SATURDAY NIGHT SUICIDE MATERIAL.

Lucky is from Radiohead's third album OK Computer, released in 1997.




Then Massive Attack's Man next Door, which is set to fragments of a 1965 film by Alan Schneider, based on a script, or what passes for it, by Samuel Beckett, the Irish avant garde writer and poet. The title of that film is simply "Film", it lasts 22 minutes, the main character is Buster Keaton, there's no dialogue at all, and it's about a guy wanting to escape being perceived. Beckett is of course most famous for his play Waiting for Godot, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, are waiting for a guy, Godot, who never comes. Kind of like waiting for a leftist to grow a brain, quoi. The price for most unintellectual quote of the day goes to me, for "Samuel Beckett was a nutter".





Hey, I'm fine and dandy. No suicide plans, not at all. It's just that I don't think that just because a song is dark, it automatically cannot be good. In fact, imho both Lucky and Man Next Door are brilliant.


Nite.


MFBB.

WHY DADT SHOULD NOT BE REPEALED.

A US Admiral made it to Belgian MSM. Below is a screenshot from Belgian daily HLN (Het Laatste Nieuws), 2 February 2010.



Naturally, US admirals are only presented to the Belgian population if they announce either surrender or something related to our whorenalists' eternal dada, gay issues. In this case, it's the latter. We are, of course, talking about Joint Chief Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen, and his plea before a Senate panel last Tuesday, presented as a personal POV, to repeal the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Policy (DADT) introduced by President Clinton in 1993. Mullen expressed his view as "a matter of integrity" and said that it is wrong to force people to "lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens."

First off, I think "wrong" is a bit too stark an expression. I might agree with his using the word "fair" however. To which I would reply immediately: whoever said that life is always fair? And whoever claimed that life in the military is always fair?

I am but a simple citizen and I never even served, but to me the prime issue for an Army, like it is to so many other things - my company e.g. - is first and foremost about efficiency. Opening up a debate that

a.) will in itself consume precious resources,
b.) will invariably create divisiveness within the military, and
c.) of which an outcome repealing DADT will undermine combat effectiveness...

... is, in my opinion, a very stupid thing to do when you are at war with a mortal foe. To top it all off, can you imagine the rolling laughter among a group of taleban in some dank cave in Waziristan when they hear on the shortwave that, while their archenemies have not yet managed to get the AF surge underway, they have at least made progress on the gay front?

Over at our friend CDR Salamander's site, there've been some good posts on the issue, and I'd wager his comments section continues at least as much, if not more, good reading material as the posts themselves. A couple of the comments in his February 3 post stood out, in my opinion, and with or without kind permission of the authors, I will repeat them here.

First, here's a comment by Mr. X. He's in favor of repealing DADT:

"There's a popular misconception that the "don't ask" part of DADT means we are forbidden from asking, but that's not true. Shipmates casually ask one another all the time. "Hey, what did you do this weekend?" "Who was that I saw you having dinner with?" "So, are you seeing anyone?" An honest answer to those questions from a homosexual is grounds for discharge, regardless of the fact that they were "asked" by someone within DoD. There is also no penalty in the law for those who ask, and nothing that prevents the information from being used if someone does ask. Because the law is written this way, homosexuals frequently find themselves in situations where they are asked questions they may not answer truthfully. I think that's was Admiral Mullen was talking about when he raised the issue of integrity."

Fair enough, but like I said, life's not enough fair. I realize there's probably a great deal of injustice and suffering involved for gay people serving under DADT. But the question you have to ask yourself is, what are the pros and cons of scrapping a policy that, despite its flaws, was better than nothing? If the cons outweigh the pros, just stop whining and leave the policy in place. And I would wager the cons FAR outweigh the pros. We'll come immediately to that, but before we do, here's a column by a certain Claude Berube, a fequent contributor to Proceedings and Naval History on the USNI website. Some exerpts:

"Second, Didn’t Know Don’t Care would be based on individual competency. It would not be about special privileges for any one group. Rather, it is about the freedom of individuals to serve. There are standards in the Navy as reflected by fitness reports or other assessments. The one question we should ask is: Can this individual do the job? After the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan’s life, he was wheeled into the emergency room and jokingly said “I hope you’re all Republicans!” If a qualified health care professional said they were a Democrat, he wouldn’t have waited until a Republican showed up. The same philosophy of competence should apply in the Navy.

