Ion Birladeanu: Nightwatchman, Gravedigger, Artist

From the Outraged Spleen of Zion:

Bîrladeanu is a rare model of the absolute refusal to make any compromise with a corrupt, totalitarian regime. He preferred a marginal existence, taking the lowliest possible jobs - gravedigger, nightwatchman etc. - in order to preserve his own existential liberty untainted by any contact with the regime: at the lowest possible level, where one no longer has anything to lose, even the tiniest comfort or advantage, it is no longer possible for oppressive authority to apply any form of blackmail. And all the while, through his art - an art that was clandestine in the fullest sense, an art that was "unschooled", and thus wholly free of the corrupting influences of the communist education system and the mechanisms of censorship - he developed an unrelentingly honest and authentic critique of totalitarian Romania.

Come to think of it, I am reminded of the Russian film "Tema", directed by Gleb Panfilov , in which the main character is a playwright who has prostituted and ruined his talent through grovelling conformity with the communist regime, which has showered him with awards and other material advantages.

The film is about his existential crisis, in which he realises, in spite of the official praise heaped on him, that he is worthless as a writer. At one point in the film he meets a gravedigger, in fact an intellectual who has chosen this "profession" in disgust at the demands made on him as a writer by the regime.

ROMANIA, 2008:

SNIP

They are people who either refuse to play by the canonical rules of their time and live contrary to that set of believes, either question the status quo. Ion Bîrlădeanu had such an existence. He was born in 1946 and for more than 30 years he refused to become an “honorable citizen”. During communism he had had several jobs. In his 20s he left his native village (Zăpoteni, in Vaslui county) to work on the reed fields in Tulcea and then as a docker in Constanţa.

Arriving in Bucharest he worked as grave digger, as frame saw worker, security person, or unqualified worker at the House of the People. Starting with 1989 he lives a marginal life, working as a freelance selector of garbage from a block of flats on Moşilor Street and doing little favours for the people living there. He does not raise a family; he is not employed to this day.

SNIP

Throughout his existence Ion Bîrlădeanu selected magazine images and made a series of unique collages. All of them had a cinematographic intention. He started with a native talent in drawing and, with his passion for movie making, he created an imaginary, proto-pop world which came 20 years before the possibility of reception from the Romanian public. In Romania, the pop aesthetics is a post-communist reality and it is a direct consequence of the consumerist society.

With little or no resources, Bîrlădeanu creates a cinematic photogram that tells a complete story. All his collages are a very special hybrid between pop art, with a
surrealist touch and dada. Add a little flavor of communist gulag in which films and brands symbolized possibilities of freedom.

SNIP

Through out his life, Ion Bîrlădeanu chose liberty and despised all types of conventional authority. In his collages he built an imaginary arena where he was always victorious, where hypocrisy stood defeated in the cheers of the crowds, and where the humanist-ironical scenario was played over and over again.

A week before the opening, M. Ion showed me some things that he considers some sort of "imitation” art, but which, for me, is the missing link in his artistic project. In the 70s, during his commute to the ship yard, he used to carve in wood, all sorts of logos. Through all this fascinating objects, I found a wooden communist medal. It is a replica of the “hero of socialist labor”. It was made by M. Ion at the beginning of his career but he will now wear it proudly like a gladiator showing his wooden gladius as a sign of the freedom he earned in the arena.
~ May, 2008

Other source links:

INCEPEM BLOG

Galleria de arta Hart

Romanian govt toppled in no-confidence motion

1 hour ago

BUCHAREST 10/13/09 — The Romanian government fell Tuesday after losing a no-confidence motion despite Prime Minister Emil Boc's pleas that the collapse of his administration could put an IMF-led economic bailout at risk.

OBAMANOMICS = ZIMBABWEFICATION: THE COLLAPSE OF THE DOLLAR

OBAMA IS DOING TO AMERICA WHAT MUGABE DID TO RHODESIA...

• GOLD AND OIL ARE HIGH.

• OIL IS HIGH DESPITE HUGE INVENTORIES AND THE LARGEST RESERVES OF ALL TIME.

• IT'S THE WEAK DOLLAR, AND THE WEAK DOLLAR IS BECAUSE OF OBAMANOMICS.

CLICK PIC' FOR NEWS ITEMS...

Obama & SEIU: Like a Hand in a Glove

Yes, it's a Neil Diamond reference. This video, from Naked Emperor News, via BreitbartTV, is damning. Obama says that he and SEIU go way, way back. Basically, he says that he wants to socialize this entire country and expand his cronies' power.


Awesome. Obama is such a corrupt, low-life, hack politician. Notice how his accent changes whenever he doesn't know what to say, which is all the time when he's speaking without a teleprompter, as if sounding Southern were somehow plausible in someone from Hawaii, Indonesia, and Chicago.

