The American Revolution

I find it fascinating that much of what I have been saying has come true - or, at least, there are now others out there saying the same thing. The latest example is Ernest Christian’s and Gary Robbins’ perspective entitled ‘Will Washington’s Failures Lead Second American Revolution?' on INVESTORS.com.

The title caught my eye in that several interpretations are possible. The article did not disappoint in this regard. It did, however, gloss over the muck of revolution, touting the now entirely probable November midterm results as the cleanest of all the possible outcomes. Unlike our first revolution, however, the article acknowledges that it is unlikely to topple King Geobama (sic).

And this is precisely what I’ve been stressing as well: that the mistake we made back in November 2008 will yet cost us a great deal; that it will yet take several election cycles to turn the corner, much less recover. And even so, the die may already have been cast and the only benefit to us may well amount to no more than having become aware.

Neither is it appropriate to blame Obama for all our ills. Where we now find ourselves has been long in coming. In fact, we owe Barack Hussein Obama a debt gratitude for having uncovered the plot for us. McCain - like Bush - would likely have continued to keep us in the dark.

Cat Stevens wrote in “Tuesday’s Dead”: ‘If I make a mark in time - Then I can say the mark is mine - (When, in fact) I’m only the underline…' Obama is and always has been ‘the underline’. He is not original; he is not historic (as he likes to boast). If he were, he would have the American people behind him. He does not. Therefore, his revolution is not a revolution. It is a coup. The revolution is yet to come, and it will be an American revolution.

Governments Fail

In many ways, India finds itself in the position of Israel. It has intractable neighbors hell-bent on drawing it into a vortex of dysfunction. The grand puppet master is China of which Pakistan is a client state. China has made it no secret that it wants to see India broken up into separate and competing regions that would be helpless in the face of a Chinese advance. The best way to accomplish this is to drain focus and resources away from what it takes to maintain India’s identity.

India has fashioned itself as a western-style democracy which by definition requires the participation - economically and politically - of all its people. If large segments of its population could be persuaded to opt out, India would no longer exist as a nation.

Pakistan is a failed state, created by the good will of the Indian power brokers after the British colonialists had been forced to retreat. It was determined that each of the two countries would pursue separate paths and that these would prove incompatible within the confines of a single laboratory. Still, it was hoped that the two nations could exist side by side in relative peace. Israel’s desire to live side by side with a fully-functioning Palestinian state reflects a similar desire. In both cases, this goal looked achievable on paper. In reality it was not to be so.

While India prospered, Pakistan disintegrated into a failed state. Failed states typically fall under the control of more powerful regional actors. These then determine their fate and function. Pakistan has become a tool in China’s hands to destabilize India just as the Palestinian conflict has become a tool in Iranian hands to destabilize Israel.

It is easy to be distracted by the flashpoints in the world and dismiss the role of the grand puppet masters. Every time there is a problem between Pakistan and India we should be looking at China. Every time there is a problem between Israel and Palestinians we should be looking at Iran.

Success and failure cannot exist side by side. The words ’success’ and ’failure’ are interchangeable. What one side deems as ’success’ is ‘failure’ from the other’s perspective. Totalitarianism does not tolerate democracy. Islam does not tolerate infidels and so on… Therefore we have a problem that can only be resolved by power and the willingness to use it. We have reached the limit of what can be achieved by appeasement alone.

America’s challenge is to rediscover what it stands for and then to fully support those of like mind who may find themselves in trouble: in this case, India and Israel.

I find it fascinating how we kowtow to the Chinese. We are afraid that they will stop buying our debt. They are well aware of the power we allow them to wield over us; that we will do nothing to provoke them. Why don’t we just turn it around and use the same weapon against them? Why don’t we just come out with it and say we are broke and are no longer able to service our debt; that the U.S. paper they hold is worthless? Why don’t we just tell them outright that if they don’t call of their attack dogs - North Korea and Pakistan - we will announce to the world, making it official, that we’re broke, thus putting an end to the charade?

Their government would likely fall; as would ours. The question then becomes: What would take its place? My bet is on the American people who would make a fresh and positive start of it given their present advantage. China, Pakistan, India, Israel, Iran - who knows? One thing is for certain: We’ll have to get ourselves right before we can even think of doing anything for anybody else.

American Universities Doing Their Part

My neighbor and his family are currently away, vacationing in Japan. They are expected back this weekend. They will be here for approximately a week and then they’re off to sunny France for an additional two weeks. Both he and his wife are immigrants. He works for Google.

Look, education costs are crushing alright. I know; I put two kids through college. Both turned out alright and have jobs, thank God. But higher education in America has ceased being education in the classical sense. Instead, it has become a ticket for entry into the upper classes. The basics are no longer stressed. What is critical is that one conforms to and shows promise in advancing a specific ideology. The lower grades have essentially become day care and PC engines of social conditioning.

Education in America has become pure fluff. This is why we require foreigners to innovate, build, and maintain whatever remains of our industrial and financial base. In this we have already been overtaken by what we condescendingly refer to as the Third World (primarily Asia). Since fluff, like financial derivatives, can be priced at whatever the gullible are prepared to bear, education has become a toxic investment.

It has come to my attention that major American colleges and universities are looking to open up campuses in India. Will these be having American teachers? I doubt it. Perhaps there’s a strategy emerging here. It has been said that the best way to bring about the downfall of a nation is to export liberalism to it. Let no one claim that American universities are not doing their part.

Conspiracy Theory

“How do we defeat such an enemy?” We beat them, pure and simple. We go in with all we’ve got and get the job done. We have the best fighting force in the world, bar none. If the Afghan government itself becomes a problem, there are strategies on a higher level to take care of that as well. Ditto, Pakistan. There is simply no excuse for America to lose any skirmish anywhere in the world.

What we lack is will. The Democrat Party has aligned itself with the anti-war movement for decades. They have politicized war and used it to keep Republicans from winning at the polls right here at home. They have thrown every conceivable obstacle in the way of any war effort for decades. They have been actively rooting for our enemies, especially under Republican leadership. They have struck words like ‘winning’ and ‘victory’ from the public debate. In the process they have succeeded in reducing our military to some ad hoc version of ‘meals-on-wheels’, a job it is wholly unsuited for.

If we decide to continue on our present course, we are guaranteed to lose. In fact, losing is virtually guaranteed if it is the aim, first and foremost, of our policy makers to lose (for whatever reason) as it now seems.

It has now been made clear that it is the aim of our present administration to reduce America’s influence around the world; that it considers American hegemony as the single most potent impediment to world peace. The obvious consequence of such policy is the demonstration of losses on the battlefield, the diminution of our dollar, and the seizing of political power over opponents here at home largely by the canard of blaming our losses on the opposition.

I’m as much a fan of conspiracy theory as the next guy. I was watching “The Fall of the Republic” just yesterday but couldn’t shake the feeling that what I was watching in itself might be nothing more substantive than propaganda. Conspiracy theories all follow a well-trodden path. There are heroes and villains and it all ends up in some kind of dystopian morass of dungeons and chains. I began to feel disgust and retreated to my history books. When it occurred to me that history itself is little more than conspiracy theory in reverse.

Which brings us to now. Clearly there is at present no will to win as far as America is concerned. All our efforts seem to be singularly focused on neutralizing the Tea Parties and their supporters. On the highest levels of our government it appears to have been decided that this is the only battle worth winning. All others - Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Taiwan, India, Central and South America - be damned.

Chicago Politics

None of what was said back in 2008, or even what is being said today about Obama’s associations and involvement in what we refer to as ‘Chicago politics’ is a story. The only story here is the one about the dog who didn’t bark: the mainstream media. They have consistently refused to delve into Obama’s past. And this is precisely why we are where we are today.

What has become all too obvious by now is that this is not merely a matter of following the money. It’s much bigger than that. This is about ideology. This is about Islam.
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Update on the Abelino Mazeriego murder earlier this month in Summit, NJ:

My son and I took our customary walk uptown tonight and found Springfield Avenue closed to vehicular traffic. As we proceeded into town on foot we found hundreds of people there. There was a march and vigil starting at City Hall, going past the murder scene (which has in the meantime become an oft-frequented memorial with candles, condolences, flowers and balloons) and ending on the Village Green across from Summit Station. The people who came were somber, well dressed and civilized. All races, young and old, were well represented.

