...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!”

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.

Hollywood Always Has It End Well

The narrative in and around the Gulf is so compelling - so riveting - if it never had happened, we would have had to invent it. And so we did. Plenty of horror movies out there in which some threat is burgeoning and seemingly unstoppable. Then the hero rides to the rescue on his white horse… Hollywood always has it end well.

It occurs to me that in this particular oil spill saga there are no heroes – at least none that we can see (yet). It just keeps chugging along, getting worse every day. The means we have currently devised to mitigate the immediate problem – the loss of jobs; massive dislocation, and overall threat to the environment – seem inadequate. We’ve elected to sacrifice BP on the altar of public opinion and, along with it, even more jobs. The moratorium on drilling ups the ante as even more jobs are absurdly sacrificed to our pagan god, Gaia. In short, we seem to be fighting the loss of jobs with the loss of more jobs.

In the meantime, the spill spills on. There are signs that the media and our ADD president are on the verge of losing interest altogether. The World Cup and our rapidly approaching midterm elections are just too juicy to overlook. And then, of course, there was Michael Jackson’s death anniversary.

Odd to see no one coming to our aid. Besides affecting the lives and livelihoods of Gulf residents – not to mention wildlife – badly, the spill can also be classified as a global environmental emergency. Whenever there has been such an emergency abroad, the U.S. has usually been the first to arrive. We were always quick to offer humanitarian aid to the stricken whether we were invited or not. Earthquakes in Turkey and Haiti; tsunamis in East Asia; famine in Africa; etc. Often our considerable contribution had to be disguised - our sacks of emergency foodstuffs re-labeled - to look like it’s not coming from us but from some NGO (as not to offend the people filling their bellies with our own home-grown grains).

On May 3rd, 2008, Cyclone Nargis hit shore in Myanmar and devastated the densely populated, rice-farming delta of the Irrawaddy Division. It was the worst natural disaster in Burmese history. The ruling junta’s version of our Jones Act prohibited the country from accepting foreign aid – this, despite 200,000 dead or missing and millions displaced. We continued to beg and bribe officials and they eventually relented and allowed some of us in.

No such efforts are being made here. The nations of the vaunted ’global community’ seem to be just standing around, clucking their tongues and shaking their heads. Where are the Russians, the Chinese, the Venezuelans, Brazil? Where is the Middle East? Europe? Where is The Sierra Club? PETA? Nothing to say? Where is the UN to bash down our doors and fix this thing (which, as is becoming increasingly clear, we can’t handle ourselves).

“Yes, we can!” indeed! Since Obama has been in office, we haven’t been able to do anything, except to make things worse. Whether due to incompetence or by design, it doesn’t matter anymore. We’re going to hell in a hand basket. While the rest of the world just stands around watching.

I once saw an Indian film “Bandit Queen” (Shekhar Kapur) in which a woman was publicly beaten to within an inch of her life. The town’s people just stood around and watched. It sent a chill through my heart.

Could this be the legacy of Ameica's fall from grace: Nobody helping anyone? Every man out for himself?

SmackDown

No matter which side you take re Washington’s BP shakedown, there’s more than enough suspicion that the whole thing has been staged. Wrestling too was once a legitimate sport. It no longer is. This is not to say that WWE (formerly WWF) is not popular. It is.

Purists will point to modern high-profile wrestling as a sham. Those who patronize the sport agree that it’s 100% drama, theater and hype – but they are more than willing to suspend their disbelief for the duration of the show (as we all must when we go to the movies, watch television, read books, newspapers or just listen to friends either boast or complain). The slightly squeamish among us can take solace in knowing that the blood we see is fake – ketchup, which we all just adore.

Not so in the Gulf. The oil washing up on the coast is real. The birds and fish are actually dying. These are the actors who are facing a real existential threat. Suspended dividend payments to retired BP share holders who will now have to cut back on medicines and cold weather jaunts to tropical climes are real as well. They may yet be willing to forgo their loss and see it simply as the price of admission. As in professional wrestling, however, they will be asked to suspend their disbelief for the duration.

The news out of Washington does not get better. Last week we were told that, due to unforeseen circumstances, health care costs - far from declining - will actually increase; that, no, you will not be able to keep your insurance provider or doctor. What else haven’t we been told? Every week the estimated damage from the oil spill rises. Taxes rise; job creation continues to falter.

Yet, we are told, the green valley of plenty lies just ahead. Somewhere, over the hills, the drums of war are beating. Israel, Kyrgyzstan, the Koreas are on the brink. Fake blood? Fake oil? Lies? (Spoonfuls of sugar help the medicine go down.) …and, don’t forget, fake money to salve any wound that doesn’t kill outright.

Enjoy your SmackDown, America. You paid for it.

