Thursday, April 29, 2010

May Day Contest

Status: Closed

Obama Cuss Jar Total: $602. WINNERS: Conservative Cowgirl (Guess: $604) and her favorite blog, IOwnTheWorld.

Thanks to all for participating. Our next contest will be the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. Until then - have a great summer and keep your f*****g ears warm!





Related Videos:

Our proletarian dictators don't measure up:



But a former American fermentation company comes close:



About:

There will be TWO WINNERS: you, and the blogger or source who sent you here! Both will get the Commie Obama Rally Cap and Bottle of Leninade - the two most coveted bourgeois trophies of the Obama Revolution!

Rules:

Add your guess in the comments below. Guesses MUST consist of a dollar value guess (no cents) AND the name of the referrer. If you don't have a referrer, pick one of the cool bloggers in our Blogroll!

One guess per person please.

Contest ends at noon EST May 3rd.

If two guesses are equal - one higher and one lower by the same amount - the tie goes to the lower.

The first of duplicate guesses will be considered.

Hints:

The jar is 10 inches tall, and 7 inches in diameter.

The jar only contains $1 bills. All were placed flat in the jar at the time of the indiscretion. You can see the $124 stack at the bottom of the jar from our first contest on July 4, 2009.

View our Obama's Checklist to get an idea of the quantity of our colorful language in the 10 months since our last contest.

See more pictures of the hat at the hat store.

Ushanka Tips to those linking to our contest: Jumping In Pools, IOwnTheWorld,

Happy May Day, and may the best Comrade-Blogger team win!

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Wednesday Afternoon Cigar

Torano.


We started reading Professor Robert Gellately's book, Lenin, Stalin and Hitler. Too early for a qualified comment, although this book was recommended by a comrade whose opinions are highly valued. We will say that it is an easy read so far and there is little doubt it will meet the standards to be listed in our Library to your left.

A couple comments from Leon Trotsky jumped out at us on pages 43-44. The context was Lenin's first proposal to abolish freedom of expression.

He [Trotsky] said that "during civil war the right to use violence" -this less than forty-eight hours into what was still a bloodless revolution - "belongs only to the oppressed." There were catcalls at the meeting: "Who's the oppressed now? Cannibal!" Trotsky pressed on to say, "If we are going to nationalize the banks, can we then tolerate the finance journals? The old regime must die: that must be understood once and for all."

Our founders' first proposal was to establish freedom of expression. The commies: to eliminate it.

The Bolshevik commies' first nationalization target was the banks. Today theLiberals Progressives Communists (Democrats, aka The Party) failed their second attempt at "finance reform" that would give the executive branch the unchecked ability to shut down banks it deemed too risky (or whose campaign contributions were not in line with the proletariat). Although the breaking news is that GOP may bend on this abuse of power.

The other news: Hispanics to hold marches in 70 cities on May 1st. May Day.

Nothing to see here.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

We Were Interviewed!

The cool blog, Jumping In Pools, sent us some questions about the founding of Ushanka.us and the origins of our sexy hat.

Here is a link to the interview.

A hearty Ushanka Tip to Matt and his fellow bloggers at Jumping In Pools!

Monday, April 26, 2010

Ugly Statues

Foreign Policy has posted pics of the eleven most ugly statues. Here is #11 of Kim Il Sung, aka Dear Leader.

WSJ: Good Friday

Friday's Wall Street Journal reminded us of a time long past. When one could open the Journal's Opinion page with confidence of conservatism under every headline. Maybe it was just a dream...


Normally it is not a dream. It is common now to open the paper to see Mr. "Obama is Not a Socialist" Princeton Economics [?} Professor Alan S. Binder (left) doing what is clearly an Obama Suck-Up on the opinion pages. Just ask the president for a job already.

Or the female version of Bill "We must find the middle ground even if we forfeit all credibility" O'Reilly, Peggy Noonan (middle). Like Mark Levin, she was in the Reagan White House. Unlike Mark, she desperately lacks a core. Reading Noonan is like a box of chocolates...

And last, the WSJ's lib-on-staff, Thomas Frank (right). Like the Alan Colmes in the old Hannity and Colmes show, Mr. Frank is forced to spew liberal drivel to an audience that turned to the WSJ to avoid such blather. Maybe he'll follow Colmes' lead.

