George Soros: Media Mogul

Rush picked up on it early – the liberal bias in the mainstream media. He identified certain phrases that various media would regularly use in response to major news stories and strung them together, and played them on air. It was astounding to hear talking head after talking head saying exactly the same thing, using the very same language. It was hilarious. We put it down to Democrat ‘talking points'. Nobody yet talked of conspiracy.

Story after story focused on Republican stumbles. Story after story promoted Democrats. Important stories that showed Republicans in a positive light were spiked altogether. Eventually it would come to be known as ‘media bias’. Any Republican who dared to speak out on his party’s behalf was immediately slammed by the press. Democrats, however, could do no wrong.

At about the same time, liberal news outlets began experiencing severe revenue shortfalls. Talk radio and the internet surged. Newspapers, like the New York Times became an editorial and financial laughing stock. Technology was blamed for news consumers’ full flight away from traditional media. I remember having expressed doubts at the time. It seemed too pat an explanation. We ourselves had cancelled two newspaper subscriptions and stopped buying magazines – and it wasn’t because we were getting our news from the internet. We were just tired of being insulted every time we turned the pages.

Now it has come out that there is essentially one man who has been behind it all along: George Soros, one of the richest, most influential men in the world.

Dan Gainor, Boone Pickens Fellow and the Media Research Center’s Vice President for Business and Culture, writes in two recent articles (“Why Don’t We Hear About Soros’ Ties to Over 30 Major News Organizations?” and “Why Is Soros Spending Over $48 Million Funding Media Organizations?”): “Since 2003, Soros has spent more than $48 million funding media properties, including the infrastructure of news – journalism schools, investigative journalism and even industry organizations.”

Soros is known as a ‘philanthropist’ worldwide, a label he carefully cultivates. It puts him outside the sphere of suspicion. We have since learned that his is not a benign influence. We’ve become aware of his outright hatred for the Bushes and Republicans in general, and Israel. It is now no longer surprising the way the media tracks.

In light of Soros’ hold on major media, his propaganda machine is virtually unstoppable. We can try to starve it in the market place, but there is always more money the man can come up with. There has even been the suggestion that, where he can, Soros spikes rival media outlets with offensive advertising.

In a way, now that we understand the game, it has become somewhat easier to figure out. Forget Republican; forget Democrat. The American media is the issue. It bleeds its poison worldwide. Keep track of what the media routinely smears and what it promotes, and you get a pretty good feel for what George Soros wants you to condemn and what he wants to promote. …and, for God's sakes, run the other way.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Why Not Again?

There is a house in Thiruvanmaiyur along the beach road where I usually take my morning constitutional – a big house of indeterminate color, with all kinds of frills, picture windows and Rapunzel towers; one, that stands out and would catch the eye of sidewalk artists and movie audiences – that seems mostly abandoned. The yard is choked with weeds and refuse; neighbors heaving their trash over the wall. It is said to be used occasionally for photo shoots for some of the oodles of movies the highly successful Tamil film industry cranks out on a daily basis.

One time I was out there early morning, watching the fishermen unloading their catches and I noticed a helicopter hovering over that particular place. I didn’t think too much about it at the time; but lately, I’ve been thinking that it could also very well function as India’s version of our witness protection program or as a safe house for Tamil Tiger plotters. Hide in plain sight. Why not make the lie so big, so obvious, that no one will question it?

Mockery is one of the most potent weapons in the human arsenal. It has always been so. Christ on the cross was said to have been mocked. Obviously, Bush was mocked constantly. Since Obama’s election, mockery has been pretty much off the table as the president has shown himself to be far more adept in the art (of mockery) than any of his critics.

Besides, it’s in bad form to mock a black man. One might be accused of racism. Though, this too might be dependent on other factors as we are discovering that black or white may not be the issue at all. Justice Thomas, for instance, might be mocked and no one will say much about it. It’s only Obama that cannot be mocked. What’s the difference? Both men – last time I looked – are black. Here we come to the nub or it: only certain black men can be mocked while others can’t. The modifier that explains all this appears to be ‘conservative’.

