In 1960, Nixon beat Kennedy in California following up on Eisenhower’s decisive wins over Adlai Stevenson. Nixon won California again in 1968, beating out Humphrey, and then McGovern in 1972. Ford held on to California in 1976, Reagan won it decisively in two elections and Bush held on to it against Dukakis.

All that ended in 1992. No Republican has won California since.

With the largest number of electoral votes in the country, California played a decisive role in Republican presidential victories.  Texas, with the second largest number of electoral votes, a state which leaned Democrat around the same time that California learned Republican, has become the ace in the hole. And if the Democrats can turn Texas blue, then it may be a long time until we see a Republican in the White House.

Jimmy Carter was the last Democrat to win Texas and he was the Democrat who lost Texas. But today’s Democrats are hoping that Hillary Clinton can win Texas back.

On paper Texas does not seem very shaky. Mitt Romney, a Massachusetts moderate, pulled in better numbers than McCain and nearly matched George W. Bush’s numbers in 2000. Romney performed even better than Ronald Reagan did when he first took Texas in 1980. That alone is a sign of how red Texas has gotten in the last thirty years.

So why worry? Demographics are one reason. Texas is approaching the same demographic tipping point as California. Even with Republican 4/10 Latino vote scores, the Texas future is inevitably tilting in a Democratic direction even without the proposed illegal alien amnesty. The demographic tipping point won’t arrive in 2016, but the voter registration and community organizing tipping point might.

Battleground Texas is the new Democratic strategy for doing to the Lone Star State what General Santa Anna tried to do in his time. Their strategy depends on heavy doses of voter registration and community organizing. The two are largely interconnected in urban areas where the Democratic Party’s political machine links together social services, community groups and bloc votes.

In 2012, that machine took a great leap forward by merging community organizer tactics with dot com data mining operations and corporate email lists for a technocratic community organizing machine. With both sides crediting voter turnout and smart data for the win, the Democratic Party is feeling bold enough to head on into Texas.

Battleground Texas may be bravado, a feint to put the Republican Party on the defensive and get it to commit valuable resources to fighting for its formerly safe territories, but it may also be the real deal as a Democratic Party convinced that it can name its own price and do anything with a bunch of emails and a lot of PACs sets the stage for the next Alamo.

Jeremy Bird, Obama’s national campaign field director, who scored big with voter registration in western swing states like Colorado and Nevada, is hoping to help Battleground Texas do the same thing. But Battleground Texas’s actual executive director is Jenn Brown, an Obama campaign veteran, without much local experience, and while its digital director, Christina Gomez, does have that experience, its digital footprint is underwhelming, from its sloppy website to its chummy insider Twitter accounts.

Battleground Texas is mainly talking about itself and its plans for making Texas blue. That may feed the dreams of its New York and California donors, but there’s little there to appeal to non-partisan Texans. Battleground Texas has the usual spin about racial underrepresentation and voting rights indicating that its only real strategy is the race card. And while the race card has yet to wear out, expecting it to tilt Texas over in time for 2016 may be unrealistic.

While Bird promises that he can turn Texas into another Virginia, Texas is a very different place than Virginia. Battleground Texas smacks of an elitist national attempt to bypass the Texas Democratic Party with a lot of college students and not a whole lot of knowledge of the battleground territory. Unlike the old Obama organization which did its dirty work without constantly boasting about it, Battleground Texas has a borrowed ten-gallon hat full of bravado and not a whole lot of cattle, people or anything else to show for it.

Is Battleground Texas overreaching with its plans to spend tens of millions of dollars for a long shot plan to shift Texas? Tellingly Bird is counting on California and New York donors to buy into his plan to turn Texas blue. Texas doesn’t have a shortage of rich Democrats willing to plow money into the party. One of them is financing the Giffords gun control PAC. And yet Bird seems to think that not enough Texas donors will be willing to help Battleground Texas cover its grandiose budget. And that may be because even Texas liberals know that a grand project for the state this decade will be wasted money and effort.