So, now that the WSJ has lowered our expectations, one can see how pleasantly surprised we were last Friday. It isn't just conservatism that we seek in the WSJ, but an objective analysis of current events written by those we trust will show us the good, bad and the ugly. Here are some of the articles we found:

Rush Limbaugh, Liberals and the Violence Card

Had President Obama campaigned on this agenda, he wouldn't have garnered 30% of the popular vote.
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The Obama/Clinton/media left are comfortable with the unrest in our society today. It allows them to blame and demonize their opponents (doctors, insurance companies, Wall Street, talk radio, Fox News) in order to portray their regime as the great healer of all our ills, thus expanding their power and control over our society.

A clear majority of the American people want no part of this. They instinctively know that the Obama way is not how things get done in this country. They are motivated by love. Not hate, not sedition. They love their country and want to save it from those who do not.


Kimberely A. Strassel, The Real Republican Civil War

Writing of the Marco Rubio (reformer) vs. Charlie Crist (establishment GOP) race in Florida:

If an angry public has done anything, it's been to embolden more of these reformers to run. Pennsylvania Senate candidate Pat Toomey was a leader on Social Security reform in Congress. John Kasich, running for Ohio governor, promises to overhaul the state's decrepit tax and regulatory systems. In House races you see more candidates running on bold solutions. Yet for every budding Rubio there remains an establishment GOP member who fights earmark bans, blanches at Medicare reform, and just wants to get through the next election.

This divide is putting enormous pressure on the GOP leadership. It tastes victory this fall and is terrified of blowing it. It watched President Obama sandbag Mr. Ryan earlier this year, holding up his roadmap as an example of the terrors the GOP would impose on the nation.

At some point, GOP leaders are going to have to decide what the "new" GOP is. Principled opposition to bad Democratic policy is a legitimate strategy for the midterms. Then what? Republicans will win seats this fall. How long they remain in them will come down to which side—the establishment GOP or the reformist GOP—wins what is the real Republican civil war.


Bing West, The Meaning of the Korengal Retreat

Did you know we are retreating?

In 2006, the United States sent a company of men into a sparsely populated, steep-sided valley called the Korengal in northeastern Afghanistan. It was part of a new counterinsurgency strategy aimed at stopping fighters from coming across the nearby Pakistan border and at winning over local tribes by patrolling their villages.

Last week, the U.S. all but conceded the Korengal to the Taliban by pulling out of the valley.
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We will know in about a year whether the Korengal is an isolated failure or a bridgehead for insurgents. The litmus test will be whether the main road to the provincial capital near the Korengal is safe to travel. Either way, the Korengal does illustrate that our counterinsurgency doctrine of winning hearts and minds with good will and material projects can be checkmated by Islamic extremism and tribal xenophobia.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Sunday Afternoon Cigar

Camacho SLR.


We are finishing Tim Tzouliadis' fantastic The Forsaken. A book about desperate US citizens who fled to the Soviet Union during The Great Depression in search of work who quickly found themselves with more work than imagined in the Gulag.

FDR received a confidential briefing from British Intelligence on August 13, 1943 on the massacre of 20,000+ Polish officers in the Katyn forest. The evidence could not have been stronger, yet it was supressed as FDR insisted on the cooperative nature of the US-USSR alliance. The conversation between FDR and William Bullitt, the first US ambassador to the Soviet Union who left his post disgusted with Stalin and the crimes of the NKVD is on page 240:

At the White House, when William Bullitt tried to warn Roosevelt about Stalin's true intent, the president lost patience with him. "Bill, I don't dispute your facts, they are accurate," Roosevelt replied. "I don't dispute the logic of your reasoning. I just have a hunch that Stalin is not that kind of man. Harry says he's not and that he doesn't want anything but security for his country, and I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask for nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won't try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace." Bullitt purposefully reminded the president that "when he talked of noblesse oblige he was not speaking of the Duke of Norfolk but of a Caucasian bandit whose only thought when he got something for nothing was that the other fellow was an ass." But Roosevelt had heard enough: "It's my responsibility and not yours, and I'm going to play my hunch."


