Quem Deus Vult Perdere Prius Dementat

Why is everybody so happy? They're talking in hushed tones of 'The First Hundred Days' of the Obama Era as if they had some palpable accomplishment to brag about. The Administration has snuck a few pieces of legislation through the legislative process and people who are paying attention are alarmed at many of their policies. CNBC, a business channel not normally given to political discourse, is inhabited by folks who are able to read and understand what these things mean and the business-types on that channel are aghast. Hard-core conservatives are predictably upset at what they see as a slide to destruction. Even some liberals are looking over the 'accomplishments' and becoming uneasy.

But if you get your news from the 30-second newsbreaks in the commercial intervals during 'Desperate Housewives' you're feeling pretty darn good about Barak. One glance at the cover of People Magazine will fill you with confidence and pride at America's wise political choice. Approval ratings are at 60%. Barak obliges this vast audience with plenty of images that show that he's as photogenic as Bill Clinton, swinging his golf club with a quiet insouciance with his eyes fixed firmly on the future that is just outside the bounds of the glowing photograph. At last, a Democrat who looks sharp in his tailored suit instead of that furtive little weasel Bush! I guess things can only get better, right? He's rolled up his sleeves and done something about the economic mess left to him by the Bush Administration and he's got a lot of swell new solutions for all our other problems so why shouldnt we support him?

But 'The Hundred Days' concept can refer to two incidents in history; the storm of legislation that began FDR's 12-year tenure in the White House or the return of Napoleon from Elba and his march to Waterloo. Both ended badly. Waterloo has become a synonym for hubristic disaster and FDR's hurricane of legislation did nothing to help the country out of the Great Depression and in fact can be accused not only of prolonging and deepening that depression but also can be looked on as the beginning of the trend that has brought us to the current crisis. One thing that Bonaparte and FDR had in common is a boundless energy that they threw into The Hundred Days. Wrongheaded as they were they moved forward rapidly and with purpose.

Not so the sluggish Obama. With a Speaker Of The House described by her colleagues as 'crazy and meaner than a junkyard dog' and possessing a complete lock on The House and a Senate with 59 Democrat votes, needing only one or two feeble RINO votes to perpetrate any legislative monstrosity Harry Reid needs to push through you would think we would be living in a People's Republic by now. But this legislative mountain has so far given birth to a couple of anemic baby mice. They've voted a trillion dollars in handouts to friends, donors and favored sectors of the electorate (labeled 'stimulus'). They've effectively doubled the federal budget. The banks have been strong-armed into the TARP program. A large sector of the auto industry has been nationalized and turned over to the union bosses who destroyed it in the first place. The defense budget has been slashed. But the 'liberal agenda' , the avalanche of legislation putting every dream of every crackpot left-wing college professor or union boss into law that Nancy Pelosi promised in the magic First Hundred Days is surprisingly missing.

Why? The American People have demanded more subsidies, especially in these critical times. This is a free country so where's all my free stuff? Free medical care--that's a right! Free college education for anybody who can scrawl their name on an admission application--another right! And what about the right to stay in your house when you cant pay the mortgage? The right of your union to charge your boss four or five times the wage rate people in other countries earn for the same work? The right of public employees to earn eighty percent of their gross pay (indexed for inflation, of course) when they retire after twenty years of service? The right of illegal aliens to all the benefits available to so-called 'citizens'. The government needs to fix the weather by replacing all smoking power plants with eco-friendly windmills and solar panels and also to replace all those stinky gasoline-powered cars with battery-powered cars that run just as well and eliminate the need for expensive petroleum. All those greedy bankers and CEOs need to be stripped of their bonuses and private jets so that The Children can have a decent education in our cash-starved schools.

