2011 is how many people failed to expect it. The US economy was like a giant locomotive, derailing in a slow-motion movie, and yet, the multiple well-respected experts could not foresee the coming crush. The obvious root cause of the blindness of the liberal economists is, at its core, their profound ignorance of how the economy works. They just do not understand the most basic things about the wealth creation. But before I jump to a more detailed discussion, let me first post a few quotes from my own blog.

The first quote comes from my November 2008 article, right before the elections.

Well, one thing that makes me feel better [about democratic lead in the polls] is that Obama seems to be gaining ground, and may well be our next mumbler and stumbler in Chief, while the libs will continue their control of Congress.


Some political party will pay dearly for all the crazy spending, bankrupt SS, Medicare, Medicaid. Someone will have to make hard decisions on the war with Islamo-fascism. Someone will have to deal with failing Europe, resurgent Russia, belligerent and powerful China, insane global warming scares.

If all of that falls on the narrow shoulders of Obama, Pelosi, Reid - and they fail (and fail they will) - the DNC will have to pay a dear price. Can Obama be better for the GOP and America than Jimmy Carter was? I most surely think so.

So 4 years from now, when unemployment is 10-12%, inflation is 10%, GDP is down, stocks are down, our economic freedom is gone, I can look at liberals and tell them: "You folks were kind of stupid in 2008, weren't you? Now, drop on your knees and beg for forgiveness". Isn't it totally worth it? I say yes...

In short, the chickens are coming home to roost - and the liberals may be the ones organizing the welcome party for them. Libs did not want to reform the Social Security under Bush - heck, they will have to deal with it under Obama. Libs thought we could easily win the war by talking to our enemies - smile, Obama will have 4 years to cool down Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and the rest by talking to them. Libs did not want to cut welfare spending - they got Obama who will expand it. Taxes are too low for companies? Obama will raise them. You think our economy can sustain the liberal Congress, liberal president and the coming recession? Think again.

Bush is doing his best to avoid the recession under his watch. He is pumping the market with paper, so he could postpone the inevitable. And stupid democrats are playing along. Whoever is elected will have to deal with a crisis of Gargantuan proportions, and Obama is the best guy to screw it up – since I don’t want a republican to do it. In short, good freaking luck to liberals and what the liberals lovingly called "A Magic Nergo".

And yes, don't let me forget - Europe is, not feeling too good. Something to do with sclerotic liberal economy and "youths". It will get worse soon. Don't be surprised - liberal policies are quite advanced in Europe - like the advanced stage of cancer. I believe the Europeans should run for their life...

All in all, I expect Obama presidency to be an utter failure, and I do expect the Republican party to cleanse itself by 2012 and take over Congress and Presidency.

Who can honestly argue that my 2008 predictions were not spot on? Notice that nearly everything I said - did happen - the US economy is in shambles, Europe is disintegrating, American foreign policy is in disarray, and unemployment and inflation are rising yet again. How in the hell could Hyphenated American know all that in 2008?

Here is another quote - from an article I wrote in April 2009, when Obama's economic plans were put into action. Back then, if you don't remember, the stocks were starting to rise, it seemed that Obama was pushing back the unemployment.

I remember the former Russian Prime-Minister, Egor Gaidar explaining back in the 90ies to his leftie liberal opponents (former communist apparatchiks) in the Duma that printing money is bad for the economy. While there is some initial euphoria after the money influx, after 6-9 months the inflation catches up, and all the results of the stimulus are gone, and the people are saddled with even more discombobulated economy, mal-investment and high unemployment. In short, things got worse, not better.


Lets now examine the United State. Bush and his liberal cohorts in Congress and Senate pushed a lot of money in late summer, and fall. You surely remember the stimulus checks, money for the banks, the whole nine yards. Trillions of dollars left the government purse and were injected into the economy. It's April now, and the stocks started an unexplainable rise, while unemployment is going up. If you know economic theory - there is nothing puzzling in this situation. Wait for the inflation to hit the stores pretty soon now. It will become ugly. Will it be worse than 10% inflation? It most likely will - since don't forget that Obama makes Bush look like a fiscal ultra-conservative. It will be a long and sustained inflation. Should we expect price controls? Very plausible from this administration.

The New World Order is here - same as Old Europe.

Again, my predictions mostly came true - except I under-estimated the time constant of the US economy. Back in 1990ies, the lag between the government's massive spending and inflation was about 9 months in Russia, while it appears to be closer to about 2-4 years in the US. I presume this is due to 2 main reasons - US economy is much larger than the Russian economy (and don't forget that some of the newly minted dollars spill over to other countries), and American people are less used to high inflation (which means the people's reaction is slower). But all in all, again, my predictions were quite good - Obama's "stimulus" created a false short-term stimuli to the economy and masked the actual problems. When the money ran out, the recession returned - and I believe it will be worse than the 2008 recession.