The Democrat Party - or as we call them "The Party" - has maintained this theme in international relations. It has led to countless deaths and vast suffering, and will continue to do so. If you doubt us, open any book listed in our Library to the left.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Information as a Weapon for Freedom

"Kudos" to Google for two recent decisions!



1) China Pull-Out. Incredible, remarkable, commendable. After numerous privacy demands from the commies plus an elaborate hacking attack, Google chose to turn off their Chinese presence. No diplomatic summits. No olive branch compromises. Just a business decision based on business realities. Poof.

And who is left holding the bag? Microsoft gets to be the big player in China. Our slogan suggestion for Steve Ballmer: "Microsoft: Less Ethics Than Google".



2) Google, being all things data, has launched a site where you can view the number of government requests for either content removal or user account information. In other words, a list of countries which are more inclined to restrict information and/or waive privacy.

Luckily, the United States is way down in the list.... to #4. Click the image above to visit Google's new site.

Now if we can only get Google to commemorate Memorial Day. And Independence Day. And Christmas. And. And. And.

In the battle of ideologies, the Internet has been a powerful weapon against the left. Watch the coming elections, especially 2012, when incumbents' broken promises go viral on YouTube. And, as Google has used the web to display raw data of government attempts to censure, watch as more companies start displaying how much government is included in their product pricing.

Liberals Progressives Communists must hide their true intentions behind lies. More and more, those lies will be exposed and shared.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Sunday Afternoon Cigar

Santa Damiana.


From our daily blog scans:

English Russia has a post with newly found pictures from the Great Patriotic War:


Robin of Berekely asks at American Thinker: Was Jesus a Marxist?

It's bad enough that the radicals want our children, our newspapers, our money, and our health care. But hijacking God?

The Left tried first to separate people from God. They banished Him from schools and government; they ridiculed and mocked believers.

Their efforts having failed miserably (about 80% of all Americans still identity as Christian), so they turn to plan B: Contaminate the Word of God.
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I think that the progressives know, deep inside, in places they keep well-hidden, that their souls are damaged.

Their movement is not really about redistribution, or social justice, or green power. It's about extinguishing the Light that exposes their brokenness.

HCR Wrap-Up

Excerpts from our favorite writers days after the passing of Universal Health Care:

Laura Hollis, Townhall, March 22: Procedure is all that protects us from dictatorship.

How much more do we have to witness before there is no more blather about Barack Obama as a “centrist” or a “moderate?” Yesterday’s legislative debacle was only the latest in a series of calculated, deliberate and premeditated steps by this President to dismantle the constitutional protections Americans have enshrined in our foundational documents and achieve complete government takeover of the reviled and envied private sector.

Consider what we have seen happen in a little more than a year: nearly the entire American automaking industry nationalized, with its CEOs thrown out at the will of the President. Private contracts with investors eviscerated to provide payback to the President’s political patrons. Whole segments of the financial sector beholden to the federal government at the will of the President. Health care – one-sixth of the U.S. economy - nationalized at the will of the President. Student loans nationalized at the will of the President. The country taken into deeper and steeper debt at the will of the President – debt which, as it has everywhere else, will cripple enterprise, impede entrepreneurship, raise unemployment, stifle innovation, destroy America’s world-class health care, and result in shortages, rationing, economic distress, and general misery which will – surprise! – result in calls for what? More government intervention.

People who treat this as an exception to Barack Obama’s moderate “centrism” or an unintended consequence of his skillful management of a crisis he inherited are inexcusably stupid.

Charles Krauthammer, Townhall, March 26: The VAT Cometh.

American liberals have long complained that ours is the only advanced industrial country without universal health care. Well, now we shall have it. And as we approach European levels of entitlements, we will need European levels of taxation.

Obama set out to be a consequential president, on the order of Ronald Reagan. With the VAT, Obama's triumph will be complete. He will have succeeded in reversing Reaganism. Liberals have long complained that Reagan's strategy was to starve the (governmental) beast in order to shrink it: First, cut taxes -- then ultimately you have to reduce government spending.

Obama's strategy is exactly the opposite: Expand the beast, and then feed it. Spend first -- which then forces taxation. Now that, with the institution of universal health care, we are becoming the full entitlement state, the beast will have to be fed.