Note how liberals strut around, routinely mocking tea parties, Republican lawmakers and presidents, popular talk show hosts and commentators, second amendment supporters, presidential aspirants, religious leaders and their congregations, etc. Make no mistake, these are attacks and they do damage.

You might say that Limbaugh (and some others) mocks the Left. The difference is that Limbaugh gives reasons for his mockery. The Left gives no reasons. Ordinarily, the press would step in to mediate. But, we all know that the media tilts the playing field to favor the Left. Limbaugh’s words and audience are routinely treated as if they do not exist. Instead, people like the girls on ‘The View’ are given star headline treatment.

The day after Osama’s killing, Limbaugh went on air and mocked Obama. There it was! The Left was outraged (if they said anything). What was supposed to be America’s proudest moment since the start of the war on terror, was being mocked unabashedly. Other talk show hosts, known for being critical of the president, refrained from doing so. Not Limbaugh!

Maybe it’s just me, but I too found the whole deal somewhat hollow. For me personally, it did not seem to rise to the status of a significant event. And any attempt to see it as such seemed somehow contrived and cheap, and quite worthy of mockery – an ‘emperor has no clothes’ moment, if you wish. A proper trial would have sat well and settled it. The subtext is, of course, that we can no longer expect a proper trial in this country. Obama has taken that from us as well.

It should have been a moment of quiet restraint and reflection. It needed to be handled with much greater fineness than simply dumping a corpse into the drink. Mike had it right, I think: ‘Defeat snatched out of the jaws of victory’, he wrote. Neither does it impress that al-Qaeda confirmed the kill publicly. I seem to remember AQ websites being largely supportive of Obama winning the election in 2008. They got their wish. Why not again?

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Andrew Klavan: Imagination Land

The Pretenders

You wanna know what I think? I think a long time ago, when Rush was looking for a theme song for his show, he had a huge crush on Chrissie Hynde. Believe me, I know how these things work.

WAR: Comic Relief

Everywhere I turn today on the radio dial, I hear the usual yuck-yucks and clucks about what Obama did today. The war in Libya is topic number one of course. Japan has fallen to a distant third behind the many marriages of Elizabeth Taylor. Actually, the past few days we’ve seen very little of Obama. It has been Hillary Clinton who’s been out front, trying to explain this and that.

What’s curious about this is that war isn’t at all funny. The yuck-yucks center on the administration’s failure to explain how we got into it and what we can expect. The details we’re given change by the hour and are often contradictory. For instance, Obama claims that it’ll last just a few more days with us in charge, and then we’ll hand it off to some unspecified 'other'. Then, we learn, that nobody else wants it. It’s like watching a group of kids playing hot potato. Or, the kitchen sink gets clogged and we go in with all kinds of ‘shock and awe’ (to borrow a phrase). We ask the kid next door to come over and help. All he brings with him is a screwdriver while we’ve got the 130 ft. snake out. Whom are we hoping to hand off to? It’s comical, in a macabre kind of way. But here we are. The Germans have already pulled out. NATO is hiding in the tall grass. The others were never in. ‘Allies in disarray’ is how Drudge put it.

We’ve seen this before: an administration getting pummeled for deciding to go to war. Whether Kaddafi lives or dies is almost beside the point. It almost seems like the U.S. president is always the ultimate target of our scorn and ridicule; that as soon as any U.S. leader orders military intervention, it’s like, at the same time, he’s holding a loaded gun to his own head.

You might get the impression from reading this blog that I dislike Obama. The truth is I really don’t dislike him at all. His exploits have taken us in many unforeseen (and foreseen) directions. It’s been a blessing to be alive during these times of tumultuous change. The Obamas (in one incarnation or another) have always been with us. We’ve just never put them in charge of anything before. This time we did. And what did we expect? We got exactly what we voted for.
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On today’s Glenn Beck radio program, the name Stephen Lerner surfaced in connection with a union plot to collapse the American economy. Later in the day, Limbaugh also spent a segment on it. This seems consistent with what happened before (just preceding the 2008 election). When the Justice Department was notified, they ignored what must surely constitute a serious threat. Say, the kid with the screwdriver (above) goes home and were to fantasize on Facebook about putting that screwdriver of his through Obama’s eye; he would no doubt get a visit from the Secret Service before sundown. Lerner, apparently is playing for the right team (unions). So, we can assume he can happily fly under the radar, as far as Big Sis is concerned.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Flipped