So, how did it happen? The money pumping started under president Bush, and it was greatly accelerated during the Obama administration. It can be argued that most of TARP money was actually returned to the government, which means Bush's actions did provide a short term relief to the economy without too many immediate negative effects (in the long run, "too big to fail" policies will lead to even more outrageous policies of the big business - the so-called "moral hazard"). But Obama's stimulus money was completely spent - or mis-spent if you want to be more accurate. It would be very difficult to find any long-term positive effects from any item on the long menu of the 2009 stimulus bill - the fixed-sum handouts to the poor and middle class, the "shovel-ready projects" which did close to nothing to fix the infrastructure. Undeniably, spending 900 billion dollars in two short years did create a false impression that the economy was recovering and did promote the short-term spending spree, but in the end it could not solve the underlying causes of the 2008 recession - and once the money was gone, and reality rose its ugly head, the recession came back with a vengeance. What I also expected was that Obama would surely impose numerous rules and regulations that would seriously damage the US economy - which he proudly did. From CO2 emissions, to union rules (for example, Boeing-busting by the labor department), Obama's jihad against energy producers - coal industry, oil exports from Canada, and illegal moratorium on drilling after BP-Obama disaster. The so-called "Dodd-Frank Bill" was a rather brave attempt to drastically increase the role of the government in financial markets (same government that bankrupted Fannie and Freddie - as well as Medicare and Social Security, and grew the national debt to 100% of the GDP). Last but not least was the bonanza of regulations due to Obamacare - the naked attempt by the liberal elite to take over the national healthcare. I also expected Obama to raise taxes - which he undeniably did through the so-called Obamacare. And of course, the federal spending went completely out of control under the current president. It's sufficient to note that 2011 budget is larger than 2007 budget (last one written by the republicans in Congress and signed by Bush) by a hefty 1.1 trillion dollars.

All in all, even without Obama's busy schedule to destroy the US economy, America was in a bad shape. But the last 2.5 years made the economy fundamentals far worse than they were in 2008 - which is something I expected a Marxist community organizer would easily achieve. Artificial work projects, handouts to the poor and subsidies are inherently a wrong way to promote the wealth creation. Any person who studied the Austrian economic theory understands that these measures will only give a temporary and false feeling of recovery - which will have undeniable negative consequences in the long run. When the government decides to spend a billion dollars on a feel-good project, it does not help the economic recovery - quite the opposite. What it does is it essentially competes for resources with real businesses, and makes the wealth creation more expensive. If you plan to build a store - the labor and the materials becomes more expensive, since the government is now using those. When the government borrows a trillion dollars, the loans to private businesses become more expensive and they cannot expand. In other words, the money for the stimulus have to come from somewhere, and this somewhere is your pocket. How could that really help you? Imagine someone (for clarity, let's call him "Obama") inviting you to a most fabulous party with champagne and caviar, and most exquisite meats. You are having a good time, enjoy yourself to the fullest. And the next day you find out that this "someone" used your credit card to pay for the party. Now comes the tricky question - are you better off financially after this party? Of course, this analogy is only partly accurate - while Obama did put all the expenses on your credit card, he did not invite you to the party - unless you are among his core supporters (union leaders, Soros and the like).

In general, Obama's stimulus had no chance to succeed. But what made it worse - it was coupled with myriads of other steps, each one making it more difficult, more risky, more expensive to run a business in America. In short, Obama's stimulus and Obama's policies made the double-dip recession inevitable - and utterly predictable.

From 2009 to summer 2010 I was rather amazed (and amused) by the thousands of economists who proclaimed that a double-dip recession was extremely unlikely. Where are those economists now? What happened to them? What did not surprise me was the reaction of large and small businesses, most of whom stubbornly refused to invest or spend the "record-breaking" profits from the last few years. Apparently, they too understood that the Obama-recovery was built on the sand, and it would soon end. And now it's ending, and the hard times are ahead of us. Very, very hard times are ahead of us. I predict this - don't forget to write it down. The only people who can get us out of these troubled times are the Tea-Party. No one else has the guts and the brains to do the right things.

What are they even talking about?!

I am reading the debate about the debt ceiling, and I feel like most of the left-wing went completely nuts. They talk about mythical "draconian cuts" to the federal government - and they seem to be dead sure they are telling the truth. And this just a few months after the previous "draconian cuts" of tens of billions of dollars to the 2011 budget, which in reality were worth a measly 38 million dollar. Today, comrade E. J. Dionne, a man enamored with the ideas of big government published another article full of lies, distortions and plain idiocy. Characteristically, as any leftie, he called himself a "moderate" (according to him, anyone slightly to the right of Lenin is a "moderate"). And one passage really made me upset:

"Instead, the center bends. It concocts deficit plans that include too little new tax revenue. It accepts cuts in programs that would have seemed radical and draconian even a couple of years ago."

Let me put things in perspective - please see the table below which summarizes the nominal federal and total spending (federal, state and local) on Medicaid and welfare - and shows how much these two programs grew in just the last few years. Once you see the numbers, you will understand that even a couple years ago, today's federal budget would indeed seem radical - even extreme - but not in the way E.J. presented it to the readers.

And now tell me - who believes that after all is said and done, that the federal, state and local spending for 2011 is likely to be cut? Heck, what are the chances that welfare and Medicaid spending will simply go to the level of 2007 - back when no one was starving on the streets. In fact, if 2011 budget were to kept at 2007 levels, it would have been smaller by a hefty 1.1 trillion dollars - even though the federal interest payments were higher by 30 billion dollars in 2007. Now, put this 1.1 trillion dollars in your calculator, and you will notice that the federal deficit in 2011 would be cut from the impossible 1.645 trillion dollars to a rather more reasonable 545 billion dollars. And, ladies and gentlemen, don't forget that 2007 was NOT a spend-thrift budget, not at all - even in 2007 the federal government was spending money like there was no tomorrow.

The entire debt and deficit discussion is insane - what are these politicians even talking about? We can easily cut the federal budget to 2007 levels - and that won't be a real "cut" to the liberal programs - we will simply return to a less insane level of spending prior to the Democrats takeover of the budget.

And when we do go back to 2007 levels - then we can start discussing on the balance between tax increases and the cuts to entitlements.