Romney won Texas by 1.2 million votes. Those are formidable numbers and countering them will take big budgets and armies of volunteers that will have to go well outside their Austin comfort zones. Obama picked up Austin’s Travis County, Dallas County, Houston’s Harris County and El Paso County. Voter registration could no doubt find new voters there or duplicate voters, as the Dem machine has a way of doing, but it’s not as if the machine hasn’t already done a pretty thorough job of finding Dem voters in Houston, Austin and Dallas.

While the Democratic Party may be betting that forcing the GOP to fight for Texas will divert their resources, an extensive Democratic engagement with Texas may divert theirs even more. Battleground Texas offers a big dream to lure bicoastal billionaires into splurging money that Democrats could use to win actual battleground states.

A Democratic struggle for Texas backed by big money and bigger ambitions may be another case of fighting a land war in Asia or more aptly, the Blitzkrieg into Russia, with some initially deceptive successes leading to wasted resources and national defeat.

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Although the creation of the film Idiocracy evidences how we’re already halfway to an idiocracy – the work reflects decadent modern culture – it’s a good comedic warning about where we’re headed. For those too unsophisticated to imbibe such Hollywood fare, know that the movie presents a dystopian future America dumbed-down to a preposterous degree. One thing portrayed in the film is the degradation of language, with, for instance, a doctor character starting an interrogative with “why come” instead of “how come.” And it is a perfect example of art imitating life.

Many today will rape the English language, taking pleasure in mangling and tangling it, confusing corruption with creativity. What follows are examples of such, starting with the relatively innocuous and concluding with the more dangerous.

While journalists are supposed to be word men (those were the days, huh?), they often lead the charge toward idiocracy. It’s not just the news piece I read a few years back penned in pidgin English – obviously by someone to whom English isn’t his first language – but those who try to be “cute.” For example, Golf Channel’s Tim Rosaforte recently mentioned something that had been revealed and began his sentence with, “The big reveal is….” But unless he was about to apprise the audience of a large window jamb’s existence, “reveal” is a verb, not a noun. The word you’re looking for, Tim, old boy, is “revelation.” Likewise, let’s dispense with the new and budding practice of writing things such as “The tells are there,” which seems to have originated in the poker world. “Tell” is a noun, not a verb. If one wants to “tell” someone about a thing serving as a clue, the relevant term is “indication.”

Oh, just to head the cutting-edge lexical fashionistas off at the pass, I’m aware that some usages I’m condemning may have already infected certain less sophisticated dictionaries. The fact is that unlike the French, we don’t have a language academy to regulate our language. Consequently, if grunts and other guttural emanations came to take the place of most words – which I half expect – they’d be in dictionaries, too. But I don’t have to accept the defining of ignorance upwards any more than the notion that Lady Gaga actually creates music.

Then there is one of my pet peeves, the almost universal misuse of “healthy,” as in “Eat that venison, Timmy; it’s healthy.” But given that the deer has been shot and cut into pieces, I doubt it is. If a deer is running around in “a good state of physical health,” it’s healthy. Once it’s on your plate, however, it can only be “healthful” and perhaps make you healthy.

Next there are the examples of the wider society taking its lead from the ghetto. For instance, we may now hear, “He ‘disrespected’ me,” which is just a step away from saying “dissed.” I prefer to respect the language and say, “He showed me disrespect” or “He acted disrespectfully.” In the same vein, some now say “My bad” when they mean “My mistake.” Let “bad” enjoy its adjectival existence.

Sometimes, though, a desire to sound intelligent can actually grease the skids for language devolution. For example, while most now use the word “gender” when they mean “sex,” the former once referred only to words, which can be divided into three gender groups: masculine, feminine, and neuter. Why has “gender” been the victim of a language bender? Well, just consider that in the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, the organizers sought to define what could constitute a family. And they listed five “genders”: male heterosexual, female heterosexual, homosexual, lesbian, and bisexual. This language was ultimately removed because of Vatican contingent lobbying, but it reveals the truth:

“Gender” was co-opted to facilitate the homosexual agenda.

After all, if you want to normalize something, it helps to lump it in with what is normal. But since it’s already cemented in people’s minds that there are only two sexes, no one could realistically label homosexuals a third sex. So a new term was needed. And what better than one already inclusive of more than two categories, with the third being “neuter”?

