Traipsing Around In The Hallway

There have been other instances when we first sent in ‘advisors’; then we armed our preferred side; then we provided air support; and, finally, we put American boots on the ground. It did not end well. You’d think we would learn. But aren’t we starting the same cycle all over again in Libya?

There was a time when we went all out in support of the notion that we are killing our planet, based on ‘irrefutable’ scientific evidence, graphs and projections - which were then proven to have been manufactured for political advantage. Yet, we are still operating on the original premise and demanding wholesale changes in the way that we live.

There was a time when Keynesian economics was the talk of the town. It dictated hiking Federal spending in order to increase prosperity and jobs. We were told that that economic activity increases by $2 for every dollar spent on unemployment insurance, and the like. We were told, we had at last discovered the golden goose; we had invented a perpetual motion mechanism that would spew greenbacks forever. Two for one. The more unemployed, the better for our economy… It’s not working.

The result of all these things should have been foreseen by those who promoted such policies. They should have known that it wouldn’t end well. These are the brightest among us, after all. If they don’t know, how should we with our mere high school education and a couple of college credits in basket weaving?

I maintain they did know – maybe not the first time it was tried, but certainly the second and third. And here we’re repeating all the same mistakes over again. Why?

Isn’t it obvious? Redistribution of wealth. It’s a core belief among those now in power that this must absolutely be done. They know the people bought it the first time around. And they know the people will buy it again: all the same promises; all the same lies. And then, when they figure out it’s not working, we’ll simply say, “Oops!” And they’ll assume we noticed our mistake and will correct it. This will give us time to do it again. And, again, we'll say, “Oops!” And “Oops!” it is until they’re ready to revolt, but by then it’s too late. They will have been bled of all their power to seriously resist.

Why Libya? It’s the same principle that applies: “Oops!” and “Oops!” again, until our precious army has been discredited beyond redemption. With the economy in tatters; Congress in tatters; the military in tatters, America’s enemies will have won. That’s when we’ll get Israel!

Don Trump has been getting a lot of press attention for keeping Obama’s birth certificate controversy alive. He himself is not exactly strident about it, knowing it’s become the third rail of American politics …and he does want to be president. It does give an opening, however, to those who want to keep the issue going. Why is it an issue in the first place?

Carter made a lot of mistakes, both in foreign policy as well as domestic. These can be filed away as teachable moments for future American presidents. These were teachable moments too for America’s enemies.

The law draws a distinction between someone falling asleep while smoking a cigarette in bed and someone deliberately pouring gas into the stairwell of a building and setting it on fire. Granted, the end result is the same.

Obama has been in office long enough for us to question his motives. As such, it is logical for us to question which team he’s actually playing on. His birth certificate would provide a clue; as would his school records. The fact that these are unavailable to us just goes to intensify our suspicions. Obama’s reluctance to provide this evidence is an indication of something being seriously amiss: Someone has been, or is about to be, snookered.

At the very least, we would find out if our president is merely a guy with a cigarette, or the guy with the red 5 gallon can, traipsing around in the hallway.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

No Joy In Mudville

Whereas in dreams landscapes often change and even faces merge into rough composites of people we may have known, the dreamer always remains the same, encompassing all that we understand the core of ourselves to be. It therefore behooves us to make some modicum of effort in making inquiries of anyone we aim to enter into a contract with. If we should want to get the garage roof fixed, for instance, we would normally first seek references before deciding on a roofer.

Society, even a democratic society, always breaks down into a hierarchy of leaders for the rest of us to follow. Leaders are freely chosen on the basis of their resumes and our assumption that their intentions are similar to ours. When the actions of a leader approximate what we would do under similar circumstances, we can pretty much take it for granted that the leader has our best interests at heart.

Last night, on the John Batchelor Show, John ran a segment in which three of his guests were asked to recall their personal experiences back in the late 70’s, waiting in gas lines (on alternate days) to have their tanks filled. Curiously, all three drove Pintos. We all were so much younger then, but we all remember having participated in some capacity in the drill. Back then, we blamed OPEC and, to a lesser extent, president Carter’s ineffectiveness. It made for large headlines all over the country but never rose to the level of existential concern. After all, Ronald Reagan stood in the wings.

Today, a similar situation earns barely a whisper. True, so far there have been no shortages; only the price of fuel is spiking. Enough money will buy you anything. Still, it’s worrying as we are coming face to face with our own limitations in our need to keep up.

We’re not talking about it because we fear we already know the truth. And we’d rather not know. Every dollar we spend on oil goes to fuel our own destruction. And it’s being orchestrated by our own White House. Every policy decision our current leadership has made seems specifically designed to make us more vulnerable. There can no longer be any doubt: this re-distribution of our wealth in the name of atonement is fast approaching the limit of our endurance. Our dependence on oil remains constant even as our sources and options decline. We have been rendered literally powerless to save ourselves.

With Carter in office, we at least knew that things could possibly turn around with the next election. Now, we’re no longer so sure. Obama appears to have his second term well in hand. We may never get another chance.

That’s why we don’t talk about it. Instead, we grin and bear it. Two years - even one - seems like an eternity. Any plan to unseat Obama seems like a long shot. And though spring is approaching after a long hard winter, there’s not much joy in Mudville as the driving season commences.

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Being There

It has been duly noted that once again we seem to be on the wrong side of things. We’re supporting a rag-tag army of assorted leftists and Islamic radicals, and throwing Mubarak - a U.S. ally - under the bus (so to speak); that, for all our efforts to help lift the Egyptian people out of the tyranny of what essentially amounts to (we are told) U.S.-sponsored poverty, we are inadvertently abandoning them to another kind of tyranny - one of Islamic fundamentalism which would likely put Israel - another so-called U.S. ally - at risk, as well as the Suez Canal, a major shipping lane (primarily for oil) which is likely to affect even Europe - more U.S. ‘allies’ - adversely.