The translation of the title of this piece is 'Whom the Gods would destroy they first make demented'. That might be a good replacement for 'In God We Trust' on our currency. The currency that will be increasingly worthless as each new wave of 'stimulus' is poured into a declining economy. The conservatives are waiting for the American People to catch on to the effects of all these Obamunist economic tricks and turn on their authors. Thats a nice thought, but its going to take a lot for these spoiled, dependent slobs to realize that their rights are unsustainable and unworkable and not rights at all. The dementia has eaten into America's brain. They really think that the government can fix the weather. They really think that they can retire at fifty with free medical care, a phat pension, mortgage relief, and an electric-powered Winnebago that will take them on a permanent tour of a well-maintained highway system in a country free from the fear of a terrorist attack or crime by illegal alien criminals surrounded by a world of democratic nations impressed by the sheer morality of America's admirable foreign policy. Thats how demented we have become.

The state of the political culture in this age of Obamunism is like one of those parties that some people throw in their beach houses on sandbank islands when a Category Five hurricane is approaching. What, Me Worry? Everyone is happy waiting for Daddy Obama and those caring, concerned Democrats to drop fat worms into our widely-opened mouths. We just declare the worms exist (nemitodii stimulatus) and there they are! The economic collapse of Europe is interesting but what does a 6% decline in GDP in Germany have to do with us? If the Taliban takes over in Pakistan why should we care? Nuclear Iran? Not our problem. Somali pirates? Hey maybe we can make a movie about these poor saps and have Johnny Depp play the Head Pirate just for laughs!

Because one of the worst mistakes of the Obamunists is the presenting of our bungling non-action in Somalia as some kind of a victory. The pirates got a green light for more thuggery and the world got the message that this four-flushing phony will take a victory on the cover of People Magazine instead of risking a real response to an international crisis. Another is our broadcasting to the world that we intend to prosecute the people who squeezed the secret plans of our Islamonazi terrorist enemies from them while we label our peaceful political opposition as potential terrorists. The world is also looking askance at the ever-increasing bond auctions of our Federal and State governments as they work to fulfill the rights they've told a gullible public they can expect.

So as Barry gives Hero Chavez the ghetto handshake the Taliban moves in for the kill in Pakistan, the North Koreans fire ballistic missiles into Japan's airspace, and Iran readies their first nuke for testing the American press goes insane complimenting BHO on our much-improved image in the world. As the banks slide further toward insolvency, the UAW seizes control of GM and Chrysler, the Fed pours vast oceans of money into a shrinking economy, the cap-and-trade disaster looms and unemployment creeps into double digits the press and the public are agog at the many accomplishments in this First Hundred Days of the New Age. If you deny that socialism doesnt work and I deny that socialism doesnt work then it works! Another Great President said something similar and he had a 60% approval rating, too.

Make no mistake. The problem that this country has is that everybody now expects to get more out of the system than they put in. Everybody. Its mass insanity. Dementia. The Gods are laughing. They know how this story ends. Obama isnt Achilles, he's Hector.

The Tea Party

I'm Mad as a Hatter and I'm not going to take it anymore! Wait, there's something really wrong with that sentence...Oh, I see! I am going to take it. Lots of it. All the time. More and more. Does that sound a little cynical? After all I'm a proud attendee of a Tea Party, one of the many protests against the creeping cancer of Obamunism that has made us forget the maddening bureaucrat who ran the government just a few months ago.

I never appreciated one of W's stronger qualities. He didnt cut the size of government. In fact it grew enormously under his stewardship. But he was pretty good at running that big, huge monstrosity. The actual screw-ups were few and when they popped up they were dealt with pretty effectively. Bush never overestimated what could or could not be done. Its telling that the greatest 'screw-up' of the Bush Administration was more of a public-relations defeat than an instance of actual incompetence. If you compare the Feds actions during Hurricane Katrina to the State Of Louisiana, run by the hopelessly incompetent Kathleen Blanco; or if you view the complete disintegration of the New Orleans city government and take note of the craven, cowardly behavior of its mayor and many of the members of its police and fire departments you'd have to admit that the Fed's initial paralysis, quickly overcome with the arrival of the military, was mild by comparison.