As far as the "revenue enhancements" - I personally believe that there are plenty of ways to increase revenues without raising taxes. The best way to raise revenue is by increasing employment and improving the economy. For example, we can abolish the minimum wage - the biggest hurdle to the employment of young and unskilled laborers. We can further help revenue by abolishing the entire Labor Department and liberalize the union laws. The next step would be to drop the "Endangered Species Act" - which would immediately bring back millions of jobs destroyed by the EPA. And finally - and this one is really the most fruitful idea - we can impeach each and every statist from the federal, state and local government and restore the American Dream. All these measures combined will surely bring far more revenue than any idea that our Inglorious Leader will devise in the next 3 million years. But then - don't forget that as Obama said a few years ago, he cares more about "social justice" than revenue.

A few obvious things

I always enjoy reading the left-wing intellectuals - and for rather nefarious reasons. I guess the best explanation for this sick pleasure of mine can be described in one word - "schadenfreude". The dictionary defines it as: "pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others". There is nothing more pleasurable than watching a liberal intellectual, an arrogant prick, tie herself in knots trying to solve a rather trivial problem.

Catherine Rampell, a liberal reporter for the NYT, wrote an article, which posed a rather peculiar question - "where is the outrage?" Poor Cathy is bewildered why she cannot find much attention paid to the incredibly high unemployment numbers. Here is the passage that made me smile...

Fourteen million, in round numbers — that is how many Americans are now officially out of work. Word came Friday from the Labor Department that, despite all the optimistic talk of an economic recovery, unemployment is going up, not down. The jobless rate rose to 9.2 percent in June. What gives? And where, if anywhere, is the outrage?  The United States is in the grips of its gravest jobs crisis since Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House. Lose your job, and it will take roughly nine months to find a new one. That is off the charts. Many Americans have simply given up. But unless you’re one of those unhappy 14 million, you might not even notice the problem.

Cathy also notices an obvious lack of organizing among the unemployed - which too remains a puzzle to her and the experts she interviewed.

"“There used to be a sense that unemployment was rich soil for radicalization and revolt,” says Nelson Lichtenstein, a professor of labor history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “That was a motif in American history for a long time, but we don’t seem to have that anymore.” But why? It’s partly because of the greater dispersion of the unemployed, and partly because of the weakening of the institutions that previously mobilized them.

But why, screams Kathy. Well, as Michael Bulgakov said in his novel Master and Margarita, "This ain't Newton's Binomial". Next thing you know, Kathy will be pondering another puzzle - why did Cindy Sheehan, the "absolute moral authority" was turned into an unperson by the media? And where is the anti-war movement gone? And where is the liberal outrage about Obama's illegal war in Libya? All these are questions which are extremely hard to answer for people with mediocre minds - and hence the NYT always has such an impossibly hard time figuring them out.
Let's start with the obvious. As left-wing blog salon pointed out - bad economic news are bad for Obama's re-election campaign.

...the swing voters who will decide the 2012 election won't be relying on a measured analysis of the logic of each party's case to make up their minds. It's the state of the economy that will dictate their verdict. If they perceive it to be improving, they will reject the GOP's claims about Obama's "failed" economic stewardship. But if they believe it is stagnant or getting worse, the GOP line will be music to their ears. Which is why the new unemployment data released Friday morning is so devastating for Obama. As Andrew Leonard noted already, the numbers themselves -- a 9.2 percent unemployment rate and almost nonexistent job creation for June -- are truly awful. But what's worse for Obama is whatever job-creation momentum seemed to exist a few months ago is now completely gone.

In other words - it makes perfect sense for Obama and his lackey's in the media to downplay all bad economic news and pretend that all is honky dory. And don't ignore what Obama's political guru, David Plouffe recently said:

“The average American does not view the economy through the prism of GDP or unemployment rates or even monthly jobs numbers. People won’t vote based on the unemployment rate, they’re going to vote based on: ‘How do I feel about my own situation? Do I believe the president makes decisions based on me and my family?’

And don't forget the infamous "recovery summer of 2010" promoted by the Obama administration - with an explicit goal of defending the stimulus spending. Of course, if the public feels that economy is in bad shape, it will conclude that Obama's frantic economic policy - from 900 billion dollar stimulus to multi-trillion dollar Obamacare was a failure. In light of these revelations - is it really such a damn mystery why the mainstream media tries to make the suffering of unemployed American to become invisible to the public? Which is just another way of repeating the conclusions of a research on media bias by a diverse group of scientists from London School of Economics, Dipartimento di Economia Pubblica e Territoriale and Massachusetts Institute of Technology:

"We find evidence that newspapers with pro-Democratic endorsement pattern systematically give more coverage to high unemployment when the incumbent president is a Republican than when the president is Democratic, compared to newspapers with pro-Republican endorsement pattern."

And don't forget this astute observation by Mark Helprin, later was popularized by James Taranto:
 

"If George W. Bush becomes president, the armies of the homeless, hundreds of thousands strong, will once again be used to illustrate the opposition's arguments about welfare, the economy, and taxation."

Of course, when Obama-the-Messiah became president, the armies of homeless, hundreds of thousands strong disappear from the media (just as the US anti-war left became pro-war when Hitler attacked USSR). The unemployment suddenly became "funemployment". After reading this article from the LA Times - who will have the heart of stone to rise against unemployment? Indeed, unemployment is a blessing, not a curse according to LA Times. they even invented a new term "funemployment", just to show that even unemployed people enjoy their life during the Obama presidency.

For the 'funemployed,' unemployment is welcome. These jobless folks, usually singles in their 20s and 30s, find that life without work agrees with them. Instead of punching the clock, they're hitting the beach.

