Stinks To High Heaven

‘Purposeful’? Please! The (UK) Telegraph reports that Barack Obama is set to release up to 2000 photographs of prisoner abuse by U.S. military personnel. This comes at a time when he decides not to release pictures of the dead Osama bin Laden. While it is likely that both issues are still in flux – as the WH has been known to waver – the fact that this is even being discussed at this time is nothing short of a slap at America.

There is your reason for why former President Bush will not be seen with Obama (at Ground Zero or anywhere. I would even go so far as to suggest that everyone stay away from today’s wreath laying.) I have often said that the primary aim of this post-American administration is to sow chaos. We have chaos in our financial markets; we have chaos in our energy sector; we have chaos in our government… Everywhere you look there is chaos and no attempt is being made to steer away from what appears to be total collapse.

This incident involving the release of photographs shows as clearly as anything I have seen what Obama is up to overall. It can no longer be regarded as isolated happenstance; a mistake; second thoughts; inexperience – what have you. The pattern is unmistakable.

There is now an attempt to pull Pakistan into it. It is said, they couldn’t possibly NOT have been involved. Pakistan could actually be cleaner than we think. Maybe Pakistan knew that bin Laden was already dead. They were simply paid not to interfere with Obama’s Hollywood photo shoot. I’ve seen the pictures purported to be of the dead bin Laden. I see a dead man. I don’t necessarily see bin Laden. For all I know, it could all be a hoax. The argument against it, of course, is that too many people had to have been involved. Somebody would be bound to talk.

It’s not that there haven’t been hoaxes before. Do I have to list them? ‘Global warming’, for one. Many also suspect the financial meltdown just before the 2008 election. What about the current American presidency itself? You would have to agree that the way in which Obama was elected was highly unusual. (No background checks; no checks at all.) And you’ve got to ask yourself: Would America really have elected a Marxist, had they known? Come to think of it, the last thing I saw on television that was real was the World Trade Towers coming down. Since then, it’s all been pap, and us trying so hard to believe that we haven’t been played for fools.

BTW, I continue to be astounded by Larry Kudlow’s continued optimism. I see nothing on the horizon that would justify this. I agree that if a proper election were held in 2012, our skies would brighten. At this point the leg of a stool would be an improvement over the current WH occupant. And yet, every day we are told that Obama could and will win reelection. I, for one, am wondering if we’ll even make it that far.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Mt. Kailash: Shiva's Holy Abode

Mt. Kailash in Tibet is said to be a holy place. It is not very high, but no one has ever climbed it. Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Bon come to walk around it instead. As single circuit of 32 miles is said to cleanse one of all one’s sins of this life; 108 circuits guarantees nirvana; and a frigid bath in nearby Mansarovar Lake is said to take away the sins of one’s previous lives as well.

Kailash is located near the source of some of the longest rivers in Asia. Hindus believe it to be the abode of Lord Shiva. It is a forbidding place where the air is thin and hard on the lungs. Pilgrims - especially the old - sometimes die in the course of their Pradakshina (or circumambulation).

Such deaths never make the news because they are primarily solitary events - attempts by individuals to strike a peace with their Maker. When people rise up in significant numbers in revolt, however, the mighty take notice and begin to shake in their boots. They either flee or meet the challenge head-on with threats and bullets.

The odds right now are in favor of Kaddafi winning over the rebels. These will continue to fight on with whatever means they have available. They have put their young lives on the line. Years of selective oppression have brought them to this point of desperate decision. Inspired by the various uprisings in neighboring states, they know it’s now or never.

Contrast this with the protesters at Wisconsin’s state capitol. Many were bussed in from elsewhere (like Zimbabwean mercenaries) to shout slogans and carry signs. They’ve trashed the premises to the tune of sums. They’ve managed to disrupt the orderly flow of representative governance for weeks on end on the slender basis of some ideological throw-back currently promoted by the president of these United States. It’s no more than a Hollywood casting call for the idle, framed by the marble walls of a grand old capitol, unsupported by what ever drops off the relatively narrow journalistic frame. Their signs tell the story of feigned outrage and unlikely connections. They are there simply because a free nation allows it without consequence.

