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.

Conspiracy Nutcase

Do I detect a pattern? I’ve been accused of being a conspiracy nutcase. But there appears to be a pattern nonetheless. Case and point: The so-called near world banking collapse installs Barack Hussein Obama in office amid the jubilant cries of the hopeful. Since assuming office, the crisis is said to have been averted, but every policy decision appears to be having precisely the opposite effect. New York State is said to go bankrupt by Monday. Other states are on the brink. In New Jersey, for instance, we have a governor who says all the right things but risks the wrath of the public sector unions as well as that of homeowners who can be expected to pay higher taxes for lesser services. In our town the local library has cut its hours of operation.

The ‘solutions’ being so vociferously discussed and fought over do not address the fundamental issue. They merely delay the inevitable. Money that is saved will immediately go to plug some other hole. And the whole thing is predicated on the expectation that the economy will gradually improve. Not much chance of that. Looks to me rather like the doubling down on a death spiral.

There has been much talk of ‘disaster’ lately. First there was the constant harangue about what we can expect if ‘global warming’ were to continue. After that particular ploy fell apart, there was the ‘disaster’ in the Gulf. Are these two connected? True, the first was theoretical; the second is real. Question: Was the second concocted to maintain the momentum of the first? Will it now become possible for our government to pass ‘cap and trade’, a scheme to rake untold billions into government coffers, quite without regard to what it will do to the private sector economy?

Additionally, there’s been trouble along our southern border with Mexico. Should it escalate into ‘disaster’, will that be the signal to cram immigration reform onto the books that (some say) would add millions of Democrat voters to the rolls, assuring (for lack of a better word) ‘Democrat’ control of over U.S. governance in perpetuity?

The pattern appears to be ‘disaster’, followed predictably by a blizzard of regulation, all designed to benefit one party. I will go further: These regulations, by the very definition of the word, are designed to limit the people’s freedoms. Whereas it can be said that the Bush administration also spent our money like a drunken sailor, what’s been happening since literally dwarfs all previous spending. It may have still been possible to grow ourselves out of Bush’s excesses by prudent policies designed to encourage economic growth. But now, most agree that even that hope has all but faded.

Lastly: Is it being deliberately done? In my view, yes. If this makes me a nut job, so be it. Just as there are alternate energy solutions out there (to my mind, illusory) - like wind, solar panels and perpetual motion machines – there are alternate economic models as well. There is the Islamic model involving such concepts as zakat and gharar, strikingly similar to communism and the overall concept of wealth re-distribution. There is feudalism and barter – all designed to concentrate power among the elite few. The vast bulk of us, reduced to worker bees, would exist solely for the benefit of the State which then decides whether we live of die.

A frontal assault on the very concept of democracy, I fear, is perilously close. It will assert itself with a vengeance within the next couple of years when we are likely to find that our choices at the ballot box are severely limited or inconsequential. It may also take the form of canceled elections. We remain under assault.

This is not to say that we remain victims. In fact, I believe, our present economic malaise is more due to our own determination to put on the brakes – passive resistance: not buying; not spending; not expanding our businesses; not investing; and, in some cases, not working. We are sitting on our hands. We are refusing to contribute to the success of a government whose policies we despise. We hold the reigns. If things continue to go the way they might, we may even decide not to vote.

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.

Too Many Accidents

Mike – You seem to accept that the Gulf spill was an accident. I’ve seen or heard nothing so far that would explain what actually happened. There have been too many 'accidents' lately: the election of Obama for one; the collapse of the housing market for another; banking; the continuing collapse of the economy; errant stock market gyrations, and now Deepwater Horizon.

So far: only blame-shifting - no credible explanation as to how any of these happened. We know how the World Trade Towers came down. (The Halliburton-installed sprinkler systems failed to work, no doubt.) Too many witnesses. Now we are asked to believe that Islamic terrorists had nothing to do with it. What was it then? Some kind of domestic overseas contingency operation? (Whatever ‘contingency’ or any word means anymore.) And before that, there had been any number of poorly explained plane crashes that were said to be ‘accidents’ even though in at least one of these the black box revealed someone yelling “Allah Akbar” as the aircraft plunged.

Then there was the government’s attempt to blame the sinking of the Cheonan on a flock of birds. That one didn’t wash, but they nevertheless tried. Then there was the would-be Times Square bomber - a white guy who didn’t like health care reform. The list of attempted deception goes on and on.

The Deepwater Horizon disaster has been handled similarly. (The Halliburton- installed sprinkler systems failed to work.) We don’t know the cause. None of the survivors have been publicly interviewed. In fact, it almost seems like a news blackout is in effect.

I happened to be at a local 7/11 yesterday. A woman came in with a toddler. She let him run around the store while she was making coffee for herself. The toddler brushed up against a shelf of pickle jars. One of these dislodged, fell to the floor and broke. Both, woman and child froze. Gathering herself, she looked down at the child and shouted. “Now look what you’ve done! Pick that up right away!”

Enuff said.