POTUS visited New Jersey today where he met with small-business owners at Tastee Sub Shop in Edison. He also taped a segment for The View which is to air tomorrow. He did not meet with the Boy Scouts during their week-long 100th anniversary celebration.

It might have been nice if he could have found time to take the short hop over to Summit to address the people here.

Abelino Mazeriego

Rest In Peace!

Leaders And Jailers

Leadership should not be difficult. The Bible says that people should obey their leaders as to make their leadership not a burden to them. A leader is in essence a tube through which a higher power speaks. The people will be proud to serve for they know that he serves them as well. They will be confident that he has their best interests in mind.

Leadership is a gift - an inborn skill, like that of ‘boys who can hit a bird with a stone at thirty paces. They have not learned it; they can simply do it; it did not come by effort, but by magic or grace. The stone in their hand flies off by itself; the stone wants to hit the bird and the bird wants to be hit.’*

How far we have fallen!

Leaders who complain about how hard it is to lead are not leaders; they are jailers who must constantly watch their backs. They preside over chaos and discontent. Indeed, they make use of these in order to promote the fiction of their leadership. It renders them ever more isolated, like planets spinning out of their orbits.

‘There must seem to be a center in the vast network of associations. If one were at that center, one would know everything, could see all that had been and all there is yet to come. Knowledge must pour upon the one who stands at that center as water runs to the valley and the hare to the cabbage. His word would strike sharply and infallibly as the stone in the sharpshooter’s hand.’*

I used to admire Jerry Brown. I had read somewhere that he studied Buddhism and practices Zen. As such, I thought of him as possessing some measure of wisdom. Now I see him (and others) as just another in a long line of political hacks.
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*excerpts taken from Hermann Hesse’s ’The Glass Bead Game’ and translated roughly from the German to fit the context of this writing.

Tanning Salons Be Damned

Logic tells us that Ahmadinejad has lots to fear. The same is true of Barack Hussein Obama. Obama is losing his base; alienating his opposition even further, and causing such a stir that has even the disinterested now scratching their heads. Will he moderate his stance; adjust course? No. He will press ahead with his agenda; he will double-down with the full force of his office in support. He will scatter the corrupt seed - his empty words - here and there, and those starving for truth and hope will momentarily be held off only to find that those seeds will not sprout. Yet, it will give him a precious moment to re-group in his stony desert garden, pass another (empty shell) bill with a promising name that his cabal of insurgents can define later and spin into a noose.

Is he frightened? Perhaps a little. But he is a man possessed. He sees himself as historic; a man with a mission. He would readily sacrifice himself, his family, his nation for the improbable vision he holds so dear. His fear is but a speed bump, a mere annoyance, a paper cut. There are enough urging him on; telling him he is right, that he must do more, faster.

Obama, like Ahmadinejad, represents just a sliver of the population that continues to assure him that their cause is just. As such, he lives in an impenetrable bubble of assent. All others - no matter how great their numbers - are infidels who must be brought to heel or be killed. Truth absent, there is no argument, no compromise. The time is at hand to act.

Remaking a nation is no small task. Obama cannot lose faith. The time may never come again for the possibility of a mosque at Ground Zero to even be worthy of contemplation. He is cutting against the grain. The pain he may feel, to him is ecstasy; it is the pain of birth. He is not immune to doubt or suffering. He views these as the price of justice. He cannot conceive of suffering in any other context than wrenching his own into the sun, even if by his own actions that self-same sun should turn blood red in defiance of folly. Tanning salons and democracy be damned.

No War; No Oil; No America

The phrase, “politics stops at the water’s edge” is a now famous adage accredited to a number of American politicians, most notably (perhaps) to Arthur Vandenberg, a respected Republican senator from Michigan back in the 1940’s. It recognizes that the efficacy of the president should not be diluted by partisan parochial debate when it comes to foreign affairs or when our national security is challenged as during war. All this, of course, is assuming that the president has our best interests in mind.

Americans have been largely content to leave the execution of foreign policy to the ‘experts‘ - this, with the understanding that there is so much going on out there, much of it unfathomable to the average amateur weekend warrior; and some of it, no doubt, more than we’d feel comfortable in knowing. After 9/11, then President Bush told us to expect many changes; that some of these would affect us directly while others would pass beneath the radar, implying that the government was working on numerous levels to protect us. The proof was in the pudding: There were no further attacks on Americans, on American soil during the Bush presidency.

As the political climate within our own country reached the boiling point, the old adage was literally trampled underfoot. Portions of Bush’s clandestine policies overseas were deliberately leaked and hotly debated in Congress and out on Main Street. It was all done in a blatant effort by the Left to unseat Republicans. As such, military strategies became less and less effective. It is interesting to note that the WikiLeaks appear to deal with documents primarily from the Bush era, thereby (possibly) setting the stage for ‘crimes against humanity’ litigation and state-run show trials.

Obama is touched by WikiLeaks only insofar as he is seen as continuing Bush’s policies. In reality, though, he is simply letting the momentum of what Bush’s team started and maintained run down. It’s no secret that Obama doesn’t like war and means to end any possibility of it within his lifetime. It’s no secret that he views America as the one impediment to world peace that he himself can control.

Obama did not do too much to stop the WikiLeak document dump. In fact, unlike in the Pentagon Papers case, the University of East Anglia email revelations among other high profile surprise disclosures, there was plenty of warning this time around. It was almost as if Julian Assange was waiting for permission to leak his stuff. Outright permission never came, but neither did injunction.

Now we are told the president is wringing his hands about the whole thing, Don’t you believe it for a moment! Just like the oil spill, for him this was a welcome event. Let’s not kid ourselves; we know only too well where this man stands: no war; no oil; and, ultimately, no America.

What Is Not

“Earth is off the shelf of and planetary geology.” - JB

This represents the same basic argument that prevailed during Galileo’s time. Galileo essentially discovered that the earth orbits the sun. This got him into trouble with the elites of that time - philosophers and clerics - who subscribed to the view that the sun orbits the earth, thus making the earth the center of the universe. He was denounced to the Roman Inquisition. Although cleared a year later of any offence, the Catholic Church nevertheless condemned heliocentrism as heresy and Galileo was told to abandon his support for it. When he later defended his views in his most famous work, ‘Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems’, he was tried again and forced to spent the remainder of his life under house arrest. Isn’t this the same as what is going on today re ‘global warming’?

Eventually we would come to accept that our solar system itself is merely some insignificant adjunct to some insignificant galaxy on the fringes of the universe. What does that do to our considerable egos? Some say it lead to existentialism; nihilism and beyond. Let me suggest that the next (and possibly final) knot along this thread may yet emerge, namely that the true center of the universe is the human mind. This would certainly go a long way toward uprooting whole herds of sacred cows - ego for one. Alan Watts and Carlos Castaneda came tantalizingly close to articulating this concept. The scriptures of all the world’s religions allude to it.

As we strive to understand all ‘being‘, we remain largely ignorant of ‘non-being’ which cannot be measured or quantified by our senses or by the extensions thereof. The scope and significance of ‘non-being‘, some say, can only be grasped by what Zen refers to as ‘no mind’ (or ‘no thought‘).

It is ‘non-being’ within which what some call ‘God’ resides. So, even if we - who look to telescopes, rulers and scales as the ultimate test of reality - should succeed in figuring out everything there is to know about all there is, we would still fall infinitely short of figuring out what is not.

Winners and Losers

I keep reading about fresh U.S. casualties in Afghanistan. The headline usually reads “worst month since…” And I can’t help but wonder what has gone wrong. The major news media used to make a big deal about U.S. casualties in Iraq. It was presented as a kind of game show countdown (or 'up'); some kind of doomsday clock. We were told it was Bush’s fault and that the war there was already lost and that any further action was meaningless - Bush’s war; not America’s war.

Now we’ve come full circle. The administration that got itself elected by promising to end Iraq and fight the ‘right’ war in Afghanistan now has exactly what it wanted. Still, the casualties continue to mount. It’s been a boon of sorts for Obama in that he can now claim victory in Iraq (which he has). But Afghanistan remains a daunting enterprise; first, because we don’t seem to know whom we’re fighting. According to the administration there are good Taliban and bad Taliban; there are corrupt politicians and despicable ones. And each and every one of them has turned against us.