Nobody asks why the people of the Middle East are in perpetual poverty, despite untold billions pumped in by the West (for oil). Nobody asks why conditions for Muslims in India continue to be markedly worse than they are for Hindus (and others), despite government efforts to give them every possible advantage.

Perhaps we haven’t exactly thought it through all that well; perhaps we haven’t considered all the implications of embracing shariah and treating it on par with what our own sacred texts espouse. Perhaps we thought that by siding with a seemingly ‘popular’ movement all else would fall into place; and we would be loved as we’ve never been loved before.

Such miscalculations are easy to make. Carter miscalculated Iran and we’re still paying the price. They still hate us. But he meant well. At least, we think he did.

We’re also giving Obama the benefit of the doubt in the current situation. We seem to have forgotten his stance on the Iranian popular uprising a year or two ago. We seem to have forgotten his stance when Honduras went through its constitutional travail, as well as so much else that has been plaguing us domestically since this man assumed power. We’ve refused to connect the dots.

I still remember as a child, the seemingly endless wait at restaurants for the waitress to bring our food was made tolerable by the table mats I was given. The ‘connect-the-dots’ game was always a part of it. The game was relatively easy. The dots were always numbered; and I knew my numbers. I knew what order they came in. Yet, I would always hesitate to start, trying to predict before-hand what figure would ultimately emerge.

Today, connecting-the-dots seems to have become a lost art. While it’s true that the dots are no longer numbered, they are self-explanatory nonetheless. We have been reading the newspapers, after all. We can remember what has happened previously and in what order it happened. We have seen enough of it to know what is likely to happen next - and afterwards…

Still, we act like every day is a new day. All events are random and unexpected. Obama has been in office two years - and unpleasant things have happened and are continuing to happen. Where is all this ‘hope and change’ thing taking us?

While all our problems have been attributed to Obama’s inexperience (including, of course, his constant hectoring of Israel to mind its ways), a pattern seems to be emerging.

Heads of state are beginning to notice and draw conclusions. While we gnash our teeth, seemingly finding ourselves at the mercy of unrelated events, our enemies are beginning to take liberties. Our friends are beginning to distance themselves. Our economy is going to the dogs. Our ‘fixes’ only seem to be making things worse. And throughout it all, our government media tells us that all is hunky-dory; that we are doing just fine; and that the light at the other end of the tunnel is straight ahead (under the inspired leadership of Imam Obama).

Things are falling apart. Despite removing ‘mother’ and ‘father’ terminology from U.S. passport applications and replacing it with gender neutral verbiage (‘parent one’ and ‘parent two‘), junior Obama is finding that it still takes either Mom or Dad to drive the fambly (sic) sedan.

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Assassination Prohibition

China has actually been conducting military exercises with Russia (among others) under the auspices of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as late as September of last year. It was labeled “Peace Mission 2010”.

During the exercise certain Russian deficiencies came to light. No doubt, Russia is in the process of rectifying these shortcomings. Russia and China do not mock each other publicly as both are openly mocking the U.S. Both know that POTUS Obama has withdrawn from the game at his own peril.

The signing of the START treaty was universally seen as a public humiliation of Obama and America. Obama knows this, but does not care. He is above geopolitics. He has his own agenda. So far, we can only guess what this agenda might consist of. We might assign naiveté to Obama; we might even assign incompetence. We might allow him to play out his utopian farce until a new man can take over in orderly fashion. Both Russia and China appear to be in agreement that it won’t hold together that long. Something will happen before Obama leaves office - it will likely be something our present president won’t know how to handle. In fact, they’re counting on it. Both are seeing to it that they are prepared.

Afterwards, it’ll be a new game.
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Ever since President Ford’s Executive Order# 11905 in 1976, the option of political assassination has been pretty much off the table. A subsequent EO in this regard (Carter’s EO# 12333) reiterated the assassination prohibition. President Reagan was the last president to address the topic. At the same time, he seemed to have no problem whatsoever in sending a lethal package right into Col. Kaddafi’s Tripoli tent, killing about 100 including Kaddafi’s fifteen month old daughter, Hana. I don’t imagine he would have lost much sleep had Muammar had been killed as well. Because no subsequent executive order or piece of legislation has repealed the prohibition, it remains in effect today.

It seems to me that all this smacks of a gross double standard: faceless grunt soldiers appear to be fair game, while those who sent them out to kill are off limits. Nowhere was this point brought home to me more forcefully than watching Madeleine Albright toasting the North Korean dictator, Kim Yong-Il, while much of his nation was starving in some bestial work camp. It showed me that there appears to be an understanding among the privileged that guarantees their continuance simply by being a member of some exclusive club.

This raises the issue of just who can be considered a ‘political target‘. What exactly constitutes the threshold of political leadership. Is the unelected Hu Jintao a legitimate leader? Is the fraudulent Karzai? Is Kim Yong-Il? Is Ahmadinejad? Chavez? Mugabe? Rush Limbaugh?

Certainly, North Korea and others have been giving us huge problems. They have threatened us and predicted our immanent downfall. They are at this very moment preparing our graves. Besides the basic unfairness of the two-tier class distinction all this implies, there are also practical aspects to consider. Did Kaddafi continue to give us much trouble after his tent was hit?

We know precisely where each one of these troublemakers lives. We knew exactly where Saddam Hussein spent his nights. Yet, we mobilized an invasion at great expense, killed a lot of people (including our own) and eventually arrived at the same result. Why go through all this?

All we’ve succeeded in doing is to ignite (perhaps) a million fuses, each singularly fixated on our death by a thousand cuts, when a single 'stitch in time' would have more than sufficed.

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