Of course, most people know nothing of this and just use “gender” because it sounds more sophisticated than “sex.” This is also part of what causes us to say “underprivileged” or “disadvantaged” when we mean “poor.” But this trap is easy to avoid. Just apply a principle embraced by good writers: Never use a longer word when a shorter one suffices.

Destructive agendas are also enabled by the common desire to be “fair.” A good example is a recent Telegraph piece entitled “Germany is linguistically stuck in the 1880s,” which to my ears sounds like a compliment. The author, Brian Melican, complains about Teutonic resistance to inclusive language and writes that it’s common in German to read a sentence translating into the following:

“When the customer calls, he can expect to speak directly to a consultant. The consultant will always make every effort to satisfy the customer’s wishes – after all, his job is to listen to the customer.”

So here we have a company who – to judge by its description – employs only male consultants, who then deal with only male customers.

Well, that is the conclusion one might draw – if he had the education of a Fig Newton. The rest of us know that male pronouns used generically are inclusive: They refer to members of both sexes. Melican desires that everyone submit to the thorough linguistic hen-pecking compelling the use of the nauseating “he or she” and “his or her,” even though, interestingly, the language engineers never propose to defeminize English by ceasing to refer to cherished items (e.g., ships) and qualities (e.g., wisdom) as “she.” (Note: If Mr. Melican were concerned about correct grammar and not just politically correct grammar, he might have known that “company” in his last sentence should be followed by “that,” not “who.”)

Then there is literary anthropomorphization of inanimate objects. For instance, in this Toledo Blade column, writer Jeff Gerritt points out how most black murder victims were “killed by handguns” as he kills our language. Now, since this phraseology can serve to facilitate the gun-control agenda, you can decide whether Mr. Gerritt is extremely smart or extremely stupid. But when one says “killed by,” the “by” implies action by an entity with will and purpose. A marksmanship competition can be won by a marksman with a rifle. Similarly, a victim isn’t killed by a gun with a criminal; it’s the other way around. And unless firearms develop intellect, free will, and the power of locomotion, this won’t change.

There are many other examples, which alike are driven by ignorance, insidiousness, or both. Whatever the case, we ought to be mindful of the theme of the old book The Tyranny of Words: The side that defines the vocabulary of a debate wins the debate. So watch your mouth – the culture you save may be your own.

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Claire Perry, the Prime Minister’s adviser on childhood, has made the headlines by criticising a „treadmill” culture in which parents pressurise children to achieve. In an interview with the Times, she said that “It’s usually the mother that is orchestrating all of that and doing all the driving. We have created rods for our own back. Children need time to be bored.” She is not wrong. But although this is certainly true of a certain kind of highly aspirational, affluent family, it is far from universal. The most insidious problem lies elsewhere.

Consider the case of Danny Kitchen, the five-year-old boy who ran up a bill for £1,710.43 on his parents’ iPad. Every parent knows how easy it is: children have a magnetic attraction to anything with a screen, and an uncanny way of squirrelling phones and iPads away when you’re back is turned. And they seem to have been hard-wired with all the skills they need to pick up any piece of technology and start playing a game on it. There but for the grace of God, eh, mums and dads?

Maybe. But the question that’s bothering me is the one that nobody seems to be asking. What was a five-year-old doing playing a game called Zombies vs Ninjas in the first place? The fact that this hasn’t raised a single eyebrow is a depressingly accurate sign of the times. While a small demographic of parents may drive their children to breaking point, the majority tend to stick a screen in their hands and tell them to get on with it. This should cause Mrs Perry – and the rest of us – far greater concern.

I have written recently about the mystifying way in which schools have embraced screen technology without giving it the slightest thought, working on the unexamined assumption that the more digitised the classroom the better. Many parents are just as bad. It is, of course, very tempting for a harassed mum to give her child an iPad to keep him quiet. But this is a Faustian pact. Such a short term fix can have nasty results in the long term, if children lose the ability to play imaginary games and entertain themselves when boredom strikes.