The game there has become so skewed that we’ve been reduced to appealing for just one person to step forward and say, “Jolly good job, America! You can go home now and prosecute your soldiers for war crimes”; just one person we can manage to bring in front of cameras to attest to something good we may have inadvertently left behind: a school; a hospital; a charred poppy field; a woman left unscarred - anything at all that hasn’t immediately been erased in the time it takes to get an BBC news team to the site.

I wonder about the American families who have suffered the loss of dear ones in this wanton wasteland. I wonder if they understand how their personal loss advances America’s cause. I sure don’t.

These wars have been shamelessly politicized from the start to serve parochial political ends. As such, a great debate ensued between those who wanted us to win and those who wanted us to lose. That battle was decided right here in America when Obama came to power. While our first impulse to engage extreme elements within the Islamic tradition was proper - indeed unavoidable - since then, any thought about our actual mission there has been lost in the shuffle.

There have been winners and losers alright, but these have no longer anything to do with either Afghanistan or Iraq. Those people have been exploited for the purpose of bringing the Obama administration to power and subjugated Republicans. It is here that you find your winners and losers.

They're Dangerous

I honestly believe you don’t give the Left enough credit, John. You shouldn’t dismiss them out of hand; they’re here, and they’ll still be here after the elections. They’re not interested in the economy; they’re not interested in jobs; Israel; GM; energy and whatever else we might feel is important. They’re not even interested in elections. They’ve got their guy in the White House and that’s enough for them. They’ll do their bloody best to keep him there, whether the economy improves or not.

Netroots is just the rabble - moronic; expendable. There’s an exact duplicate of those same people that you never see - or you see them in the guise of reasonable people in suits: Soros, Kerry, Frank, Schumer, Clinton, Reid, Pelosi - need I go on?

Then there are the internationalists, powerful men who harbor illusions of grandeur; self-appointed global visionaries who see themselves as having been anointed for the sole purpose of taking down no less than the United States of America - former bulwark of the free world. It is they who have the deep pockets; the endurance; and, above all, the organization to bring all this about. Their primary weapons are terror, propaganda and time. They hope to win by attrition; by exhausting us - the loyal, disorganized, partially blind opposition.

They see their time nearly used up. They will act now - or soon. Financial collapse, social unrest - they hold the strings - their guy in the White House. They have arrived. Elections be damned. They won’t let go. Even if we win overwhelmingly in November, what will we have we won? A Xerox copy machine? A House and Senate that have already discredited themselves beyond redemption?

Our disadvantage remains because we play by the rules. They don’t. That’s why we don’t win wars anymore. We fight by Queensberry Rules - like the British once did - and lost. Back in Washington’s time, we picked them off one at the time as they marched in neat formation. Their uniforms matched the pain we inflicted.

“A large, robust man in a blue suit…” Really, John? He wouldn’t do this if he thought his side couldn’t win. At one time there was an equally laughable chump with a mustache who managed to bring the world to its knees.

Don’t dismiss them, John. They’re dangerous.

Follow the Leader

It has become generally accepted lore that the northern part of a region is more prosperous than the southern part. This is because, we are told, the harsher climate in the north forces its people to be more resourceful than those of the lazy horse latitudes. There are exceptions of course.

North Korea has essentially become a prison in which weather and food are weapons. If one were to elect to serve one’s time in the custody of men, one might well choose a place like Cuba because in Cuba the weather is not one of the weapons that can be used against you. The jailers too can be counted on to be of a somewhat gentler disposition because of the climate thing as - again, we are told - gentler climates breed gentler people. Again, there are exceptions.

Still, prison is prison no matter how often you paint its lips. There are two kinds of people in this world: leaders and followers. (We’ll disregard loners and misfits for the time being.) Followers are far greater in number. They will happily cleave to any given leader as long as the leader does not make their subservient position too obvious. Leaders, once again, break up into two groups. There are leaders who are natural born, and leaders who are actually followers (with no leadership skills) who pretend to be leaders. These will lead by threat and deceit. Nations in which this happens are called ‘tyrannies‘. They are hollow and exceedingly fragile.

In our country false leaders have become so inept that their leadership has come to depend increasingly on threat. As we are still much better educated than the norm, the deceit of our so-called leaders no longer works. The feared uprising, therefore, must be curbed by threat. If you do not pay your share of confiscatory taxes; if you speak out against dear leader Obama, you’re automatically on the outs; blackballed; ostracized; ridiculed; excluded; marked ‘failed’. You will be expected to correct your ways or suffer impotence on the fringes of society.

You will make it your life’s work to support the regime. If you are a scientist, for instance, you will obediently go along with the theory of ‘global warming’ no matter what the data shows. If you are a doctor, you will support a woman’s right to abort and the standards set by the state for denying healthcare to the aged. If you are a landowner, you will submit to government regs that limit the use of your own land to favor the snail darter, and possibly even agree to give up your holdings by random declaration of eminent domain. If you are a driver, you will adhere to the posted speed limit even though your car and conditions permit twice that. If you are a smoker, you will try to quit - or lie about trying - while scurrying around in back doorways and alleys.

In North Korea, the game played is considerably more basic than that. Here, both the weather and food are weapons. I suspect that if Kim Jong-Il were to die and we were to go in to check it out, we would find nothing. It’d be like one of those scenes in countless prison escape movies where the warden enters a cell, throws back the blankets and finds only a dummy there.

The National

The National - "Bloodbuzz Ohio" (official video) from The National on Vimeo.

Bringing Down the Bank

I don’t get much pleasure in bashing the president. Neither do I get much pleasure from hearing the president being bashed. And I suspect that most of you who read this blog are getting tired of it as well. For far too long I’ve been posting comments that you’d have been entirely justified in skipping over because you already knew what I was going to say. And it would have merely meant that you had already moved beyond. ’Beyond’ does not mean wallowing in cynicism, cheap shots, and burying one’s head in endless minutia. It means looking past what we now see and can no longer change.

The simple truth of the matter is that we’re all collectively heading to a place where we’ve never been before. And we’re scared. Obama isn’t the problem. He is just the most accessible manifestation of our overall disease. No matter who had been elected president back in 2008, he or she would have brought us to the same place. We all are subject to the tide of history which is greater than ourselves. The fact is that our shore line stands seriously eroded and any protective measures we might take this late in the game would turn out to be woefully inadequate.

To begin with, it’s all been decided already within the highest levels of academia. They’ve set our course and stamped it with their seal of unanimous approval. Conservatism has lost the argument. There was never the possibility of compromise. To undo anything now would require a revolution even greater than the one we’re presently experiencing.

I am an American, first and foremost. I am clearly not a Socialist. As such, I am not a Democrat. This is because history tells us that socialism does not work. I realize that in order to make such a statement, one has to come to some common understanding of how to determine if something works (or not).

Clearly, Socialists think that socialism works - that it is fairer, kinder and more compassionate. I would gladly forget history and even stipulate to that much if I thought the people at the top actually loved America. I’ve heard the argument that proper socialism can only happen here in America; that the reason it has failed in other places was because they were not yet ready; that these had not gone through the necessary steps after which socialism can be effective. America, they argue is now ready to embrace socialism precisely because it has gone through a period in which capitalism has been discredited. They view socialism as the highest evolution of effective human governance toward which capitalism is only a stepping stone.

Socialism, Marxism, Maoism, Communism, are all the same to me. I’ve never been able to split hairs so precisely as to ascertain a difference. Again, I would stipulate to it all if I had even the slightest notion that those promoting these concepts actually loved America - but they don’t.

A man walks into a bank, pulls a gun and tells the tellers to hand over the money. They smile nervously and accede to his request. He leaves the bank a happy man. Maybe some hero bank guard gets popped in the process. At any rate, it’s over. The rest is left up to the cops and the insurance companies.

Now consider a man coming into that same bank wearing a suicide vest - say, on the last Thursday of the month, in the late afternoon when lines have been forming with people all cashing their pay or welfare checks. The man does not want money. He wants to bring down the bank. This is what I fear is happening in our nation right now.