Re: Discovery of a 5,500 Year-Old Shoe

I enjoy hearing about such discoveries. It puts everything else that we allocate so much editorial space to in perspective. Interesting too is the current drive by tea partiers - many of whom are said to carry a set of our founding documents in their breast pockets - to reacquaint us with our founding. It is an attempt to connect and revive the potency of past building blocks while avoiding present realities. Aside from the fact that it is never possible to rewind time, it is also fallacious to assume that said (hallowed) building blocks did not in themselves contain the seeds of what now constitutes our present.

Clearly, America’s train has gone off the rails. Perhaps there were never any rails to begin with. The late sixties, early seventies produced a sea-change in the way those who would become the elite of our generation thought of themselves. No longer were truth and goodness of primary concern in the positive formulation of a life; instead, the degree of enlightenment that can be attained or, at the very least, demonstrated with gestures of intent became key.

The effects have been huge. Freed from the bonds that religion-based societies have traditionally imposed, the gates were now thrown open to new and unconventional arrangements that propelled economies to produce wealth at an unprecedented rate and allowed its (elite) beneficiaries virtually unlimited freedoms.

Despite this - the thrill of being able to cradle practically infinite potential in the palms of one's (now often) arthritic, cyber-assisted hands - a palpable unease has settled over the land, particularly among the elite, who now increasingly find themselves under the gun. Clearly, the only strategy we have thus far identified as being even remotely compatible with our Utopian global designs, enlightened tolerance, remains at risk.

We invariably escape to the politics of blame. Since the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon and subsequent spill, the overriding theme can be summed up by the term ‘man-made’. Suppose for a moment that the tectonic plates had shifted of their own accord and caused a rupture, releasing a never-ending geyser of oil into the waters. The result would have been the same: fouled beaches, imperiled wildlife, shocks to our economy. Entire populations would have had to shift in order to find jobs and build lives elsewhere. As John points out, such things have happened before – many on a much grander scale.

Instead of cooperating, we choose to blame BP, Obama, Bush, whoever… hoping against hope that after the dust has settled it will somehow pay off in our favor. We scour recent histories for flaws, for someone to crucify or offer as a blood sacrifice to our current accredited, omnipotent ‘isms’. Throughout, we take care to avoid the cutting edge of history’s scythe. We take pains to re-write our own stories, choosing only facts which logically absolve us (on academic paper) while conveniently discarding any material that might condemn us.

70,000 years is a long time. Not much to be gained from diddling on the fringes except, perhaps, the assurance that we will survive even this. My question concerning the above clip is: What happened to the other shoe? - thrown at Bush, no doubt.

Erebus and Terror

At this point, what's in it for BP to fix this thing? Zip. What's in it for POTUS to fix it? Zip. They’re both on the same page (but for different reasons). Obama can now comfortably proceed with his no-growth agenda while Heyward is hung out to dry. The Gulf will recover. BP will not.

I read somewhere that Heyward could exit with a substantial golden parachute. He could go to New Zealand and have his life back. Unless, of course, Holder has him extradited to The Hague and tried as a world-class criminal. Anything is possible these days. Before the East Anglia e-mail scandal broke there was talk about treating ‘global warming’ skeptics on par with Holocaust deniers. After it all fell apart, what was left for these folks to do? Answer: GIGANTIC OIL SPILL.

What we have yet to broach is (and this is critical) How did it happen? ‘Why’ seems another word struck from our pc no-fault lexicon – replaced by ‘accident’ or ‘Act of God’, presumably the same God who kept Obama from saying things he doesn’t believe in at Memorial Day services in Chicago. I hear the weather at Arlington was just fine.

Clearly, our country is suffering through an accelerating litany of disasters, each benefiting only one man; only one cause. It makes me suspicious. Heyward’s best bet is to just sit back and let the Obama administration destroy itself. Obama’s best bet is to keep grabbing power. What Heyward and the rest of the country don’t yet seem to realize is that, far from weakening our current president, disasters (foreign or domestic) only tighten the noose that’s already around our collective necks.

Erebus (the darkness) was born of Chaos. Erebus went on to sire Hemera (goddess of day) and Aether (god of sky). So far so good. But he wasn’t finished. Cer (goddess of death) was next, followed by Oneiroi (god of dreams), Hypnos (god of sleep), his twin brother Thanatos (god of hell), Momus (god of satire), Nemesis ( goddess of revenge), and Charon, the ferryman who ferried the souls of the dead across the river Styx, to the land of the dead.

…and there’s our future all laid out for us to see,
as foretold in ancient Greek mythology.

Passive Aggressive

BP is finished (maybe?). Even if BP succeeds in stemming the gusher, the Obama administration will see to it that the company ultimately goes out of business. BP has no incentive to do ‘the right thing’. In order to have even a chance of surviving as a viable entity, BP must do its utmost to bring the Obama administration down. BP and the Obama administration are adversaries.

BP can dick around till August and then go on to failure# 6, and all it will do is improve its own chances. Nobody will question BP’s passive aggression or competence because the Obama administration has already publicly announced that it alone is in charge; that it alone is telling BP what to do and what not to do; in other words, the Obama administration owns whatever happens.