Bush didnt come off the rails until the financial dominoes started falling. His descent into Keynesianistic check-mailing was the first time he utterly abandoned any kind of conservatism and openly pursued liberal policies. His former liberal actions (immigration, education) were taken because these issues were being pushed hard in the media and by powerful political players. Bush didnt want to fight the trend and lose; he'd rather be part of a crappy deal after he had blunted the worst aspects of it in a compromise. But the check-mailing was no compromise with the liberals. Bush thought of it and pushed it. He hired Henry Paulsen (a Democrat) and worked on the bank bailout. There were alternatives, the repeal of the Sarbanes-Oxley mark-to-market accounting rules and the creation of liquidity by the Fed but I think Bush did the only politically possible thing he thought he could do.

But now we are in the hands of different people. Their fumbling, patently dishonest statements peg them as ideologues with absolutely no managerial skill at all. The gangsters in the legislature treat the Obama hippies with the contempt they deserve, sending up bills for President LePetomane to sign lustily as his Hedly Lamar-like Axelrod stands leering on the sidelines. Thinly-veiled contempt is what Obama gets from the majority of the world's leaders, appalled at grandstanding Barry's lack of gravitas. Ditto from the Somali pirates in their safe, unbombed pirate lairs. Everybody who deals with this clown comes away scratching their heads.

The freak-show claque of screwballs Barry has picked as Cabinet heads seem to be competing for who can say the dumbest, most offensively outrageous thing in front of a TV camera. Is Janet Napolitano doing as good a job at the HSA as she did governing Arizona? What moronities will The Smartest Woman In The Universe over at State utter next? Could Eric Holder be any more glassy-eyed and Orwellian? He's like the Trotsky of the Obama Revolution. Timothy Geithner's inept actions have sparked a panic to dump dollars at the same time he's peddling two trillion dollars of worthless bonds. And the beloved VP, Slow-Joe Biden, the man whose chia-pet-like plug-job is an inspiration to Hair Club members everywhere; what of his many weird statements? Every time he breaks loose from the well-guarded estate where he has been attending to extremely important business at the behest of Barry, the Bide-Man finds a camera and proves that he is by far the dumbest idiot who ever threatened to become president. The living, breathing argument against any of Janet Napolitano's angry returning veterans aiming their laser-guided weapons in Barry's direction. This is not a group that exudes managerial competence. The Chinese are frightened and appalled enough to be worried about their stash of dollars and not very receptive to buying any of the new bond issues that are being floated. There certainly arent hundreds of Chinese illegal immigrants donating to Barry the way they did with Hillary.

So if everyone else in the world, or should I say everybody in the world who doesnt watch Oprah and The Daily Show or read People Magazine, has a sneering contempt of Obamunism and sees it for the con that it is, why, when a few flag-waving conservatives gather on some windy, cold street corners to protest the direction in which things are going, are we labeled extremist nuts? Is Sarkozy an extremist nut? The entire British press corps? Well, I'm not either. I just see what is obvious.

Now some of my fellow demonstrators definitely fit into the high-fiber definition. Is abolishing the income-tax or the Federal Reserve a politically viable position at the moment? No, its crazy talk. So is fervent opposition to abortion. You can argue these things until you are blue in the face but the fact remains that they are completely politically impossible at this time and saying them loudly, as though they are the main point isolates you politically. And if these are your only issues, if the present danger doesnt make you want to sublimate them and fight for the survival of our most basic economic and political freedoms then you are as useless as any Earth Day-worshiping liberal. There was an odd assortment of Ron Paulians and people with over-the-top political obsessions present but most of the people in that windy plaza were just regular types, frightened by what they see coming. A surprising number of young people.