A child who can only be content with a screen in hand is an accident waiting to happen. With their capacity for creative and multisensory play stunted by a blaring gadget, they will develop into a different and terrifying breed of adult. (Especially when that screen is used for horrible games like Zombies vs Ninjas.) This parenting style has become hugely dominant in recent years, to the extent that it is rarely challenged. We’re looking at evolutionary backsliding, people.

And that is not all. When not exposed to screens, many children are simply thrust into one commercially designed environment after another, all of which seem intended to deaden the imagination. On the weekend I found myself in the particular circle of hell that is a „soft play centre”. If you don’t know what that means, count yourself lucky. In a side-room, a little girl was having a sixth birthday party for about fifteen other girls. Every single one was wearing a „princess dress”, gaudy pieces of nylon often produced by Disney that make children look like so many Easter eggs. Or Barbie Dolls. Every single one was wearing plastic jewellery and make-up, and stuffing brightly-coloured sweets into their mouths. The birthday girl was sitting on a bulbous plastic throne. This was the second party to be held there that day; as soon as their time was up they were shepherded out, and the stage was re-set for another group of girls in pink nylon. As the first group left, many of them were already playing on iPads and phones. It was like a battery farm producing the cretins of the future.

Of course, television and video games have a place. For older children, certain games in particular can be immensely creative and stimulating, if played in moderation. The problem is that many parents have little concept of moderation, and even less insight into the basic necessities of childhood. Britain’s children are growing up swamped in a toxic combination of endless screentime, tacky and tedious toys, sexualised clothing, gender stereotyping and unhealthy foods. This is the real problem, not the mothers who panic if their baby gets an A minus in Greek.

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UPDATE. Declaratia pe aceasta tema sustinuta la Targoviste. “Se potriveste proverbul: prostul daca nu-i fudul, nu e prost destul”.

Multi oameni s-au lasat pacaliti de declaratiile sforaitoare ale lui Ponta, Antonescu si Voiculescu despe cat de grijulii sunt ei cu binele cetatenilor.

Nimic mai fals! Avem inca o dovada ca Ponta, Antonescu si Voiculescu nu se gandesc nicio clipa la binele nostru, ci doar la interesele lor limitate. Cei trei lideri politici care conduc Romania i-au anulat sansele de a mai intra in spatiul Schengen in viitorul apropiat prin declaratia ca Romania nu mai este interesata de Schengen.

Nu este asa: Romania este pe deplin interesata sa intre in spatiul Schengen. Asa cum am sustinut cu convingere integrarea Romaniei in Uniunea Europeana si am muncit pentru acest obiectiv, asa sustin pe deplin aderarea la spatiul Schengen, pentru ca va aduce beneficii pentru romani.

Ma gandesc in ce cheie sa interpretam declaratiile lui Corlatean, Ponta, Antonescu: nu este asta o forma de tradare a intereselor noastre de cetateni romani, cetateni europeni?

Cred ca, de fapt, USL nu vrea sa respecte recomandarile Mecanismului de Cooperare si Verificare.

Ponta nu vrea sa ceara revocarea ministrilor cu probleme penale, Relu Fenechiu si Liviu Dragnea, nu vrea ca, in continuare, Comisia Europeana sa priveasca cu atentie procesul de desemnare a Procurorului general si a procurorului sef al DNA, nu vrea ca parlamentarii cu probleme de integritate sa demisioneze.

Si, pentru ca USL si Ponta nu vor sa respecte niciuna din recomandarile Comisiei Europene pe justitie si anticoruptie, atunci mint si ne indeparteaza tot mai mult de Uniunea Europeana, intorcand directia tarii spre Est.

USL continua politica de izolare a Romaniei pe plan international.

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Who doesn’t love wind energy, in theory? The idea of harnessing nature’s gentle zephyrs to replace nasty tankers bringing crude from foreign shores appeals to everyone.*

As Yogi Berra said, “In theory there’s no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is.”

In other words, sometimes theory has a brutal collision with reality. And reality usually wins.

The town of Falmouth, MA is learning the difference between theory and practice the hard way. Several years back, voters approved the installation of a pair of giant wind turbines at the town’s water treatment plant. Now that the turbines are installed and operating, many residents regret that decision.