I note that the signs in the video above are all handmade and not designed to play to movie audiences. The blood that is bound to stain them is real - not Taco Bell sauce or Nathan’s mustard. Wisconsin’s demonstrators represent nothing but rent-a-mob thrills.

All the worlds major religions define sin within the context of something that was actually done. Inattention and ignorance therefore do not qualify as sin. While Libya’s rebels still stand a chance of salvation, not even Kailash could cleanse Wisconsin’s rabble of their stain.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Lessons Unlearned

The next time you’re tempted to disparage somebody, Kaddafi, Mubarak, any nation, bedbugs, fleas - anything - make sure you know what you’re doing and why. (I’d be interested in knowing just how many of you still get a chance to listen to Glenn Beck since he’s been dropped from several major radio markets including mine. It’s still possible to hear his radio show on the internet. The connection is often tenuous, but it does appear to run in a continuous if erratic loop on Mercury Radio Arts.)

Anyway, today he gave one of his more lucid rants. Without necessarily meaning to, he described precisely how we got Obama. It started with Bush. Hatred for Bush and anything Republican was whipped up into a frenzy. It came to be known as ‘Bush Derangement Syndrome’. Everyone was invited to join in - and everyone did. By the time the 2008 elections rolled around anyone who was neither Bush or Republican could have been elected, no contest. And ‘anyone’ was. To this day most of us still don’t have no clue just who our man in the White House actually is.

I dare say, we no longer remember exactly why it was we hated Bush so much. Nobody has much scar tissue to show from when Bush was in office. We just hated him, for no particular reason. We hated him just to give expression to our hatred. It was cool to hate; it was the ‘in’ thing to do. The media drove it; Hollywood drove it; universities drove it - and we all went along for the ride.

In our mass-induced hypnotic state, nothing we could foresee could have been worse than Bush. We all fell for it. ‘Anybody’ would save us and cleanse us of the dirt in which we wallowed.

It was perfect. It was like using a saw to cut wood. Two separate pieces. It works every time. We never once asked ourselves who started it and why. Who stood to gain by Obama coming to power? Who supported him? Who also hated Bush so much that they were prepared to cut off their noses to spite our faces? As such we stood with the Left, we stood with Rev. Wright and his liberation theology; we stood with Ahmadinejad, we stood with Chavez and Castro. We stood with the socialists, with the jihadist. We stood with every one of America’s enemies.

What did we expect to happen? Not one of us said, “Hey! Wait a minute. What exactly is going on here?” Instead, we’re still trying to make the wicked step-sister’s foot fit into Cinderella's glass slipper.

It’s a lesson that remains unlearned. To this day we are spurred on to hate our own: Rush, Beck, Savage, Palin and anyone else who might have even a smidgeon of conservative credentials. Tea Parties in the crosshairs; Michelle Bachman, John Bolton, Clarence Thomas, Carl Rove - all strategically lined up for target practice. And shoot we will, as long as we’re served the rhetorical bullets on a silver platter by the media.

If you notice, Obama remains curiously absent the sniper’s target. No one would dare say a thing outright against him. He remains a victim - a victim of the targets he himself has set up. …and victims can never do wrong.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Portents

As happens so often, over and over again: On one hand, successful and creative individuals discover that the exercise of free self-expression is the one elixir that makes life overall tolerable; while, on the other, they invariably go out of their way to support leftist causes. The Left consistently uses these ‘useful idiots’ to grab power and then spits in their faces once the goal has been achieved.

Case and point: For years now, octogenarian author, Nadine Gordimer has been championing leftist causes in her native South Africa. Now that the ANC - which she has long actively supported - has come to power, she has been reduced to pleading for the right to free and open expression once again. (Three of her novels were banned during Apartheid.)