Fears Al Qaeda-linked scientist was planning nuclear attack on UK after MI5 learn he worked at top-secret British lab

From the Vlad Tepes Blog, via the Daily Mail London:

October 11, 2009

• MI5 investigate brilliant scientist’s links to world-famous Rutherford Appleton nuclear research centre
• French Interior Minister claims ‘worst may have been avoided’ after brothers’ arrest
• Uncanny parallel to Dan Brown novel as scientist hunting for ‘God particle’ is held over fears he planned to attack Britain
  

Raid scene: French police at the modest flat in Vienne where Adlene and Halim Hicheur were arrested on Thursday

A brilliant young nuclear scientist who was arrested in France last week over alleged links to Al Qaeda had worked for a top-secret British nuclear research centre.
Last night fears were growing that Dr Adlene Hicheur – who was a researcher for the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire for a year – could have been planning a nuclear attack in the UK.
The French government said yesterday that the arrest of Hicheur, 32, and his brother Dr Halim Hicheur, 25, could have averted a terrorist atrocity.
They were seized after an 18-month investigation by French anti-terrorist police hours before Adlene Hicheur was due to travel to the laboratory where he now works at, CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research near Geneva.
Halim Hicheur carries out research at similar high-security scientific institutions around Europe.
The brothers’ council flat was stormed at 6am last Thursday by eight masked officers from the elite Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence (CDII), the French equivalent of MI5, and 20 armed riot officers.
With almost no noise, a spearhead unit rushed up the concrete steps leading to the cramped flat in Vienne, South-East France. A battering ram was used to break the lock and the warning ‘Armed police!’ shouted.
Large-calibre machine pistols and other weapons were aimed at those inside the flat, including the brothers’ parents and siblings.
Secret agents had been monitoring the brothers’ movements, and all their phone calls, text messages and emails were being bugged ‘in real time and minute by minute’, according to a security source.
‘It was like we were sitting on their shoulders. We knew exactly what they were saying.’

Mysteries of the universe: An aerial view of the Rutherford Appleton lab where Dr Hicheur worked The source said that Adlene Hicheur had been ‘pinpointing nuclear targets’ but would not be more specific.
The scientists were being questioned last night at the maximum-security headquarters of the CDII on the outskirts of Paris while MI5 began trying to piece together their movements and contacts in Britain. Read More »

TURKEY-ISRAEL SPLIT WORSENS; TURKEY-SYRIAN ALLIANCE GROWS

TURKEY - WHICH RENEGED ON HELPING THE USA JUST BEFORE THE IRAQ WAR - IS DRIFTING FURTHER AWAY FROM THE WEST AND TOWARDS THE UMMAH:

Less than a week after Turkey informed Israel that it was unwelcome in the Anatolian Eagle military exercise, 10 Turkish ministers are scheduled to travel to Syria on Tuesday to take part in a meeting of the newly formed Turkey-Syria High Level Strategic Cooperation Council.

Turkish FM: 'Of course we are critical of Israel's approach'

The council was established last month in Turkey at a meeting between Turkish foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and his Syrian counterpart, Walid Moallem. At that meeting, the two countries - which were on the verge of war over a border dispute in the 1990s - agreed to do away with visa requirements for visitors to and from both countries.

TURKEY IS AS GOOD AN ALLY AS PAKISTAN - AND THAT'S NOT SAYING MUCH.

I WOULDN'T TRUST EITHER AS FAR AS I COULD THROW A PIANO.

MORE PROOF THAT INDUSTRIALIZATION AND FOSSIL FUELS IMPROVE LIVING STANDARDS AND LIFE SPANS

VIA WUWT:

In fact, by virtually any objective measure of human well-being — e.g., life expectancy; infant, child and maternal mortality; prevalence of hunger and malnutrition; child labor; job opportunities for women; educational attainment; income — humanity is far better off today that it was before the start of industrialization.

That human well-being has advanced with economic development is clearly true for industrialized countries. The figure below for the U.S., a surrogate for industrialized countries, shows that life expectancy — perhaps the single most important indicator of human well-being — and GDP per capita — the best single measure for material well-being — increased through the 20^th century, even as CO2 emissions, population, and material, metals, and organic chemical use increased.

... Following is a sampling of fossil fuel dependent technologies that have helped advance specific facets of human well-being:

• Hunger. Global food production has never been higher than it is today due to fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation, and farm machinery. But fertilizers and pesticides are manufactured from fossil fuels, and energy is necessary to run irrigation pumps and machinery. The entire suite of technologies that are called the Green Revolution is based on energy. And in today’s world, willy-nilly, energy for the most part means fossil fuels. Additional CO2 in the atmosphere has most likely also contributed to higher food production. Another factor in keeping a check on food prices and reducing hunger is trade within and between countries which enables food surpluses to be moved to food deficit areas. But it takes fossil fuels to move food around in the quantities and the speed necessary for such trade to be an integral part of the global food system, as it indeed is. Moreover, fossil fuel dependant technologies such as refrigeration, rapid transport, and plastic packaging, ensure that more of the crop that is produced is actually consumed. That is, they increase the overall efficiency of the food production system, which also helps reduce food prices and contain hunger worldwide. See here.

• Health. Having sufficient quantity of food is the first step to a healthy population. It’s not surprising that hunger and high mortality rates go hand in hand. In addition, even the most mundane medical and public health technologies depend on energy, most of which is derived from fossil fuels. Such technologies include heating for sterilization; pumping water from treatment plants to consumers and sewage from consumers to treatment plants; and transporting and storing vaccines, antibiotics, and blood. In addition, energy is necessary to operate a variety of medical equipment (e.g., x-rays, electrophoresis, and centrifuges); or undertake a number of medical procedures. Moreover, economic surpluses generated by greenhouse gas producing activities in the US (and other industrialized countries) have helped create technologies to enable safer drinking water and sanitation; treat diseases such as AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis; and increase life expectancies through vaccinations and improvements in nutrition and hygiene. See here.