“It gets to be jet-engine loud,” said Falmouth resident Neil Andersen. He and his wife Betsy live just a quarter mile from one of the turbines. They say the impact on their health has been devastating. They’re suffering headaches, dizziness and sleep deprivation and often seek to escape the property where they’ve lived for more than 20 years. …

The first turbine went up in 2010 and by the time both were in place on the industrial site of the town’s water treatment facility, the price was $10 million. Town officials say taking them down will cost an estimated $5 million to $15 million, but that is just what Falmouth’s five selectmen have decided to move toward doing.

If approved at an April town meeting, Falmouth residents will decide at the polls in May whether to levy a new tax to finance the removal of the turbines. Until then, the turbines are shut down from 7 p.m. until 7 a.m. Twelve hours of operating a day is not sufficient to cover the operating costs.

Most alternative energy sources work quite well on a small scale. Difficulties arise when we attempt to scale them up. Our country uses huge quantities of energy – almost 100 quadrillion BTU per year. Most of that comes from fuels that are dense in energy content: oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear. Energy from wind and solar is not dense, so the installations must be extensive, often intruding on the human environment.

When you have a giant turbine whoosh-whoosh-whooshing a quarter-mile from your bedroom window, you’re at Yogi’s interface between theory and practice. And a good night’s sleep is going to trump saving the planet nine times out of ten.

* In practice, oil is mainly a transportation fuel. Wind and solar exclusively generate electricity. Wind turbines don’t reduce the need for imported oil.

Cross-posted at my energy blog.

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In the terrible economic crisis of 1922 Benito Mussolini got 25% of the vote in Italy. Two years later he had more than a majority.

You know the rest.

In the economic crisis of 2013, Beppe Grillo received 24% of the vote (see last week’s analysis of Grillo’s political beliefs). This week he blocked a government from forming. Grillo now controls the Senate, but he is going for a majority in both houses in the upcoming vote in June.

That’s in Italy, but in Greece the Golden Dawn party is following the same path. So is the new Hungarian fascist resurgence. In Germany it’s called the „Pirate Party.”

 Europe’s political class is shocked and panicked. They are pretending Grillo is just a „populist” and a „reformer” – but he also wants to „process” all the Jews in the world, who are responsible for all the evil. Grillo wants to nationalize the banks and abolish interest rates, „just like the Islamic Development Bank.”

To understand the new upsurge of European fascism, you have to imagine what it’s like to live in Rome.

Imagine the US government being sunk in red ink. The United Nations suspends the US Constitution and compels us to adopt a new UN currency called the UNO, designed to favor other countries. The United States no longer runs its own currency. Our economy tanks and our deficit keeps getting worse.

Therefore the UN unilaterally appoints a caretaker president for the US named Monti, who imposes radical budget cuts on our dependent welfare state.

1. Social Security is cut by half. People have to live on 700 euros per month.

2. ObamaCare is cut by half. Two hospitals in Rome do not pay their medical staffs for six months.

3. Taxes on income and sales are raised to an average of 50%.

4. Small business taxes are increased – but big businesses taxes are lowered, „because big business is more efficient.” (Meaning it has bigger unions).

5. Politicians and bureaucrats get major pay raises. The figurehead President of the US doubles his salary.

Government at all levels is corrupt. It’s the only way people can survive. Everybody is playing double games. People are doing two jobs and running their own businesses out of government offices. Everybody cheats on taxes. The mafia controls half the country. Survival depends on the black market, the black economy. The currency is kept artificially high, so exports crash.

It’s happened to Italy under the European Union. Don’t think it can’t happen here. Obama is a Euro socialist, representing faculty lounge socialism in America, so completely arrogant and cocksure that Paul Krugman just knows how to run the trillion-dollar US economy. Nobody else can figure it out, but Krugman knows that he knows. Our new rulers are control freaks, just as free market economists have said since Adam Smith. They are six year olds steering the family car and thinking they are in control until…

… until it all blows up.

This week Europe blew up. The media haven’t caught up yet, because they are what they are. But the markets are catching up fast.

