Life

"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance." - Cicero - 55 BC

Every American should read this article from the leading Russian newspaper, Pravda. I think its stunning.


American capitalism gone with a whimper

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.
Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.
First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blind the foolish.
Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.
The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.
These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?

These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.

Barack Obama's command that GM's (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of "pure" free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.
So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.
Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper...but a "freeman" whimper.
So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set "fair" maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.
The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.
The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.
Stanislav Mishin

Here is Henry fooling around at his graduation. The other kids loved it by their expressions, his parents did not. This was shown during Henry's part. Note the reference to Michigan, who he does not care for much.

I am really proud of Henry and his reading. He is reading chapter books now and every night I am just amazed at how well he can read. I imagine he'll be far ahead of a lot of the kids in his kindergarten class next year. Sure, he'll be one of the older kids but that doesn't take away the fact that he's a great reader. His teachers say he is one of the best in his class now. Here's a typical page that my boy is reading:

"My pet kitten is lost," says Jack.
"Can you get him back?"
"Yes, I can," I say. "Where did you last see him?"
"At the vet," says Jack, "but he is not there now."

Jack and his new girlfriend Maggie. Our house from the water. It's the red house just above the pontoon boat.

Before...

Well, we managed to cram everything into the truck and uhaul. And I mean cram. Sarah's friend Liz wanted to catch a ride down to the lake where she was going to meet someone for a ride to PA this weekend and unfortunately that isn't going to work unless she wants to lay on a mattress in the uhaul for an hour and a half.

I'm not sure what will happen to big SUVs once the Obama fuel standards become effective but I doubt they will be building them anymore. We will all pretty much be driving around in little tiny clown cars in the future to meet these stringent standards. I'm sure that will improve highway safety a lot.

We are all set for move-in day on Friday. U-haul is rented, bunk bed has been picked up, washer and dryer were delivered yesterday, mattresses will get picked up tomorrow along with the nail gun for the final phase of the wood floor. Sarah has spent a million dollars on new stuff for the place, sheets, comforters, etc. We will drop the kids off at school at 7:30 a.m. and head to the lake for the unload. I'm going to start on the floors and Sarah will need to clean the place up a bit, its a construction zone right now. We'll throw all the construction debris in the trailer and Sarah will drive it to a dump in Columbus Friday afternoon. She will return on Saturday morning with the boys. Sounds like a plan to me.

Our great view never gets old. The stain is one the walls in the one bedroom. Note the area around the floor where trim will go.

I'm headed down to the lake tomorrow after work to start laying the wood floor. I have zero confidence that this is going to turn out great because of the uneven floor. It's complicated by the fact that I believe the tiles that were under the carpet are asbestos, which means that I really can't just rip them up and install a new subfloor. So I'm going to make it as level as I can and just lay the wood. And hope it turns out good enough to last 25 years.

Here are the new walls and ceiling. Picture doesn't do them justice. Once I get some stain or clearcoat on them, they will look great.

Party was great, had more people then ever before. We lucked out on the weather. I golfed today and won the Memorial Cup, one of three golf trophies a group of guys play for every year. But it was a rough day, 5 1/2 hours on the course because we were playing behind some slow golfers. That's why I don't like to golf on weekends, it takes up pretty much the whole day.

I'm off to Chicago tomorrow until Wednesday.