The Ice Queen

Michelle Obama - arguably the person closest to the president - once famously said: “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country“. This was back during the 2008 presidential campaign when it became apparent that her husband actually had a fair chance of becoming POTUS.

America has had several periods of relative prosperity within Michelle‘s lifetime. Her statement seems to suggest that even during the good times she did not like her country very much. I wonder what she thinks today?

Things are pretty bad right now, all of it pretty much the direct result of her husband’s two-year reign. Is she still proud? She hasn’t really said much about it recently - not that we know of, anyway. Is this because she’s no longer proud? Or is it because it would reveal too much for her to say it now?

As I said to a friend recently, success depends upon where you stand. A demolition crew, for instance, would have a different idea of success than a builder would. It is quite possible that both take pride in their work.

It has become clear that Democrats’ view success as the total annihilation of Republicans. They have proven over and over again that it doesn’t concern them a bit if success should come at the expense of the country. When Harry Reid proclaimed that “the war in Iraq is lost”, he did so with a certain bravado. He saw it in terms scoring points for his party, members of which were openly betting that things there would go badly. When he called President Bush "a loser" during a civics discussion with a group of teenagers, he paid no heed to the fact that he was speaking about the man who was duly elected to represent the stars and stripes around the world.

Reid may be excused for his failure to understand that the good of the nation should always take precedence over party. The Obamas’ vision, however, appears to be broader. The president appears to have used the likes of Reid, Biden, etc. for a much larger purpose. He seems bent on diminishing America’s influence on the world stage. He has been doing so consistently, always to America’s detriment, by attacking its economy (and now the military) and fostering divisions in a myriad of ways.

To date, he has applied the term ’enemy’ only to American voters and tax payers. At the same time, he all but refuses to name the Islamic threat. His administration has ordered the censure of various heretofore commonly used terms relating to global terror while introducing new terms that appear to put the Tea Parties, war veterans, and weekend militia groups on an equal footing with terrorists.

This reflects either a failure to properly prioritize, or a deliberate effort to balkanize Americans. If the latter, there can only be one reason.

In the next Congress there will be plenty of heads he can throw snowballs at. It promises to be a bloody mess. I wonder if Michelle gets off on this kind of thing.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

I'll Eat My Hat

There are people all over the country who now claim that Mr. Obama is now finally positioned on the right side of things due to his stance on the Bush tax cut (sic). However reluctantly, Obama appears to have bitten the bullet and done what’s right. Let’s say the Bush tax cuts (sic) are extended for a year or two. For ordinary families it would simply mean that the status quo has been maintained. Hurray!

Keep in mind, we will have done nothing to reverse our downward slide. In fact, we have made our situation worse by accelerating our descent into debt via the pork that has now become attached to this bill. We have set ourselves up to fight this fight again the next time it comes around - hence, there continues to be uncertainty. Not even the president is fully on board which he made perfectly clear at his (not Bill Clinton’s) presidential press conference. So, if it fails to ‘stimulate’, which it will, for there is nothing to suggest that (contrary to the opinions of Pelosi and Reed) paltry unemployment checks magically turn anybody into big a spender.

We have become so desperate as to grasp at mere straws just to prove that our bold new experiment with socialism works, that we are now quite willing to overlook the big picture. Hitler was the impetus behind the concept of the Volkswagen. It was a huge success and has survived to this day, yet we are not prepared to proclaim the Hitler years a triumph based on this alone. What’s scary is that Obama himself could dive into the frigid Potomac and save a drowning child just before the 2012 elections and we would potentially reward him with an additional term in office, overlooking the fact that every one of his major policy initiative is geared to diminish our nation in some significant way.

I hold to my prediction re the fate of the Bush tax cuts. If it turns out that I am wrong, I will admit it. If anyone should demand that I eat my hat, I will gladly do so. It should be a relatively easy feat as I don’t wear hats in any case.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

To Make It Seem It Never Happened

There’s no puzzle here. When, oh when, will anybody begin to understand that this is not some chess game between Republicans and Democrats where one of the kings is left standing and another game ensues? This is the endgame by which the very game board is consumed.