Somebody Tell The White House

I am deeply saddened tonight. A middle-aged Ecuadorian man was beaten to death on Saturday night. He was sitting on a bench in a small park across the street from the Indian restaurant where he worked as a dishwasher. At around 9:30 in the evening he was approached by three youths. Two sat down beside him. One threw a white cloth over his face; a second beat him; while a third video taped the action. The attack appears to have been unprovoked.

This happened smack in the center of town where I have lived off and on for over 50 years. In all that time, I cannot remember anything like this ever happening. The victim was taken to Overlook Hospital where he died on Tuesday.

It took the police and mayor till Tuesday to release a statement. They were hoping the man wouldn’t die so the incident could be swept under the rug and forgotten. Meanwhile, the video had made the rounds on the internet long before. Citizens are understandably outraged. What had taken the mayor so long to warn residents? He claimed that an immediate statement would have compromised the investigation.

An 18-year old was arrested. A 17-year old, who is said to have inflicted the fatal blows, has also been taken into custody, though his name was not released due to his age. The camera guy was let go.

Summit is one of the wealthiest towns in the state. Property values have barely been affected by the recession. The prosperous commercial center where it happened consists primarily of banks, up-scale restaurants and hair salons. Though, since the recession started, there have been some businesses that have closed.

There is a sizable and close-knit Hispanic community here. There will be more blood. It got me to thinking that the race war the White House seems so intent on provoking will misfire. The battle is coming alright. But it will not be fought between whites and all others. Whites will know enough to steer clear.

Somebody tell the White House.

Close Encounters Of the Third Kind

Some time back, driving in an open Jeep one misty morning along a lonely stretch of road through the South Indian wildlife preserve of Bandipur, we came upon a group of about a dozen or so elephants that were blocking our way. Nothing to do but to stop the car and wait till they moved on. Slowly, they approached us and surrounded our vehicle. They were simply curious and not at all in a hurry.

We must have been there for the better part of an hour, watching them at close quarters - silent, living cathedrals in gray motif. They were watching us as well. I wondered what they thought of us - puny creatures, hauling stuff with mechanically assisted limbs. Their eyes were kind and betrayed no trace of judgment or impatience and, thus, we were compelled to surrender ours.

They moved about like a silent gathering of clouds. There were little ones which they were careful to keep on a short leash.

We too were silent; somewhat akin to awestruck. I can’t say we ever felt threatened - as in a dream - even though hostage-like. We submitted to the time-out we were granted by their impenetrable presence. All the while, the sun steadily rose and the mist lifted. At last they all seemed to agree to go on back into the jungle, leaving us free to continue with the distinct impression of having just had a religious experience.

Degrees Of Brutality

So, at last we’ve come full circle. We’re back to practicing the absurd - yet irresistible - game of racial politics. If the election of Barack Hussein Obama was to have fixed anything, it was precisely this. Instead the racial divide within our country has widened since Obama’s been in office. Anyone who disagrees with his radical policies is now automatically labeled ‘racist‘. That would include upwards of 70% of us.

There is a solution. The President could make use of his bully pulpit and tell everybody to just cool it. In the area of race, no white chief executive could have made much of an impact; it‘s an opportunity that is open only to blacks. Instead Obama remains silent. He is the dog who doesn’t bark, which leads to the inescapable conclusion that he actually wants it this way.

The first thing we have to realize about this is that it’s not about color. It’s about class. If it were about a hierarchy based on color, we would all be growing the same color flowers in our gardens. There’s nothing magical about skin color. In Hinduism, the god Krishna is depicted as (random) blue, simply to set him above the rest.

The world over, it has long been apparent that the white race as a group has enjoyed greater comfort and success - albeit, by it’s own definition of that success - than others. Now conditions have become ripe for the rest of the world to challenge the whole notion of ‘success‘. Within our own nation, meritocracy has been largely supplanted by the notion of entitlement. This is why the answer to 2+2 no longer matters.

Similarly, commonly used terms have been modified. ‘Success‘, for instance, no longer means success. It means ‘oppression‘; or, if you wish, ‘slavery‘. This is why blacks in our public schools are encouraged by peers to fail and not to be seen as playing by the rules of the ‘oppressor‘. As such, all knowledge that had been traditionally taught in our schools has now been downgraded to rank propaganda, promoting a largely leftist, egalitarian agenda.

The reason Obama cannot produce his school records is because there are none. He is the product of affirmative action which eschews merit as a standard for achievement. It was telling early on when he seemed not to know the precise number of states that make up our union. To him such lapses are of no consequence. Any number - even one that happens to coincide with the exact number of Arab states - would have earned him a passing grade.

What matters most is ideology. Ideology easily flows into the vacuum that typifies ignorance. Racial politics is retrograde. Yet we can expect more - not less - of it as the 44th presidential term progresses. It has always been an convenient political tool for dividing people up into groups, sowing suspicion, and setting them against each other. If the white race were to disappear overnight, it would not solve the problem.

On a local New York radio talk show this morning I heard about a school out on Long Island, where the students of one school had to be moved lock stock and barrel to another, a mile and a half away. It seems the original area is no longer safe. Gang activity has become so rampant as to render local authorities helpless. Gangs mentioned in the report were the ‘bloods‘, the ‘crips‘, and ‘MS-13‘. Whites were not known to be involved.

When affirmative action supplants success, new hierarchies begin to proliferate like weeds in a garden. Hierarchical behavior is sewn seamlessly into the human condition - like language and having to breathe. In Wyandanch the new hierarchy is apparently based on degrees of brutality.

...and the Left marches on

It is now official. The Obama administration has officially transitioned from blaming Bush to blaming BP. No doubt the ‘JOURNOLIST’ has already issued marching orders to that effect.

From past experience we can surmise that the new strategy will run seamlessly to its conclusion. BP will cease to exist just as Republicans will never again regain power. There’s some degree of finality to the whole thing as well. Lindsey Graham summed up the Republican’s strategy yesterday (in connection with Kagan’s SC nomination). 'We will roll over', he said in essence. Closure.

BP will be pushed to the brink and beyond. Its pockets will be emptied; its profits siphoned to help to further promote government decadence.

After BP, it’ll be Shell on the spit, or Exxon, or any of the others who are considered to have deep, oily pockets. This will drive up the cost of energy which amounts to yet another tax working American’s will be asked to bear. The oft-stated ‘feel-good’ goal behind all this is, of course, the re-distribution of wealth; which, like the ‘global warming’ hoax, has not so much to do with ’fairness’ as it has with concentrating wealth among the political elites.

Once the private (or wealth producing) sector has been depleted. The government will turn on itself. This then will mark the end of civilization as we know it. It will be the point at which, according to our legend, Jesus returns to survey the damage and save whatever is left to save.

Believe it or not, the above actually represents only a best case scenario. The worst case is all-out war without Jesus taking sides. I could happen any time from now on forward. And the way we’ve been fighting wars, we’re virtually guaranteed to lose.

“Get me my prayer rug, b**ch!”

Afghanistan: Too Failed To Fail

Let’s not forget, America too is too “failed to fail” - just like it is axiomatic in the Democrat (and to some extent in the Republican) Party where you have failure propping up failure. Drugs? No problem. Deficits? No problem. Illegal immigrants? No problem. Corruption? No problem. Etc. As always, the American taxpayer can be expected to shoulder the load. How much longer? Unknown.
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Little by little, the Left is exposed - like peeling an onion. This week, the article entitled, “America’s Ruling Class - And The Perils of Revolution” by Anglo M. Codevilla in The American Spectator was discussed widely on conservative talk radio. Yesterday and today, The Daily Caller in articles by Jonathan Strong exposes the MSM. These articles read in tandem pretty much lay bare the bones of what we’ve all been puzzling about, namely the spectacularly rapid and unfortunate rise of Progressivism in America.

Whether or not we can regard these developments as an autopsy is still to be determined. From where I sit, there’s still plenty of life left in the old carcass; still too many people determined to endorse all the wrong moves. Case and point: By all accounts, ‘global warming’ as a viable concern should long ago have been declared dead and buried. Yet, I find it still stirring. And we will likely be saddled with ‘cap and trade’ because of it - never mind that the data is fraudulent. It was never about ‘saving the earth’ anyway, as Codevilla explains. It was always about power and outright theft.