Third, character counts. Character is not an exclusive trait of any race, gender, or sexual preference; character is demonstrated by individuals. Once a person is deemed qualified to serve, then openly serving homosexuals must be held to the same standards and adhere to regulations as heterosexuals. If they cannot follow regulations, then they must be as accountable as anyone else regardless of race, gender or sexual preference."

The column goes on like that, and it seems Mr. Berube is proposing a policy he labels "DKDC", for Didn't Know, Don' Care. Now, is it just me or am I the only one who fails to see substance in this proposal? Because Mr. Berube never seems to explain how such a policy, letting gay people out themselves and simply judging them by their competencies, should be implemented in practice.

No, I suppose I sound hopelessly archaic, but in the end I'll just stick with the opinions of two commenters on the CDR's thread, "Old NFO" (a male) and "DeltaBravo" (a female). Both served, I assume, with the US Navy. I... told you I was archaic, that's why I'll let the Lady speak first. DeltaBravo:

"You know, since most of the posters here are men I've seen an aspect of this debate that has fallen by the wayside. I don't want to bring an avalanche of accusations and anger and... well, who cares. I'll wade in anyways....

The following is very non-PC. Read at your own risk. I'm just making comments from the point of view of a woman who has watched things for years, has female relatives and friends who serve and have served, and who knows the female mind.

Forget the jokes about DADT and hot lesbians.

There are lots of women in the military. DADT isn't just about the Navy and a few women on ships. It's about other branches that have higher percentages of women clustered in some specialties. How to say this nicely... not a few lesbians among them. Right now they have to keep a lid on things.

YOU.DO.NOT.WANT.TO.TAKE.THE.LID.OFF.THAT.POT.

Women deal with each other differently than they deal with men. In the grand scheme of things I'd rather have 10 male bosses than one average female one. Women are not nice to each other. I have watched people who were suspected of being lesbians target women in the workplace who did not accept their vague advances. It's not pretty. Women can be brutal with each other and very spiteful. Career-killing spiteful. Now put a bunch of them in a command and have love affairs going on semi-openly with people now allowed to publicly proclaim their love that can now speak its name. Girlfriends pairing up, new young recruits coming in and all the drama. Oh, the drama! (Picture what you know of male/female triangles and fraternization. Rejections. Accusations. Now double the estrogen involved.) You do not want to be the COs who have to wade into that minefield. Ever watch a show on women's prisons? Try that in a military division. It will destroy all semblance of unit cohesion.

This isn't just about guys in showers feeling gazed upon. This is about the emotionality and attachments that women can foist on each other that will give many DIVOs excedrin headaches.

At least before, there was doubt maybe whether someone was lesbian and their advances were misread. But bring that whole woman scorned thing out into the open.... it makes what you men navigate look like a cakewalk.

I've seen it in action. NOT FUN. "

Then Old NFO:

"I'm looking forward to the excuses when this blows up. Eighteen year old kids in boot camp with proselytizing gay activists as drill instructors. 56 man berthing compartments and open showers all shared with a few open homosexuals. Shop supervisors and division chiefs being threatened with harassment charges if they try to get any work out of a self described gay. Take all the problems of putting women on ships and multiply them several fold.

As for Admiral Mullen and his ilk. I wonder if there is a point where political correctness would become too much even for them. They still can't admit the Fort Hood massacre was done by an Islamic Terrorist. And now they think allowing open homosexuals into the high pressure close quarters of shipboard life is a great idea.

Earth to Admiral Mullen and Obama. The military is not an office. You don't go home at the end of the day. You live in close contact with your shipmates 24 hours a day for months on end. Every little personal habit is inflicted on everyone else, especially in the lower enlisted ranks . I expect homosexuals will become the new protected class in the military. Good luck meeting your enlistment goals."