This is a huge event for the United States, because our political elite is bound and determined to turn us into Europe. Hasn’t the EU found the answer to war and peace and prosperity forever?

Our Democrats believe it. Europe is their model. Every batty new idea they have is copied from the glorious European Union. Twenty years ago they still celebrated the Soviet Union, until that house of cards crumbled. Now they have shifted their fantasy paradise to Europe.

Over there, fifty years of increasingly centralized control have made it impossible for voters to be heard. The political parties are stuck in GroupThink. Only the fascist „protest” parties agitate for reform. The ruling class doesn’t listen. They don’t have to – they don’t have to run for election.

So European voters fled to the fascists to express their rage and despair. Imagine one out of four US voters going for Lincoln Rockwell, and you get the idea.

In Italy, Beppe Grillo the Clown just received 24% of the vote, the biggest percentage a single party has received since Benito Mussolini, Il Duce, in 1922, another economic crisis year.

 The Italian vote gives the Clown control of the Senate, and the biggest voice in the lower house. The Grillini now speak for the capital city of Rome. Since fascism is illegal in Italy, the Five Star Party pretends not to be fascist; but scratch the surface and that old grinning ghost stares back at you.)

The EU and US media are still in denial, but Italian party politicians instantly flew to Berlin to talk with Angela Merkel, and came back to build a common front against Grillo the Clown. But the Joker refused to play. He wants another election in June.

Currency markets are signaling panic. Don’t believe the media. Believe the markets.

Europe is our future. It’s Obama style of Chicago „governance,” and as long as the people were inundated by EU propaganda they believed that Europe had discovered the secret of peace and welfare forever. Talk to any European and that’s what you hear. They keep wondering why we don’t follow them to Never-Neverland. If you tell question them they turn a deaf ear. They’re mentally stuck.

As long as America defends Europe, they will keep hating us and pretending they are running the ocean liner, like kids with plastic steering wheels.

 The key to the whole farce is Europe’s „democracy deficit,” which means that the people can vote for the European Parliament – but it has no legislative powers at all. The Parliament is a Potemkin front. It has no power to pass binding laws.

On the other hand, the unelected ruling class has centralized more and more power in „Commissions” – which is what the word „Soviets” used to mean. But the EU has no electoral legitimacy. Nobody votes for the people who really run the place. That means the EU receives no feedback about the impact of its cult-like policy fantasies. When the people wanted a public referendum on the EU, the political class arrogantly told them to go… yes.

In France, the Grand Corps of the State („Enarques”) run the government. Germany and Britain are similar. Together they appoint the European ruling elite. This is the EU socialist Apparat, the Political Machine that controls everything. And yes, there are capitalists, but they work hand-in-glove with the Apparat. It’s Crony Social Capitalism (technically the same as fascism).

As a result normal people feel totally powerless. As long as the Ponzi scheme lasts, the victims loved it. The media churned out neo-imperialist propaganda about how Europe had finally discovered peace and welfare forever, and everybody wanted to believe.

Today, southern and eastern Europe are running into a brick wall, designed by Europe’s ruling class in its delusional way. The north blames the south, and vice versa. Nobody can stop the ruling class from its mad rush to destruction, so we are seeing a ‘protest vote” in Germany, Poland, eastern Europe, and the PIIGS – the Mediterranean coastal countries plus Ireland.

The only protest party people can vote for are barely disguised fascists: The Five Star party in Italy, Golden Dawn in Greece, Pirate Party in Germany, and fascist insurgents in Hungary.

Here’s how it’s done. In Italy Beppe Grillo ran as a sly comedian, spinning off conspiracy theories about ‘chemtrails” (jet contrails) that poison the Italian people, the Rockefellers, Rothschilds and Illuminati who run the world to oppress the poor, and all the usual paranoid fantasies. But he also attacked massive corruption (which is true) and self-serving politicians (also true), and the euro currency that killed Italian exports (also true). Grillo voiced criticisms that other politicians avoided. Everybody knows about massive corruption, for example. Grillo said it.

