The Definition of 'Crazy'

It’s always easy and entertaining to make fun of history in a Monty Python kind of way; to say what if, as if ‘if’ were some kind of Frankonian monster ripe for resurrecting at the snap of a finger. Much more difficult to see the lunacy of current policy. If Reagan had killed Kaddafi, who is to say that would have been the end of it?

Fact: For several years after we sent a package bomb into Kaddafi’s tent (killing his daughter among others) we never heard from Kaddafi again. Fact: He behaved himself for a time like a kid after a spanking. And then, we seemed to have lost the concept altogether and the likes of Kim Yong-Il, Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez were able to make their mischief unimpeded, turning the whole class into an uproar.

Now, nobody is learning. The teachers have fled the premises. The school is has become wildly dysfunctional and you have some version of William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” going on everywhere you look.

Enter the 12th Imam to put a stop to it. I expect he’ll have enough buckets lined up to put out the fires that are raging; to snuff out the fuses that are burning toward setting off a nuclear holocaust. If not, it doesn’t really matter what any of us do.

For a brief while, we thought it was Obama who would fill the bill. We gave him every chance. We even called him ‘savior’. We were convinced that he was the one who would bring us together. He made quite a convincing start of it, giving speeches all around the world and drawing adoring crowds everywhere he went.

Now we know it was all just so much hot air, effectively causing the polar icecaps to melt and the bears to seek shelter inside an ever shrinking population of whales. Curiously the oceans didn’t rise as predicted and the island of Manhattan still stands (although we did our best to bring her down by other means).

As much as we make fun of Kaddafi, we still shy away from looking in the mirror to examine ourselves. The definition of ‘crazy’ is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. What we are doing in almost every aspect of our public policy is the same thing over and over again. And all it’s done is accelerate our fall from grace.

Spring is just around the corner and all of us here in the northern latitudes can put our snow shovels away and breathe a sigh of relief. Soon time to put some of the old stuff out on the curb for yard sales or for sanitation to pick up. Don’t plan on going anywhere though. Gas will likely be around $5 a gallon.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Monty Python And the Holy Grail

I discovered this gem 10 years late. The kids were already old enough to watch and understand movies. We saw this one over and over again and we laughed every time. Even when not watching it, we had come to know the script by heart and acted it out precisely. “Bring out your dead!” was one of our favorite parts to reenact.

Those were innocent days. Or so it seemed. Our future still lay ahead of us. Even with all the political drama raging all around us, we felt somehow secure, ensconced in the apparently limitless American dream. We felt we could forge ahead as long as the government kept foreign threats from materializing into something that could hurt us. There was no question that our government was up to the job.

We had jobs. We went to work every day. We could even afford to be choosey. Say, we didn’t like what we were doing, we could always go and do something else. The kids did their homework with pencil and paper. …or else they read history texts with a picture of George Washington on the cover.

We would never have guessed that it would all fall apart under a church-going, half-white, half-black president who would turn all black the minute he took office.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Parrot Sketch

The Republican Party is dead. There's no longer anything that can save it. It can appear to function - like a Zombie bank - but that illusion of movement is just the buzzards and the maggots. Sure, there's a rich history there, all the way from Lincoln to Reagan. It hurts some of us to let it go just the way we were once determined to hang on to our American brand of car and cigarettes - until we figured out that both were killing us. Eventually, most of us went Japanese and we gave up cigarettes altogether. Now, all we can do is watch the old Bogart movies.

We're all on the same side. I get wary when someone attacks the Republicans without mentioning the Dems - or vis-a-versa. Both parties are no more; deceased; expired – like the ‘Norwegian Blue’ in Monty Python’s ‘Parrot Sketch’. It's no use pretending they’re not dead. The Dems are animated by Marxism; the Republicans are animated by maggots. Time for something new and healthy; something optimistic; something with a vision; something capable enough to inspire; something vigorous enough to sweep all the road kill to the side.

It'll take some time to get organized; to find our sea legs; to become confident enough to draw serious attention. We're already much further along than anyone thought possible. You wouldn't know that from reading most papers and watching TV.

The '9/12 March on Washington' was a watershed moment. All those who attended knew it was that. There will be other such moments - like a Hoffman win in NY's 23rd, like Corzine going down to defeat (eventually), like the anti-Obama vote in Virginia come next Tuesday. Republican wins in NJ and Virginia should not be interpreted to mean that the Republican Party is alive and well. It's a mere stop-gap measure to show that the country is already sick of Obama’s brand of communism. The Republicans are next up to get their clocks cleaned by, let's say, a party of people who embrace (American) principles, values, sanity and common sense.