The sense that I felt from the Tea Party I attended in the giant government complex in Van Nuys was that we had to get together to stop the things that are happening now, not yell about pie-in-the-sky issues that are decades away from resolution. If we dont all drop our little personal agendas and just work to oppose the people who now have almost total power those other issues will become meaningless. As it is we are faced with a government which is about to embark on one of the greatest social engineering schemes in world history. They are going to fix the weather. I dont say that with any sense of satire or irony, that is exactly what they plan to do. What has happened in the last two months is nothing. The EPA has announced today that dozens of chemicals are 'greenhouse gases that are threats to human health'. They dont need any legislation or action from the executive branch to begin the crusade against your car, your refrigerator, your air-conditioner, your job, your way of life.

The courts will mandate that these Evil, Greedy Corporations stop releasing Greenhouse Gas and impose punitive damages to be collected by greedy lawyers and New Age non-profit foundations. The courts will rule your car unconstitutional. The courts have now reached the point where they can rule anything they want and that ruling has the effect of law. The Constitution has become malleable in the hands of these leftists and has lost all its meaning. They can now invoke the EPA finding and close every fossil-fuel-burning power plant in the country. The feeble, expensive stream of windmill and solar-panel generated electricity into your house will be enough to run a few dim, mercury-filled, hazardous light bulbs and your computer (which will also be your TV set, phone, link with the world). Do you think I'm kidding? You think these hippies are going to let you keep that chloro-fluorocarbon-filled refrigerator which is writing a death-warrant for polar bears and melting the polar ice caps? Think again, Amigo.

The people at the Tea Party, from the crazies to the average folks who were there, could quote the liberal's rhetoric very accurately. It was a nice crowd but there werent any newbies. These were all hard-core anti government, anti-liberals. It was like the Peace Movement in 1966. The masses hadnt caught on and so everyone had the same sense of purpose in the face of what looked like overwhelming odds. Everyone I talked to had a level of awareness that was very satisfying to me. They all knew that spending trillions of dollars on absolute nonsense would wreck the currency. They all knew that the State Of California didnt have a prayer to avoid fiscal calamity. They knew that these genius's ludicrous attempt to influence the weather was a pathway to serfdom and poverty. It was like being around old friends. No one needed to say very much. The Present Danger was apparent to all.

But can the juggernaut be stopped? Not with this crowd. Not in this political system. The system will fail on its own and then we are in tremendous danger. Democracy is not working. The legislators of both parties are too prone to handing out goodies to their friends, the lifetime judges have become enamored of imposing their social theories on us peasants from the bench, the permanent bureaucracy has a mind and life of its own. There is no controlling legal authority. When the sheet hits the fan the frightened population will dump what remains of its freedom looking for easy answers; the election of these Democrats proves that. A man on a horse will emerge to pick up the pieces.

As I left the Tea Party I rode home on The Orange Line, part of a giant tens of billions of dollars mass transit boondoggle that was designed to peaceably separate Angelenos from their beloved automobiles. An expensive failure. The only Angelenos that were riding it when I did were Spanish-speaking folks who came to this country because here, if you work hard and get a little bit ahead, you can buy yourself a car. Too late fellas! Los coches son el mal. (Cars are evil.)

What Do Women Want?

In the century since Sigmund Freud asked that question many people have tried to answer that question, with varying degrees of success. Have the most penetrating answers come from the world of psychiatry? The overfunded 'Feminist Studies' departments of elite universities? Sage philosophers after much deep pondering? Nope. None of these wise-guys have ever brought any insight to this important question.

So who knows? Who can penetrate the very inner souls of our female wives, daughters, girlfriends, colleagues, and friends? Its so obvious and so simple---the people who make automatic dishwashers! Yes guys, while we would be perfectly happy to have every dish we own coated with a hardened layer of whatever frozen entree we microwaved onto it and laying unwashed in the sink while the hungry cats try to lick some sustenance from the caked-on fossilized goo women are not so easy-going. Even if they are not even in the same room as the dirty dishes they will never be happy or relaxed knowing that they are sitting there, calling out to be sparkling clean and sitting happily in their proper place in the cabinet.