• Child Labor. Fossil fuel powered machinery has not only made child labor obsolete in all but the poorest societies, but it allows children to be children and, equally importantly, to be more educated in preparation for a more fulfilling and productive life.

• Equal Opportunity for Women and the Disabled. But for home appliances powered for the most part by electricity, more women would be toiling in the home. Moreover, power tools and machinery allow women, the disabled and the weak to work on many tasks that once would have been reserved, for practical purposes, for able-bodied men.

• Education. Today’s populations are much more educated and productive than previous ones in large part due to the availability of relatively cheap fossil fuel generated electrical lighting. And education is a key factor contributing not only to economic development and technological innovation but also personal fulfillment.

In addition, a substantial share of the income of many developing countries comes directly or indirectly from trade, tourism, developmental aid (to the tune of at least $2.3 trillion over the decades), and remittances ($328 billion in 2008 alone) from industrialized countries. Much of this would have been impossible but for the wealth generated in industrialized countries by fossil fuel powered economic development. This economic development also allowed the US (and other developed countries) to offer humanitarian aid to developing countries in times of famine, drought, earthquakes, floods, cyclones, tsunamis and other disasters. Moreover, such aid would have been virtually impossible to deliver in large quantities or in a timely fashion absent fossil fuel fired transportation. Similarly, it would be impossible to sustain the amount of trade and tourism that occurs today without fossil fuels.

Clearly, fossil fuels have advanced human well-being in both industrialized and developing countries. The claim that the net effect of fossil fuels has been detrimental to either group is unsubstantiated.

Remarkably, virtually all the technologies noted above were conceived, and developed in the industrialized countries, and enabled in large part by the wealth generated from the direct or indirect use of fossil fuels and other greenhouse gas generating activities. In fact, because of the diffusion and active transfer of technologies from industrialized to developing countries, the latter are far ahead of today’s industrialized countries at equivalent levels of economic development.

• In 2006, when GDP per capita for low income countries was $1,330 (in 1990 International dollars, adjusted for purchasing power), their life expectancy was 60.4 years. But the US first reached this level in 1921, when its GDP per capita was $5,300. See here (pp. 20-21).

• Even Sub-Saharan Africa, the world’s developmental laggard, is today ahead of where the U.S. used to be. In 2006, its per capita GDP was at the same level as the U.S. in 1820 but the U.S. did not reach Sub-Saharan Africa’s current infant mortality level until 97 years later in 1917, and its current life expectancy until 1902. That is, with respect to infant mortality, Sub-Saharan Africa is 92 years ahead of the US’s pace! With respect to life expectancy, it is 104 years ahead.

Thus, empirical data do not support the underlying premise that industrialization of today’s developed countries has caused net harm to developing countries. In fact, a major harm to developing countries seems to have resulted, in part from climate change policies instituted in industrialized countries.

WHAT THE THIRD WORLD NEEDS IS INDUSTRIALIZATION AND FREE MARKETS AND FREE TRADE - NOT HANDOUTS OR CARBON SWAPS.

THE PEOPLE WHO RETARD THE INDUSTRIALIZATION OF THE THIRD WORLD ARE THE LEADING CAUSE OF THIRD WORLD POVERTY AND MALNUTRITION AND SHORTER LIVE SPANS.

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE? ARE THEY BIG CORPORATIONS? GREEDY CAPITALISTS? UNSCRUPULOUS CONSERVATIVES?

NO, THEY'RE LIBERALS. LIBERALS WHO ADVOCATE THINGS LIKE PROTECTIONISM, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND THE GREEN ECONOMY.

IN OTHER WORDS:

TO MAKE THIRD WORLD POVERTY HISTORY WE NEED TO MAKE THE LEFT HISTORY.

25 LIBERAL WORD PAIRINGS YOU SHOULD BE VERY WARY OF

EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE WORD PAIRINGS SHOULD SET OFF YOUR BULLSHITOMETERS 'CAUSE WHENEVER A LIB UTTERS 'EM THEIR FULL OF SOCIALIST SHIT:

1. PEAK OIL
2. CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT
3. GLOBAL WARMING
4. NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT
5. CORPORATE GREED
6. BIG OIL
7. BIG PHARMA
8. SOCIAL JUSTICE
9. RENEWABLE ENERGY
10. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
11. GREEN ECONOMY
12. CLIMATE CHANGE
13. CARBON TRADING
    
14. MODERATE MUSLIMS
15. SHARIA BANKING
16. HATE CRIME
17. HATE SPEECH
18. SECONDHAND SMOKE
19. GUN CONTROL
20. LIVING CONSTITUTION
21. PREDATORY LENDING
22. WESTERN HEGEMONY
23. NATIONAL HEALTHCARE
24. SOCIALIZED MEDICINE
25. OBAMA CARE

BONUS: SINGLE PAYER

TEA PARTIERS VERSUS TEA SIPPERS

Have we become a people ruled by our federal government, who work for the benefit of the federal government?

It's supposed to be the other way around.

We're supposed to have a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

"We the people" formed the government; we defined its limited powers - powers specified and limited to those described in the Constitution, with all those not specifically listed as belonging to the federal government remaining with the states and the people.

Socialists - or "Democrats" as they like to be called - feel that the government is the most efficient, most honest provider of goods and services even though there's not a single example from anywhere in the world at any time where this has been true.

