first rule: never alarm the populace

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so yesterday, still reeling from the healthcare coup d'etat, i came across a washington post headline that left me with my mouth hanging open:

"what the fuck?" i asked myself.

i went back to retrieve the article for tonight's post, and could find it nowhere--in its previous form, anyway.  i did, however, find essentially the same story with today's date, under the following headline:

see how much nicer that one reads? (guess they got a call.)  the first paragraph of the story, however, was the same:

The Obama administration plans to overhaul how it is tackling the foreclosure crisis, in part by requiring lenders to temporarily slash or eliminate monthly mortgage payments for many borrowers who are unemployed, senior officials said Thursday. 

[emphasis mine]

i asked a few people today what they thought about the government ordering private industry around like that, and the general consensus was basically, "well somebody needs to--and besides, isn't it good he's helping those poor folks who are out of work?"

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what i can't get over is the stunning speed with which it's happened.  we're not moving toward fascism anymore--hell, we're there, and the only people who seem to care are all marginalized by the media as borderline-domestic terrorists.

i watch the dems preen and crow over their recent ugly healthcare win, which effectively ensured that nobody'll need 60 votes in the senate to get anything passed ever again--one more element of the founders' carefully planned system of checks and balances effectively destroyed.

thus exhilirated and emboldened by this new lowered standard--hell, even crazy shit can get 51 votes--i see john kerry dusting off his global warming bill, which would give the government--in addition to control over the automotive, financial services and healthcare industries they presently enjoy--control of the energy sector as well.

and coming down the pike after that? chuck schumer and lindsay graham are already testing the waters for their new, improved amnesty bill which will effectively grant citizenship, full benefits and the right to legitimately compete with naturalized americans for ever-fewer jobs to 15-20 million illegal immigrants (oh, and give the dems 15-20 million new voters--but who's counting?).

never mind that the vast majority of americans hate both these ideas, they'll just do what nancy and harry did with healthcare--arm-twist it through the house, pass it in the senate with reconciliation, and set it so that the ugly doesn't kick in for 4-5 years, by which time nobody'll blame them for it.

on second thought, the post really shouldn't have bothered to tone down their headline--america doesn't care anymore.

because anything that validates my favorite stereotypes will always show up here

h/t jmg

because i live for shit like this

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so the rich germans and the bankrupt greeks are at each others' throats over in euroland, and it's beginning to get really entertaining.

in case you haven't been keeping up with the whole greek-crisis thing, allow me to give you the quick-and-dirty:

basically, fully a third of the greek workforce is either employed by and/or otherwise sucking off the tit of the greek government, and most of the other two-thirds are heavily and luxuriantly unionized, with all that implies. astonishingly, this fiscal model has proven to be unsustainable, and everybody seems to understand this but the greeks.

the hardworking, efficient germans are tired of carrying the soft, decadent greeks [not to mention various and sundry other profligate and ungrateful mediterranean countries whom they feel misrepresented their dire financial straits in order to qualify for entry into the EU in the first place] and are balking at bailing 'em outta what they see is a mess of their own making.

this sentiment recently found expression in the form of the following german magazine cover:

the headline roughly translates as "Liar in the Euro Family"--and yeah, that would be a greek flag wrapped around miz venus.

needless to say, this enraged the greeks--who, not to be outdone, upped the ante by responding that what they actually wanted from germany was not a bail-out, but a return of all the goddam gold they'd stolen back in WWII.

this sentiment found expression in the following newspaper article, which featured a photograph of the goddess victoria atop the siegessaeule in berlin, only she's holding a ...

now, this is multi-culturalism, people.

how it shoulda been done

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so last night mitt romney's on larry king talking about obamacare, and i watch [not only because romney's been there/done that, but as governor of massachusetts he actually managed to package and deliver universal healthcare for his state (a) cleanly; (b) in an open, carefully deliberative and above-board manner, with a minimum of arm-twisting and/or shady backroom deals; and (3) with full bipartisan support--imagine that, bitches].

despite larry's best efforts to thwart him, he managed to say two very interesting things.

the first was [and yeah, i'm paraphrasing a little--but not much]:

"the healthcare bill that obama just signed is upwards of 2,500 pages, while our massachusetts bill was just 70 pages."

how could that be, you ask?  how could romney condense something so complex into so small a package?

he elaborates:

"we looked at the people who didn't have insurance, looked at all the money the state spent every year treating said people in emergency rooms and free clinics, took that money and used it to help those people buy private insurance."

get that, people?  10% of the citizens of his state didn't have healthcare, so romney's plan attempted to deal simply and directly with that 10%.

contrast that with obamacare:  10% of americans don't have healthcare, so he's gonna fix it by massively fucking with the 90% who do.

for those of you naive, sloppy, sentimental, uncritical thinkers who still believe that obamacare is anything but the pure, naked, socialistic power-grab it actually is, stay tuned--i've got a few more things to say on the subject.

nice knowing you, america

connect the dots yourself

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saw this column a month or so back [yeah i know, but read it anyway].

within that piece was a link to this one, which contained some interesting polling data.

ever since, whenever i come across shit like this, i pause and reflect.

and most recently, i've asked myself--having scorched the political earth of america in order to pass their doomsday healthcare bill, how could the democrats even remotely hope to hang onto power come november?

well, today i came across this little tidbit [and btw, thanks, scotland--god knows our press would never tell us this shit].


to my previous advice about buying gold, allow me to append the following: buy a prius.