Both China and Japan - (we could even go so far as to say) all countries - face challenges in implementing policy. There are always approaches that warrant tweaking. Since there might be questions as to the underlying assumptions that would presumably lead to improvement, it is possible that any given policy (based on such assumptions) might ultimately fail to produce the desired result. So far, China has done things pretty much by the book.

There is, however, nothing to guarantee that ‘the book’ - even the American book - is always right. Time is like a train rushing ahead. There also needs to be some measure of faith that the tracks will continue to be there.

There is no doubt in my mind that - although China has made some serious mistakes in the past, giving birth to any number of Albatrosses around its neck - China aims high. It wants to be top dog. As such, it intends to surpass America. This does not necessarily imply evil intent. It proceeds out of a sense of national pride. The leaders of China believe in destiny. They feel that their time is at hand, and that they must now prepare as much as possible and, when the time is right, ‘seize the day‘. Apart from China, there are any number of signals that the U.S. itself has been sending that confirm China’s suspicion that its own turn at the wheel is near.

When my wife queries me if I would prefer eggplant or carrots for supper, she immediately jumps to the conclusion that I don’t like carrots and will never buy them again. In truth, I don’t mind carrots at all. Confronted with a choice, I inevitably fall into a trap of my own making as soon as I voice an opinion. Carrots, after all, are different from eggplant.

I agree with a liberal friend of mine that we should not be in the business of exporting ‘democracy’ throughout the world. We should persuade by example. China has been watching us and has adopted many of our ways. It has helped them to become relatively successful in a short period of time. China also sees us now, and intends to avoid making our mistakes. The point is, the leadership of China seeks to do what it feels is best for China. We may or may not agree as to how China‘s ascendancy would ultimately affect us.
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Interesting opinion piece by Michael Medved in this morning’s WSJ, entitled, “Obama Isn’t Trying To ‘Weaken’ America”. The pull quote from it reads “Some conservatives call the president the political equivalent of a suicide bomber: so consumed with hatred (for America) that he is willing to blow himself up in order to inflict casualties on a society he loathes.”

It goes on to list various failings of past presidents from Franklin Pierce to Bill Clinton, implying that we have well survived all their foibles; that Obama’s fumbling in office is of no more consequence than Clinton’s diddling with Monica Lewinsky in an Oval Office anteroom. Medved’s grand proof that people like Rush Limbaugh - who has said, “I think we face something we’ve never faced before in our country; and that is, we’re now governed by people who do not like the country.” or Sarah Palin, who said, “...he (Obama) is hell-bent on weakening America.” - are imbecilic. He bolsters his argument by saying, “None of the attacks on Mr. Obama’s intentions offers an even vaguely plausible explanation of how the evil genius, once he has ruined our ‘strength, influence and standard of living’ hopes to get himself re-elected.” - as if elections would be of any concern to ‘evil geniuses’ in the first place.

I used to like listening to Medved’s radio program when he was here in New York years ago. I especially liked his movie reviews. It could be that he has flipped, like Philadelphia's Michael Smerconish, and as John Batchelor himself is forever threatening to do.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Let's See How It Plays

Olbermann gone, but not forgotten. Perhaps it all boils down to ratings after all. Olbermann has always been near the bottom of the heap. He has talent, no doubt. His talent was overshadowed by his bias. Once bias has been freely and audaciously exhibited, there is no longer any need to watch. Everyone already knew what was coming.

Olbermann is much too smart to let this happen. I suspect he was encouraged all the way. He knew that his ratings suffered. (They all know.) In fact, he had much larger audiences than what was obvious when his clips were played on much more successful shows. These made him out to be a clown and he readily obliged. Why?