The free market is the most efficient provider of goods and services.

Our recent economic crisis was principally caused - not by greed or by a free market run amok - but by government intervention: the CRA; FANNIE MAE; FREDDIE MAC distorted the real estate market creating a bubble and inflating the bubble with derivatives which had the implicit backing of the US Treasury.

Had the federal government not interfered with the banking and mortgage industries the bubble would have never ever occurred.

Politician-designed government-run and tax-payer financed enterprises can never be as efficient as private for-profit enterprises because they have no incentive to innovate because there is no competition. And they have no incentive to become more efficient because they are not "playing" with their own money.

Hayek, Friedman and Coase - and Surowiecki - each proved that the free market was actually better, fairer and more efficient than anything else.

For leftists this is counter-intuitive; they reflexively feel that a benevolent elite properly educated about Marxism would make better choices for you than a hodge-podge of private outfits each making self-centered decisions.

The crowd is always wiser than the elites.

The rowdy tea partiers are always wiser than elitist tea sippers.

And you know best what to do with your own money.

Government governs best which governs least, taxes least and spends least.

And, the less government does, the less politicians can steal, mismanage, and ruin.

I think this is the real reason liberal politicians love big government. They get power, powerful friends and the power to help them.

Obama's so-called stimulus was the worst bit of government spending of all time.



And Obama's so-called stimulus did nothing for the economy - except perhaps hurt the dollar.

In only 8 months, Obama has us firmly on the path to ruin: ruinous socialism at home and calamitous appeasement abroad.

But it's not too late to chart a new course. Or to get us BACK ON OUR TRUE ORIGINAL COURSE - THE ONE CHARTED BY THE DECLARATION AND THE CONSTITUTION!

First, we have to fire Congress in 2010, and then fire Obama in 2012.

WILL THE DEMOCRATS DO TO KABUL AND BAGHDAD WHAT THEY DID TO SAIGON?

Saigon fell in April of 1975.

4/30/1975.

The last US combat troop left Vietnam in 1973.

You read that right.

1973.

3/30/73.

When he took over from Westmoreland, General Abrams did GREAT.

Vietnamization had been working FINE.

Until the liberal Democrat Doves in Congress came along.

And pulled the plug on SVG financing.

Then the North VIOLATED the terms of the Paris Peace Treaty, invade the south and without US financial help - Saigon fell.

The doves did that.

It led directly to 2 MILLION refugees fleeing the Vietnamese socialist tyranny. THE BOAT PEOPLE. 500,000 died fleeing. Another 500,000 were put in "reeducation camp,ms. And then Cambodia fell to the socialists, and they [promptly slaughtered 3.4 MILLION. THE KILLING FIELDS.

THE BOAT PEOPLE.

THE KILLING FIELDS.

This is the legacy of Democrats and DOVES,

Like Obama.

And a USA retreat from Afghanistan and Iraq would look much the same - only worse.

The Democrats would have done this to Iraq in 2007 - but Bush stopped them - BUSH AND PETRAEUS AND OUR TROOPS!

Will Obama give Afghanis the chance to defend themselves - as Bush gave Iraq?

Or will he do to Afghanistan what the Democrat doves did to South Vietnam?

I think he WANTS to do the latter, but MAYBE if we turn the heat up on Obama and support McChrytsal he won't get away with it.

FOLEY VERSUS JENNINGS: Hmm... Pelosi always loved pedophiles and Media Matters didn’t...

Interesting. Jeffrey Lord at American Spectator has been all over this round of leftists excusing the inexcusable -- when leftists are the ones at issue.

Turns out that Nancy Pelosi, in addition to Hillary Clinton and Kevin Jennings, loves her some pedophiles. Yeah, she marched in the 2001 San Francisco Gay Pride Parade, which was dedicated to none other than NAMBLA's Harry Hay!

Here's the funny part: now that conservatives, most notably Hannity, are condemning "Safe Schools" Czar Kevin Jennings for encouraging pedophilia, albeit protected pedophilia, Dems - most vocally, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan - are up in arms that we would take issue with such a thing. It's "anti-gay bigotry" and a witch-hunt."

But remember Mark Foley? The Congressman who was run out of office in 2006 for writing emails and text messages to pages as young as 16? Weren't Dems up in arms at the time that this devious predator was an elected official? His behavior was "abhorrent," according to Pelosi, provided that conservatives were doing it, but keep honoring pedophiles.

It gets better: Media Matters wrote in 2001 that Foley's emails and text messages constituted a "sex crime." Yeah, they wrote in the LAT that such behavior was cause for the attention of "experts in psychiatry and sexual misconduct." Depends on how you write them, I guess.

There is definitely bigotry at play here, but it's not of the anti-gay sort (although the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade honoring Harry Hay doesn't help in that regard; what on earth were they thinking?).

It's of the anti-conservative sort.

Children be damned when individual Dems have their careers on the line, but run a Republican congressman out of office over some emails and text messages.

I'm not defending Mark Foley, by the way.

Jeffrey Lords suggests that Dems could actually apologize to Foley and admit that what they did was a power-grab. I don't think so.

Conservatives hold all people to the same standard -- because we're not bigots. We also care enough about kids to want to keep people who prey on them away from them and away from us. Pedophiles are not representative of gays as a whole, but apparently those who encourage them are, in fact, representative of all Democrats.