The ancient Chinese pictograph for 'contentment' is a woman under a roof. The modern American pictograph would be a woman standing next to a dishwasher. She pours the viscous oozing liquid into the little plastic door, snaps it shut, closes the door, hits a couple of buttons and PRESTO! the next morning her or her significant other removes all the past day's previously dirty, but now shining clean, dishes and places them in their proper places. Its like the cycle of life; some dishes are used every day. The breakfast ones only stay in their appointed storage places for a few minutes. Some dishes are used intermittently. Some so rarely that its hard to remember where they go. But even a husband can be trusted to load the dishwasher (if there's not too many glasses, dishes, cooking bowls and pots and pans), and males are even capable of operating this simple domestic machine. Well-trained husbands can even unload with a fair degree of accuracy.

Since the middle of the 20th century this time-honored ecology of spotless dishes has ground on in countless households. Unchanging, timeless. But outside of the kitchen a new reality was taking hold in the bigger, wider world in which the innocent dishwashers were a tiny, unnoticed corner of reality, chugging away contentedly freeing women from the chore of washing dishes and men from the occassional guilt of either not washing dishes or sitting by shamefacedly while their female companion washes them. Women began to seize power. They looked around at the Male Patriarchy permeating every aspect of our traditional culture and said, "Enough!" They listened to Oprah and Rachel Maddow and they wised up to the raw deal they've been getting since the first protozoan crawled from the sea two billion years ago. They voted for Freedom, the voted for Progress, they voted for Women's Rights, they voted for Democrats! Radical Democrats, the Redder the better. The Planet is in mortal danger from these hairy testosterone apes, humanity's hope for survival has been left in the sink caked with a layer of hardened patriarchal slime while these clods go off to surf for porn on the internet. The Redder the better and the Greener the better.

But one day, in Spokane, Washington, anywhere USA, a funny thing happened...a woman woke up at the usual time and went to the dishwasher and removed--a DIRTY DISH! In fact, all the dishes were covered with a thin, sticky film of slime. They werent clean! How had this happened? Its simple. In the name of the Planet the local pols had decreed that there should be No More Phosphates in any dishwashing liquid sold in Spokane County. The vile, planet-destroying, capitalist-enriching detergents were gone, replaced with eco-friendly, mixed-with-love, life-sustaining brands. Just one thing was wrong. All the wonderful, Planet-saving, Green detergents wont get dishes clean. The Big Lie of Environmentalism, that only a few minor adjustments to our lives will bring us back into harmony with the Goddess Gaia and her beautiful cycle of life, was writ large on the kitchen walls of Spokane. That there was no problem before doesnt matter. We have to Go Green! So Spokane, which had been existing quite happily with clean dishes has mandated dirty dishes just to do it. Because they care; and if you dont care you're part of the problem.

Of course the Spokanians arent the sort of folks to take this crap lying down. The Costco across the border in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho has been stripped of phosphate dishwashing liquids by alarmed and panicked residents of Spokane. We are living in an age of dishwashing liquid smugglers. Husbands and fathers have been forced to not shave for a couple of days and drive banged-up pickup trucks across the border to load up on 'suds' and drive back into Washington, pretending to be drunk, to throw off the sharp-eyed County Sheriffs who have been pulling over housewives in mini-vans whose springs and shocks are sagging under a heavy load of phosphate-loaded goo and making arrests.

"Whutta buncha saps!" you laugh? This particular 'Green' notion is more widespread than just Spokane. The same people who ripped the cigarette from your lips, are trying to outlaw your pickup truck and replace it with an electric wheelchair and empowered every old biddy in the universe to start squawking about your murderous hamburger habit are on a roll. And they hate your dishwasher. That power-guzzling, water-polluting waste of resources all used to make your pathetic little life 'easier'. You dont care about the Planet very much, do you? And these are the maniacs who won the last election. They were elected by a crowd of people who wanted change. Those people didnt know what 'change' meant but it sounded pretty good after looking at Bush's ugly little face for eight years. And if you're going to vote for The Big O why not go down-ballot and vote Green as well? That'll fix them greedy polecats on Wall Street!