I suppose it will sound terribly unintellectual when I say I far prefer the points of view expressed by Old NFO and DeltaBravo over anything else. Repealing DADT will result in lower combat effectiveness. Lower combat effectiveness means, a.o., higher casualties. WE CANNOT HAVE THAT. There's a war going on...





... and it has to be won. I am sympathetic to the plight of gay members of our western armed forces, but I suspect the decent individuals among them - quite a few, I would wager - will understand that while DADT may not be perfect, it is the best system so far.

One last thing.

Since Europeans are so much more sophisticated than crude Americans, it should come as no surprise that in our enlightened continent we not only do not have such a retarded policy like DADT... but our homosexual and lesbian service members even participate in Gay Parades! Don't believe me, check out these photos and you will see a few jolly good fellows proudly serving in the Royal Navy.

Now, I am not only archaic... But I am also mean-spirited. Why else would I suspect a correlation between an RN Gay Parade... and a RN Parade on Iranian TV? Look for yourself! First, the former.




Royal Navy members participating in EuroPride, a Gay Parade held on July 1, 2006 in London.


Then, the latter:



Royal Navy members from the frigate HMS Cornwall. One year after the RN Gay Parade they encountered Iranian sailors in the Gulf who said 'BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!', they shat their pants full, surrendered and afterwards learned their lesson well.


In March 2006, Second Sea Lord Vice Admiral Adrian Johns revealed that he planned to set up therapy lessons to learn hetero RN members to change their old-fashioned perceptions of gay people. Vice Admiral Johns said "his staff were investigating drama-based training resources" as a means to achieve that lofty goal.

I'm sure those drama-based training resources were of great help when a smelly brown liquid flowed down Lt. Felix Carman's pants. Not. Bloody fooking idiots. Oh yeah, did I mention DADT should not be repealed? Good night.



MFBB.

PAT CONDELL ON THE CROOKED JUDGES OF AMSTERDAM.

Kind of blows you away huh?

If you do not want your children to grow up in a totalitarian society,


DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.


I am pissed off as hell lately, and I'm beginning to think... that it is time... for a Conservative Revolution. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. From open leftist collaboration with the islamization of our societies and the Global Warming hoax, over mind-numbing taxation, the showering of welfare checks over illegals being groomed for voting cattle, and insane hyperspending... to a skyrocketing abortion toll, gay adoption and giving pregnancy tests and fucking contraceptives to 11-YEAR OLD GIRLS....


I have had ENOUGH. I'm seething.



MFBB.

TAKUAN SEIYO'S 14TH INSTALLMENT IN THE "FROM MECCANIA TO ATLANTIS" SERIES.

The Right is lucky to have in The Brussels Journal's Takuan Seiyo such a gifted and merciless chronicler of the West's decline into an ageing continent trading its once vibrant economy for sclerotic impotent dhimmisocialism, and paralyzed by bogus guilt over the GW hoax and an allegedly murky past as a colonizer of supposedly noble, peaceful civilizations elsewhere. Last week, Seiyo published his 14th installment in the groundbreaking "From Meccania to Atlantis" series, and, although I actually loathe to use the phrase... it is a must-read. The elusive TBJ contributor focuses mainly on the horrific travesty that is the Wilders Trial currently taking place in Amsterdam. But before linking to a couple of exerpts from his brilliant post, I'd like you to meet a trio of very, very nasty people. On the photo below, actually a screenshot from the extreme leftist daily De Volkskrant, you see from left to right "Professor in Counterterrorism" Bob De Graaff, "Radicalization Expert" Hans Moors, and "Extreme Right Expert" Jaap Van Donselaar. They are the authors of a "scientific study" of which the predetermined conclusion was that "Geert Wilders is a danger for democracy". This "study", ordered by Interior Minister Guusje Ter Horst, coincidentally a socialist, is, in a slightly polished form, one of the elements "à charge" used against Wilders in this political trial.