But we knew that already from leftists' compulsive deference toward Islam, the cornerstones of which are institutionalized pedophilia, slavery, incest, and rape.

Unless Democrats consistently condemn and refuse to tolerate violence against children - which they most certainly do not - we have to assume that harming children is an integral part of their agenda.

Yes, Democrats are out to hurt your children, which is why they support Kevin Jennings, Harry Hay, every Mohammedan slimeball they can find to grovel to, and ACORN when their offices are happy to aid and abet the smuggling, enslavement, and rape of children - with tax breaks - and are fine with them sending convicted sex offenders to your home as census workers.

That's why they're fine with those who advocate pedophilia - like Kevin Jennings, Arne Duncan, Nancy Pelosi, Dalia Mogahed, and Harold Koh - making huge, important policy decisions. That's why they hate school choice (can't let kids opt out of using textbooks dedicated to pedophiles, now) and the traditional family.

That's why they're so cavalier about mortgaging children's futures. (They're just going to abort theirs anyway.) If they actually disagreed, their actions would demonstrate otherwise.

Until all of the above characters are purged from their respective offices, textbooks dedicated to pedophiles are expressly banned as part of public school curricula, all federal funding to every ACORN associate is actually cut off and a real independent audit takes place, and all deference toward Islam ceases, we must assume that Democrats really, truly want to harm our children.

THE HIGH COST OF OBAMANOMICS: THE WEAK DOLLAR AND EXPENSIVE OIL - AND HIGH UNEMPLOYMENT AND HUGE DEFICITS

NYTIMES:

Benchmark crude for November delivery gained $1.70 to $73.47 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Heating oil rose 5.4 cents to $1.907 a gallon and natural gas jumped 15 cents to $4.92 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Still, there are enormous supplies of all three due to the recession and there is little chance of a shortage in the near term.

The weakened U.S. currency, however, continues to lure global investors who can buy oil for a bargain because it is priced in the dollar. There are billions going into the energy markets despite huge surpluses, especially in natural gas.

The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the dollar against other major currencies, is down 14 percent since early March, and crude has jumped by about $20 per barrel.

DESPITE HUGE INVENTORIES, OIL IS VERY EXPENSIVE - BECAUSE US DEBT HAS SKYROCKETED UNDER OBAMA AND THIS HAS WEAKENED THE GREENBACK.

THE DEMOCRATS USED TO ATTACK BUSH FOR SPENDING TOO MUCH IN IRAQ, BUT THEY HAVE SPENT 10 TIMES AS MUCH ON A HOST OF BOONDOGGLES WHICH HAVE DONE NOTHING FOR THE ECONOMY AND NOT MADE US SAFER.

WHY DID THEY DO IT?

CUI BONO?

THE MACHINE.

• IF YOU LIKE EXPENSIVE OIL, HUMONGOUS DEFICITS, HIGH UNEMPLOYMENT AND A WHITE HOUSE STAFFED BY THE RADICAL LEFT, THEN OBAMA IS GREAT.

• OTHERWISE HE'S THE WORST PRESIDENT IN US HISTORY.

• AND GETTING WORSE AND MORE DANGEROUS EVERYDAY.

A hiring tax credit returns from the dead

Excerpt:

The White House is finally coming to realize that taxes affect job creation. Terrific. Its solution seems to be to bribe employers for hiring new workers, albeit only for a couple of years. Less than terrific.

Alarmed by the rising jobless rate, Democrats are scrambling to "do something" to create jobs. You may have thought that was supposed to be the point of February's $780 billion stimulus plan, and indeed it was. White House economists Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein estimated at the time that the spending blowout would keep the jobless rate below 8%.



The nearby chart compares the job estimates the two economists used to help sell the stimulus to the American public to the actual jobless rate so far this year. The current rate is 9.8% and is expected to rise or stay high well into the election year of 2010. Rarely in politics do we get such a clear and rapid illustration of a policy failure.

This explains why political panic is beginning to set in, and various panicky ideas to create more jobs are suddenly in play. The New York Times reports that one plan would grant a $3,000 tax credit to employers for each new hire in 2010. Under another, two-year plan, employers would receive a credit in the first year equal to 15.3% of the cost of adding a new worker, an amount that would be reduced to 10.2% in the second year and then phased out entirely. Why 15.3%? Presumably because that's roughly the cost of the payroll tax burden to hire a new worker.

The irony of this is remarkable, considering the costs that Democrats are busy imposing on job creation. Congress raised the minimum wage again in July, a direct slam at low-skilled and young workers. The black teen jobless rate has since climbed to 50.4% from 39.2% in two months. Congress is also moving ahead with a mountain of new mandates, from mandatory paid leave to the House's health-care payroll surtax of 5.4%. All of these policy changes give pause to employers as they contemplate the cost of new hires—a reality that Democrats are tacitly admitting as they now plot to find ways to offset those higher costs.

Alas, their new ideas are little more than political gimmicks that aren't likely to result in many new jobs. Congress doesn't want to give up revenue for very long, so it would make the tax credits temporary. Thus anyone who is hired would have to be productive enough to justify the wage or salary after the tax-credit expires—or else the job is likely to end. An employer would be better off hiring a temp worker and saving on the benefits for the same couple of years.

More here

Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

TURKEY BANS ISRAEL FROM MILITARY DRILL, AND WHOLE PRACTICE GETS CANCELLED

Turkey continues to signal its backtrack to darkness:

(IsraelNN.com) A multinational military drill has reportedly been cancelled due to Turkey's unwillingness to allow the Israel Air Force to participate in the exercise.