I suspect it’s some version of the ‘fairness doctrine’ again: Olbermann on the Left; Beck on the right. “We’ll get rid of Olbermann, if you get rid of Beck. In fact, let’s get rid of the whole bunch of them: We’ll get rid of MSNBC; you’ll get rid of FOX. Let’s start with Beck and Olbermann and see how it plays.”
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"Despite the fact that Democrat policies are hugely unpopular, two factors have enabled the party to continue to present itself as mainstream.

“The first factor has been the media. As has been their practice forever, it seems; the media have helped Democrats by demonizing the Republicans and rightist politicians. Working hand in glove with leftist politicians, the media have implemented the politics of personal destruction against right-wing leaders. By demonizing the likes of Bush, Cheney, Palin, Limbaugh et al, they have rendered the social cost of supporting Republicans and the Right too high for many Americans to bear.

“At the same time, the media have colluded with the Left to present leftist leaders as earthy, heroic, sophisticated and responsible statesmen. By keeping the content of their policies firmly out of the discussion and framing the debate instead around personal attacks and symbols, the media have successfully kept conservative leaders on the defensive and shielded leftist politicians from substantive attacks on their radical policies.“

The preceding has been taken from Caroline Glick’s latest article in the Jerusalem Post. It is not about America. It is about Israel. I’ve taken the liberty of changing a few words.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

More Christians Than Lions

There’s another narrative here that the media couldn’t quite bring off; but, God knows, they tried. That was to say, because of Obama’s visit to the hospital, Giffords opened her eyes. It would have made for terrific copy world-wide. It would have gone along seamlessly with an earlier thread: Obama as messianic figure.

All the other stuff worked. They really can’t complain. Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Tea Party - all in the dog house. The need for yet more money to treat people with psychological problems and to house psychopaths; maybe even a brand new Federal department complete with death panel czar to oversee it all. More welfare for the afflicted; higher taxes, of course. More money for education; more gun control… on and on it goes.

Finally, it’s all Republicans’ fault. Listening to Aaron Klein broadcasting from Israel last Sunday, he related how Israelis were convinced that Jared Loughner was a right-wing tea party member - and these were people working in news rooms!

In India, it’s the same story.

There are more Christians than lions; but, hell, you’d never know it.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

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.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Liberals - 1; Conservatives - 0

January 8th, 2011

Urgent: Flash e-mail from the White House: A message from OFA (Organizing for America) national volunteer coordinators:

Dear Blogger: By now you’ve heard the news. Time to mobilize. What just happened in Arizona (where else?) is more than murder. This is our opportunity to invigorate some of our policy objectives. Target gun control and talk radio (Limbaugh, Beck, etc.). Target the internet and capital punishment. Target Palin. For suggestions, go to xxx@yyy.com for templates and suggestions.

Get busy. Support the cause. Support Democrats. Support your president. Prizes for the most e-mails sent.

Remember, never let a crisis go to waste.
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The above fiction is nevertheless believable. How else can we explain the current feeding frenzy in the press and on the blogs? Clearly, what happened was a personal tragedy for all those hurt and killed. Also clear is that it’s a stretch to involve people who had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

More than the wounding and murders themselves, the real tragedy is what immediately followed. I differ from Limbaugh in one important respect: Whereas he sees it as a one last-ditch desperate effort - a ‘Hail Mary pass', if you wish - by liberalism losing steam, I see it as only the beginning - the opening salvo of what we can expect for the next two years. The media and Democrats are scoring big.

This morning, ‘The Hindu’, Chennai’s hometown newspaper will carry Paul Krugman’s column entitled “Climate of Hate”. In it he implicates and smears everyone who does not agree with his radical views. Indians will read this and, hearing no other American voices, will shake their heads sadly. Some who have relatives abroad will send e-mails to caution them. They will warn them of the Tea Parties, talk radio, FOX, the GOP, Palin, Beck, O’Reilly, conservatives, etc. All this will be done out of genuine concern and in good faith.

Talk show hosts are feeling the need to defend themselves today. Their faithful - even if in the numerical majority of the population - agree with them. But as a part of the overall national narrative they remain marginalized. Their protestations sound somehow hollow as the ball continues to roll left.