We saw a similar deal go down during the Iranian hostage crisis. The Iranians ran rings around Carter for 444 days and made him look like a complete idiot. Once the new president was in place, all the nonsense stopped.

Replicant Children vs. Tyrell

Time is a critical disciplinary element in what defines the human condition. As Jorge Luis Borges wrote in ’The Immortal’: "Death (or its allusion) makes men precious and pathetic. They are moving because of their phantom condition; every act they execute may be their last... Everything among mortals has the value of the irretrievable and the perilous."

Time, often said to be illusory, provides the framework within which we exist. Our ability to manage time effectively provides a measure of our effectiveness as human beings.

Even for those of the leisure class for whom time seems not to be of the essence, the need for precise scheduling somehow tends to assert itself. In William S. Burroughs’s book (and presumed semi-autobiographical) “Junky” (1953), the protagonist voluntarily submits to the timetable of his addiction. Also, often times, a child reared in an undisciplined parental environment, will later seek out the implicit discipline associated with some branch of the uniformed services in an effort to maximize his or her human potential.

It is significant that the Tyrell Corporation’s replicant slaves have been engineered to have only four-year life spans as to prevent them from developing emotions and the desire for independence – in other words, to become fully human.

Corporations – like the fictional Tyrell or the factual BP – clearly remain unconstrained by time. They - like the undisciplined young (and often reckless) - see themselves as eternally immortal. Yet, they too have need of a framework within which to operate and test their mettle. This framework is profit.

Leftists are quick to point out that the profit motive is rogue, out of control, and basically anti-life. When, in fact, profit is depended on a set of the strictest, most uncompromising laws in the universe. A business that is run badly cannot succeed. Going forward, a business plan is self-correcting at every turn. It is inexorably tied to the law of supply and demand and well managed risk which, in turn, is tied in no small measure to performance and customer expectations. If left to their own devices, corporations provide real value to their customers (which is you and I).

If corporations are interfered with for criminal or political purposes, they become cancerous. It is much more likely that corporations become rogue by political interference than the other way around.

It is unreasonable to blame BP for the oil spill in the Gulf. For one thing, anyone would be hard pressed to prove malicious intent. Such intent is infinitely more likely to have originated with some hard-nosed political agenda concern (of which BP may have become an unwitting victim).

Right now it seems that the stunted emotional growth of the replicant children that are presently running our government are far more culpable for the multiple messes that have accrued on virtually every front.

The Truth And Nothing But The Truth

Some argue that the only effective way of stopping the oil spill in the Gulf is to detonate a thermonuclear device. As this would require POTUS to actually take a decision, we can expect the oil leak to continue indefinitely. Obama will be able to take refuge in his own personal Tora Bora: blame Bush; blame Big Oil; blame America.

The job of being president has overwhelmed Obama. He will ride out his term on the now thread-bare trappings of the office. It is scary to think that, despite what happens, 40% will continue to support him. Whatever you might say, that’s an awful lot of people. Using the oil spill analogy, that’s an awful lot of oil spilled to pollute the potential good will and effectiveness of the next administration.

The focus of global terrorism will now center on oil rigs. It’s a model that was initially developed by the Somali pirates. It was duly noted that the West is incapable of responding even to minor threats; and that each failure to respond diminishes it ten-fold.

The time has come to buckle up; to know that we are not being told even the half of it; and that, if we ever were to find out the whole truth, we would come to realize that none of it is good.

Nobody's Talking

I’m not seeing a plan. All I’m seeing is BP blamed a lot – and Big Oil. How convenient! It’s the same as it was back just before Obama was elected, when we had our big brush with economic Armageddon. At that time the big banks were said to be at fault. And this still is the case. What I’m saying is, we never seem to get at the root of a problem. We never go back quite far enough to examine its cause.

Yet, something caused Bush to panic and start insisting on TARP. And something caused Deepwater Horizon to blow up. It was a huge structure (32,588 tons; 112 meters long; 78 meters wide; 97 meters high). We say it was an ‘accident’. But look at it this way: When the World Trade Towers collapsed, nobody could claim it was due to a mere 'accident' in the kitchen of its ‘Windows On the World’ restaurant. It took something much bigger to bring those buildings down.

The following is only a partial list of recent semi-successful news blackouts we have come to know of.

1. Operation Orchard
2. Specific documentation detailing the spark (and origin) that got TARP rolling.
3. Bhutto assassination
4. South Korean ship sinking

And now we can add the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon to our list. Somebody knows the answers to all of this. (I suspect that JB knows.) But nobody’s talking. Why? It's quite obvious. If we knew only half of what’s going on, we’d be out on the streets with our pitchforks. Perhaps Obama’s only crime is his sloppiness in keeping things covered up. Also, the blame game seems to still be going well. …and we’re still only up to the second letter of the alphabet after all.