The cancellation came after the United States and other nations allegedly withdrew from the joint drill following Turkey's ban on Israel's participation.

The air force exercise, which has been held five times since June 2001, was to be hosted by Ankara and originally involved Turkey, Italy, the U.S., NATO forces and the IAF.

But Turkish military officials informed the IDF last week that the IAF was not welcome to fly in this week's "Anatolian Eagle" exercise due to the use of its planes during Israel's counterterrorism Operation Cast Lead in Gaza last winter.

The operation was launched by Israel on December 27, 2008 to end the thousands of rocket attacks fired at civilians living in towns and cities in Israel's southern region. It lasted until Janary 20, 2009.

Ah, so that's it. Again, we find a so-called ally discriminating against Israel's right to self-defense and blaming the victims instead of the terrorists who launched rockets at Israeli targets. In that case, I think it's better not to bother wasting time with Turkey, submerged as badly as they are in their selective memories.

IN ITALY, TARGETS OF HONOR MURDERS GET PROPER PROTECTION

As the fate of Rifqa Bary appears on the horizon again, Atlas Shrugs features some news translated from Italian sources that show how, just like in France, authorities there too are making efforts to protect women from Muslim families who fear for their lives. For example, from Mediaset:

“He wants to kill me.” That is what a 15-year-old Moroccan girl says about her father, who frequently beat her, so she left home.

Her father is a Moroccan worker who has lived in Italy for 25 years. He beats her up because she has an Italian boyfriend, and he keeps reminding her that she is Muslim – “Tu sei musulmana” – and she should not have an Italian boyfriend. His beatings, and his attitude, became so worrisome that she fled from the house and is now staying in a “comunita” (a kind of group-home that serves as a refuge for those who flee their family situation).

At the end of the very short item, there is a brief interview by phone with a politician who discusses how how one political party, the Northern League or Lega, wants to have a national law passed that will ban the niqab, for at present the situation depends on the local officials, the mayor, of reach town, to decide for himself how to deal with the niqab problem as he sees fit.

And here's another from Il Giornale:

Amo un italiano, papà mi uccide" Marocchina di 15 anni sotto scorta “

I love an Italian, daddy wants to kill me” Moroccan 15-years-old under protection

(in Italian)

«Her request for help is heartbreaking: «Help me, I do not want to end up like Hina and Sanaa». She said in tears to the Carabinieri of Pavia, just a few hours ago, a Moroccan fifteen-years-old escaped from his home in Voghera. And the soldiers have moved immediately: "Now the student is in a protected location in Lombardy, away from the parents herself accused of having threatened to give her the same end of Sanaa. Besides, its history, for some months now, is similar to that of two girls, had their lives took for the only "guilty" of loving an Italian, and not a Muslim, man. A script already seen.

The young girl knows an Italian, they liked one another, they start to go out together. He has the same age: a clean story. Yet parents do not go at all well. The father, as soon as he discovers it, screams her again, and again, that she must break off this story. Finally, a bit for filial obedience, much more for fear the teenager obeyed. But only briefly. Finally she cannot bear it no more. She takes up to frequent the Italian kid. And unfortunately she is eventually discovered. The mother in fact found a note in his pants, thrown in the basket of dirty laundry for the washing machine. It says: "I cannot forget the past with you." From there, the hell with the family.

The harassment starts. Her father beat her repeatedly and threaten her of death: "I'll give you the same end of the others ..." alluding to the most horrific cases of poor Muslim girls massacred because they were trying to break free from a fundamentalist and dull world. Beatings and threats that the mother have witnessed as well, without blinking, but rather sharing this "method of education”. The girl tries to cling to whatever is around her, had her friends contact the Social Services, as she will explain later to the police too. But everything remains as is. Nobody took her away from that family that now beats and insulted her almost every day. The angry phrase she hear is always the same: «Raki daimen Muslima u-maghribiyya (you are still/forever Muslim and Moroccan). These are your roots, you must not forget, and that is why you cannot attend Italian boys who are not Muslims. Your father feels dishonoured». Then the blows.

The emphasis that the media have given to cases of Hina and Sanaa moves her react. Thanks to what she saw she is conscious of what can be the end. She rebels and saves herself. And the parents lose a daughter. When she decides to run away from home is disoriented, does not know what to do or where to go. But she proved stronger than she has ever suspected. Thinks of one Italian friend of her. Contacts her and goes to her place. She stayed there a night. The next day she took the train with her, destination Pavia. Once they arrived in the [provincial] capital the decision triggers: to get help from whom, certainly will not underestimate their cry of despair.

So she enter the barracks of San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro, and tells all. She knows that to rebel could win her a life without regrets, where she can freely decide her own fate. And at the sentinel that stops her at the entrance she says, without hesitation: «I want to make a complaint." Allegation that begins with tears, but ends with a half smile. Because at once she is told that she will not return in that house. Finally her terror is listened. Now, of this case, will take care the Juvenile Court».

This is exactly what the US should be taking a page from, and helping women from Muslim families find the proper shelter they seek, not subjecting them to ludicrous legal procedures.

See also this article from Phyllis Chesler that tells more about how Italy's got a movement growing that wants to ban the burqa like in France, and how Egypt, of all places, wants to do the same.