Such revelations would never have come to light under McCain (just as it never really happened under Clinton and the Bushes). It’s just that Obama has been clumsy enough to spill the beans. No doubt, Hillary will be called upon to save the day.

Musical Chairs

“There are times when you put elections aside; this is one of those times.”

Lovely thought, coming from our president. Reminds of the children’s game, ‘Musical Chairs'. Reminds of ‘the day (when) the music died’ and Republicans were left standing. Now, the only way any Republican can secure a seat is to share it with a Democrat.

The spirit of the game always assumed that the music would start up again shortly. This time it hasn’t - and won’t. In any case, whether or not the music starts up again won’t matter much because all the chairs have been taken away. Why even bother to crank up the ancient gramophone? The Democrat president is safely ensconced. Our problems overwhelm us. Elections only complicate matters.

Remind, we are only one incident away from postponing or cancelling elections altogether. They’re already out there probing for a suitable excuse. This thing is far bigger than any one individual. It’s a movement with its grip firmly planted on the levers of power. They’ve already got the main attraction, Hillary, standing in the wings.

The other day, over dinner, my son and I got to talking - but not in the usual sense. We made up some sundry names and places, and ascribed to these various improbable histories. Eventually, we inserted these fictions into normal conversation which yielded hilarious results. We dissolved into uproarious laughter, made even more irrepressible by the presence of my elderly mother who takes no pleasure in such utterly baseless frivolity. I let it go on. There’s so little cause for laughter these days.

We resolved to let my daughter in on the joke, but not before Wikipedia had legitimized our invention with an actual entry.

This got me to thinking: Could it not also work the other way around? Would it not be possible to abstain from mentioning certain irksome characters for a while? Would these then simply fade away and leave the field open for our fictional characters to develop lives of their own? I was thinking of our president and his circle of irascible hacks to whom we continue to sacrifice so much print - so much time; so much (often wasted) creativity - to no discernable advantage.

I, for one, have decided to give it a try. I stated a new blog entitled "SIDE STREETS", devoted exclusively to travel. In it I resolve never to mention the name 'Barack Hussein Obama' even once.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Parallels

I don’t know why we continue to take anything Biden says seriously. The man is (and has always been) perfectly comfortable in spouting gaffes and contradictions. Ironically, he represents the only window of transparency the current administration has to offer. From this episode alone, we learn Obama’s political strategy going forward: blame Republicans.

Will it work? No. Still, it amounts to a strategy. As long as Republicans exist they can expect to perform the role of catchall for every Democrat failure past, present and future.

It is now quite obvious to most that current policies have sent our nation into a tailspin. Why would Democrats continue - not only to pursue such policies, but - to actually double down on same? One way to look at it is that the Dems are truly misguided. They see what their policies have done but refuse to take note. Therefore they propose even more poison as a cure for a man who has already been poisoned. The truth of the matter is that Republicans have been unable to do anything to stop the Dems because they have lacked the votes. Neither have they spoken out against, and even that very softly. Democrats have pretty much had free run of the political barnyard.

What has evolved from a nagging suspicion to utter conviction for many, is that the deficit, joblessness, the growing racial divide among other (what are commonly regarded as negative) seemingly permanent features that have emerged since Obama took office, are all part of a deliberate plan to reduce America’s power and influence on the world stage. This effort has been long underway, spearheaded by prominent organizations such as the UN and by a coalition of countries that have previously been regarded as America‘s ‘enemies’. Now, many observers believe, it’s also happening from the inside.

The ‘change’ [as in the now (in)famous 'remaking of America'] as promised by Obama during the campaign has taken on an ominous tone. Few still believe that Barack Hussein Obama is merely inept. The evidence now overwhelmingly shows that he is exceedingly cunning and singularly committed to a vision that the American people want no part of.

Read Mary O’Grady’s article on Nicaragua in the Wall Street Journal this morning. Substitute ‘America’ for ‘Nicaragua’ and ‘Obama’ for ‘Ortega’ and you will discover astounding parallels. Republicans appear to be happy just watching the poll numbers. They might just find that a year from now it no longer matters.

Trust

Trust is what breaks down when one has compartmentalized; when one can no longer see the continuum in all, and between things. POTUS does not engender trust. Nor does he trust. POTUS is young, black and highly positioned. Perhaps he does not think he deserves to be where he is. Perhaps he feels he has been put there by others. Perhaps he is not even American.

It’s not about POTUS as much we would like to make it so. It’s about us. It’s about having neglected our duty to stay vigilant. We didn’t pay attention when li’l Johnny came home from school with bananas and hockey sticks. We didn’t correct him when he started out mouthing off about ‘global warming‘. Instead, we let it pass and said, “He’ll learn when he’s older.” No, Obama is not ‘other‘; he is li’l Johnny who never learned to add properly, now become president. Who would have thunk it?

This crisis we’re in is entirely homegrown. We’ve let the weeds overtake the garden. Now that we’re looking for fruit, there’s nothing there. Obama is the product of what we ourselves have done (or neglected to do). Think about it? What foreign power, even in a jealous fit of rage, would ever think of cutting off its mother‘s teat?

Interiors

If you put 10 people into a room and keep them there for a week, they’d likely part friends and send each other holiday greetings for years to come. If, on the other hand, you keep those same people in separate rooms and sow suspicion, you’d have the makings of a war.

It is the natural inclination of individuals to make allowances and try to get along - provided that they see each other face to face. Obama knows this. POTUS must split up the population into separate rooms - rich/poor; black/white; old/young; etc. The Left knows this. In order to see their agenda through, they must start a war. Chaos. The Islamists know this. In order to establish a Caliphate, they must divide the world into believers and infidels.

The walls they erect are ideological. They know that people are more likely to breach political borders than ideological ones. This is why all the emphasis and strict enforcement of the various ‘isms’.

No one strictly adhering to ‘isms’ is safe, however - even from themselves. The tensions have to come from within. It is AQ’s immutable formula to maintain its psychological advantage within every human heart. As such it sows fear in the West and the illusory enthusiasm of broadly defined ‘victory’ among its own. Thus, every human heart is forced to decide whether to yield to its fear or its hatred.

Getting back to the room containing ten people: Suppose now that one (of the ten) is seen in the corner quietly building a bomb. The rest would immediately halt their comfortable speculation about LeBron’s future or Opra’s collapsing ratings and take care of business. We have seen this happen several times within the confined spaces of aircraft. (United Flight 93 among others.)

Barack Hussein Obama is building a bomb. The fact that we do nothing to stop him means that we have been divided up and shunted into separate rooms. …while the bomber proceeds unimpeded in obdurate pursuit of his post-apocalyptical vision.

Surviving the First Wave

Larry Kudlow is a brilliant economic analyst. That’s why I listen to him. For some time now I’ve been frustrated with him (and others) for saying all the right things but being unwilling to pull the trigger. It’s always Obama’s policies that are misguided, never Obama himself. He consistently subscribes to the notion that if voters were to send the president a loud enough message (as in the midterms) he would then turn it around and begin to pursue policies designed to actually stimulate economic growth.

Kudlow has a ‘shtick‘. His signature approach to the economy as well as to politics in general is optimism. He recently interviewed Tim Geithner who told him that taxes would indeed increase but not by as much as everyone expects. Larry took this as a cause to trumpet his legendary optimism and told the story over and over again. It was simply infuriating. But, I have since noticed that Larry Kudlow - like any amateur poker player - has a ‘tell’.

Larry takes an awful lot of calls from people who are telling him exactly how it is; that Obama is a Marxist whose ultimate aim is to destroy the U.S. economy. He allows them to talk but always lets them know that he is unwilling to dip into the realm of anybody’s motivation. But I’ve come to recognize his ‘tell’. When someone begins to articulate their deepest suspicions about Barack Hussein Obama, he always makes that peculiar laugh of his that tells me that he basically agrees with the caller.

I now understand that that Kudlow knows precisely what’s going on and why. He maintains his shtick to keep from getting lumped in with the political shock-jocks. Given our present circumstances, it’s probably also a good idea to remain within the good graces of the FCC.

It’s a good bet that new rules for over-air broadcasting are in the offing. At first only the most forthright critics of the government will be directly affected. Kudlow, like anyone smart enough to read the writing on the proverbial wall, is simply making sure that he survives the first wave.