Liberals - 1; conservatives - 0

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

The Stoning Of Sarah

The Left certainly was more than ready for this one. It’s almost as if their talking points had been already scripted and sitting right there in the ‘out’ tray for months, just waiting for the inevitable moment to materialize. The media was already suited up, (ink)jets scrambled. It was the moment they had been waiting for: the opportunity to strike a blow against such perennials as gun rights, the tea parties, and talk radio. Well done, Left!

No time was lost on reflection. Facts that didn’t quite match evaporated before our very eyes. Websites scrubbed. Beck dropped. The rugs had been lifted to accommodate whatever was inconvenient to dispose of properly.

Some months ago a website (I forget which) posted a video of the stoning of a young girl somewhere in Pakistan. Nothing was left to the imagination. At the time, I wondered not just about the vicious frenzy of those throwing the stones, but also of the passive nature of those watching, and filming. The filming, especially, bothered me. “How sick!” I thought.

But then I realized that those filming couldn’t possibly be sitting around watching this again and again over popcorn and beer. There must be something more to it.

Maybe they were crying out for help. Maybe it was the only way they could think of to expose the madness. It was for us to see - to be outraged, as they were - to be moved to intercede; to take charge; to rescue them from their bloody Islamic hell. At considerable risk to themselves, they succeeded in smuggling the video out to what they believed to be the beneficent West, only to be shelved there and ignored.

We too have a bloody woman on our hands. Only, for us, it doesn’t seem to be enough. We want more. We want Sarah Palin’s head mounted on a stake to be paraded through our streets. We want Limbaugh and Beck. We want the population disarmed and helpless, at the mercy of thugs and tax collectors. We want the Tea Parties castrated and silent. We want our Constitution shredded. It is now clear that this is the official narrative of our intent.

We’ve just come from celebrating an election (in which the wrong party made huge gains). Some of us had been full of hope that things will improve with the infusion of fresh blood. That much we got. We were eagerly awaiting the first signs of change, of rebuilding that which had slipped away during the past two years. Now all of it has been overshadowed, sidetracked, postponed - the momentum lost. Who wins? Not democracy; not freedom. We’ve exploited our opportunity to take a step backwards. We’ve been derailed, stifled, disheartened. We’ve once again come face to face with just how fragile our system has become. We’ve become irritable and irritating in the same breath.

Those cell phone Pakis must be crying. America will not help. America can’t even help itself.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Stop The Presses: Wrong Guy!

I really thought today was the day when it begins. The left-wing bloggers were all in position, ready to go. Some even jumped the gun. They were not listeners to the John Batchelor Show. If they had been, they would have known that the first three reports are always wrong.

No, the shooter was not the one they expected. He did not follow the approved script. His car radio was not tuned to Limbaugh, his trunk was not filled with Beck paraphernalia. He did not carry a copy of the Constitution in his pocket. He was not a card-carrying member of any Tea Party. Instead he was a nut job, pure and simple.

He did us a favor by posting unintelligible material on the internet that points to a severely diseased mind. He posted a video of himself burning the American flag (a hat tip to Bill Ayers, perhaps). There were some books on his reading list, but most of them solidly left-inspired.

As more and more facts leaked out, the Left began backing off. This was not their guy. They would have to wait for another, more suitable to their purpose.

I hadn’t really heard the news until late. One tends not to listen to radio much, especially on weekends when it’s snowing. I had just finished posting King Crimson. The devil made me do it. Then, I went back and listened to the words…

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

The Invisible Man

I just finished reading “The Invisible Man” by H.G. Wells. It is said to be one of the forerunners of today’s very popular science fiction genre. Though told in a straight-forward manner, focusing primarily on keeping the plot moving, there is more here than meets the eye: the mechanics of 'invisibility', for instance. Take a piece of glass and insert it into water, and it becomes invisible. Take a red piece of glass and insert it into that same water and it will still show red. To make it invisible, the water would have to be red as well. This could easily translate into a metaphor for cultural shifts as well. As long as a foreign or alien concept is introduced stealthily (or invisibly) into the culture, it will not be rejected outright. This is the way Marxism has been introduced in America, cloaked in the thoroughly traditional American corpse: the Democrat Party.