And the VAT is the only trough in creation large enough.

As a substitute for the income tax, the VAT would be a splendid idea. Taxing consumption makes infinitely more sense than taxing work. But to feed the liberal social-democratic project, the VAT must be added on top of the income tax.

Ann Coulter, Townhall, March 31: Prescriptions for Disaster Now Covered Under Obamacare.

A few weeks ago, The New York Times ran an editorial noting the amazing fact that, by the middle of this year, there will be an estimated 6.8 billion people on Earth -- and 5 billion will have cell phones! (Even more astounding, at least one of them is seated directly behind me every time I go to the movies.)

How did that happen without a Democrat president and Congress using bribes, parliamentary tricks and arcane non-voting maneuvers to pass a massive, hugely expensive National Cell Phone Reform Act?

How did that happen without Barney Frank and Henry Waxman personally designing the 3-foot-long, 26-pound, ugly green $4,000 cell phone we all have to use?

How did that happen without Obama signing the National Cell Phone Reform bill, as a poor 10-year-old black kid who couldn't afford to text-message his friends looked on?

The reason nearly everyone in the universe has a cell phone is that President Reagan did to telephones the exact opposite of what the Democrats have just done with health care.

Before Reagan came into office, we had one phone company, ridiculously expensive rates and one phone model. Reagan split up AT&T, deregulated phone service and gave America a competitive market in phones. The rest is history.

If you can grasp how inexpensive cell phones in a rainbow of colors and wonders like the iPhone could never have been created under a National Cell Phone Reform Act, you can understand what a disaster ObamaCare is going to be for health care in America.

Mark Steyn, National Review Online, March 27: Obamacare Dystopia.

...right now the future lies somewhere between the certainty of decline and the probability of catastrophe. What can stop it? Not a lot. But now that your “pro-life” Democratic congressman has sold out, you might want to quit calling Washington and try your state capital. If the Commerce Clause can legitimize the “individual mandate,” then there is no republic, not in any meaningful sense. If you don’t like the sound of that, maybe it’s time for a constitutional convention.

Michael Barone, Townhall, March 25: Bond Markets Reflect the True Cost of Obamacare.

Not many people noticed amid the Democrats' struggle to jam their health care bill through the House, but in recent weeks U.S. Treasury bonds have lost their status as the world's safest investment.

The numbers are pretty clear. In February, Bloomberg News reports, Berkshire Hathaway sold two-year bonds with an interest rate lower than that on two-year Treasuries. A company run by a 79-year-old investor is a better credit risk, the markets are telling us, than the U.S. government.

Larry Elder, Townhall, March 25: Hope and Change ... the Constitution.

Ignoring the will of the majority of the American people, the discouraging experiences of countries with socialized medicine, and the already staggering amount of entitlement debt, President Barack Obama and the congressional Democrats "reformed" health care. Once a nation under a Constitution that restricted government intrusion, we now want government to provide for our "needs" by calling them "rights."
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We ignore the experience of price controls. Government can dictate prices, but cannot dictate costs. Price controls result in rationing, drive producers out of business and cause lower quality and less innovation. America, because its citizens enjoyed greater economic freedom, built a superior health care system -- which ObamaCare now threatens to dismantle.

Communism collapsed under the romantic but bankrupt notion of "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." Taking from the productive and giving to the unproductive does damage to the incentive of both parties. European countries -- "social justice" democracies -- produce comparatively few private-sector jobs. Europe suffers from high taxes, choking union agreements that make it virtually impossible to fire unproductive or unneeded workers, and government policies that mandate paid vacations and other job-killing benefits.

Into this statist abyss we willingly jump.
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So, the Constitution must be changed. It must be amended to make what was once clear absolutely, positively, unavoidably clear. Two-thirds of the states can call for a constitutional convention, where an amendment can be proposed to prohibit the forced purchase of health insurance. Three-fourths of the states could then ratify it.

Implausible? So was ObamaCare.

Mike Adams, Townhall, March 29: Civil Disobedience.

I’ve long said that there would not be legalized abortion in America were it not for the Democratic Party. But, in a post-3/21 world, there can be no federal funding of abortions without the complicity of pro-life Republicans. If you think I’m hinting at the prospect of civil disobedience, you’re right. But that isn’t our first line of defense.