Sweeping Out the Old

Diversity laws obviously create a mess of contradictions. They create rather than solve problems. We must assume therefore that problems are what the Obama administration is after. Chaos and confusion are the hallmark of the Cloward-Piven strategy. The aim is to overwhelm and thus paralyze the system. When that happens, someone (in this case our historical president) will step in and make it all alright. In the meantime, it is clear that the law allows that white males can now be legally discriminated against, held hostage, threatened, robbed, or whatever else anybody else would want to do to them.

This amounts to just another outrage in a whole series of recent outrages. It will do nothing to increase the efficiencies of our financial institutions. I remember some years back, AT&T wanted to diversify its workforce. They offered their white male employees early retirement with incentives. Many took it. They were then replaced in accordance with somebody’s idea of racial quotas. We all know where AT&T stands today.

It’s been tried elsewhere as well. In Zimbabwe - former breadbasket of Africa - whites were summarily chased off the farms and both the economy and food production collapsed.

Chavez of Venezuela did the same thing when he nationalized the oil industry and sent foreigners packing. Result: An industry spinning its wheels in the mud of mismanagement.

In the examples I mention above, the effort to achieve diversity (or its opposite), though ultimately catastrophic, was in some ways laudable. It fed on some degree of idealism; a sense of proper redress, perhaps; some (misplaced) notion of fairness. It lacked only the deeper understanding summed up in the by the wisdom that says: Doing it to one, is doing it to all. In other words, you cannot right the wrong of discrimination by discriminating. However, in our now nearly two-year old Obamanation laws are not passed to mitigate excess; they are passed to help sweep out the old by bringing about its utter and complete collapse.

Geppetto's Final Project

What the American electorate, the pundits, and even most bureaucrats have yet to figure out is that for this White House, internationally speaking, there are no sides. Spying assumes the sovereignty of a nation which would include protecting its borders and keeping its secrets. These are alien concepts to the Obama administration which views geopolitics as borderless shifting ideologies. Clearly, Obama sees himself as more closely aligned with the Fabian style which avoids direct confrontation. As such, his focus is exclusively trained on America itself.

Barack Hussein Obama has little direct interest in geo-political intrigue. To be sure, the CIA and other intelligence agencies still do exist. But these are essentially leaderless. They do what they have always done but, under Obama’s non-leadership, their efforts and skill have been reduced to half-baked at best. Enough room for infighting has opened up which further dilutes their effectiveness. As such, we can expect to see many more instances of embarrassing episodes that don’t appear to make much sense.

Intelligence consists of tools, now poorly used (or not used at all), left to languish in the hastily inherited workshop of a most incompetent dreamer. Occasionally, outside events will conspire to bring them to a kind of half-life and we see them dance to no particular tune on the deceased master’s dusty workbench. Pundits will speculate after having observed their essentially aimless jerks and starts, but only the wooden man in the White House knows for certain that he himself was Geppetto’s final project.

Is it just me, or are Obama’s ears actually getting bigger?
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Stark differences between the Obama and the Bush administrations are beginning to emerge. We seldom heard Bush himself scolding, or pleading through surrogates for policies that would involve the active participation of the American people directly. He just went about his business and did what he felt he had to do, trying as best he could to ignore all the carping. When things went wrong, we would hear about it from others.

By contrast, this president, it seems, is always out there attempting to convince an already highly suspicious electorate to agree to giving up yet another pound of flesh. Clearly, as far as the people are concerned, he has already overstayed his welcome. They are no longer listening. Then he goes ahead and does exactly what he wants.

We Have All Become Women

Most of my 60’s liberal to radical friends boastfully sport Apple PC’s and ancillary equipment. I’ve never been particularly tempted until just a few years ago when they opened an Apple Store in the mall near our house. What I loved were the designs and colors. Everything looked so futuristic and bright. It had not been around long enough to gather dust.

Too late to start over. I was already quite used to WINDOWS and dreaded making a change. Besides, what I was using worked just fine.

I spoke to my 30 something daughter about it only last week. She’s a product of Rutgers and rather liberal in her views. Yet she consistently chooses DELL. Why, I asked.

Her answer was rather enlightening. She said that Apple’s sales model is flawed; that it works entirely on the principle of planned obsolescence. When the batteries die, there’s usually no way to replace them; or, if there is, it’d still be cheaper to get a whole new unit that’s even snazzier looking, and has add'l new and exciting apps.

This, by the way, is the same sales strategy that ended up driving the American auto industry into the dirt back in the sixties, and allowed Japan to overtake it.

“Why then,” I asked, “are so many 'save every scrap of crap' libs so loyal to Apple?”

“It’s the old ‘big vs. small‘ bias all over again,” she began. "Microsoft is seen as big; Apple is seen as small (the underdog). ‘Big’ is always bad or wrong. ‘Small’ is to be nurtured and protected - even celebrated when it takes the initiative to use its crayons and draw on the wall.”

We have all become women.

Where Are the Republicans?

Good news indeed! But, unfortunately, the bad news overwhelms it. America is now effectively out of the oil business. Without oil, America’s economic engine grinds to a halt - like a car that will coast for a while after it’s run out of gas.

It doesn’t seem like anything can stop this president. He will soon sign legislation that effectively transfers Wall Street from New York to Washington; this, without having read even a single line of it’s 2000+ pages (just like every Senator and Congressman who voted). He will also get comprehensive immigration reform (amnesty) passed and more. Each turn of the screw will be hailed a blessed victory for a president determined to bury America six feet under. (They’re already out shopping for the marble slab.)

Not one Republican member of Congress has spoken out against Dodd-Frank - not that I‘ve heard anyway. (Maybe some have and it was just never reported.) On the contrary, three Republicans voted in support of the effort. That makes it bi-partisan. Everyone can now smile and pat each other on the back, and look forward to going home to brag about all the wondrous things they’ve accomplished for their indentured constituents. Meanwhile, Kagan advances like greased lightning.

Congress has been marginalized to the point where what it says hardly matters anymore. We might as well scrap it and save our money. The same can be said of the Supremes; media and education. Curiously, every dictator who’s ever lived has found it useful to maintain the fiction of justice and representative (rubberstamp) government.

Our Justice Department has gone erratic and rogue. We are left without recourse. We are living under a dictatorship. People are saying it openly now; admitting that the executive branch holds all the reigns. To think otherwise is delusionary.

At this point, what matters most about elections is what Obama thinks about them. If he thinks they’re good for his image, he’ll make an effort to turn the results in his favor. If not, he’ll just ignore the whole thing and pretend it never happened. Either way, it comes out to the same.

Faisal Shahzad: Nuts and Bolts

And yet we are terribly frightened of these characters, so much so that we are willing to remove even our shoes before boarding a plane. Think about it. We fear their condemnation, their wrath and their sweating bombs. We submit to spending untold sums on security. Yet we hesitate even to address them by name.

I remember being inordinately affected by the picture (in the papers) of a Vietnamese monk on fire. What has changed? Today’s suicide bomber is beneath our contempt. We see him as a collection of nuts and bolts. He is bloodless. We fear only his nuts and bolts. As such, we are incapable of accepting his sacrificial blood and call it victory.

They are winning. They are united in their hatred of us - in their ignorance; in their misplaced anger - while we are fractured along degrees of skill, commitment and the willingness to defeat them. Half of us suffer from Stockholm Syndrome while the other half buries their heads in minutia, busy at building a case - an excuse - to effectively counter their thrusts. If I see another book that tells me that Obama is a socialist; that Muslims want to kill us; that communists want to lynch us by our own ropes, I think I’ll go mad.

Enough already! We know who Barack Hussein Obama is and who is aligned with him. It’s beginning to dawn on us that they all hate America; that we can do nothing to make them love us; that we stand eternally condemned in their eyes. Time to face facts. We are stronger than they. It is entirely possible to defeat them. But we stand no chance if we defeat ourselves first.

Utter Nonsense

What is ‘the economy’? It is us; we, the people. It is we who decide to get up and go to work in the morning, open or expand businesses, hire people… It is we who decide what and where to buy; or whether or not to buy in the first place. What is commonly referred to as ‘the economy’ is actually us.