Now the Clown has his own sources of money and ideology, which lead straight to Tehran, as we have pointed out. The Clown hates the Jews, and his website mentions „Jews” 2,500 times, and „Iran” 2,500 times. The Islamic Development Bank doesn’t charge interest, the Clown tells us. This is pure Islamic fascist propaganda. Banks that loan free money don’t exist in the real world, because they can’t survive. But demagogues tell sucker lies, and this is a good one. Beppe tells his followers that he will nationalize the banks (like Il Duce) and give away free loans. It’s like Obama phones, straight from Obama’s stash. The suckers love it.

The Jews run the world by charging „usury” (this is an old, old story in Europe). In Beppe’s Fantasyland money comes free, exactly what Islamist propaganda says. Beppe tells the world that „Everything I know about the Middle East I’ve learned from my father-in-law” Parvin Tajik, who runs a major construction business in Tehran, and therefore has to be in cahoots with the super-corrupt mullahs.

Guess who plays the scapegoat in this age-old drama? Yup.

People laughed at old Beppe the Clown for fifteen years.

Today the joke’s on them.

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Am deschis bleen.ro în 6 august 2008. Am scris acolo pînă în ianuarie 2010, cînd am trecut pe Blogary. De 3 ani blogul este în adormire iar în acest an va ieși din online. Va fi înlocuit pe server de cincinnatus.ro, despre care vom vorbi la momentul potrivit.

Bleen.ro nu va ieși însă din online fără a face o retrospectivă înainte. 

articol din 12 noiembrie 2008:

Stolo, cu pumnii învineţiţi, deasupra unui Varujan însângerat şi chircit la pământ, prins cu Garda foarte jos.

– Vreau să distrug ceva competent, vreau să împuşc francul, să strâng de gât fiecare contribuabil care nu şi-o trage ca să-şi salveze specia şi să ne mărească nouă baza de impozitare, vreau să deschid vanele tuturor conductelor prin care trece petrolul lui Patriciu, să se acopere de petrol toate plajele franceze pe care a păşit Tăriceanu cu motorul, vreau să respir toate rotocoalele de fum pe care le scoate Băsescu pe gură!

– Stoloooou, Stolooou, nu mai da, Stolooou! Ascultă-mă, Stolooou! Regula numărul unu a Deficitului e: Nu vorbeşti despre Deficit. Regula numărul doi a Deficitului e: nu vorbeşti despre Deficit. Regula numărul trei a Deficitului e: Deficit să fie dar s-o ştim şi noi şi să ne ajungă voturi la toţi. Să se mărească, primesc. Dar să nu crească. Sau să crească pe ici pe colo, prin părţile esenţiale dar să nu se mărească. Căci de la 1 aprilie 2007 zic, şi cu mine toţii urmaşii Brătienilor, Crin, Norica, Adomniţei, Chiuariu, Atanasiu sau Păcuraru: cine nu e cu noi, nu e pesedist adevărat, deci e împotriva noastră.

– Lasă vrăjeala, Armeanule! Zi! Cine cu cine? Ei cu Voi, Noi cu Voi, Voi cu Ei, Noi cu Ei, Voi cu Noi, Ei cu Ei sau Noi cu Noi?

– Ăăă… Noi cu Ei? Nu mai da Stolooou! Ăăă…Ei cu Noi? Nu mai da, gata, gata, mi-a venit. Shit, am pierdut-o iar… Stolooou, nu mai da, Stolooou!

Am deschis bleen.ro în 6 august 2008. Am scris acolo pînă în ianuarie 2010, cînd am trecut pe Blogary. De 3 ani blogul este în adormire iar în acest an va ieși din online. Va fi înlocuit pe server de cincinnatus.ro, despre care vom vorbi la momentul potrivit.

Bleen.ro nu va ieși însă din online fără a face o retrospectivă înainte. 

articol din 5 octombrie 2008:

August 2008: Ana produce trei mere. Bugetarul are sase lei. Le cumpara, platind cate doi lei de fiecare mar.