The Real Fascists: from left to right Professor in Counterterrorism Bob De Graaff, who would make better use of taxpayer money if he studied the likes of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab rather than Geert Wilders, "Radicalization Expert" Hans Moors, a pseudoscientist whose smug face could be a hallmark of that disgusting class of self-congratulatory elitist euroleftists, and "Extreme Right Expert" Jaap Van Donselaar, dedicated to investigating those darn dangerous extreme rightwing terrorists but for some reason seemingly completely unaware of the very real (islamo)leftist track record in that domain (Duyvendak, icon of the "Dutch WU", the Hofstadgroep etc).


Below you see a screenshot of the leftist daily De Volkskrant, October 2009, when news of the "scientific study" had just come out.




Translation:

'GEERT WILDERS UNDERMINES DEMOCRACY.' Amsterdam - "Geert Wilders' PVV Party is an extreme rightwing party which mobilizes islamophobia and system hatred against the authorities. Thus the party undermines social cohesion and democracy in this country. That is the conclusion of three scientists in a report on radicalization to the House, as ordered by the Interior Ministry."

Now that you have gotten one more whiff of the stench of the real forces behind the stifling of freedom of speech in Europe, I'd like you to read a coupl of exerpts from Seiyo's excellent column:

Now, 29 months later, the next stage of the toxic toads’ assault on the peoples of the West is taking place in Amsterdam. Geert Wilders is standing before a kangaroo court on charges of, mirabile dictu, “incitement to discrimination and hatred.” An old trick of any dark oligarchy with respect to extirpating inconvenient ideas. Already used against Socrates and seen in the West more recently in the 1945 Nazi trial and execution of the nonviolent resister and bearer of a distinguished German surname, Helmuth James Graf von Moltke.

But there is more to Geert Wilders’s trial. The chicaneries that preceded it, the 70-page rap sheet, the bizarre comments by the Pharisees in charge, the disproportionality between the offense and the prescribed penalty, connote in one’s mind the prosecution’s charges in the most famous trial of them all. Those were charges of blasphemy.

The blasphemy on trial in Amsterdam is not against Allah, though if Eurabia proceeds on course such blasphemy and whatever else the Organization of The Islamic Conference dictates will be proscribed at Dutch law within years, if not months (4). Rather, it’s blasphemy against the religion of multiculturalism, diversity, appeasement, cowardice, treason and vain hopes of 30 shekels of perpetual profit from the Islamglobal economy of The New World Order.

Numerous well-informed observers have noticed the demonstrable truthfulness of Mr. Wilders’s statements for which the Netherlands justice system proposes to fine and jail him for two years, presumably stripping him of his parliamentary immunity first. Wilders’s opening statement in court was itself predicated on the question, “If something is true, how can it be punishable?”

But truth, empirical evidence, justice or the public good have nothing to do with it. This is lawfare – an asymmetrical war by the racially and culturally Europhobic neosocialist oligarchy on the people it governs. A war to squash ideas and the political parties that embody them and therefore jeopardize the oligarchy’s hold on power and the perks of power.

The depths of obscenity

“It is irrelevant whether Wilder’s witnesses might prove Wilders’ observations to be correct”, stated the Dutch Public Prosecution Service (Openbaar Ministerie). “What’s relevant is that his observations are illegal”.

The four paragraphs of the Dutch Penal code under which Geert Wilders is being tried may be found here, but a writer interested in the marrow of things would condense them as follows:

He who publicly, verbally or in writing or image, deliberately expresses himself in a way insulting of, or incites hatred or discrimination or violent behavior against, person or a group of people or their property because of their race, their religion or belief, their gender or hetero-or- homosexual nature or their physical, mental, or intellectual disabilities, will be punished with a prison sentence of up to one year or a big fine, except if he does so in his professional (i.e. Geert Wilders) or avocational (i.e. bloggers, freedom activists) or group (i.e. organized nonviolent resistance) capablity, he will get up to two years in prison and a bigger fine.