Moreover, it's also a sign of independence. Indeed, we probably should celebrate unemployment - it's so great, everybody should be unemployed...

What most people would call unemployment, Van Gorkom embraced as "funemployment."


While millions of Americans struggle to find work as they face foreclosures and bankruptcy, others have found a silver lining in the economic meltdown. These happily jobless tend to be single and in their 20s and 30s. Some were laid off. Some quit voluntarily, lured by generous buyouts.

Buoyed by severance, savings, unemployment checks or their parents, the funemployed do not spend their days poring over job listings. They travel on the cheap for weeks. They head back to school or volunteer at the neighborhood soup kitchen. And at least till the bank account dries up, they're content living for today.

"I feel like I've been given a gift of time and clarity," said Aubrey Howell, 29, of Franklin, Tenn., who was laid off from her job as a tea shop manager in April. After sleeping in late and visiting family in Florida, she recently mused on Twitter: "Unemployment or funemployment?"

Never heard of funemployment? Here's Urban Dictionary's definition: "The condition of a person who takes advantage of being out of a job to have the time of their life. I spent all day Tuesday at the pool; funemployment rocks!"

It may not have entered our daily lexicon yet, but a small army of social media junkies with a sudden overabundance of time is busy Tweeting: "Funemployment road trip to Portland." "Funemployment is great for catching up on reading!" "Averaging 3 rounds of golf a week plus hockey and bball. who needs work?"

As frivolous as it sounds, funemployment is a statement about American society. Experts say it's both a reflection of the country's cultural narcissism -- and attitudes of entitlement and self-centeredness -- and a backlash against corporate America and its "Dilbert"-like work environment.

"Recession gives people permission to be unemployed," said David Logan, a professor at USC's Marshall School of Business. "Why not make use of the time and go do something fun?"

Jean Twenge, co-author of "The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement," said in some cases, many employees had lost balance between work and life, with too many late nights and weekends spent at the office. When they stop working, they realize how much they had given up.

After you read this long and rather bizarre ode to "funemployment" - do you still wonder why there is no organized movement to lower unemployment? Heck, it's all obvious - the media wants you to think that things are go A-Okay in the Good Old USA.

And if you think that "funemployment" is a bogus idea - here is something else for you. The NYT (same newspaper that published Kathy's insane ravings) wrote a rather optimistic article about the economy entitled "For Those With Jobs, a Recession With Benefits". Apparently, unemployment may be a blessing for the rest of the country. An attentive reader won't be astonished to find out that this point of view was proposed in 2010, during the presidency of Barack Obama, the liberal icon.

For many of these long-term unemployed, the financial and psychological damage will last for years. For most other workers, however, the situation has had a perverse, and mostly overlooked, silver lining.

What's that "overlooked silver lining", you may ask? It's easy, really, the rest of the country seems to be enjoying higher real wages - which means all of us with jobs should be quite content with the current economic reality.

But since this recent recession began in December 2007, real average hourly pay has risen nearly 5 percent. Some employers, especially state and local governments, have cut wages. But many more employers have continued to increase pay.


Something similar happened during the Great Depression, notes Bruce Judson of the Yale School of Management. Falling prices meant that workers who held their jobs received a surprisingly strong effective pay raise.

This time around, nominal wages — the numbers people see in their paychecks — have risen throughout the slump, as companies have passed along some of the impressive productivity to their (remaining) workers. Meanwhile, inflation has been almost non-existent, except for parts of last year, when real wages did briefly fall.

Indeed, who in their mind would claim that Obama's economic policies were a failure? As Kathy noted: "Even in the 1980s and 1990s, angry workers descended on Washington by the busload." But who would lead them now? Do you expect ACORN to stage loud demonstrations in front of the White House? Of course not. Or can this happen today?

Back in the 1960s or even the 1980s, the unemployed organized around welfare or unemployment offices. It was a fertile environment: people were anxious and tired and waiting for hours in line.

“We stood outside of these offices, with their huge lines, and passed out leaflets that said things like: ‘If you’re upset about what’s happening to you, come to this meeting at this church basement in two weeks. We’ll get together and do something about this,’ ” recalls Barney Oursler, a longtime community organizer and co-founder of the Mon Valley Unemployed Committee in the early 1980s. “The response just made your heart get big. ‘Oh, my God,’ they’d say, ‘I thought I was alone.’ ”

Surely 2011 is a good time for the "community organizers" - but would they try to direct people's attention to high unemployment and make the failure of Obama-economy more obvious? Not really. Would the media make a big deal of a faltering US economy? Well, the same media that welcome Obama as a savior of the universe? In all honesty, Kathy's pondering on why the current economic crisis is not on the front pages of the newspapers is rather adolescent. Was she born yesterday?

By the end of the article, Kathy does manage to finally locate one group that actually cares about high unemployment - and this is when she finds the answer to her puzzle. Kathy, you can take it from here:

To the extent that frustrations are being channeled at all, they are being channeled largely through the Tea Party. But the Tea Party is mostly against devoting government resources to helping the unemployed.


Tea Party activists, for example, are more likely to believe that providing benefits to poor people encourages them to stay poor, and to believe that economic stimulus has made the economy worse.

Why populist anger over the poor economy is leaning right, rather than left, this time around is a bit of a mystery. Perhaps it is because Democrats, traditional friends of labor, control the White House and the Senate.