The markets have now gone up six days in a row. I read somewhere recently that small investors have fled the equity markets in droves. This tells me that there’s no longer any depth to these markets; that it’s become solely a playground for professional hucksters, gamblers, gunslingers and speculators. Expect the markets to continue gyrating aimlessly. Eventually, even the professionals will grow tired and walk away. After that, you can expect to see only government generated statistics with no basis in reality.

The point I mean to make is that WE are what’s happening in this country. As long as we continue to sit on our hands and wait till some competent leadership emerges, our nation is effectively on strike. Revenue flowing into government treasuries is down and falling. Good!

This is another instance in which the vacuous state-controlled media is not doing us any favors. They report we are going into or coming out of a ‘recession‘. This is the wrong way of looking at it. We are on strike! They say, we may be in or heading toward a 'depression' when, in fact, we are depressed by the quality of leadership in Washington and in our States.

It’s been said so often that it’s become easy to overlook, but government does NOT create jobs. Government only creates bureaucracies that wind up costing us money. So when Barack Hussein Obama promises to ‘save’ our jobs, he’s talking utter nonsense.

'The Glass Bead Game' (continued)

Jerry Seib is entirely too cautious in predicting the outcome of what the incomparable Hermann Hesse would agree is America’s version of the ’Glass Bead Game‘. These elections, as any others, depend on the overall perception of the disenfranchised electorate. Insofar as the federal government has seen fit to insert itself into virtually every aspect of American life, the exercise becomes an essentially meaningless referendum of Obama’s performance in office.

The only difference is cosmetic. During the last cycle, the media did such a bang-up job in demonizing George W. Bush and Republicans, the only choice left for the public to make was ‘other’ Obama was sufficiently ‘other‘. This time, the media will be powerless to affect the outcome.

When Obama was up for election back in ‘08, it was merely a matter of rearranging the political deck furniture. The clarion call for ‘change’ was mere fluff. This time, a real sense of alarm has descended like a black cloud over America. People will vote out of fear. And their vote will favor Republicans.

The game remains a game. As I have previously stated elsewhere, Obama retains power for at least the next two years. Unless Republicans mount a serious effort to impeach him, he will continue to determine the direction of the nation. As things continue to fall apart, (enter the media) Republicans will be blamed - and defeated in 2012.

Prosperity will continue to diminish, but will appear as robust in relation to the greater diminishing prosperity of others. It will be enough to keep the markets from collapsing and the people happy.

The game continues as scripted. Republicans will take control of Congress in November.

Beatific But Improbable

You label Jeff Adachi a ‘progressive‘. ‘Progressive’ essentially means ‘communist’. Adachi was apparently not paying attention or absent from school when ‘progressivism’ was presented in a series of lectures at Berkeley. He appears to have missed at least one of its critical lessons - the one about the eventual fate of the proverbial ‘golden goose‘.

The concerns Adachi raises do not enter in any discussion relating to progressivism/communism. In fact, these can be regarded as inconsequential - ‘category error’ - and quite unrelated to the field. The roadmap to communism as laid down by Marx, Alinsky, Cloward, Piven and others, is in fact a recipe for slaughter. At that point the narrative ends and we are left to imagine the rest. The ritual sacrifice of the ‘goose’ effectively ends the earthly portion of one‘s obligation. What follows is some version of the ‘Last Supper’ after which we can presumably collectively cross over into the balm of salvation. Iran’s ayatollahs are promoting a similar scheme.

It never ends up being neat as all that. After all was said and done, Jim Jones’ tropical kindergarten compound still left the task of disposing of the bodies. In North Korea, it left an entire population languishing on the razor’s edge of starvation. Mao’s original vision had to be rolled back considerably when it became apparent that the apocalypse was still quite a ways off.

The latest to have come knocking at heaven’s door is Barack Hussein Obama. The plan is to keep boiling the milk and reducing it to that sublime essence that simply melts in one’s mouth. Obama missed none of the lessons. As such, he knows full well what he’s after: that final cleansing by fire after which blind and bloodless justice will reign unimpeded in the rarified air of Reverend Wright’s (Liberation Theology) church. It’s a world without metrics - without standards - in which every last one of us is cipher equal; in which there is no difference even in difference. The thief and the robbed are the same; as are the murderer and the murdered; the lewd and the chaste; rich and poor; stupid and smart; the worker and the one with his hand out. Sounds like somebody’s beatific but improbable vision of heaven to me.

Count 'em Again, Barack!

Never before - with the possible exception of President Obama being prevented by a downpour from delivering remarks at a Chicago Memorial Day event - has a metaphor been so chillingly on point. I’m talking about the Gulf oil spill. It conveys everything, from the precipitous general decline of America (especially within the span of the past two years) to its flailing, ineffective measures to get a grip on itself. We must then ask ourselves: Was it inevitable?

Unlike the 9/11 attacks on New York’s World Trade Center, by which a vile and cunning enemy declared war on us, the oil spill appears to have been self-inflicted - but may not be entirely unrelated. We have since done everything possible to obfuscate the reality of the war. There was of course one brief glimmer of recognition as to the enormity of what was at stake, and we did react - some say, stupidly.

The 9/11 bombers never knew just how successful they would turn out to be. Not only did they bring down the (physical) Mecca of American economic dominance, but they also managed to fracture America’s unity, confidence, and will. It’s reverberations would spread poison throughout the American political system, which was the beginning of cascading dominoes, affecting virtually every public and private sector institution.

It would be naïve to think that only a handful of crazed men (who commandeered aircraft and sent them crashing into the heart of America’s economic genius) could accomplish all this with half a dozen box cutters. (By the way, has anyone ever actually thought about what exactly they did with those box cutters?) The ground had already been well prepared. The very idea of America had become brittle as eggshells. It didn’t take much to crack it open.

It starts in the schools. We’ve gone over it dozens of times. Now comes the following insight: A recent study finds that knowledge is absorbed best when it’s imparted by native speakers. How many TA’s today are native speakers?

If the 9/11 attack had not been successful and the Gulf oil spill had happened as it did, we would now be also first stunned, then outraged. We would have plugged that gusher with dynamite and blown it to Kingdome come. As it is, we’re just numb, content to have dodged the bullet ourselves.

I, for one, am beginning to get tired of the story. It’s following exactly the same tired script as everything else these days: ‘We’re ahead of schedule; we’ll have it fixed in no time’ and then: ‘So sorry, it didn’t work; don’t know what could have gone wrong. But we have a much better idea which we’ll start testing tomorrow. It may take a little while to find out if it works…’

It’s the same with the economy. Every day they tell us we’ve turned the corner; that things are on the upswing; improving. And then, when the numbers come out, they tell us it could have been worse. We are in effect asked to praise Obama for the sun coming up in the morning.

Obama’s campaign slogan, ‘Yes, We Can’, now sounds hollow. It’s even gotten to the point where most people think he’s doing it on purpose; that nobody could be that incompetent. Who ever thought that competence was even needed? POTUS has always been largely a ceremonial post; hasn’t it? A laugh line on SNL? If that’s true, who (or what) is actually running things? And why are they running us into the ground? What was that spy thing with the Russians all about? They got 10 of theirs back; we only got 4 (but we got the better deal, we’re told). Sorry, Barack. Count them again!

The Resurrection of Michael Mann

Mann, after seeing himself totally discredited, suddenly realizes that all is not lost. The intelligentsia, the powerful, the establishment, the irascible ueber-elite still support him. They do so, perhaps, in the attempt to mitigate the embarrassment of having been duped. Or by an unwillingness to abandon what they have long considered to be one of the indispensable tenets that supports their nihilism. Even as Mann sees popular support eroding, he has confidence that political realities have progressed sufficiently toward autocracy in which simple (and, in this particular case, blatantly false) declarations hold sway.

Mann must feel as a man reborn to serve a higher cause; one, that can no longer be said to be dominated by the mere search for truth. At the time, nobody foresaw what Obama meant when famously proclaimed in his inauguration speech, “We will restore science to its rightful place…”. Now we know. Science was to become merely a tool - not to beat back the frontiers of ignorance, but - to advance political agendas.