In the symposium The Trial of Geert Wilders, the American attorney David Yerushalmi found that this law he calls “fascist” contains a prepackaged guilty verdict against Wilders. What’s most telling to me is that that the law does not discriminate between insulting and advocating violence. Moreover, it expresses the fatwa of the West’s ruling elite against discrimination. That is a death sentence -- for Western civilization.

Without discrimination, neither physical existence nor a moral or intellectual system can obtain, except as miasmatic pap. Without wise discrimination between the inside and the outside, any society is destined for the flush hole of history.

The writer Nidra Poller [ibid.] quotes the Dutch Law Professor Fokko Oldenhuis:

“…the statements of Wilders are un-Dutch, they don’t belong to our Christian-Judaic culture…. He discriminates Moroccans because of their race and causes hate against them…. His desire to ban the Koran brings fear and terror into peoples homes… The laws against hate crimes were made in 1934, to protect the Jews in a reaction to what was happening in Germany.”


Poller asks, “What could be more obscene than enrolling 6 million exterminated Jews in a battle to deprive one honest upstanding legitimate popular Dutch MP of the freedom to oppose the spread of an ideology [i.e. Islam] that blatantly plans the extermination of the remaining Jewish population of the world?”

Time to enter a peculiar character, another lackey of the politically correct regime and a man who would have been perfectly at ease in the ranks of the Stasi. Meet Paul Velleman, prosecutor in the Wilders trial.




A Real Fascist: Velleman was the prosecutor who ordered the arrest, in the middle of the night and by a ten-strong squad of black-clad policemen, of cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot. This ball-less, slimy but all in all dangerous creep (at least for indigenous Dutchmen) shows far less bravado when confronted with offensive cartoons from radical muslim organizations.

"Alas, inconceivably, the persecution of Geert Wilders is more obscene even than that. Two additional participants in the symposium, the Canadian lawyer David B. Harris, and Mark Steyn, pointed out that despite the manifest risks to Wilders’s life, the Dutch government is refusing to hold the trial in a secure courtroom, even though it provided one for the trial of the Dutch-born Muslim murderer of Theo van Gogh. Steyn remarked further that in the Low Countries politicians who challenge the Eurabian arrangement are either banned (Belgium’s Vlaams Blok), forced into exile (Aayan Hirsi Ali) or killed (Pym Fortuyn) – and that the authorities are indifferent as to which of these fates befalls Geert Wilders [ibid.].

But that too does not exhaust the depth of the obscenity. The two prosecutors in the Wilders trial, Paul Velleman and Birgit van Roessel, also work for the Dutch National Discrimination Expertise Center [LECD]. Velleman is the head of LECD. As Gates of Vienna has reported, “Paul Velleman was the prosecutor who had the [offensive to Muslims and anonymous] cartoonist Nekschot picked up in a raid by ten police officers in the middle of the night, and kept him locked up for more than two days. Quote from H. Numan: ‘After release, he was told: You can forget about anonymity now. They know who you are.’“

Alias Gregorius Nekschot is a regular citizen. He cannot afford the security arrangements that the Dutch state must provide for Geert Wilders – one surmises, reluctantly -- due to his parliamentary status. So the declared purpose of Nekschot’s arrest and “outing” was, first, to silence him or get him killed, and second, to send a message to all dhimmitude resisters: Mütze ab! Ve know vho you are, and ve know vere you are too. Therefore, they know it too. Shut up or be killed. Mütze auf!

The Dutch National Discrimination “Expertise” Center has finally bagged the big fish. Everyone knows who he is. But now everyone also knows where he is. And once he is jailed, his parliamentary immunity and security detail stripped, they can finally do the work the dhimmofascist regime would like to do itself."

Seiyo concludes:

"The well-oiled machinery of repression is vast and global. The working of the interlinking cogs may be glimpsed in any “news” (i.e. agitprop) item, e.g. like this report that appeared in the Belgian newspaper Le Soir on the day when 57.5% of directly polled citizens of a sovereign country, Switzerland, decided to prohibit the construction of further Islamic minarets:

“Switzerland votes massively [for] the prohibition of minarets”, reads the headline (in French), under which almost every sentence includes words indicating disappointment, disapproval and condemnation or a negative opinion about the legitimacy of the Swiss people’s sovereign voice.