It has come to light that the present, freely elected SA government is highly corrupt. The government blames the media and threatens censorship and worse. The recent unlawful arrest of a Sunday Times reporter has sent a powerful and terrifying message throughout the South African journalist community.

In case no one has noticed, in our country the same media that vaulted Obama to the presidency, is now also coming under attack. Hollywood’s turn is certain to be next. They won’t notice, of course. They’ll be too busy congratulating themselves for the deportation of conservative talk show hosts to U.S. government re-education camps. It’ll all have been legal and above board, after proper public trials with the honorable Nobel prize recipient and Princeton luminary, Paul Krugman, presiding. (By the way, read his column today. It’s a laugh. He’ truly outdone himself.)

Folks, we’ve got a live one here!
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Along a similar vein, there’s a story by Mary O’Grady in today’s WSJ about the supposed coup attempt in Ecuador this past week. As I have suggested previously, substitute the name Obama for Correa in the story and you’ll have a very good indication what may yet lie in store for us.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

'Runaway Train' ('85 film)

So we’re into “The Big Stall”. Really now? And what do we do in the meantime? Make up word games? I think it’s time we give the American people some credit. They’re not on board with this administration. They’re no longer playing the game. They’re on strike!

We’re not victims of uncertainty. We’re not victims, period. We’ve already decided what must be done. We’re no longer passive, intimidated or scared. We’re actively sitting on our hands; dragging our heels; clawing the curtains off the wall. We’re not about to participate in the rape of our country; in the besmirching of our noble tradition, our proud history and birth right.

We’ve decided not to work, innovate, expand, hire. Just like we no longer watch the network news or read the liberal rags they still call ‘newspapers‘. They’ll blame it on the internet, alternative news sources, word of mouth, and what have you. But you and I both know it’s not that. We’ve grown tired of the propaganda and the outright lies. And, while I’m at it, we’ve had just about had enough of being blamed for everything under the sun.

As time goes on - and it can’t go on much longer - the pundits will continue to discuss the faltering economy as if it were some amorphous monster out to destroy every vestige of good cheer. When, in fact, the economy is us. Come right out and say it: ‘We are the American economy.’ It is we who are putting on the brakes. We know what we’re doing.

As time goes by and things in Washington do not change drastically, it is we ourselves who will bring the house down. We know that Washington cannot survive without us footing the bill. With less and less of us paying taxes, Washington will fail, states will fail, cities and towns will fail; even we might fail. Right now it’s a tug-of-war to see who fails first. One thing’s for damn sure: If we’re going, they’re coming with us.

We’ve already decoupled the engine from the “Runaway Train“ (’85 film). Now we’re slowing. Oscar ‘Manny’ Manheim (Jon Voight) has seen the light. He has switched allegiances. It’s not much by Hollywood standards. But it’s a start.

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?

In the Valley of Elah

There have been a whole crop of Hollywood movies released recently that were declared to be ‘anti-war’ - hence, anti-Bush - ("Rendition", "In the Valley of Elah", "Body of Lies", etc.). Such films had been successfully dubbed "anti-American" by the 'vast right-wing conspiracy’ and, as a consequence, have done rather poorly at the box office; some went directly to DVD. It is only recently that a few of these have arrived at our local library and I've had a chance to see them (without having to go too far out of my way).

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised. These films are on the whole articulate, exciting, and very well made. Penn, Clooney, DiCaprio, Sarandon, etc., commonly associated with the Hollywood Left, are all first-rate actors. The scripts and direction are tight. There is an anti-war message, of course. But there is no doubt that these films are inspired which, for me, lifts them above the purely mechanical constructs of propaganda.

Even more significant is the fact that these films reflect the Zeitgeist. They ask the question, “What are we doing – and why?” No doubt, top to bottom, we have lost our way. We no longer understand war (which essentially amounts to “killing and breaking things”). We go to war trying not to kill; trying not to destroy. We go to war with the aim of ‘changing hearts and minds’; with an eye towards “nation building”. Then, we act surprised when we get our asses kicked.