As the host begins to die, Marxism becomes visible in stages just as Wells’ lead character, Griffin, becomes once again visible after he has been killed. First socialism reveals itself; then communism; proceeding through all the subsequent stages all the way up to and including authoritarianism. Tyranny is always the final stage. In it, there is only one authority to determine the path forward.

In Wells’ novel, the people band together to capture and kill Griffin before his invisibility can prevail and metastasize into crippling terrorism. They still cannot see him, but they understand what he has done and aims yet to do. Instead of shrinking from the unseen, they attack it.

This is in contrast to Ralph Ellison’s work of the same title. The situation here is reversed. Blindness is deliberately nurtured by the seeing. They willfully ignore a whole class of people and pretend it doesn’t exist. This also is relevant today. The likes of Limbaugh and conservatives in general are routinely ignored by the media, on college campuses, in Hollywood, etc. For all intents and purposes, their views, their solutions, their very army of eager supporters do not exist despite their steadily intensifying impact (which, of course, does not exist as well).

In these two titles you have the dual aspects of invisibility. On one hand you have invisibility as a deliberate disguise for nefarious purposes; while, on the other, you have, the deliberate ’ignoring the elephant in the room’ syndrome. Both are at best dishonest. While the first can be excused as betrayal, the second amounts to willful act of cowardice. Both represent an exercise in delusion.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

We Must Believe

You’re not helping, John, bashing Republicans at every turn. When Barack Hussein Obama took office, I felt a shift under my feet. ”I don’t mean fear to anger. I mean a sudden shift, a tumultuous upheaval, an uncontrollable displacement, concepts whose surfaces had been insignificant heaving over, up-ended, raised as huge boulders smelling of the earth that still clings to them, a shift that came to me physically, as intestines violently stir and contract when some irritant throws a switch in the digestive tract. Earth, guts – I don’t know what metaphors to use (anymore), to describe…” my clutching for words to explain my sense of impending doom.

You obviously haven’t felt it yet. You’re as one deciding between cake and ice cream – Democrat or Republican – while the rooms of the mansion we cohabit burst into flames one by one.

Is the WSJ now also on the no-fly list – like FOX, MSNBC, Rush, Drudge, JPOST among so many others? The WSJ, whose offices you yourself frequently avail yourself of; the same WSJ that chronicles daily fresh, flagrant abuses by our essentially one-party government.

(Note, I threw MSNBC in with my mix of no-flies because it too has been singled out for censure after having been deliberately dragged down to unfathomable depths of ridiculousness for the sole purpose of giving the exercise an appearance of balance.)

Time will tell who is right. Yes, we are grasping at straws. Whereas Republicans don’t look promising, there is no alternative at the moment. Give them a chance. They will rise to the occasion. We must believe it, for the others (Democrats) are already way beyond redemption.
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Italics taken from Nadine Gordimer’s “Burger’s Daughter”.

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/

Batchelor @ the Hard Rock

I cannot believe that Californians are still suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome. If true, it’s the only way to explain it - putting Democrats back in office. Carly Fioria is a survivor. That in itself should say it all. Boxer is a clinger. Whitman is a message. Brown is an antique.

This brings to mind something I had forgotten: Remember back when Rush Limbaugh lost his hearing? Can you imagine anything worse than for a radio host to lose hearing? Yet, he never missed a beat. True, those initial broadcasts right after his hearing loss were painful to listen to. (Someone had to transcribe what was said by his callers for him to read.) Still, it amounted to a magnificent display of pure will.

Last night at the Hard Rock was equally inspiring. Surely John’s job is a lot more difficult than how he made it seem. I was especially pleased to find myself in the same room as Malcolm Hoenlein. Larry Kudlow was better than he is on his own show, and Monica and Margaret graced the stage with their beauty and intellect.