One is informed that the Green Party plans an appeal before the European Court of Human Rights, for violation of religious freedom. Likewise, the Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism (CECLR) – the Orwellian name alone merits a short pause -- in Belgium, naturally, opines that the victory of 57.5% of the Swiss citizenry is not a victory for democracy. The lawfare of progressive dhimmitude is trotted out too:

“A prohibition that has no effect but on a single religion is contrary to the Belgian Constitution, to the European Treaty of Human Rights, and to different declarations of the United Nations.” [ibid., my translation]


One would wait in vain for the pompous neosocialist frauds running either Le Soir or CECLR or the UN or EU or Switzerland’s Body Snatcher government or the Barko regime in the United States to express equally strong or any opinions concerning the treatment of Christians and Christianity (11) in every Muslim country in the world, or the treatment of whites in South Africa, Zimbabwe and much of the rest of Africa."

If you truly value Freedom, you should with all your might denounce the conclusions of this disgusting Kangaroo Court. Follow this link and write an email to a Dutch embassy and/or consulate wherein you express a.) your support for the brave Dutchman that is Wilders and b.) your disgust for the travesty that this "trial" makes of the Dutch judicial system.

Thank you.



MFBB.

MULTICULTURAL ENRICHMENT IN BERLIN.

Now and then we have referred to certain muslim-infested areas in Berlin, amongst others Neukoelln. Some may remember how police officers upon rounding up petty criminals had to flee for suddenly appearing muslim mobs lest they not be lynched. Here is another illustration of what life in those neighborhoods has in store for non-muslims. From the Polish site Polskaweb, German edition, January 2010:

"Veiled muslim girls suddenly attacked other, preferably blonde girls. School authorities and the Senate Administration for Schools are deeply concerned.

It happened on the street: "Two times already girls with headscarf beat with their fists on blonde girls without headscarf, pushed them to the ground, and kicked them with their feet" says Volker Steffens, Principal of Thomas More High School in Neukoelln. The number of foreigners among the about 500 pupils is more than 80 per cent from 41 nations....

Rita Herrmanns of the Senate Admininstration for Schools: "Fundamentalistic tendencies are on the rise in Berlin's schools over the past years. More and more muslim girls are wearing headscarves. More and more muslim parents forbid their daughters schooltrips, swimming lessons, sexual education". School Principal Volker Steffens is sitting in the front seat to witness the conssequences: "The islamic tendencies and straight racist attacks by [muslim] girls are remarkable."

The victims are the blonde Polish girls, because they are catholic and at the same time very liberal and therefore embody everything, what the veiled girls hate. The reason for the conflicts is most often envy. Steffens: "In religiously very tight households much is forbidden. The girls see in school other girls, who are allowed far more. They become pissed off, and harass the children of liberal families."

Volker Steffens draws the line: "Cases are talked through with the girls and warnings issued [my translation sucks - dunno what 'geahndet' means. Is there a German in zhe Room? - MFBB]. That goes from a warning over a negative reference to exclusion from school meetings and even the school itself".

Rita Hermanns: "It's good that way, because one thing shouldn't happen at all: look away! This violence must be exposed."

Good luck with that. Better oil up, lock and load grandpa's Schmeisser Madam Hermanns. Better, uncle Willi's Sturmgewehr. A few Panzerfausts might come in handy too.



MFBB.

BUTTGET PROPOSAL.

Just one article among many: Peter Morici on FOXNews.com. Morici is a professor at the Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, as well as a former Chief Economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission.

Obama's Budget -- Straight From La La Land
By Peter Morici
- FOXNews.com

Today, President Obama released his proposed 2011 budget, which forecasts the federal deficit will fall to $706 billion by 2014 or just 3.9 percent of GDP before rising again in 2015.