Ah - so there's the answer. The entire left-wing establishment is reluctant to raise the issue of unemployment because the left-wing President runs the country. In other words, all the community organizing has nothing to do with making life better for the workers - it is really more about supporting the left-wing. Do you think that Soviet bureaucrats publicly criticized Stalin for Holodomor? And don't forget the NYT publicly announcing that there was no starvation in the Soviet Union - and getting the Pulitzer prize for this piece of propaganda. After writing off 10 million people who died from starvation in the USSR - it's a piece of cake for the NYT to ignore the bankruptcy of Obama's economic policy. As George Orwell noticed in 1945, "[I]t was considered equally proper to publicise famines when they happened in India and to conceal them when they happened in the Ukraine. And if this was true before the war, the intellectual atmosphere is certainly no better now."


It is not surprising that poor Kathy could not mention that the mainstream media is strangely silent on the crisis. Between the reports on "funemployment" and "summer of recovery", there is little for them to say about the suffering middle class. And that too is because media supports Obama and his ultra-left-wing policies. All in all, there really is no mystery why the left-wing anger about unemployment is missing. But apparently Kathy could not say so in the reliably liberal NYT - she knows that there is nothing more dangerous than pointing out the obvious. As liberals tell us: "During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." And Kathy is no revolutionary - she needs the NYT paycheck - and so the obvious will continue being a mystery to her. It's sometimes profitable to appear being a dummy and Kathy surely knows how to do that perfectly.

News of the day - Hyphenated-American became a US citizen

Today, On June the 30th, 2011, Hyphenated-American has joined the ranks of citizens of the Great United States of America. In the presense of hundreds of witnesses he recited the sacred oath of an American:

I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.

Only in America?

Today, I was reading an article in the Los Angeles Times, and it became obvious yet once again to me - liberals are complete and utter idiots. Not all of them, of course, but the liberals who work as journalists for major newspapers are imbeciles. They don't know squat about anything, they have a hard time adding two and two - and yet they feel superior to the rest of the world. Here is the opening passage in the article:

It was imperfectly odd. It was strangely unsettling. It was uniquely American.


On a balmy early Saturday summer evening, the U.S soccer team played for a prestigious championship in a U.S. stadium … and was smothered in boos.

Its fans were vastly outnumbered. Its goalkeeper was bathed in a chanted obscenity. Even its national anthem was filled with the blowing of air horns and bouncing of beach balls.


Most of these hostile visitors didn't live in another country. Most, in fact, were not visitors at all, many of them being U.S. residents whose lives are here but whose sporting souls remain elsewhere.

Welcome to another unveiling of that social portrait known as a U.S.-Mexico soccer match, streaked as always in deep colors of red, white, blue, green … and gray.

Ah - isn't it sweet. Your own team is booed in its own country by the non-American-Americans - and you feel strangely ecstatic about this incident. Isn't it great that those non-American-Americans hate our American team - it's so beautiful, so refreshing, so uniquely American. Undoubtedly, Bill Plaschke, the imbecile who wrote this idiotic self-congratulating article (isn't it cool when people hate team America?) feels proud about himself and the country. It's so unique when recent immigrants (possibly illegal immigrants, if I may say so), the immigrants who demand American citizenship (and handouts, and preferential treatment at jobs and university admissions) - express their solidarity with the sh*thole they crawled out and crap on American flag and American anthem. Only in America, says Bill - and you know that deep inside his soul, Bill adds - only because of people like me.

This story reminded me of a similar episode - the non-American-Americans protesting the students who dared to wear tee shirts with American flags. After all - isn't it entirely reasonable that American flags in American schools are a clear sign of disrespect towards the non-American-Americans? I am sure that Bill was pissing blood, he was so upset that some of those redneck American-Americans dared to bring in an American flag. It's so racist - he thought - so un-American to bring an American flag to an American school. It's uber-American though to boo American anthem, of course, and it's uniquely American style of patriotism.

Let's start with the obvious. As James Bennett noted - "democracy, immigration, multiculturalism… pick any two". Any country with unlimited immigration which does not try to assimilate the new-comers will eventually be torn apart if it is a democracy. People who booed American football team are not Americans - they may be aliens from Mars, they may be Mexicans, or Russians - but they are not Americans.

Secondly, the situation described by Bill is hardly unique to our country. Back in 2008, French team was also booed by non-French-French people during the game between France and Tunisia. Here is the appropriate passage from the French media:

A warm autumn evening in Paris’s Stade de France, the UFO-like landmark French stadium. Two teams : France and Tunisia, invited for a friendly game. Sixty thousand spectators, including many French youths of Tunisian or North-African descent. All in all just another ordinary football game. Only it wasn’t.


Things went sour even before the game started, when loud boos and jeers nearly covered the voice of the young Franco-Tunisian singer performing the French national anthem. Afterwards, all through the game, incessant catcalls targeted Hatem Ben Arfa, born in France to Tunisian parents, who opted to play for his birth country despite overtures from the Tunisian Federation.

Of course, this was hardly the first time when non-French-French booed the French national anthem during the football match. Back in 2001, same "uniquely American thing" happened during the game between France and Algeria.

A football match between France and Algeria provided one of the first warning shots to the French political elite from the heart of the banlieues.


As the band struck up "La Marseillaise" before the friendly match in the Stade de France, in the northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, the national anthem was booed. But what shocked France was that those who booed were not Algerian fans but French-born second and third-generation immigrants with French nationality. The banlieues had spoken, and the catcalls from the suburbs were telling the government that the country's model of integration had failed.

That incident took place in October 2001, six years after President Jacques Chirac was first elected, having campaigned on a platform of healing the "social fracture" of poverty and exclusion that left millions of citizens out in the cold.