I had expected something far more informal. McCotter doing a guitar solo, perhaps; or Sapientia taking a bow. None of that. It was professional all the way. BRAVO, John!

We’ll have to do it again!

Killing Jobs

No mystery here. POTUS is too embarrassed to talk about jobs. It’s too obvious what he’s doing. He’s killing jobs… and he’s doing it on purpose. It would be too much of a lie - even for him - to say otherwise. He stresses education: Marxist education; re-education. He celebrates Katrina (not the Boy Scouts) because, he feels, it focuses the nation once again on the much ballyhooed failures of Bush.

Obama keeps stressing the failure of past administrations. As his wife once famously proclaimed, “Barack will never allow you (the people) to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.” Back to what? Jobs? Economic growth? Prosperity?

He means to turn the nation into a land of the jobless. Only then will he be able to impose his solutions and to do whatever Marxists do with legions of beggared masses.

In Obama’s world view, a return to prosperity would spell defeat. He cannot allow it because he knows that it is the rich who would prosper again and return the nation to a two-tier system of rich and poor; of winners and the losers. This would be unacceptable to POTUS who wants everyone to exist on an equal (economic) plane, some being more equal than others by virtue of skin color (and political orientation).

Virtually all the talking heads miss this point. They view Obama’s policies as failures while he sees them as successes. Limbaugh recognized it early on when he said he wants Obama to fail. The Left was stung by the clarity of his revelation. He had swerved too close to the truth. And he was attacked relentlessly for it.

In Obama’s world, America had become a cancer. He sees himself as the surgeon mandated to cut it out, leaving but an empty shell with no relation to past glories and what we all have traditionally regarded as success. American exceptionalism to Obama was and is anathema as long as it put our nation on a higher (economic) level than the rest of the world; as long as there is even one child starving in Africa. America had no right to endure its standard of living because, to Obama, it was never a result of hard work, talent and ingenuity. It was the result of theft.

A thief has no conception of the value of work. Therefore he has also no conception of what it takes to run an economy. He happily takes what does not belong to him and thinks it is good. Obama is essentially a thief. He has never worked a day in his life. He was pre-ordained to his present position by skillful apparatchiks who carefully groomed him to fit Shiva’s part. He is no more than a ventriloquist’s dummy. A hollow man. Dead wood, on which someone has chosen to hammer (and sickle) out an implausible Fabian tune.

Something Doesn't Add Up

Look where we were just two years ago. Bush was playing the role of the ruddy, good-natured fireman in the dunking seat at the local county fair. We all cued up to give it our best shot, hurling projectiles at the big, colorful target that was hard to miss. Over and over, he went down into the tank only to emerge wet and dripping. We gleefully continued to play the game even after the sun had gone down and he was shivering. Some of us took cheap shots, aiming our shoes at his face. How we laughed! It was all in good fun. What else are county fairs for?

Little did we know that it all was to boomerang. Now we are the target. Reading today’s opinion columns in the NYT, we are told we are stupid, small-minded, xenophobes for not embracing - among much else - the mosque at Ground Zero.

The game has artfully turned deadly. We suspect something is very wrong - something is happening which we never expected could happen in our country. Elections still seem an eternity away. Midterms. Shrug. It’s bigger than that. As we learn more and more about Alinsky, Cloward, Piven among others too numerous to mention, it gets downright scary. We’re no longer living a James Bond novel in which Sean Connery can be expected to fight for our side - and win. We are the only side remaining, it seems - all the others are against us.

How did Bush do it? We never suspected we were in this deep s**t. “D’ya miss me yet?” Yes we do, Mr. President. We know you’d have just the right words to say concerning the mosque and all. We know you’d get dunked again for opening your mouth. We now know that your erstwhile enemies are now our enemies. We just wish we’d have a man in The White House who’d feel comfortable inviting someone like Rush to dinner, letting him and his wife sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom for a couple of nights and chew the fat over breakfast. He’d then come back to us and tell us it’s all alright, that there’s a plan - a plan for saving our country.