To accomplish this feat, he proposes letting the Bush tax cuts expire and other spending cuts the Congress has rejected in the past. More extraordinary, though, the document assumes that real GDP grows at better than 4 percent a year over the four years from 2011 to 2014, and the economy does not encounter a serious recession.

If your staff economist tells you that is realistic, fire him.

Rosie Scenario wrote this budget.

The United States is facing deficits greater than one trillion dollars for the foreseeable future, and investing in long-term U.S. government bonds is a very risky proposition. It is not that Washington won't pay, but longer term, an international run on the dollar and inflation are real risks.

Investing in U.S. bonds now entails considerable political risk. A populist government, similar to those that drove Latin American republics into bankruptcy during the 1970s is in charge.

Obama's strategy: low growth policies and assume away the consequences.

This Mark Steyn article's scope is somewhat broader than the "mere" acknowledgement of a budget, and a budget deficit, and a national debt, never before seen in human history, but I thought I'd pass it on just as well:

...That's why Obama is such a job-killer. Why would a small business take on a new employee? The president's proposing a soak-the-banks tax that could impact your access to credit. The House has passed a cap-and-trade bill that could impose potentially unlimited regulatory costs. The Senate is in favor of "health" "care" "reform" that will allow the IRS to seize your assets if you and your employees' health arrangements do not meet the approval of the federal government. Some of these things will pass into law, some of them won't. But all of them send a consistent, cumulative message: that there are no rules, that they're being made up as they go along – and that some of them might even be retroactive, as happened this week with Oregon's new corporate tax.

In such an environment, would you hire anyone? Or would you hunker down and sit things out? Obama can bury it in half a ton of leaden telepromptered sludge but the world has got the message: More Washington, more microregulation of every aspect of your life, more multi-trillion-dollar spending, and no agreed rules in a game ever more rigged against you.

Obama and the Democrats have decided, in the current cliché, to "double down." That hardly does justice to what the president's doing. In effect, he's told embattled congressmen and senators to strap on the old suicide-bomber belt and self-detonate for the team this November.

That's a lot of virgins to pass out, but, with this administration, budget restraints aren't exactly a problem: Untold pleasures will await every sacrificial incumbent in paradise, or at any rate the coming liberal utopia.

What's the end game here? President Obama gave it away in his student-loan "reform" proposals: If you choose to go into "public service," any college-loan debts will be forgiven after 10 years.

Because "public service" is more noble than the selfish, money-grubbing private sector. C'mon, everybody knows that. So we need to encourage more people to go into "public service."

Why?

In the past 60 years, the size of America's state and local workforce has increased five times faster than the general population. But the president says it's still not enough: We have to incentivize even further the diversion of our human capital into the government machine.

Like most lifelong politicians, Barack Obama has never created, manufactured or marketed any product other than himself. So, quite reasonably, he sees government dependency as the natural order of things.

And in his college-loan plan he's explicitly telling you: If you start a business, invent something, provide a service, you're a schmuck and a loser. In the America he's building, you'll be working 24/7 till you drop dead to fund an ever-swollen bureaucracy that takes six weeks off a year and retires at 53 on a pension you could never dream of. Obama's proposals are bold only insofar as few men would offer such a transparent guarantee of disaster: It's the audacity of hopelessness...

You bet.

Jesus Christ. If I ran my family's financial matters like Obama does the US's, my wife would file for divorce. I am NOT KIDDING.


MFBB.

TAKUAN SEIYO: FROM MECCANIA TO ATLANTIS (13/2).

Over at The Brussels Journal, the elusive contributor Takuan Seiyo (a pseudonym) is up to his 14th installment in the breathtaking "From Meccania to Atlantis" series, but before I link to that one, I'd like to call your attention (overdue, admitted) to the previous one, which appeared more than one month ago, on December 18, 2009. For some reason I never found an adequate opportunity to refer to it earlier.

Here it is. This man deserves a readership of tens of millions.