Septembrie 2008: Emotionati, liberalii, social democratii si liberal democratii ii mai dau bugetarului inca trei lei. Analistul economic zice  ca mai bine aia trei lei erau investiti in productia de mere si astfel Ana ar fi putut produce patru mere sau chiar cinci. Insa PSD, PNL si PD-L il acuza de tradare, cinism si ura fata de oamenii simpli si amarati, din popor. Analistul mai incearca sa zica ceva dar vocea ii e acoperita de zbieretele isterice ale social si liberal democratilor si de hohotele de plans emotionat ale liberalilor. Sustinatorii celor trei partide isi fac calcule: cine va castiga, cine va pierde, cate voturi au mai ramas, cate mai trebuie etc

Noiembrie 2008: Ana produce tot trei mere. Bugetarul are noua lei. Le cumpara, platind cate trei lei pe fiecare mar. Zambeste tamp. E fericit ca acuma poate sa-si ia acelasi numar de mere dar cu bani mai multi. Social democratii, liberal democratii, liberalii si fanii lor sunt deasemenea fericiti. Au intrat in acelasi Parlament, dar cu de doua ori mai putine voturi decat data trecuta. La oferta.

Decembrie 2008: Ana produce doua mere. Banii cu care ar fi trebuit sa-l produca pe al treilea trebuie sa-i dea la buget, ca sa aiba bugetarul zece lei. Cu acestia bugetarul cumpara cele doua mere. In consecinta, bugetarul e din ce in ce mai fericit. Acum are zece lei iar doua mere de cinci lei sunt categoric mai delicioase decat cinci mere de doi lei. Ana isi baga picioarele, da faliment si se reprofileaza pe capsuni in Spania.

David Cameron and his allies have just agreed a historic cut to the EU’s long-term budget (as I predicted yesterday).

But forget the figures and maths for one second – after all the cut to the EU budget is only the equivalent of 0.0003 per cent of EU 2011 GNI – the most interesting part of this summit is political:

• The UK, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Germany, formed an alliance around a real-terms cut, outflanking France and Italy (though both countries are likely to get their own sweeteners in the end). The UK Government should be given credit for pulling this one off – it isn’t permanently isolated as some commentators would have us believe.

• Contrary to reports in the French media yesterday, François Hollande and Angela Merkel did not reach a common position going into the talks – the only time I can remember a major deal being struck without this happening. This was another step towards a more self-confident Germany, which doesn’t simply write blank cheques – and another spanner in the Franco-German engine.

• As expected, Angela Merkel acted as the lynchpin, conducting smaller meetings with Cameron and the ‘Northern bloc’ on the one hand, and Hollande and the ‘Southern bloc’ on the other.

But, when the dust has settled, there may be some valuable political lessons for the UK to consider.

First, its two staunchest allies in these talks, Sweden and the Netherlands, deliberately positioned themselves beyond the UK , to avoid London being seen as the outlier. The UK should show some gratitude and sensitivity to this – particularly as the two countries may see their rebates cut.

Second, Paris might want to get even down the road, including in UK-EU negotiations. This shouldn’t be over-stated though. Anglo-Franco relations are bound to be at their most tense during budget talks, since the rebate and CAP are directly linked and political red-lines for both.

But, finally, it is the role played by Merkel that is by the far the most significant. If anyone was in any doubt, it should now be abundantly clear that as Germany goes, so goes Europe. Hollande missing the meeting between Merkel and Cameron, for example, did cost him.

There will be a temptation in Westminster to see this as a green light for the UK government to go all in – and that Cameron’s strategy to negotiate a new deal in Europe followed by a referendum will get the unwavering blessing of the German Chancellor. But this would be premature.

Both at home and abroad, Angela Merkel thrives on her role as a broker, constantly playing different alternatives against each other depending on the issue at hand. This time Merkel tended towards the Northern bloc, in large part because she agreed with them, and because the UK had marshalled a group of allies, Germany could still lay claim to the political centre of gravity. Looking at it from Germany, of course, the UK provided a valuable counterweight which meant Merkel could come at as the dealmaker and get more or less what she wanted. This is also why she needs the UK in the EU.

But the lesson for  David Cameron has to be this: win enough support for your position among like-minded member states and Germany will back you.

Vezi sursa articolului aici.