Next: Purges and the Midwest Gulag?

It never occurred to me that I'd be agreeing with pieces on the state of capitalism that come from Pravda, but this one hits on all cylinders. Example:

'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?'

Of course Putin warned about this very trend a few months back, and I noted that (somewhere) here. The tone of this one is a bit hectoring, but I can't disagree even with that. The Russians know all about centrally planned EVERYTHING, and the Americans ignore 70 years of that at their peril. Here, peril, peril; come here boy!

There is a lot of talk about the new US Supreme Court appointee, Sotomayor. She's as politically correct as anyone could want, and apparently believes (as many judges do) that it's the courts' job to change or even make laws. Needless to say I don't agree with that; we elect people to do that, but a lot of "progressives" want things to move faster than legislatures generally do.

There's a certain amount of that in Canada, but our political and social structure is (shockingly) far healthier, at least so far. The USA is certainly in trouble, and seems to be digging a deeper hole for itself on all fronts. I've read a lot about the dismal state of the American education system, mentioned in the linked article (but see Jerry Pournelle's blog for a lot more) and the political pork-barrelling going on with the auto bailouts rivals anything Mugabe could come up with.

Plus ca change; the Russians are trying to warn the Americans away from the Marxist edge, and plus c'est le meme chose; the Americans are ignoring them. Sheeple indeed, but they aren't exclusive to the USA...