THE RIGHT TO BIG TITS: THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS SCOOPS POWER LINE AND MARK STEYN BY THREE DAYS

A TRANSSEXUAL IN BRITAIN IS SUING TO GET THE NHS TO PAY FOR A TIT ENLARGEMENT.

TODAY, POWER LINE LINKED TO THE ITEM AND COMMENTED ...

"Once you adopt the view that medical care is a "right" which the government must vindicate with taxpayer funds, there is no end to the insanity that will result."

AND MARK STEYN ALSO LINKED AND COMMENTED TODAY; STEYN: "I suppose there are worse dystopian futures than legions of large-breasted women rampaging through the rubble of an economically ruined land."

THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS DID IT THREE DAYS AGO:

WELL, WHEN THE GOVERNMENT IS THE SINGLE-PROVIDER OF HEALTHCARE, THEN YOU END UP PAYING FOR THIS KIND OF CRAP - AND ABORTIONS AND ALL THE OTHER THINGS YOU OPPOSE AND WOULDN'T WANT YOUR HARD EARNED MONEY GOING FOR.

WHEN THEY TAKE YOUR MONEY AWAY AND SPEND IT ON CRAP LIKE THIS - OR SPEND IT DEFENDING THEMSELVES FROM CRAP LIKE THIS - IT'S FASCISM.

DISSENT ACCORDINGLY.

\REGULAR READERS KNOW THIS HAPPENS ALL THE IME.

SPREAD THE WORD, BLOGROLL US, BOOKMARK US.

New Way to Tap Gas May Expand Global Supplies

From the New York Times:

OKLAHOMA CITY — A new technique that tapped previously inaccessible supplies of natural gas in the United States is spreading to the rest of the world, raising hopes of a huge expansion in global reserves of the cleanest fossil fuel.

Italian and Norwegian oil engineers and geologists have arrived in Texas, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania to learn how to extract gas from layers of a black rock called shale. Companies are leasing huge tracts of land across Europe for exploration. And oil executives are gathering rocks and scrutinizing Asian and North African geological maps in search of other fields.

The global drilling rush is still in its early stages. But energy analysts are already predicting that shale could reduce Europe’s dependence on Russian natural gas. They said they believed that gas reserves in many countries could increase over the next two decades, comparable with the 40 percent increase in the United States in recent years.

“It’s a breakout play that is going to identify gigantic resources around the world,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy expert at Rice University. “That will change the geopolitics of natural gas.”

Add to this the fact that Shell has also developed technology by which they can extract oil from Shale for about $30 a barrel:

The development of an economically viable way to extract oil from oil shale would put a ceiling on oil prices and would extend the oil era by decades. It would also increase the odds of significant global warming. Well, in light of all that a variety of media outlets are reporting that Shell Oil thinks it can produce oil from oil shale at $30 per barrel using an in situ process where the shale is cooked without first mining it onto the surface.

They don't need subsidies; the process should be commercially feasible with world oil prices at $30 a barrel. The energy balance is favorable; under a conservative life-cycle analysis, it should yield 3.5 units of energy for every 1 unit used in production. The process recovers about 10 times as much oil as mining the rock and crushing and cooking it at the surface, and it's a more desirable grade. Reclamation is easier because the only thing that comes to the surface is the oil you want.

According to NPR, the Rocky Mountains contain three times the oil of Saudi Arabia, all in shale.

Additionally, in the past few years, we have discovered oil fields in Montana/Dakotas, and in Colorado, which have FIVE TIMES AS MUCH OIL AS SAUDI ARABIA.

If we wanted to do so, we could soon become an oil exporting nation, rather than an importing nation.

Why?

Because of pressure from environmentalists.

We could be winning the battle for energy independence, but instead, we choose to lose, and thus forfeit our profits into the hands of Jihadists and Communists the world over.

I repeat, we are losing because we choose to lose, and we do so, primarily because of pressure from environmentalist groups.

That's like a football team choosing to lose because of pressure from their own cheerleaders.

MORE:

Massive Oil Deposit Could Increase US reserves by 10x

America is sitting on top of a super massive 200 billion barrel Oil Field that could potentially make America Energy Independent and until now has largely gone unnoticed. Thanks to new technology the Bakken Formation in North Dakota could boost America’s Oil reserves by an incredible 10 times, giving western economies the trump card against OPEC’s short squeeze on oil supply and making Iranian and Venezuelan threats of disrupted supply irrelevant.

In the next 30 days the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) will release a new report giving an accurate resource assessment of the Bakken Oil Formation that covers North Dakota and portions of South Dakota and Montana.

With new horizontal drilling technology it is believed that from 175 to 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil are held in this 200,000 square mile reserve that was initially discovered in 1951.

• IN OTHER WORDS, EVEN MORE THAN THEY INITIALLY EXPECTED.
• THIS POINTS UP A VERY IMPORTANT FACT TO UNDERSTAND. WE KEEP FINDING MORE OIL ALL THE TIME.
• ESTIMATES KEEP GETTING HIGHER AND HIGHER ON THE AMOUNT OF OIL WHICH CAN BE RECOVERED.
• THIS IS BECAUSE TECHNOLOGY FOR DETECTING OIL, AND DRILLING FOR IT, KEEPS GETTING MORE AND MORE ADVANCED.
• THE KNOWN RESERVES OF OIL ARE HIGHER NOW THAN EVER BEFORE IN HISTORY, AND YET THE MEDIA WOULD HAVE US BELIEVE WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF OIL.
• WHY DO YOU THINK THAT IS?