Bloody Men in Boots

I remember when Saddam Hussein set fire to his oil wells. I remember seeing the pictures of the fires burning; the black smoke rising. It seemed an impossible task to stop it. But highly specialized American teams moved in and put out the fires one by one. They were well trained in this choreography. I remember the on-site TV interviews of these bloody men in boots. They didn't think it was a particularly big deal. They just did what they came to do without undue hand-wringing and mama drama. I remember being surprised by how quickly they were able to finish their work. Their manner on camera throughout was reassuring. …and we felt reassured (though still uncertain as to whether or not the Baghdad museum had been looted of its antiquities by the rough-hewn American invaders).

While the bloody men in boots could reassure us now, they are no where to be seen. This time the pretty ballerinas in pink petticoats appear to be running the show. Their only weapons are obfuscation and blame-shifting (with a furtive nod toward furthering their ball-busting agenda). They are far from reassuring. Maybe the only way to stop this leak is by a strategically placed nuclear detonation as some have suggested. The ballerinas swoon at the thought.

Come to think of it, there are other leaks in progress: the influx of illegals from along our Mexican border; the steady deflation of the dollar; our evapotating influence on the word stage. Deepwater Horizon’s gusher is an appropriate metaphor for all these and more.

The Bottom Rung

While we gleefully crunch poll numbers, it has suddenly occurred to me that we have already lost our freedom of the press here in America. Our media tells us only that which does not threaten the overall structure of what has been put in place to get us to wherever we are headed.

I remember, back during the Bush administration there were multiple media leaks designed to embarrass the administration and ultimately bring Obama to power. Some involved classified material that gave aid and comfort to our enemies. It was all done in the spirit of childish fun – demolishing the battered piñata that Bush had become. Since Obama has been in office, the leaks have all but stopped. In fact, today, even things that are widely suspected have ceased to interest our intrepid investigative reporters and journalists.

Even alternative media has taken a step backwards. I remember a time when ‘The John Batchelor Show’ was hot on the trail of Bill Clinton’s brother’s cocaine use and his connection to secret airstrips in Arkansas. Now, we’re only discussing the polls that show Republicans ousting Democrats in November. (“Meet the new boss; same as the old boss.”) It’s something that takes up air time without the risk of endangering something we obviously regard as both sacred and fragile. We no longer dare talk about the really important things. Off-hand I can think of no less than three recent international incidents in which the White House appears to have ordered total news blackouts. In addition, of course, the suspicion remains that we are not being told the true nature and depth of our fiscal failing. Neither are we told of Barack Hussein Obama’s personal connections to radical Islam and/or Marxism. We don’t even know if he is qualified (by law) to be president.

The press plays enthusiastically along, pouring oil on the roiling (pardon the pun). Yet the public is not fooled. There is a palpable gnawing at the entrails of every thinking American that indicates something is seriously wrong on any number of fronts. Why did POTUS within hours of the Deepwater Horizon disaster order S. W. A. T. teams to the area? Why did he then proceed to all but ignore the spillage for more than a week? Why have none of the survivors been publicly interviewed?

I’ve raised these questions before and, each time I do, I feel more and more isolated. Perhaps it’s just me. I am reminded that in any business where security and even self-preservation and self-interest are paramount, any advancement does not come entirely without personal risk to the individual who is being promoted. Should he or she fail in the higher position, the only option is dismissal. Demotion is not possible. This is because with each step up in the ranks more information is revealed. Once one is in possession of such information, one cannot go back and work among those who have not yet been initiated.

We, the electorate, are clearly regarded as occupying the bottom rung. And though, in theory, we are said to hold the fate of our elected officials in our hands; in practice we only exist to be manipulated and to rubberstamp the designs of our political class whose ultimate aims remain deliberately vague.

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.

Why Is It...?

Curious! According to authorities, there where 126 people on board the Deepwater Horizon when disaster struck. 79 were Transocean employees; 6 were BP; 41 were contract workers. Let’s stipulate that the Obama administration’s assessment of the situation is correct, that BP was at fault – as Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, so eloquently put it, "Our job is basically to keep the boot on the neck of British Petroleum, - the lesson we can draw from this is that it takes only a few (community organizers*) to upset the applecart.

In addition, 94 people were able to escape the wreck in lifeboats; 4 were taken to other (North Korean*) ships; 17 were evacuated to shore by helicopter; 11 are missing and presumed dead.

Strange! Following any disaster (mining, flooding, fire, train wreck, etc.) a phalanx of press is usually right there interviewing survivors and their families. Often, the president makes it a point to go and personally comfort the wounded and the grieving. To my knowledge, none of this has happened. Why? Wouldn’t at the very least each one of the 94 have a spectacular story to tell? Why is it that the missing and presumed dead are never mentioned even so much as in prayer? Something about this sounds very fishy (if you pardon my pun).
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*my own speculation

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.