I feel I’m reliving the time right after the ‘global warming’ hoax was exposed. Have we walked away from it? Have we swept it in the ash can? No. We’re proceeding as if the incriminating data leaks never happened; ‘cap and trade‘, here we come! Or when Mohammed Atta and the gang flew into the World Trade towers. We seldom talk about it anymore. This doesn’t mean it never happened. Or when the Cheonan was sunk by the North Korea. We pretend that if we don’t say anything more about any of these things, they never happened; that we can be safe simply by forgetting.

Similarly, if the same faces (Reid, Pelosi, Frank, Schumer) continue to dominate the news, the midterm shellacking of Obama’s policies never happened.

Much has been made of the comparison of Obama to Carter. There is no comparison. Carter did his best - albeit incompetently - to serve his nation. They’re trying to say the same thing about Obama. But there’s a world of difference. Obama means to deliberately destroy us. For him the bad economy, the joblessness, the collapse of health care, the collapse of the dollar, the imminent collapse of Israel - all are victories. He means to go further. We still have further to fall. He means to go all the way - like a young communist/Islamist on his first date.

JB doesn’t get it; Meese doesn’t get it; nobody gets it. Yet the alarms are going off are all around. We won’t get it till after it’s happened. And even then, we’ll continue to argue over whose fault it was.

The time to do something is now. But 99% of the population still has its head in the sand; including Rush who opines that the best thing to happen to the Republicans is having Pelosi and Reid as the face of the Democrat party. This is the wrong way of looking at it. It’s not good to have them back. That’s why I despaired after the results of the elections were announced. The same game continues. The only thing that’s changed is the faces of the strawmen - who are now no longer Bush.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Funeral Procession

Midterm elections over. The people have spoken. The results are being spun as a repudiation of Obama’s policies - yet, perhaps not as strongly as might have been envisioned. Many legislators - particularly the ones representing the coasts - should have been ousted. In Nevada, Reid’s win looks more than suspicious. As does Boxer’s win in California. I believe these elections, among others (involving Democrat wins), were fraudulent. There’s no way to prove it, of course. And nobody will even try.

A more accurate depicter of the mood of the nation is the economy. The health of our economy remains poor and a key indicator is the unemployment rate. The political argument goes round and round: The lack of jobs is due to the poor economy; and the poor economy has produced joblessness. How to improve the economy? How to reduce joblessness to tolerable levels? One way is to define a new norm.

The Fed is poised to print money and inject more liquidity into the system. It is generally acknowledged that this will hurt the dollar. Yet, the Fed - prompted by the White House - is willing to risk inflation just to show a bit of improvement on the labor market. It won’t work. What the White House does not understand - or does not want to understand - is that the government cannot manipulate the economy like they do elections. They cannot yet dictate what the people should do with their money. They cannot yet compel the people to spend, save or hire, and then finesse the numbers to suit. Short of rendering the currency worthless (in which case there is no economy) they are powerless to arbitrate economic solutions.

As such, the economy remains the only venue which allows people to express their confidence (or lack of it) and overall support of the government and its policies. Expect the economy to remain on life support as long as Obama remains in office. I believe that the president knows this. That is why the Fed, at the direction of the White House, is pursuing a course which will ultimately lead to the dollar’s collapse.

Obama’s trip to India can be seen as the first act in the pomp and circumstance of a funeral (procession) that is yet lacking a corpse.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Shattered Windows

Actually Obama, a cold, heartless ruler, came along just at the right time, to remind us of just how bad it can be while our government is still functioning in a way as to give us some leverage. In a way, we can still say he’s inept. He has revealed his stripes (or spots) all too readily. He and his entourage of Democrats (I use the term loosely) will be defeated at the polls - eventually.