The agenda is to underline that America from its inception has always been wasteful and corrupt; so much so, in fact, as to deserve being knocked down a peg or two; that America’s illegitimate wealth must now be taken away and shared with others, worldwide. The theory of ’climate change’ was to be the narrative that draws it all together and justify the outright theft of our nation.

Back when Dan Rather made up stories about Bush’s military service in order to discredit him, the excuse was that the spirit of the broadcast segment remained essentially on point: that the president is and had always been an ignorant and lazy bum. Dan was made to retire because of this. Today, even the pretense of accurate reporting seems to have slipped by the wayside.

Will They Have the Guts?

China and America are in the process of trading places. Both are set to experience massive dislocation by significant segments of their populations. There will be blood on both sides. Indications are that the carnage on the American side will be greater primarily because America seems to have lost its identity. China has not. A second factor may play an even greater role: Whereas America seems resigned to continue its march toward atonement and subsequent obligatory punishment for past sins, China in general appears confident that its future remains bright.

Listening to Larry Kudlow, and anyone else who keeps talking about the November midterms as being our nation’s salvation, is starting to get on my nerves. Let me say categorically and unambiguously that the midterm elections - no matter how they turn out - will have absolutely no effect in stopping Obama’s hard left re-distributionist agenda.

Any legislation that a Republican-dominated congress is likely to advance will be immediately struck down by Obama’s veto pen. This would apply to any rollback of existing legislation as well as any legislation that can yet be expected to pass in the ‘lame duck’ session. We’ll be stuck with that. In many ways, the barn door is already wide open and the horses are long gone. There are numerous confiscatory tax increases in our immediate future that will absolutely cripple our already anemic private sector. More will surely be added during ‘lame duck’. Expect ‘cap and trade’ to pass; expect VAT; increased health care costs can be expected to add to our already insupportable deficits. Individual states will begin to default.

Republicans can shout all they want but they will not be able to do anything to change even one iota of the spending, tax policy, and regulations that are already in place. Add to this the fact that the president retains the use of the executive order in all matters; he will continue to make interim appointments and possibly even float a Supreme Court choice. Even if successive SC appointment are not approved for the remainder of this president’s term, it’ll make for devastating headlines, and the Court itself would now consist of eight. Not sure to what extent 4-4 decisions count.

Best of all, when things go wrong, as they surely must, Obama can and will blame Republicans.

Let me put this as delicately as possible: There is only one way we can get back on sane footing. And that is to impeach the president. A Republican congress may actually have the power to do just that. But will they have the guts?

People like Kudlow (which includes most of our media - right, left or in-between) are still assuming that the midterms will send such a powerful message that the White House will have to change course. Think again. Obama does not listen to messages; he does not play at politics in the usual sense. Obama has a dictator’s mentality. It is filled with rage toward any opposition. He will not rest until he sees this country destroyed or bent to his will.

No, my friends, we cannot survive another two years of this. We would end up like the Thanksgiving turkey left in the oven to defrost when someone decides to run the (oven) cleaning cycle without first checking if anything’s been left inside.

Betrayal

When we are first born we are nothing (as well as everything). We are equipped with specific tools chief of which is a sense of identity. It’s noteworthy that the first thing that usually happens is that we are given a name. The child opens its eyes and sees. And all it sees (it thinks) is a part of itself. It is only by learning the names of the people and objects around it that the divide between it and the outside world is established.

From there the child begins to make certain assumptions. He learns to manipulate specific objects - his mother, for instance - to get what he wants. She presumably knows what she must do in order to attend to his needs. He needs to eat; his diapers need to be changed. His dependence on her continues not as demand, but as expectation. It would never occur to him to say, “Thank you.”

The child’s name circumscribes his identity. His first allegiance is to himself (which now includes his parents). He does not see them as separate from himself. Later, as his world view expands, he must determine his own proper place within it.

No matter how complicated it may get, no matter how many paradoxes arise - all due to and resting on false assumptions - the shadow of his first life experience remains: I am (singularly responsible, either through my action or inaction, for) all I see.

Religion derives from identity and the desire to secure for oneself a place within eternity. In this, one’s assumptions become critical. Clearly the lion’s share of one’s efforts go towards achieving and maintaining one’s target position. The time may come when previous alliances and dependencies are no longer useful. These are then jettisoned. Guilt may arise from such acts as abandonment or betrayal that may have become essential to the service of one’s perceived (greater) self. Meanwhile, the shadow of one’s very first assumptions invariably come back to haunt.

Only saints are spared this dilemma. At this juncture ordinary people are faced with a choice: either to recognize and accept their limitations; or to strive for ever greater control on one hand, or utter dependence on the other.

Hinduism recognized this dilemma from the start. It created the caste system within which everybody is assigned their place. The promise of a higher entry into the next life (provided that one adheres honorably to one’s duties) helps the lower casts to endure. Only wise men realize that it is only a matter of appearances; that suffering as well as joy is spread out evenly among all.

In the West every individual is held responsible for his own fate, which (whether one admits it or not) extends to the afterlife. As we are our own severest critics the question of salvation comes into play. Liberals tend to fall victim to ego from which stems the infantile presumption of utter co-dependence with the universe. Therefore, for just one to be saved, all must be saved. Conservatives tend to harbor more modest ambitions. They are content with saving only themselves and perhaps a few others. They also tend to be happier, successful and self-satisfied.

Point of note: Identity drives all. This is why only a man of outside lineage can agree to commit an act of betrayal.

The Beginning Of A Tyranny

"What does Obama make of manned space?" Obviously not much. Frank Gaffney has it right. The ultimate aim is to transfer of knowledge, wealth, power (especially) to the (Muslim) world, thereby diminishing the U.S. position overall by an administration hell-bent on pay-back.

I think it may be time to go into the archives of ‘The John Batchelor Show’, download and print a hard copy. In this way we might just be able to explain to our children and grandchildren what has happened to our country after the government decides to scrub the web clean. This thought was sparked by the Justice Department’s refusal to prosecute the (New) Black Panthers on charges of voter and poll worker intimidation in Philadelphia, a clear violation of current law. Obama’s refusal to comment on the matter shows where his own sympathies lie.

This has not been the only indication of this administration’s unwillingness to abide by tradition. From the outset, Obama and his Democrat-controlled congress have sought to enact a virtual blizzard of incomprehensible (and unenforceable) laws and then proceeded to go about enforcing same selectively. This is not justice; this is the beginning of a tyranny.

The American people have thus far gritted their teeth and born every Democrat overreach. To the administration’s considerable consternation, they will likely continue to do so, waiting patiently for their chance to clean house in November. We may never get that far.

The pattern that is emerging is clear. The administration is bent on achieving total control over every aspect of American life from soup to nuts. The only ingredient that still eludes it is an outbreak of violence which would then provide the excuse to clamp down hard on media, the internet, gun rights and the freedom of assembly. There might even be cause to cancel (or postpone) elections.

No doubt, the administration is banking on the final shoe to drop. They are prodding and poking the electorate into taking a defensive stance which would then be interpreted as aggression (hence justifying a crackdown). In light of the fact that Democrats do not seem at all concerned about getting re-elected, it can be assumed that they feel they still have an ace up their sleeves. This ace could be violence. Since it hasn’t happened so far (and there have already been several reported attempts at incitement), it is fair to assume that the administration is growing desperate. I would not put it beyond them to engineer some kind of incident out of whole cloth before the November midterms. Keep an eye on Glenn Beck’s August rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC which is expected to draw huge crowds Even the Black Panthers have promised to attend. Note that permits for the event have not yet been issued by the Parks Department. May cooler heads prevail.

When King Samir Shabazz screams about killing white babies on a public street and our black president does not denounce him immediately; when incidents of blatant voter fraud are no longer prosecuted by the Justice Department; when a clear and present Islamic threat must never be mentioned by name in polite company; when defending one’s (Arizona) territory becomes the object of a Justice Department inquiry and suit, it means we have crossed the fine line into chaos. In chaos everything becomes possible; nothing is improbable, and we are all at severe risk.

Should we survive this presidency, it might do to be able to show what it was that has brought us to this low point in our history. The past year and a half has produced plenty of omens, few of which were taken seriously. Now that it’s happening, it behooves every one of us to prepare ourselves for the worst. Let’s begin by preserving the record for future generations to ponder.