But again their contentment has been shattered by another intrusion by the Busybody State. Now, that's OK with me. I would be happy to return to washing out utensils on a Need To Use basis. But I'm married. The corollary to the question, "What Do Women Want?" is "What Do Women Hate?". The answer, of course, is a sink full of dirty dishes, dishwasher liquid that doesnt work, and a husband, tired from a day of honest toil, settling happily down into comfortable bliss in a soft sofa or easy chair with not a care in the world. What woman would sit still for that? So, now that the communist lunatics that she voted for have ruined her life, who is it who is going to pay for it?

Men, that's who! How many three-pointers are going to sail into the basket while you're in the kitchen up to your elbows in soap suds and hot greasy water? In fact, even when you're done your return to comfort will be in a room dominated by the noise of happy residents painting the walls in their houses strange, florid colors as insanely gay men talk about 'window treatments' and granite countertops. Yes she has taken advantage of the crisis caused by her socialist allies to seize the remote. Hope And Change, like any other system, has winners and losers and guess what you former Male Patriarch...You Lose! Is she going to start voting for people who will protect the integrity of her dishwashing liquid? Nope. She's just going to get a new dishwasher--that would be you, amigo!

And if us older curmudgeons are helpless what of our sons? Those poor, hapless lads whose innocent high-jinks were rewarded with mind-twisting counseling and a lifetime addiction to Ritalin and who have been bombarded with feminist and eco-greenie propaganda since birth? They'll have the burgers ripped from their lips, the 4 wheel drive will disappear from their axles, contact sports will be outlawed but these doughy little wusses wont have the nads to vote for their own freedom. They'll continue to Save The Planet. Enjoy doing the dishes fellas! The vacuum cleaner is next.

Blue Dog Bull Pucky

I just got done reading an article on Real Clear politics.com about how the so-called 'Blue Dog Democrats' are worried that the morons who voted for them might not be on board as the Obamunists adopt the policies that made Albania the economic powerhouse that it is today. (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/04/centrist_dems_dogged_if_they_d.html).

Blue Dogs from Purple districts worried about spending too much Green money by the Reds running their party...what a pile of horse dookey! THERE ARE NO MODERATE DEMOCRATS! If your Representative or Senator voted to make Nancy 'Stretch' Pelosi Speaker Of The House or Harry 'The Body' Reid Senate Majority Leader then they are a dyed-in-the-wool out-and-out commie left-wing socialist America-hating anti-capitalist freedom-ending radical Marxist. The only difference between a 'Blue Dog' Democrat and Chuck Schumer or Barney Frank is that the 'Blue Dogs' have constituencies slightly less politically retarded than the Bright Blue centers of socialist idiocy and are forced to lie about who they really are so that they can hornswoggle normally sensible people into voting for them. You would think it was obvious that residents of Nebraska or Virginia would have more sense than people who live in New York, California or Massachusetts, thats a no brainer, but look at the lying liberal weasels they send to the Senate; Jim 'Melonhead' Webb, who ran as Ronald Reagan and votes like Hugo Chavez, and that sneaky sloped-brow pinko Neanderthal Ben Nelson, who is always involved in thoughtful dialog with RINO Republicans like Arlen Spectacle, Olympia Snow-Job and Thusan Collinth, crafting filibuster-proof majorities in the Senate for the latest attack on our country dreamed up by the Stalinist Leadership. Obamunists all. So any time you vote for any Democrat for any office, no matter how 'moderate' they pretend to be, remember that you are voting to decrease your freedom, raise your taxes, fund extremist groups, deny American sovereignty, cut the military and further destroy a country that was once the beacon of hope and freedom to the entire world.

