The Rants of Anaximenes

A lot has been written of late about how the current administration is enamored with European-style systems of government, health care, social reform and the like.  Last week, Obama named Donald Berwick as his nominee for the newly created health care bureaucratic head of the Center of Medicare and Medicaid Services. Like his Supreme Court justice nomination Elena Kagan, here is another Harvard academic egghead with no real world experience and a decidedly socialist view of government, which is why no one but Harvard would employ them.  Berkwick is quoted in a 2008 speech to the UK National Health Service as saying the US health care system is "immoral" and that the UK "did it right." Of course, that was not long after Great Briton's Health Secretary was forced to apologize in Parliament for the death of 90 patients in two southern England hospitals because nurses didn't exercise proper infection control by washing their hands.

And then, we all will remember how Obama had to go to Berlin to deliver a speech during his bid for the presidency, the only US presidential candidate to have campaigned oversees. Apparently he overlooked the fact that Germans are not a part of the US electorate. Obama grandstanded for the media in front of an audience that largely doesn't speak our language, and those that do called it a speech full of dubious metaphors and soggy logic. If nothing else, it exhibited for all those who would carefully listen just how naive about foreign affairs he really is.

Our centralized power loving, nanny state admiring, re-distributionist, true-believing liberal ideologues, like Obama and his puppets in Congress, have been unashamedly honest about their love of the European model. But I have to ask, what the fuck is so great about Europe?

The European Union is slowly unraveling. It’s been eleven years since the Euro replaced the francs, marks, drachmas and pesetas of the original twelve members of the “Eurozone”, and the current world financial crisis was its first major test. It very nearly flunked it, for two reasons. One, was the unmanageable debts of countries that should never have joined in the first place, like Greece. The other was the sheer lack of political institutions strong enough to protect the currency in a crisis.

• Greece has taught the world what happens when a nanny state's indebtedness reaches 102% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP), adding 13% of GDP to its debt every year. On the verge of economic collapse with riots in the street, it took the Germans to bail them out by backing their debt.


• German fury at paying for Greek extravagance is turning into outright anger against the EU and the Euro, which has lost 16% of its value in the past six months and is at a four year low to the American dollar. Germany's citizens should well be alarmed. With the Greek bail out, their country now owns a total of $704 billion of debt issued by not only Greece, but also Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Ireland, a sum that equals a staggering 25% of the German GDP.


• Although it only unofficially accepts the Euro, Great Britain also suffers from an annual budget deficit that equals 12% of its GDP, due in no small part to a broken socialized health system, one which we seemingly wish to emulate. In a mere twelve months, Britain's total indebtedness will rise from 60% of GDP to 71%, thereby putting that country on a fast track to become as bloated, sick, and disoriented as its Aegean neighbor.


• Spain's debt-to-GDP ratio is 114%, putting them as the indisputable Numero Uno in any list that speculates about the "Next Greece." Awash in an invasion with a ten-year 800% increase in immigrants now living in Spain, the country's unemployment rate is an astounding 20% and youth unemployment is a catastrophic 42%.


• France owns $511 billion of Italy's $1.4 trillion debt, an amount that represents a stunning 25% of France's GDP. If Italy ever defaults on its debt and cannot make its interest payments, the whole EU house of cards could come tumbling down.

And so it goes...

Thanks to the current administration's unsound fiscal policies and a European-style, over-developed sense of "social responsibility" at any cost, the US will double its national debt following in the footsteps of the EU within the next ten years. I therefore thought it best to shed a little light on Europe, and why it fails so fucking hard.

Transition of Leaders

The American voters change their leader every eight years, or four if they are wholly incompetent boobs. Until recently, no despot has every ascended to the Presidency. The American people can be fooled once but not twice, so mark down this prediction: Obama is another liberal Democrat who won't pick up a second term in the Oval Office. Americans like leaders who kick ass and don't bow down with bended knee to pricks like Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz. We're embarrassed over shit like that.

Europe has been overrun by more despots than you can shake a stick at. Not that anyone in Europe actually would, because they're all weak willed and ill-equipped to deal with political bullies. European people look to the state to serve their every need and they're equally gullible when anyone promises it. Occasionally, the US has to go over there to kick somebody's ass after they've been in power for fifteen years wreaking havoc on the rest of us.

Military Supremacy

We invented nuclear weaponry and if an American president hadn't had the balls to use it, half the planet might very well be under a totalitarian imperialistic regime speaking Japanese. We've bailed out country after country because they were too pussified to fight their own battles. Sure, we've made mistakes, but how many countries are free from totalitarianism because of us?  Not that anyone appreciates what we do for them, which leads me to want to say, "fuck 'em," fight your own battles.