AND WHY IS IT THAT OUR PRESIDENT JUST BLOCKED DRILLING AT 60 SITES IN UTAH?

IF OUR PRESIDENT ACTUALLY WANTED TO DESTROY AMERICA, WOULD HE BE DOING ANYTHING ANY DIFFERENTLY?

BECK, O'REILLY, OBAMA AND THE DECLINE OF THE DOLLAR

BECK IS RIGHT: THE DIRECTION OBAMA HAS CHARTERED WILL DESTROY THE DOLLAR AND THE ECONOMY.

MYSTERIOUS BRONZE AGE DISK FOUND IN RUSSIA

Russian dolmen rescued and mysterious disk uncovered

The rescue operation of the Kolikho dolmen (located in the Tuapse region on the Black Sea coast, Russia) has been completed successfully. The dolmen was found by accident after the seasonal flood in 2008. It was buried beneath 3 m-thick river deposits and left untouched since the Bronze Age. This is the first case in Caucasian archaeology.

The burial chamber was full of partly disarticulated human remains. All of them were put in the chamber through the hole in the façade slab. Radiocarbon dates of human remains (72 persons) covers the period between 1800 and 1300 BCE with no signs of chronological gaps. In other word, the dolmen was in use for about 500 years.

The grave goods complex is small and consists of pottery, bronze javelin head, bronze spiral earring, bone belt buckle, few stone flakes and a sandstone disk with carvings on both sides. On one side of the disk are somewhat 'astral' symbols, while on the other side are possibly marks of calibration near the rim of the disk. The sandstone disk looks like a sort of device or the Caucasian version of the Nebra disk.

Doomed to be totally destroyed due to seasonal flood the dolmen was finally disassembled, packed up and transported to State Historical Museum in Moscow to be restored and presented to public in 2010.

MORE ON WHAT THE NEBRA DISK WAS USED FOR HERE.

HOW TO DEFEAT THE TALIBAN AND AL QAEDA AND SAVE AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN

We don't have to surge in another 40,000 or 60,000 or 100,000 troops into Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda.

All we have to bomb the crap out of the FATA regions of Pakistan.

Bomb them until there's not a single habitable hut or cave.

We can do this over several weeks and months with a lot of conventional bombs of various sizes - or over 24hrs with several nukes.

REALLY.

Let's be done with this crap once and for all.

This is a better plan than retreating or lingering on for what could easily become another 8 years of deadly and risky stalemate.

The longer we wait the less stable become both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Using 2 nukes on Japan stopped WW2 and saved 20 million lives - most of them Japanese.

Using several now in the FATA regions will be just as pacifying.

If Bush hadn't of been a wimp, then he would have done this in October of 2001 - and we wouldn't have had to fight any of the anti-islamist wars anywhere - not in the Horn of Africa or Iraq or Iran or Thailand or the Philippines.

We could have nuked al Qaeda then and announced our willingness to do it again against ANY nation aiding or abetting or harboring al Qaeda anytime we were attacked.

By scaring the crap out of all the nations appeasing al Qaedas - like Iran and Iraq and Pakistan and even Saudi Arabia - it would have restored deterrence.

THE MSM'S DON'T ASK/DON'T TELL POLICY:

Why is a large modern house a "McMansion"?

And why is anybody who wants one "obsessed"?

This hate-speech from America's Green/Left now seems to have arrived in Australia.

See below.

It is just a sneer at ordinary people who don't follow Green/Left fads. (NSW is the Australian State of New South Wales)

" NSW'S obsession with the McMansion is as strong as ever. While the rest of Australia opts for smaller, more efficient abodes, new homes being built in NSW are 22 per cent larger than the national average. Data from property research firm BIS Shrapnel has revealed the average size of new homes in NSW grew 3 per cent this year to about 308.3sq m, compared with a national reduction of 0.8 per cent to 253.1sq m, The Daily Telegraph reports.

AVJennings NSW general manager Rod Killick said the figures revealed NSW buyers still believed "bigger is better". "It has been clear for some time that Australians are starting to prefer homes which are more efficient with their use of space," Mr Killick said. "That means smaller homes in terms of square metres, but it doesn't mean less comfort or amenity. "NSW homebuilders are clearly bucking that trend. "In fact, while NSW's homes were exactly the same size as the national average in 1990, they are now more than 50s m larger - that's more than the size of a double garage."

According to BIS Shrapnel, while the national average house size had grown by almost 12 per cent over the past decade, the NSW average had almost doubled. "In the last 10 years, NSW homes have grown by 23.9 per cent. That's double the national growth average and shows that home builders in NSW still believe bigger is better," Mr Killick said. However he expected obsession with size to wane, with trends suggesting buyers were becoming focused on design and quality.

Mr Killick said he didn't expect the outlandish growth to continue. "AV Jennings is finding that customers are starting to prefer spending their money on smaller homes with better quality inclusions and combined living areas, rather than paying the same for a larger home," Mr Killick said.

SOURCE

Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

RIGHT NOW, THE GOP HAS ONE JOB: CRUSHING OBAMACARE

THE GOP HAS A SIMPLE JOB:
THEY MUST CRUSH OBAMACARE -
OR MAKE THE DEMOCRATS PAY FOR IT IN 2010.