Republican Attorneys General around the nation are correct to challenge the legality of the national health care legislation passed by Congress on 3/21. If these suits are successful, we may be able to dismantle the legislation using the courts of law – long after it was dismantled in the court of public opinion. But if we fail in court, what is next?

The necessity of having a backup plan in the event of failed litigation efforts was made clear to me just one day after the congressional vote. The first Democrat friend I saw after 3/21 greeted me by saying, “F*** all you f***ing Republicans.” It is clear that you can only say “no” so many times when dealing with legislative rapists. It is equally clear that the time for reasoned discourse has passed and the time for civil disobedience is drawing near.

I would not likely enjoy spending time in prison. But I simply cannot imagine paying federal taxes that could be used to fund abortion. I just cannot resign myself to complicity in the murder of the unborn. I can more easily see myself going to trial and throwing myself on the mercy of a jury of my peers.

Jury nullification was used to end the Salem witch trials. Maybe it can stop federal funding of the murder of unborn children.

Our new slogan at our Commie Obama hat store: You have the healthcare. Now get the hat.

Should we rename our blog slogan to "Ushanka.us: Documenting the End of America"?

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Saturday Afternoon Cigar

Rocky Patel Sun Grown.


We are reading The Forsaken by Tim Tzouliads. An incredible book about the migration of Americans to the Soviet Union in the early 30's, lured to factory jobs during the Great Depression. Jobs at first. Then American passports replaced with Soviet passports. Then the knock in the middle of the night.

From page 74, discussing the departure of the American ambassador, William Bullitt, who left when he realized the true nature of the Communist enterprise:

William Bullitt was far from alone in realizing the truth of what was taking place around him. One of the American reporters, William Henry Chamberlin, left at the same time in the early summer of 1936. "I went to Russia," Chamberlin later wrote, "believing that the Soviet system might represent the most hopeful answer to the problems raised by the World War and the subsequent economic crisis. I left convinced that the absolutist Soviet state...is a power of darkness and of evil with few parallels in history...Murder is a habit, even more with states than with individuals." Perhaps it was not accurate to say that the Terror had begun then. In truth it had been in existence for many years. But Bullitt's departure did coincide with a vast expansion and acceleration of the process, as if what once had been mere habit had now been transformed into an overwhelming compulsion and an inexorable desire.

Chamberlin was lucky to leave. Moreover, he was lucky there was a place to escape to.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Tax Day, or Tea Party Day?

Both. We would venture to guess that those few who still pay taxes make up most of the proud patriots who attend the rallies. If that has anything to do with certain ethnic groups being under-represented, then is it safe to suggest the current tax code is racist?

Memory Lane: Here is the video we made from last year's tea party on March 15th:



And here is the video from the April 15, 2009 tea party:



From IOTW:



We plan to attend a tea party in a yet-to-be-announced location, however weather may be an issue.

A hearty Ushanka Tip to all those who attend a rally today. Have fun, be safe, and if you see any libs do as Obama says: "don't be afraid to get in their face".

UPDATE 7:45pm:

We attended today's Tea Party rally in beautiful Kansas City! The forecast was for rain, but it was a dry gathering of determined Kansas City patriots. Pics and video coming soon, except we have to post this picture immediately:



UPDATE 10:45pm:

We've been enjoying the many pictures from fellow bloggers of today's Tea Party rallies. This one jumped out at us from The Digital Hairshirt:

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Gods of Government

Found at Knowledge Is Power.



Just a note that posts will [continue to] be scarce. We are traveling to an undisclosed Tea Party this week. In the meantime, please click over to some of our friends in the blogroll to the left.

Sunday, April 04, 2010

AWOL

Our apologies for the few posts these past weeks. We've discovered a secret, diabolical plan by the Democrats to silence their critics: Taxes. We've either been completing our tax returns, or stressing over them. Hence the few posts.

While we haven't been producing, we have continued consuming. We will provide a post-HCR blog post here shortly with the best of the colorful comments from our conservative mentors.

In the meantime, we've been negligent with our Ushanka Babe posts. English Russia has a post we took this picture from: Miss Belarus Detective 2010. Let the interrogations begin!