And of course in 2005, same very attitude was reported from the non-French-French citizens:

In Aulnay-sous-Bois last Saturday morning, a similar scene was played out in which the elected representatives of the republic were reminded that the "social fracture" is more serious than ever, and that the young Arabs on the estates still feel alienated from a mainstream society which has abandoned them to their own devices.


The mayor of Aulnay, Gérard Gaudron, had hoped that a march would mobilise the population against the violence on the estates and bring out a sense of solidarity. But as soon as a group of city councillors and shopkeepers began singing "La Marseillaise" there were noisy complaints from the crowd.

And when one thinks about France and its issues with non-French-French, what actually comes to mind? The 2001 booing of the French national anthem was followed by massive riots on the streets of French cities in 2005, burning of 9 thousand cars and general unrest. In 2007, the non-French-French were able to burn down a library, two schools and a police station (how in the hell can you burn down a police station?!) in addition to hundreds of cars. The rioters also started to use the guns against police - which was a rather startling new development given the fact that France has pretty strict rules against the gun possession.


Bill Plaschke through his ignorance may conclude that it is uniquely American when immigrants openly and purposely disrespect the country they joined to move to. Mr.Bill Plaschke will even celebrate the early signs of the American nation being torn apart. What unfortunate is that LA Times is stupid enough to hire people like Plaschke to brainwash the readers instead of educating them. Do the owners and editors of LAT really think that the police will protect them from riots and violence which are inevitably coming? F*cking morons, all of them.

Obama's war

The  NATO coalition has been waging a war in Libya since March 19.  Let's look at some statistics. NATO is an organization of 28 states. It's combined annual military budget is more than 1 trillion dollars. The population of all NATO countries is close to 800 million people. On the other side of the conflict - Libya, a country of 6.4 million people and a nominal annual GDP of 74 billion dollars. One day of war costs the US taxpayers 285 million dollars - which is more than Libya's entire GDP. And yet, for more than 3 months, Muamar Kaddafi has been able to withstand an attack by the mightiest military machine in the world - and the current situation can be best described as "quagmire". The "days, not weeks" military campaign turned into a long and bloody affair with no light at the end of the tunnel. When looking at Obama's war, the most relevant quote that comes to mind is Napoleon's maxim - "An army of sheep, led by a lion, is better than an army of lions, led by a sheep". It is quite possible that at some point in the future (maybe eve tomorrow), a lucky missile will kill Kaddafi and bring an end to the conflict. It is also entirely plausible that some random Libyan major will decide to switch sides and bring Kaddafi's head on a platter as a gift to the rebels. Even if something like this happens in the next few weeks, one thing is certain - the entire war is a disgrace to America and its allies.

The failure of Obama's warmongering in Libya is evident to all, and it seems the White House understands that it needs to do something about it (or rather say something uplifting). A "small victorious war" turned up to be neither. Hillary Clinton, the "I am sick and tired of people who say if you disagree with this administration somehow you're not patriotic" dissident suddenly changed her mind. Yesterday the old witch shouted the following:

I say with all respect that the Congress is certainly free to raise any questions or objections, and I’m sure I will hear that tomorrow when I testify.


But the bottom line is, whose side are you on? Are you on Qadhafi’s side or are you on the side of the aspirations of the Libyan people and the international coalition that has been created to support them? For the Obama Administration, the answer to that question is very easy.

In short, you either support Obama's "dumb war", or you support Kaddafi. No "ifs" of "buts", no "Dissent is Patriotic" - it's either you are with us or you are with the mass-murderer. No shades of grey here. How quickly things change. Does she really think that denouncing all critics of Obama's war she can win support of the American people?

What's more surprising to some readers is how the most "cerebral" president of all times, Barack Hussein Obama launched this small victorious war. He is a man known for taking unusually long time before reaching a decision - and he is also known to unmistakably choose the worst possible course of action.

For more than 2 weeks people in Libya were rebelling against Kaddafi, and his regime was on the brink of collapse. While this was going on, Obama was characteristically silent. At some point Kaddafi was able to regroup and pushed the rebels back. When all appeared to be lost for the Libyan revolution, Obama rushed into action and crawled on his knees to UN and the Arab League and begging them to give him permission to intervene. After the UN nabobs were generous enough to give him a nod, Obama sent the NATO bombers against Kaddafi's troops. To confirm once again my initial impression of Obama as a man of unusually feeble mind for someone with a high-school diploma, 2 weeks later he suddenly became very curious about the nature of the Libyan rebels he rushed to support and he sent CIA to investigate them. Apparently, it did not enter his mind to find this out BEFORE he rushed into war.

Even today, no one in his administration can explain whether the rebels are Islamist scum, or they are pro-American freedom fighters. I suppose we will find this out once Kaddafi is ousted - or in the immortal words of Nancy "Dumb ass" Pelosi "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it."

And here is food for thought - the provinces that rebelled against Kaddafi are known for sending record numbers of recruits to fight the Allies in Iraq. While Kaddafi is certainly a thug worthy of a rope around his neck, it may be that the rebels are even worse. It's rather difficult to discern why Obama decided to support the Islamists in their jihad against Kaddafi - instead of letting these two sides kill each other at will. As Henry Kissinger said about the Iran-Iraq war - "It's a shame both sides cannot lose". And don't forget that even Obama's own Secretary of Defence, Robert Gates stated that Libya posed no threat to the USA whatsoever, and there was no national security issue.