Random Thoughts

Good (bad) things come in threes. First there was the Deepwater Horizon oil platform explosion and subsequent collapse; then came the (failed) Times Square bombing. Question: Can we expect one or two more such incidents?
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Mayor Bloomberg: “We have no idea who did this or why”. Are we checking Times Square surveillance cameras for people wearing tee-shirts with tea party slogans?
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'Overseas Contingency Operation’?
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Good idea: Terrorist trials in civilian courts in Manhattan.
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Mayor Bloomberg: “The bomb squad was called... they did the job they're expected to do. The kind of job they're trained for.” Is the White House sufficiently trained and ready to do what the U.S. Constitution mandates it to do?
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Plan A was making friends with terrorists (sorry, I meant to say “man-caused disaster mongers”) and their enablers. What is Plan B?
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“Man caused disaster” - If not “man caused”, what is it? Accidental? Act of God? (Sorry!) What is the meaning of “man caused” accident? The accidental president. Just asking.
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Is the fact that nothing serious has happened thus far since Obama has been in office - excepting of course the Deepwater Horizon overseas contingency - testimony to Obama's overall competence? Or has he been (accidentally) lucky? We all know that Bush failed us as president, having neglected to prevent not only the most serious man made contingency operation on the U.S. homeland since Pearl Harbor but also meteorologically generated conspiracies specifically directed at the hapless inhabitants of the Gulf coast.
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Has anybody bothered to look up the meaning of the word "contingency"? Does it apply here?

Declare the Wearing of Glasses a Crime

You can always count on Bill Maher to say something stupid. His appeal (if it is that) is not in what he says; it is in how he says it. Also, never forget that one of the reasons ‘W’ ran into so much trouble politically was because many of his supporters thought he was not conservative enough. In other words, that he caved in too much to Democrats.

The Left's complaint about POTUS is just that. They feel he has not been radical enough. He has allowed talk radio to dominate the narrative; he has bailed out the rich and famous on Wall Street; he has not closed Gitmo; he has continued Bush’s wars; etc. The hard core Left in this country is basically a destructive and vengeful force. They’d likely see happen what Pol Pot did in Cambodia: clear out the cities and drive people out into the countryside; erase any vestige of human history; declare the wearing of glasses a crime (for it means that one might be inclined to read books). They shun education, technology, art and free individual expression in general. To the extent that Obama has failed in this, they proclaim him a failure and he, who is essentially of a similar mindset, recognizes his shortcomings.

Mention that the Democrat party also does not speak with one voice, though it may seem so. What is clear is that the extreme left wing is calling the shots, while the moderates are being shunted out. It’s the same with Republicans. This makes for fascinating drama. Left and Right politics are irreconcilable – because they are essentially one and the same. With the middle forcibly hollowed out, the shell is bound to collapse.

For now it makes for good political talking points to blame Big Oil. It’s quite superfluous to dig for the truth behind the explosion. We might actually have to face the fact that there are people out there who despite our good (communist) intentions are determined to bring us to our knees – which is actually quite alright with the Pol Pots among us who envision Utopia as an endless system of gulags.

Were We Attacked?

I couldn’t sleep last night. It wasn’t the red fox screeching outside my open window; it wasn’t my lumpy bed; it wasn’t the extra cup of Brazilian coffee I had after dinner.

You keep saying “accident”. How do you know the Deepwater Horizon platform explosion and its subsequent collapse two days before the world was to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Earth Day was an accident?

Nobody could claim that 9/11 was an ‘accident’. There were too many witnesses. But everything done since has been to assign ultimate blame to America. Then there was what was widely suspected as the torpedoing of the South Korean naval vessel by North Korea a month ago. If true, this was clearly an act of war, but nobody’s talking. Why? Because chivalry demands a suitable response to an act of aggression and no one is currently in the position to respond to an act of war given the multitude of other concerns nations in general are facing. Bin Laden himself said that he based his murderous campaign against the West on his belief that the West would not respond effectively to the challenge.

Better to sweep this sort of thing under a rug and pretend it didn’t happen. Worry about nickel and dime economies, tea parties, and who’s sleeping with whom…

Just in case nobody’s noticed, the axis of evil has expanded to our own hemisphere since Obama has been in power. Venezuela, for instance, has been palling around with the likes of Russia, Iran, North Korea and Zimbabwe. Notwithstanding the North Korean MO of torpedoing ‘enemy’ ships and now possibly oil rigs, these rogue nations have been paying attention. They’ve seen that we will not retaliate no matter what happens. We’ll try to get away by proposing media lynchings based on Sarah Palin’s sock drawer …and ‘accidents’. The American media/government complex will happily go along with it. Besides, it fits in neatly with their anti-war, anti-oil (energy) Marxist agenda. The public has been suitably trained to immediately assume ‘accident’. Did Obama give it away when mentioning sending in S.W.A.T. teams?

The reason I couldn’t sleep was because I kept wondering: Were we attacked?
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Note: The Deepwater Horizon was built in Ulsan, South Korea by Hyundai Heavy Industries at a cost of approximately $365 million and entered service in 2001.