Even more disturbing is what we’re doing to our military. By getting away from the essence of war, redefining it as a kind of charitable ‘meals on wheels’ operation, we effectively change the mission for which our military men and women have been trained. They then face a task (which even we have trouble articulating), without the slightest idea of how to approach it. Soldiers in today’s army don’t only have to worry about the enemy, but also about legal bureaucrats back home who want to score political points by hauling them into court.

Meanwhile, our sixth century enemy throw-backs have not yet been ‘enlightened’. They’re still quite comfortable fighting their wars under the old rules.

This is unacceptable. Either we fight to win; or we don’t fight at all. Either we are willing sacrifice the blood of our kids for some kind of tangible return, or we bring them back home. Containment is a job for the police. ‘Nation building’ is a job for churches and charities. The military ‘kills and breaks things’. That's all it does.

Our inability to grasp the nature and purpose of war is because we’ve abandoned the principle reason for it: PROFIT. We’ve cast ‘profit’ as a dirty word. Even if we are doing something for profit, we prefer not to articulate it as such. Typically we say we don’t go to war for oil – though that’s exactly what we’re doing. Then we catch ourselves and allow someone else to run off with the spoils. We’ve shed our blood and have nothing to show. But, at least our secular souls were saved. As we then root around to come up with an excuse for all the carnage of which we were clearly a part, we take comfort in the fact that once again the evil of all evils – our military – has been tarnished.

Krishna Is the Eighth Avatar of Vishnu

It's interesting that the once benevolent and generous gesture of giving a hand to those we determined to be the most needy world-wide, has now shed all pretenses and morphed into outright extortion.

I just finished watching the most delicious French comedy ever “My Best Friend” (’07) which contained the line, “You mean you pay to have people like you?” It sums up our progression from spontaneous giving, through paying for sex, to blackmail and extortion.

Speaking of movies, if there is still any doubt that there is a fifth column in this country that spares no expense in helping to create the impression that America is evil and must be defeated by any means possible in order to save the planet, that doubt can be put to rest with James Cameron’s AVATAR.

Over the years, Hollywood has always been very successful in creating powerfully persuasive fantasies that pit good against evil. Within a span of the past 50 years it has worked hard to define the antagonists. On one side is America; on the other is the rest of the world. America itself stands divided and is perched precariously on the cusp. It is within the private chambers of every American heart that the conflict will eventually be resolved.

AVATAR, stokes the notion that America is the single most potent destructive force on the planet. Visually, it employs the racial aspects of the tension. It hails a kind of back-to-the-earth tribalism as the answer to saving the planet or, in a larger sense, saving mankind’s soul. As such, it justifies any attack on the white man’s hegemony as warranted and totally acceptable. To Hollywood (by an extension of the logic) the shoe and the panty bombers are visionary new-age heroes.

This movie should do especially well in the Middle East, in Africa, Asia and South America. Though we have a significant number of domestic self-haters amongst us, most of the American movie-going public will recognize that it is they who are under assault by the predictable propagandists for the no-boundaries Left. Let’s put it in context: If during WWII, Hollywood had turned out movies such as AVATAR, we all would now be speaking German and eating Bratwurst. There would be no more Jews, Gypsies and whoever else Hitler might have set his sights on.

After the movie was over, my son remarked that AVATAR had the exact same plot of every movie he’s ever seen in the past ten years. This is a shame. Hollywood has everything it could possibly want at its disposal. Yet, it’s been working so doggedly to cheapen itself and ultimately bring about its own destruction. It used to be that ‘propaganda’ was a dirty word. At least, it was when I was growing up. Now there are galleries in Manhattan and on college campuses celebrating Soviet-era propaganda as high art.

No doubt, depending on who ultimately wins this fight, either AVATAR or Mel Gibson’s APOCALYPTO (AVATAR’s exact ideological opposite) will some day be celebrated as well.