But as far as Obama's behavior goes - it actually gets worse (or better depending on your perspective). For some reason, our president decided to ignore the War Power Acts in its entirety. A few years ago, when asked about Bush's possible attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities (which by all means do constitute a danger to the US security), both Barack Obama and his side-kick Joe Biden were unequivocal. Here is what future vice-president thought in 2007:

I have written an extensive legal memorandum with the help of a group of legal scholars who are sort of a stable of people, the best-known constitutional scholars in America, because for 17 years I was chairman of the Judiciary Committee. I asked them to put together [for] me a draft, which I'm now literally riding between towns editing, that I want to make clear and submit to the United States Senate pointing out the president has no authority to unilaterally attack Iran. And I want to make it clear, I want it on the record, and I want to make it clear, if he does, as chairman of the foreign relations committee and former chair of the judiciary committee, I will move to impeach him."

I can only guess that the same "best-known constitutional scholars" later approved Obama's attack on Libya - and confirmed that Obama did not need the Congressional authorization to continue the war indefinitely - overriding the opinions of career lawyers. Of course, back in 2007, Obama was also unequivocal  about the limits of the president's power:

Question: In what circumstances, if any, would the president have constitutional authority to bomb Iran without seeking a use-of-force authorization from Congress? (Specifically, what about the strategic bombing of suspected nuclear sites -- a situation that does not involve stopping an IMMINENT threat?)


Answer: The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.

As Commander-in-Chief, the President does have a duty to protect and defend the United States. In instances of self-defense, the President would be within his constitutional authority to act before advising Congress or seeking its consent. History has shown us time and again, however, that military action is most successful when it is authorized and supported by the Legislative branch. It is always preferable to have the informed consent of Congress prior to any military action.

It's also amusing to read that back then, Obama even believed that the president had no right to detain American citizens. From the same source:

Question: Does the Constitution permit a president to detain US citizens without charges as unlawful enemy combatants?



Answer: No. I reject the Bush Administration's claim that the President has plenary authority under the Constitution to detain U.S. citizens without charges as unlawful enemy combatants.

Quite ironically, only a few years later, Obama decided that targeted assassination of American citizens is allowed by the US Constitution. If anything, Obama's understanding of the US laws is extremely flexible - in fact one could argue that he does not care a bit about the US Constitution and instead follows the Lenin's principles of "revolutionary conscience". Here is the direct quote from the Soviet Decree from December 5th, 1917:

Местные суды решают дела именем Российской Республики и руководятся в своих решениях и приговорах законами свергнутых правительств лишь постольку, поскольку таковые не отменены революцией и не противоречат революционной совести и революционному правосознанию.

My translation:

Local Courts make legal decisions on behalf of the Russian Republic and in their decisions follow the laws of the previous governments only as long these laws are not abolished by the revolution and do not contradict the revolutionary conscience and revolutionary justice.

Read this decree carefully and think - is there any indication that Obama's legal views are drastically different from those of Lenin? If so, I would like someone to list those differences. I hope my reader keep in mind that Lenin wrote those decrees when he had absolute control of Russia - while Obama's powers are severely limited by the US armed forces, which would not let him launch the Red Terror.

Last but not least I must mention once again Obama's refusal to pursue Congressional resolution supporting the war in Libya. Indeed, he had 3 months to do that - and yet, he demonstrated no desire in convincing the Congress to provide a legal justification for the war against Libya. Indeed, his claims that the war in Libya is not a war (they call it now "kinetic military action") are not taken seriously by anyone. Why is he doing so? The answer to that is rather simple - Obama is and always was a very intellectually lazy man - he simply does not think it's worth his efforts to follow the US Constitution. Why bother with the niceties - when instead he can spend his time with the fundraisers or playing golf?!

Here is just one example of how far he can go ahead and insult our troops just by simply not bothering to check the most important details. I believe a man so intellectually sloppy cannot be smart and educated - it's just not feasible...

During his remarks to troops at Fort Drum today, the President was reminiscing about the times he has spent with the US Army's 10th Mountain Division, when he got something wrong.


"Throughout my service, first as a senator and then as a presidential candidate and then as a President, I’ve always run into you guys. And for some reason it’s always in some rough spots.

First time I saw 10th Mountain Division, you guys were in southern Iraq. When I went back to visit Afghanistan, you guys were the first ones there. I had the great honor of seeing some of you because a comrade of yours, Jared Monti, was the first person who I was able to award the Medal of Honor to who actually came back and wasn’t receiving it posthumously."


The problem is, Jared Monti was killed in action in Afghanistan, on June 21, 2006. He was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously, September 17, 2009. President Obama handed the framed medal to his parents, Paul and Janet Monti. He and the First Lady comforted them in the Oval Office following the ceremony.

Seriously, if you are going to make a speech and you got the urge to mention the name of a hero - would it really hurt to check his name first? And once you start putting together his other famous gaffes - the 57 American states that he visited, the 3000% decrease in insurance premiums, Austrian language - and compare him with president Bush (can you find anything that Bush said in 8 years of his presidency that was even remotely as embarrassing as what Obama blurted out in the last 2) - it's impossible to believe the media mantra about his super-human mental abilities. In fact, the facts point to something quite different.

But fear not, ladies and gentlemen, in November 2012 American people will get a chance to correct the mistake they made in November 2008. I hope this time they will take the elections seriously. I don't know about you, but I am certainly done with our first Affirmative Action president.