What is still unclear is our own capacity to learn - to remember - as to not fall for the twin ploy of promises that no one can keep, and lies. In an opinion column in today’s WSJ entitled “Why Obama Is Still the Favorite in 2012”, Michael Medved makes the case that the whole thing hinges on the Hispanic vote. No matter how desperate conditions in our country get, will Hispanics, Blacks and Asians still insist on voting race to the exclusion of all other (more weighty) factors? Clearly Democrats think so. That’s why a recent comment by Harry Reid, ('I don't know how ANYONE of Hispanic heritage could be Republican'…) raised such eyebrows - especially in conservative circles.

Whites themselves are divided. Though there is some indication the white liberals are having second thoughts, the rest apparently are content to tough it out. A steady stream of dismal economic data will not convince them. The popular media will continue to drive the narrative: blame Bush, Republicans, conservatism; etc. As Kenneth Stevens so artfully explains in post after post, race is fast becoming the driving force behind everything. Perhaps it already has.

We still have a chance to turn it around, but the window is closing. The re-election of Barack Hussein Obama in 2012 would shatter the window and replace it with bars.

Close in Nevada

JB makes it look close in Nevada. In fact, the brutal Democrat pro’s pro machine going up against the novice, amateur Angle would seem to give Reid the edge and set up a David vs. Goliath-like confrontation in November. Nevada’s unemployment rate is the highest in the nation. Reid will claim he has sufficient political standing to bring home the Washington bacon in the form of unemployment checks and government cheese. He may even suggest federally sponsored ‘shovel-ready’ jobs to build or repair more ‘bridges to nowhere’ in the desert. No doubt Harry can deliver on such things. Real prosperity based on real jobs, of course, is another matter entirely.

Yet he could claim that real jobs are just over the horizon: wind; solar; batteries; nuclear, even. He could try to convince voters of existing jobs ‘saved’ by his party; that all that appears to have gone wrong so far was due to Bush’s eight years in office and Republicans’ mindless knee-jerk opposition; that he had been (albeit barely) successful in averting total economic collapse. He could warn of slippage; of a repeat of the past two years’ struggle (against good sense).

Angle has no such arguments. She can only paint Reid’s reign as ‘failure’, promising change without resume or clout. JB is right. It could be close.

Say what you will, Harry Reid has proven himself a master in the political arts. His mastery, however, only extends to the intricacies of political maneuvering in the ‘glass bead game' as it is played in far-away Washington. And Washington will be eager to come to Reid’s aid.

There remains the sense, though, that Washington is no longer wedded to the people’s best interests; that Washington is strictly out for itself; and that the worst is yet to come. The gusher in the Gulf is a metaphor for a whole basket of gushing threats to our liberty; the private sector economy; American influence abroad; and, perhaps most troubling of all, American identity.

It is still unclear if the average American voter appreciates the implication of America’s overall slide into irrelevance due to a series of highly coordinated domestic and international efforts; or if he even cares about who (on the world stage) thinks what of us. These are issues that are generally left in the hands of high-ranking officials who receive their salaries precisely to handle such things in our stead, leaving us to provide for our families and keeping our neighborhoods safe.

Since Obama has been in office, there are many now crying ‘fire!’ in our crowded theater. While most of us do not yet smell smoke, our suspicions have nevertheless been heightened. We tend to look more closely at things. Many have taken to connecting the dots. Overwhelmingly, the picture that emerges is troubling.

The word has gotten out and can no longer be ignored and buried in an avalanche of distracting minutia. Is Reid even aware of the groundswell that is building against Washington with which he is joined at the hip? Or does he remain blithely confident that pre-2009 tactics will work as they always did. The MSM certainly continues to do it’s best to cover but the bare surface of our metaphorical oil slick. By making Nevada’s November senatorial election out to be a horse race, JB himself hopes we will keep tuning in.

I predict right now that Reid will lose badly – not that it makes much difference with Schumer and Durbin standing in the wings. It will nevertheless send yet another signal to Washington that its gig - one way or another* – is up.
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*read carefully.