The Left’s strategy has not changed much since the 1930s. They push government spending ever higher, and then define budget deficits as the problem. When fiscal conservatives point out that the overspending causes the deficits, the Left labels that as extremist, supporting slavery and homicidal. When in power, the Left ratchets up the spending on its clients and picks the pockets of the productive citizens out of a faked concern for the “deficit gap.”

The one rule is that expenditures are never reduced, except as a strategic ploy. If an emergency forces a reduction, what’s reduced is the police, the garbage pick-up, the libraries, but never the budget-busting public workers’ pension programs, or the legions of $150,000-a-year deputies of bureaucrat deputies, hired and retained through thick and thin to fulfill the Holy Grail of Body Snatcher creed: “balance” between competent straight white males and quadriplegic black Muslim lesbians.

But there comes a time when the spending is no longer an exercise in cynical egotism or delusional ‘social justice,’ but a deliberate battering ram with which to fell a nation and steal its future. There is no precedent in history to the reckless magnitude and speed of the Obama–Pelosi regime’s spending. It’s impossible to capture concisely all the details of the confetti curtain of $100 bills streaming day and night from ten million Bernanke helicopters, but a few mileposts are worth mentioning:

The Senate of the most indebted nation in history, a country staggering under mountains of debt that it has no viable way of repaying, continues to pass Titanic spending bills that just in the first nine months of 2009 included:

$350 billion Wall Street bailout extension

$787 billion “stimulus” package

$400 billion, earmark-infested omnibus spending bill

$6 billion to federalize charities and pay volunteers

$109 billion loan to the International Monetary Fund

$3 billion for “Cash for Clunkers”

$400 million in corporate welfare to the tourism industry

$4 billion bailout of the Postal Service





In what the New York Post called “a stimulus without the stim", the federal government has spent a half-billion dollars on ten large government stimulus contracts in New York City and Long Island that created 54 jobs. That comes to $9 million per job.

Overall, the government has spent $246,436 per each of the 640,329 jobs it claims to have saved or created so far. That's a pretty costly stimulus, a government Ponzi scheme of printing money and so robbing those who hold previously printed money, then flinging the new money about in order to cover up the sorry effects of the government’s own prior malfeasance and stupidity.

Each buyer of the 690,000 vehicles that were sold during the “Cash for Clunkers program” (gov. propaganda here) received a government subsidy of $3,500 - $4,500, at a total cost to the taxpayer of $3 billion. But since the majority of these beneficiaries would have bought their cars anyway, the 125,000 who were actually induced by the government to buy cost the taxpayer $24,000 each.

Fraud in the “$8000 ‘stimulus’ to each new home buyer” program is currently assessed at $500 million. Thousands of such $8,000 tax credits have been issued to illegal aliens, children, and people who had not bought a house – the latter including at least 53 IRS [Income Tax Bureau] employees. That’s what happens when a government rather than the free market mechanism dispenses money.

Obama has announced a plan to send 78 million American seniors a check for $250 each. That’s a paltry 19.5 billion dollars. In Detroit, thousands line up for “Obama money,” that they believe is a personal gift from The One. In Tampa Bay, millions are wasted to subsidize beauty school tuition for beauticians for whom there are no jobs. Maybe that’s the ultimate Monkey Business haircut.

As if this weren’t enough, the lunatics in the House of Representatives write a 2000+ page bill that nobody has read and pass it at 23:00 on a Saturday night. They propose to spend another $1.2 trillion on health care for the 12.5% of Mexico’s population (3) that prefers free American doctors, in a reform that would actually worsen everything that’s already bad in the American healthcare system (4), explode U.S. debt, increases taxes, and kill jobs. Two Saturdays later, the Senate gives its stamp of approval, in a wheeling-dealing process that involves buying one senator’s vote with a $300 million bribe to Louisiana, twenty times the amount of the original Louisiana Purchase.

I have only one advice for Americans. Get rid of this Fraud and his cronies ASAP. They are destroying your country. But do it in a legal way, of course. Make it a Victory not only of Democracy but also for the commonest of common sense.


MFBB.