The EU has no common military except for the pussies at the UN. The UK and France have their own nuclear arsenal. But the Netherlands, Italy and Belgian were given US nuclear weapons under a NATO agreement struck during the Cold War. None of them have the balls to use them, however, and if any country in Europe is ever invaded, we'll have to go over there and rescue their asses - again.

Soviet Occupation

This is what America's largest city looked like after WWII. The Russian army has never set foot on American soil. Japan is the only country that had the cojones to attack us, and well, you saw what became of them. The only other attack on American soil came from a bunch of unsophisticated Muslim Jihadists who could hijack and fly planes into buildings. And well, you saw what happened to the country that harbored their sorry asses. The misinformed, arrogant and largely misguided European youth think the US are bullies. But we're only a bully when provoked - a bully, by the way, that any other country would ask to help them in a heartbeat if they found themselves on the wrong side of unilateral military aggression.

This is what Germany's largest city looked like after WWII, and the allies carved up the country into itty-bittty pieces. Unfortunately, the Russians overstayed their welcome and permanently occupied half the country for more than forty years. If it hadn't been for the US military occupation of half of Berlin, the free sector of that city sustained through the Cold War would have also ceased to exist. The Germans had little to do with the reunification of their own country. It took the resolve of the US to bring about the collapse of the USSR, including its puppet country of East Germany, otherwise known as the German Democratic Republic, which was anything but.

Military Discipline

The US Marines in full military dress command respect and evoke a certain air of "don't fuck with us." I guarantee you that after Katrina hit New Orleans, it wasn't the New Orleans police who restored order in the storm's aftermath with roving bands of looters and armed gangs who had the remaining city denizens by their throats and fearful for their lives. It was the goddamn Marines. Bush deployed them from Camp Pendleton, an act as Commander-in-Chief for which he never received credit. By the way, many of the New Orleans police themselves participated in looting or outright abandoned the city. I also guarantee you, any that did were never in the US Marines.

The Grecian Army military dress uniform includes a skirt. Spartans might have been some tough sonsofbitches, but at least they didn't wear skirts. No wonder why, the world over, when someone uses the colloquial expression for anal sex, they call it "going Greek." The Grecian military has not participated in any armed conflict since the Germans kicked the shit out of them in WWII.  Ironic, then, that it was the Germans who bailed them out of economic disaster earlier this month.

Space Exploration

NASA was founded in 1958 and just eleven years later, landed two Americans on the moon, a feat it repeated five more times. Three years later, we were the first country to successfully park a probe in orbit around Mars, and have landed probes on the surface of that planet six times. A year after orbiting Mars, we were the first nation to create a space station, Skylab. The NASA space shuttle program, the first of its kind to re-use spacecraft, has completed 130 orbital missions. US space craft Voyager I & II are the only interplanetary spacecraft to have achieved solar escape velocity, meaning that their trajectory will not return them to this solar system.

The European Space Agency (ESA) was founded in 1975 and has yet to break the gravitational bonds of Earth. In fact, the ESA can do little without partnering with other space agencies, notably NASA and its Japanese counterpart, JAXA. This includes the International Space Station which has been disproportionately subsidized by American taxpayers.  It has been a US space shuttle or a Russian Soyuz rocket that transports all astronauts to and from the "International" Space Station. And now that the US is out of the shuttle business, thanks to President Obama, the Russians will be the Europeans' only taxi driver.  The prediction here is that the International Space Station is doomed because of a lack of European know-how and American money.

Internet Development

Americans conceived of and created the Internet, which was first brought online in 1969 under a contract led by the Advanced Research Projects Agency. It initially connected four major computers at universities in the southwestern US. By 1971, other universities, NASA, and the Rand Corporation plugged in, and users have increased exponentially ever since. The explosion of computer technology, PCs and laptops, Ethernet connectivity, Internet Service Providers, the World Wide Web, WiFi and search engine compatibilities have all been led by US corporations.

Europeans coined the phrase "Information Superhighway." That's pretty much it. That's pretty much their entire fucking contribution to the development of the Internet.  The European Laboratory for Particle Physics proposed a new protocol for information distribution, which became the basis for the World Wide Web in 1991.  The proposal was to create hypertext, a system of embedding links in text as links to other text. But it was the development in 1993 of the graphical browser developed by the US National Center For Supercomputing Applications that gave the protocol its first practical and commercial application. Netscape Corporation produced the most successful graphical browser to that time called, Mosaic.  It's a distant memory now, after Microsoft declared war and launched its Internet Explorer in 1995.  But the point is, Europe's contribution to the founding of the Internet is so absent, I couldn't even find a decent avatar for this section.

