Welcome to Vlad's Daily Gloat, my new eXile blog from Russia in which I laugh every day at the hilarious decline of America, "the world's only superpower." The eXile editors agreed to give me this blog space as a "probnii shar" or trial blog. We will see how much our online American readers can endure the pain of a Russian laughing at your country's inglorious collapse on a daily basis.
Today I am lucky to launch Vlad's Daily Gloat with a real side-splitting story about America's hilarious decline. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says that the United States war in Iraq is the real cause of America's economic decline, and that it's at least 50 times more expensive than the Bush Administration admits:
THE Iraq war has cost the US 50-60 times more than the Bush administration predicted and was a central cause of the sub-prime banking crisis threatening the world economy, according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.
The former World Bank vice-president yesterday said the war had, so far, cost the US something like $US3trillion ($3.3 trillion) compared with the $US50-$US60-billion predicted in 2003.
So America gets, to use The eXile's language, a double clusterfuck in both eyeball sockets: it's going bankrupt to pay for a war that it can't afford (and hiding the costs like Enron, Bush's former bankrollers), and to top it off, America is losing the war! America goes broke in order to suffer defeat. That is FUNNY!
AMERICAN EMPIRE: GOING BROKE IN ORDER TO GET DEFEATED
Or to be more precise, America already lost this war, but it is too delusional to accept defeat. This means America will continue to go bankrupt, and continue to lose. This means it can't even pay for things like giving medical insurance to its own children:
Just a few days' funding would be enough to provide health insurance for US children who were not covered, [Stiglitz] said.
This is bad news for American children, but it's good news for a gloating Russian observer like me.
I also had a laugh from this story from the Wall Street Journal about a gullible American soldier who fights and dies for America, and meanwhile, he must abandon his American house because he can't pay for the mortgage--because of the war he's fighting in!
Sgt. First Class Nicklaus Skaggs is among those looking to walk way. Mr. Skaggs bought his home in April 2005 shortly after returning to California from a one-year tour of duty in Baghdad.
The $455,000 three-bedroom home he and his wife purchased in Vacaville, about one hour northeast of San Francisco, is worth an estimated $285,000 today, well below the $453,000 he owes on his mortgage. The monthly mortgage payment, which jumped after its interest rate increased, is now $4,000, up from $2,980 when he bought the house.
Mr. Skaggs expects to be redeployed to Iraq again later this year. But he can't sell his home, since there are few buyers, and he can't refinance because lenders require a large down payment he doesn't have. Now, the 18-year Army veteran has decided to walk away from his mortgage. He hopes in a few years lenders see his decision as a unique situation created by the housing meltdown. "I don't think that house is going to recover in value any time soon," said the 40-year-old. "I'd just be throwing the money away."
Actually when I stop laughing I feel some pity for this American soldier. Should I? I don't know. I'm trying to remember pity that Americans feel for Russians in the defeat of Afghanistan or so-called "Cold War defeat." While I'm going through my memory trying to remember the American sympathy for Russians suffering, I'll continue to laugh at this soldier-sucker and the whole country of declining morons.
Long Live The Occupation of Iraq! May you elect John McCain and stay in Iraq for 100 years, gullible American losers! Ha-ha-ha-ha!
--Vlad Kalashnikov
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