But right now the tidal wave of cash printed by the Fed and handed out to all and sundry by the beneficent megastate is having the effect of temporarily halting the headlong slide to rock bottom. It seems a few rays of sunlight are peeking through the gray gloom of Obamunism and lending a faint hope to the immediate present. The crash was like when the lights go out in a tough waterfront bar; a lot of scores get settled. In this case companies who were dying to clean house did it all at once under the cover of the general emergency. It seemed that all of a sudden everyone I knew either got laid off or was fearing a layoff...including my wife who is a low-paid library aide running a library in an elementary school. At least in the film industry you expect to get laid off but a friend of mine is a Civil Engineer at the same job for decades who was completely unglued by layoffs at his company. His 401k has lost two-thirds of its value, his mortgage is 'under water' and he's been forced to take a 20% pay-cut. Better than being one of the 50% of his firm who got the boot, I suppose. An Obama voter, too, but it would be stupid to rub that in his face right now. Wait till election time. Lets see how eager he is to re-elect Henry Waxman.

But the current calm is deceptive. The infusion of bogus cash created by the Fed might have roused the stock market a bit but the firing of corporate CEOs by the government and a crop of legislation completely deleterious to any expansion of economic activity bode ill for the future. As does a precipitous drop in tax revenues and an increasing load on pension plans and Social Security by laid off older workers who want to take early retirement. Social Security, supposed to be in surplus until 2017, is soon to be in the red. In the red even without the anticipated addition of tens of millions of illegal aliens made eligible for SSI handouts by 'immigration reform'.

Meanwhile, the ever-lovable Barney Frank has shepherded a bill through committee without debate that would give the government control over all salaries. Confiscatory Federal and State tax hikes are going to make any income over $150k completely meaningless--and inflation is going to put a raft of Obamunists who were shouting, "Eat The Rich!" from their low tax-brackets all of a sudden on the hook for a bunch of unexpected taxes. The upper middle class bourgeois bedroom-community granola-eaters will be feeling the bite of this as every penny that they worked and saved for is lost. There is already a problem of abandoned unsellable small boats, too expensive to moor and maintain, cluttering the coastal waters as owners ditch the useless hulks in a desperate effort to cut their bottom-line costs. Another industry destroyed.

And if wage controls are put in place can price controls be far behind? If hyper-inflation is a problem why not just pass a law against it? That'll create a nice sunny business climate, along with the inevitable shortages and disruptions that those kind of controls always cause. So if you've got anything in the stock market sell on the current upswing and then buy a ton of non-perishable consumer goods and stash them in your garage so you will have plenty of stuff to trade on the black market. Avoid gold which the greedy megastate always confiscates from the idiots who think their horde of dubloons will tide them through the tough times. Even if the government forgets to confiscate them what will they be worth? A can of beans? Better to invest in the can of beans, they're a lot cheaper and if you dont trade them you can still eat them.

But dont tell your friends, whatever you do. One of the characteristics of socialism is that it engenders total selfishness and dishonesty in the people live under it. You dont tell anyone what you've got going because trading your can of beans for a new t-shirt is illegal. Hoarding your can of beans is illegal. Making any profit of any kind is illegal. So keep your mouth shut and cry poor.

Meanwhile, enjoy the calm before the storm and enjoy being able to oppose this madness. The life of a socialist peon is a life of the mind, the life of an artist. You'll have time to surf the web and dandle your grandchildren on your knee. You're as successful now as you are ever going to be so dont worry about it.Socialism is the art of cruising through life without making waves. You run your little scams and enjoy what you can cheat out of the system.

Thats the world that our moderate Democrat friends and their bi-partisan Republican allies have dragged us into. The hard-core Obamunists will do all the heavy lifting, but really, what are the chances that we'll elect people who will go to DC or the Statehouse and make REAL cuts? Zero. We can enjoy all the tea parties we want but everyone is getting a subsidy of some sort and its ingrained in our minds that they belong to us by right. The Bill Of Rights is less important than my right to my Social Security check or my right to a cheap, subsidized class in 'Pornography In World History' at the local community college. We just have to learn to adapt and wait for the wind to change.