Day and night “Night and day”

It is fascinating how media gives hand to Obama in the days of yet another failure.

Two months ago the Obamacare website was partially functioning. Obama administration has promised that by the end of November it will be “FIXED”.

On October 1^st the website was partially functioning. Today, on December 2^nd the website is still partially functioning. Nonetheless, Obama reported that the deadline has been met. “We’re happy to report that 90 percent of users are now able to create accounts.”

I am sorry. The deadline been met? I think that it can be not only described as kept promise but also as over performed the task. Indeed, last week we were told that the success rate is 80% and still it was accompanied by the comments of satisfaction and regarded as met deadline. Now it is 90%. How else can we assess it rather than overachievement?

The verbal formulas used by various commentators are:

-        "night and day" (difference) /Zeitz/

-        “working smoothly” /Sebelius/

-        “improvement is dramatic” /Sebelius/

-         “Pretty good”

-        “Quite a task” (that has been conquered)

-        "series of technical fixes"

-        "capacity upgrades"

-        “extensive work”

-        “a big improvement over October”

-        “up and running” /Brian Lehrer/

-        “work for the vast majority of users”

-        “a vast improvement”

-        “allowing more users to move through that part of the system more quickly than before”

-        “low overall error rates”

-        “working reasonably well”

-        "The site is performing well today with low overall error rates”

The list continues.

We are witnessing an unprecedented period in American media history when it makes all in its power to keep a liar shielded.

Congratulations, Mr. De Blasio!

You have won on your populist promises, one of which is more disturbing than all others - slavery.

Yes, slavery, as your intention to provide more so-called affordable housing is nothing else than assisting the businesses by providing them with cheap labor at the expense of the taxpayers.

Let’s imagine what would happen if no subsidized housing would be available in New York, or for that matter in any municipality. As the price of property both for sale and for rent rises and many low-paid workers can no longer afford living there, they will move to the regions with lower prices. Food preparation and serving workers will leave us first; then the dishwashers will go away, and then cashiers, hosts and hostesses, followed by amusement park attendants, movie theater ushers, ticket takers, personal and home care aides, clerks and so on. 

What is going to happen? This is the question that escapes imagination of people like De Blasio and those overwhelmingly electing him to be the New York Mayor. 

When the Wall Street brokers find themselves having to spend half hour to get their lunch, they will quickly find the place where the owner pays more to his employees so they won’t move, therefore the customers receive fast and decent service. Following this example other owners will be forced to increase their workers’ wages. 

When the shoppers enter a dirty store with long lines at the registers, they won’t come back forcing the owner to either close his business or increase the wages and keep his workers.

This is how market works.

But, when the government pays the workers the difference between low wages and the decent one – which is exactly what affordable housing is – the business owners can keep their workers while paying them minimum salaries or just slightly above that. The result is poverty, inequality, despair. The consequences are high crime and low living standards in housing projects.

If you think that the gullible poor are the only people cheering deblasios into high offices you are wrong. Businesses, enormously  benefiting from sweetly sounding populist programs like “Affordable Housing”, are also among the enthusiastic voters as well. They can keep low-wage workers while the taxpayers will foot the rest of the bill.

I have sent email to the US Department for Housing and Urban Development asking them to explain what the term “affordable” means. Not surprisingly their answer was “something affordable is what someone can afford.” Then I sent another email, which was never replied to. What I asked was that based on their description, any property - that is purchased and being properly paid for without an owner/renter going bankrupt - is affordable. That includes $25K studios, $250K houses, $2.5 Million buildings, and $25 Million mansions.

This makes the “AFFORDABLE HOUSING” no more than a slogan, nonsense, and the scheme in which unscrupulous politicians save businesses’ money at the expense of taxpayers by promising the naïve poor a free lunch. 

This is how socialism works. We can do it. We actually are doing it.

2013-10-10
New York

THE ONE WHO BROUGHT ARAB WINTER

Unlike countries whose leaders are routinely elected by 95 to 99% of the population, the United States is normally polarized as any real democracy is normally to be. Obama’s approval rating fluctuated from 70% on the first inauguration day to 30% two years later with the average almost exactly 50%. So we can see how differently Americans perceive their president. However, the percentage could be much higher if Obama’s latent wisdom were noticed and appreciated by his opponents. When Obama went on his first presidential Middle East trip and made his famous speech at Cairo University on June 4, 2009, most bat-eyed observers thought that he winks to the Muslim Brotherhood and encourages Muslims in their relentless struggle against infidels, Israel, and the West.
This young fellow, having minimal experience in anything pertinent to governing, didn’t strike anyone’s imagination as a schachgroßmeister. Nonetheless, now we can see and appreciate his long-sighted moves.
His speech and following flirts with Muslim Brotherhood and other enemies provoked the chain of revolutionary events equal to, or perhaps even greater than Gorbachev’s perestroika. Who could have imagined four years ago that Muslim Brethren enjoying gradually but steadily increasing popularity and power in Mubarak’s Egypt will be stripped of all their gains starting from the presidential office and ending with sheer legitimacy.
Who would have dared to predict that the fire of Arab Spring, so luminously started on December 18, 2010 with the human torch in Tunisia, would be extinguished by flooding Hamas’ tunnels and dechemilitarizing Syria, thus turning the blooms of thorny wild flowers in Benghazi into wintery flakes of Sarine on the outskirts of Damascus? Nobody.
Obama did.
Such ability to foresee the distant results of his actions hidden by the cloak of time reveals his great political skills and prophetic vision. He brought the Arab Winter and perhaps Islam’s dusk. We still have more than two years of enjoyment to watch the intricacy of his chess moves.  The intrigue, though, is slightly more transparent now that we know that all his moves that appear on the surface to aid Islamists and hurt Israel and the US are no more and no less than strategic sacrifices aiming to embolden our adversaries and provoke them to make a fatal mistake. Just wait. Don’t breath.