We’d be quite prepared to sacrifice; to do whatever it takes. We’d rally around the flag until the whole lot of these bastards are defeated. (This includes you, Hillary!) We’d even buy government bonds with what money we’ve got left, and work our fingers to the bone in some rivet factory for the slightest glimmer of light.

What I still can’t understand is the women nowadays. Would they really want to go back to a totally male-dominated society without any rights? Why aren’t they up in arms and at the point of the spear? Can’t they see where it’s going? The military is banned from recruiting on campuses because of ’don’t ask, don’t tell’. Why aren’t Muslim organizations banned from those same campuses for their even greater affronts to human dignity?

No. Something doesn’t add up - doesn’t add up at all.

Surviving the First Wave

Larry Kudlow is a brilliant economic analyst. That’s why I listen to him. For some time now I’ve been frustrated with him (and others) for saying all the right things but being unwilling to pull the trigger. It’s always Obama’s policies that are misguided, never Obama himself. He consistently subscribes to the notion that if voters were to send the president a loud enough message (as in the midterms) he would then turn it around and begin to pursue policies designed to actually stimulate economic growth.

Kudlow has a ‘shtick‘. His signature approach to the economy as well as to politics in general is optimism. He recently interviewed Tim Geithner who told him that taxes would indeed increase but not by as much as everyone expects. Larry took this as a cause to trumpet his legendary optimism and told the story over and over again. It was simply infuriating. But, I have since noticed that Larry Kudlow - like any amateur poker player - has a ‘tell’.

Larry takes an awful lot of calls from people who are telling him exactly how it is; that Obama is a Marxist whose ultimate aim is to destroy the U.S. economy. He allows them to talk but always lets them know that he is unwilling to dip into the realm of anybody’s motivation. But I’ve come to recognize his ‘tell’. When someone begins to articulate their deepest suspicions about Barack Hussein Obama, he always makes that peculiar laugh of his that tells me that he basically agrees with the caller.

I now understand that that Kudlow knows precisely what’s going on and why. He maintains his shtick to keep from getting lumped in with the political shock-jocks. Given our present circumstances, it’s probably also a good idea to remain within the good graces of the FCC.

It’s a good bet that new rules for over-air broadcasting are in the offing. At first only the most forthright critics of the government will be directly affected. Kudlow, like anyone smart enough to read the writing on the proverbial wall, is simply making sure that he survives the first wave.

Morphic Resonance

I am continually amazed that after posting the day’s offering on this blog, I often hear virtually the same thing spoken or written by someone else later that day or the day after. This morning, for instance, I wrote about the possible linkage between the demise of ‘global warming’ speculation and the Gulf oil spill. This afternoon, substitute host for the Rush Limbaugh Show, Mark Belling, made the very same point. It’s happens time and time again. I really don’t believe that someone is out there using my stuff. The only credible answer then has to lie in what Rupert Sheldrake refers to as ‘morphic resonance’: a growing number of people all reaching the same conclusions.

So, let’s stipulate that ‘morphic resonance’ in one form or another exists. I, of course, feel gratified by the sense of being ‘plugged in’. Why is it then that liberals don’t get it? Answer: blocking. Liberals are somehow able to block, for whatever reason, the feedback mechanism between the morphic field (within which the awareness of the species gestates) and themselves.

I pretty much know where we’re headed. I’ve stated it outright or alluded to it in nearly every post. What eludes me (and presumably others as well) is the way out. How do we save ourselves? is the question that now preoccupies me. I’ve made some plans which involve leaving the U.S. for good. But that doesn’t solve it for my children. I’m still hoping that this new generation can come up with some answers to get us out of the mess my generation has left them with. I just don’t see it.

Meg Whitman says she ‘see(s) it every day’. Her answer is to put Californians back to work. Duh! If someone had said this even two years ago, I would have believed it’s as simple as that. In the meantime, we’ve become so terribly entrenched in our debt obligations, a magic wand of hopeful words simply won’t do it anymore. I found it interesting that the clip began with a view of San Francisco, Mecca of liberalism in America. It ended with a shot of Death Valley. Coincidence? (…like the steady stream of offensive advertising on conservative talk radio?)