Financial Institutions

Along with NASDAQ, the New York Stock Exchange is, hands down, the most powerful financial engine on the planet with almost five billion transactions annually and market capitalization of over $152 trillion. Yes, that trillion with a 'T'. That is more money than the capitalization of exchanges in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland and the whole of Europe combined. When the Dow Jones Industrial Average has a bad day, so do all other European indexes, including the German DAX, the Italian MIB and the UK FTSE, otherwise known as the "footsie."  Leave it to the Britons to name their primarily stock market indicator after a body part fetish.

The Euronext is a pan-European stock exchange based in Paris. It boasts that with a market capitalization rate of $29 trillion, it is the fifth largest stock exchange on the planet. This is a little exercise in mathematics and marketing where you can look much better than you really are. While indeed they are fifth largest, they also have a market capitalization rate 1/5 the size of the NYSE. No matter. The NYSE merged with the Euronex in 2008, so in fact, we fucking own you.

Gasoline (Petrol) Prices

The price of gasoline in the US is considerably cheaper than Europe. It's bouncing around $2.75 a gallon right now. In the Netherlands, where petrol prices are highest, it's running $6.48 per gallon. In the UK, it's $5.79 a gallon. The US imports about 60% of its oil from other countries, a third of which comes from Canada and Mexico.  We're not as dependent on oil from the Middle East as you are led to believe; only 17% of our imported oil comes from Saudi Arabia, and 5% from Iraq.  The US oil reserves are estimated to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 210 billion barrels, which is more than Iraq and Iran combined.

Europe as a whole imports 80% of its oil, a stunning 38% of which come from OPEC, making the EU far more dependent on Middle Eastern supplies. Moreover, Europe imports 33% of its oil from Russia. Europe oil reserves are estimated at less than 25 billion barrels. The main reason for the high price of European gasoline, however, are taxes.  While the US gas tax per gallon averages at 45 cents, around 16% of the total cost, it is far, far higher in Europe: almost 70% in the UK, 66% in the Netherlands and 63% in Italy.  You people are getting hosed at the pump hose.

Pop Culture


Founded in 1970, Aerosmith is still going strong today. Nominated for 63 awards, the band has received 31 of them, including 4 Grammy's and the MTV Europe Music Award. They have had 21 singles chart in the Billboard Top 40. The Beatles disbanded in 1970 and the best thing that any of them ever did was The Beatles. They had 30 Billboard Top 40 hits, but now, two of them are dead and the band will never play together again.


Debuted in 1994, Friends ran for ten years. It was nominated for 63 prime time Emmy awards and was exported to 32 countries, including the UK where it ran for eight seasons. Debuted in 1994, The Vicar of Dibley ran for thirteen years and no one in America has ever fucking heard of it.  What the hell is a "vicar," anyway?


Denise Richards is what an American former fashion model and movie actress looks like at thirty-five years of age, still pretty much a smokin' hot babe. She's had a beleaguered personal life, married once with two children. Saffron Burrows is what a British former fashion model and movie actress looks like at thirty five years of age: more collagen than a vat of Jell-o. She supports socialism, has never been married and is a lesbian romantically linked with Fiona Shaw, a 51 year old Irish actress.


George Carlin blazed the trails of comedic genius back when people in Europe actually thought circus clowns were some funny shit.  George won five Grammy Awards for his comedy albums, published seven books, and was seen on 14 HBO specials and in 16 films. But the Brits think that wearing stupid costumes while running around in circles in fast-motion camera is funny. Benny Hill did the same shit for 20 years. His well known theme song, Yakety-Sax, was a Kentucky-born Boots Randolf recording.  Both George and Benny are dead.  And while the world will remember George, it's trying hard to forget Benny.


The imagination and creativity of Gene Roddenberry spawned generations of worldwide fans with six TV series and eleven major motion pictures. So recognized, I don't even have to mention the name of the series or the character represented in the avatar for this paragraph. Dr. Who, on the other hand.... Yes, precisely. Dr. Who? A guy who teleports through dimensions in a fucking phone booth?  How lame and embarrassing. It was exported to PBS in the early seventies for a couple of years, but never caught on, mostly because Americans demand more depth and imagination than this pathetic example of science fiction had to offer.  Its revival attempt with a 1996 made-for-TV movie was an abysmal failure, capturing a prime time audience on Fox of less than 10-million. And current rumor is that a motion picture is in the works. Prediction: that, too, will be a failure.


When Americans make a movie about Italians, they become international blockbusting sensations. This one spawned two sequels and a whole genre of Mafia films. All three Godfather installments won Oscars for Best Picture and the franchise won a total of 16 Academy Awards. By contrast, when Italians make a movie about Italians, no one even knows what the fuck they're talking about. The Cannes Film Festival gave Fellini a "Technical Grand Prize," for Roma, but did anyone besides Fellini really give a shit?


Yes, Europe fails on so many levels. Go ahead and cry. Cry for the cameras, girlie-man.  The US laughs at you.