You can't not LOVE this man, Barack Hussein Obama

About a month ago our commander-in-chief proclaimed that Middle East has witnessed a “Teutonic shift“. Assuming that it was not a goof (Obama is known for his deep knowledge of the European history – for example he is famous for re-discovering the long-lost “Austrian language“), he was right on the money. Indeed, with the advancement of Moslem Brotherhood (a largely secular group according to Obama’s administration) in Egypt, recent re-unification between PLO and Hamas as well as success of jihadists in Libya, the Middle East is starting to look more and more as Nazi Germany. Now, granted, Teutons were a German tribe well before Hitler, but many people in Europe would not doubt recognize the meaning of Obama’s description.


In general, this president showed us all an example of a bald bold leader, not afraid to speak the truth to power. Let’s put together a few quotes from Obama – just to see the uncompromising honesty and integrity of our commander-in-chief.



“Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided…” 2008



“We should never seek to dictate what is best for the Israelis and their security interests. No Israeli prime minister should ever feel dragged to or blocked from the negotiating table by the United States.” 2007



“The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation. As Commander-in-Chief, the President does have a duty to protect and defend the United States. In instances of self-defense, the President would be within his constitutional authority to act before advising Congress or seeking its consent. ” 2008



Last but not least, Obama’s famous speech about the Iraq war. It sounds so different today – so out-of-place. One thought surely creeps in – “Did he say Iraq or Libya, Hussein or Kaddafi?”

I

don’t oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.

What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income — to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.
That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.

Now let me be clear — I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity.
He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history…
I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.
I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.

2002.



By the way – the best thing about Obama is not just his sincerity and how he strives to uphold his principles. What I admire about him is that he first collects all necessary information, analyzes it, and then makes a decision. Here is a quick example – follow the sequence.



1.Libyan people rebel against Muammar Kaddafi.



2. At first, the rebellion appears to go quite successfully, but then Kaddafi counter-attacks.



3. After 2-3 weeks of weighting the odds, when the rebels’ position appear to be untenable, president Obama launches a war against Libya.



4. A few days later, president Obama asks CIA to find out and inform him who are the rebels that he went to war for.



As an engineer, I find this sequence puzzling – but then, I deal with real world, not community organizing. BTW, speaking of community organizing – can someone send me the job description for a community organizer? I’ve read Obama’s memoirs, and he went into details explaining what he did for year in Chicago – but I still don’t understand what was his actual responsibility.

Nicholas Kristof stole my idea

Many months ago I was talking to my liberal neighbor. At some point we started discussing a rather pathetic state of American education, and I shared with him a rather brilliant idea of mine. "Look neighbor," I said, "US government spends more on education that it spends on the military (back in 2008, the difference between the two was a startling 130 billion dollars a year). Our military are the best in the world, and our education is the worst in all of civilized world. And don't forget that military spending covers 1.5 million active military personnel  - and they've got aircraft careers, tanks, warplanes and nuclear missiles. On top of that, millions of retired soldiers who were wounded and are now provided free medical care. On the education side, we've got about 3.2 million teachers , and a few thousand concrete buildings. When our army goes to war, we can watch on TV how a missile flies into a chimney and blows up a whole bunch of nasty folks into smithereens. When our educators go to educate - all we got is a long list of complaints. On the military side we've got hydrogen bombs and Martin F-22 Raptor (150 million dollars a piece) - and we can kill the entire world 50 times over if we choose to. On the education side - well, our schools are a laughing stock. It is obvious that the only way to drastically improve our schools is by turning them to the military to run - because our educational professionals are not worth a bucket of warm spit".


I must confess that I was rather amazed that Nicholas Kristof somehow found out about my idea and wrote an article about it on the pages of the New York Slimes. But don't forget that Kristof is an idiot, so he could not grasp the enormity of my idea - and he f*cked it up. According to him, the US military is a little piece of socialism in America (and a well-run piece of socialism at that). He was most amazed by the day-care facilities run by military, the health-care, and as a side note, he mentioned that our soldiers don't seem to suck too badly. He was also quite taken by the rather egalitarian pay in the military, and the fact that military academies are among the best in the world. And then, in a rather stunning show of complete ineptitude (so typical of liberal quasi-intellectuals), he decided to compare our military with the private sector - which meant that he missed the entire crux of my idea.

So, Mr.Kristof, let me explain to you what you missed the first time. Our military are part of the government, so we, as taxpayers, run it as we damn please. We cannot, say, decide how much a CEO of a private corporation can make - but we set the pay for the "public servants" because they work for us. If you are in awe of our military and you want to emulate their success - then try to deal with the rest of the government. Let me remind you that our military are not unionized. They are not allowed to collectively bargain for better medical care. They cannot go on strike. Their participation in the political process is severely limited.  There are no tenures in the military and if you perform badly, you lose your job.  If a soldier disobeys direct order of his superior, he will be court-martialed. And he cannot simply call in sick and march to the capital and demand more pay. And yes, most of our soldiers are right-wing, and they had to go through blood sweat and tears to be admitted to the military.

So, if you are serious about your praise for the military, and you are concerned about the low standards of the US education, then you will join me in demanding that our educational system be run in the same fashion as our military (and probably by the same generals). We can start by immediately forbidding our teachers to participate in political activity, the unions will be abolished, the teacher pay will be not allowed to go above the pay of our military personnel. The tenure must become the thing of the past, and teachers will be hold personally responsible for their actions. And if a teacher goes on strike - he will be sent to a military jail - no ifs or buts here.

In short, Mr.Kristoff, if you want the rest of the federal, state and local government to even approach the efficiency of our military, we must treat our "civil servants" as soldiers. Let's start with the haircuts first - I've seen a few folks in the local public school who looked like they needed to see a barber. They are no hippies in the army, private!