Bring Lawyers, Thugs, and Money

We are bombarded daily with bad news. Alarms are ringing practically everywhere. More and more people are chiming in. What do most Americans do? They shoot the messenger and return to their bocce games in the park. Meanwhile the soothing strains of CNN saturate all public spaces. “Don’t upset yourself. Here, take another pill.”

A woman (or man) in a burka is seen running across the park. She suddenly detonates. “Will you have a look at that?” A cup of fair market coffee now costs $8. “Sure we can afford it - now that we no longer drive, it’s the Ecuadorian Shoe Repair on the corner that’s become the bastard: Imagine, changing $65 to re-sole my $150 shoes!

“It’s now been the third time I’ve had to have it done – now that I no longer drive – and each time the price goes up by 20 bucks. He only accepts cash. I doubt he even pays taxes. But even he’s hit hard times, I think. The last time I was in there, besides selling shoe polish and laces, he also sold cigarettes, at $3 less than the 7/11. He says he has all brands. He keeps them in the back, where he has his workshop.

“I might have gone out and bought a new pair, but none of the new shoes fit anymore – not in my price range anyway. So, I’m stuck.”

Stuck indeed! We bought Obama and now have to wait at least another four years for a chance to put him back on the shelf. Not that a Republican would have been much better. Republicans have for far too long settled for the consolation prize. They haven’t really done much by way of opposition.

We should have figured it out when we found Congressman William J. Jefferson co-opting military resources in the aftermath of Katrina to bring him to his house in New Orleans, so he could check on money he kept in his freezer. It took a natural disaster to bring Jefferson’s crime to light. Just imagine all the disasters it would take to flush out all the other Washington criminals. There wouldn’t be a tree left standing on this sad continent.

Why would anybody in their rational mind spend millions – now billions – to get themselves elected to any public office? Think about it! And why does the cost just keep going up and up? It’s got to be for a chance at the public trough.

Now look at Wisconsin. They’re not as slick as those in DC, but the nature of the game is the same. Never say die. Once you’re in, you’re in.

They hold an election and elect a governor. They give him a mandate. As soon as he tries to do anything, the opposition leaves the state and hides. The governor hangs tough. Good for him. He is a man with old-fashioned principles. Maybe he doesn’t quite understand how things are done. But we’re not yet finished. Bring in lawyers, thugs and money from outside. Then go the judicial route. They hoped to overturn the will of the people by voting in a liberal judge. But they screw this up as well - but only barely. Now they orchestrate recall elections for every legislator who might have voted the ‘wrong’ way. Eventually attrition prevails and they’ll get their way. And even the brightest among us dissolve into laughter or fold like cheap cameras, hoping to make it home in time for one more night of undisturbed sleep.

Such is the face of representative governance in America today.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Soros: The Dog That Doesn't Bark

Having had the privilege of witnessing 62 springs in this our glorious northern hemisphere – and, yes, I have already applied to receive Social Security – I have come to the conclusion that there must be a hidden hand directing all this – sorry Lou. How else would one explain the precise timing, the sheer beauty of emerging flora from the tiny snowdrop to the greening of the mighty oak; the return of the Robins and Cardinals; the sap rising in the old Maples that stand guard around the house? It cannot be an accident.

At the same time, it is clear to me that with all this glorious precision surrounding us, there must also be an author behind the political mess we find ourselves in. It can’t just be put down to neglect. If it were due to pure absence, we would hardly take note; we would live like the animals, in perfect harmony with our environment and with each other. We would not feel compelled to envision a God to either worship or deny. No, absence cannot explain the mess that Washington has created.

To put wars, systemic corruption and hatred down to chance is as silly as saying that existence has no father. My obsession with finding the hidden hand that’s guiding our nation to ruin is based on the belief that someone must be held accountable. It’s obviously not Obama. He’s much too visible – a useful idiot. In this case, it must be the dog who doesn’t bark; the dog whose existence is easy to deny, as we find it easy to deny God.

My candidate is George Soros who seems to have his paws into practically everything that stinks. He appears to be a man of many personal hatreds. He has all the money in the world. He can shake up dictatorships as well as kingdoms. Democracies are harder to pry loose from their moorings; this just goes to show you how far we’ve fallen already.

Take Wisconsin, for example. Wisconsin elects a governor with the mandate to get its house in order. He tries to do so amid much vocal opposition, much of it imported from outside the state. Today there is an electoral contest for a seat on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court which has up till now held a narrow conservative majority. Today’s election could shift the balance in favor of the liberals. If this were to happen, all the governor’s achievements will likely be overturned.

Tonight, this election is too close to call. Only a couple hundred votes separate the candidates. It is claimed that a lot of union money has poured into the state to defeat the conservative incumbant. Not mentioned in most reporting is that in a survey of attorneys conducted by the Milwaukee Bar Association in February 2011, Prosser, the conservative, received 296 "qualified" votes compared to 112 for Kloppenburg, Prosser’s liberal opponent. In addition, in Wisconsin’s non-partisan Supreme Court Primary, Prosser received 55% of the vote compared to Kloppenburg’s 25%.

This election should not be close. Somebody is pulling strings. If Kloppenburg wins, elections no longer have any meaning in this country.

I do not blame the Dems; their job is to win. The same is true of Republicans. Politicians will do what politicians do. I hold the press responsible. They know full well what’s going on. Yet their coverage overwhelmingly favors Democrats in all things. By it, they tilt the playing field. And who controls the press? Who has all the money in the world to grease the skids with carrot juice and sticks? Why it’s lefty George Soros, of course.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Gettysburg (redux)

Maybe we should exorcise the words ‘wrong’ and ‘right’ from our dictionaries. When pundits say that Obama, Kaddafi, Ahmadinejad, Mugabe, Chavez (or whoever) are on the ‘wrong’ side of history while Scott Walker, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck proclaim themselves to be on the ‘right’ side, it betrays a bias. There are only sides. ‘Wrong’ or ‘right’ are relative to the side one happens to be on. Let us then just say, “There is their side and there is our side.”

We have now established that there are indeed sides. Provided we feel strongly enough to identify our preference, we must then support our side with all we’ve got.

We’re in the midst of a global battle we must win. We can no longer be bystanders because the outcome of this battle will determine our future and the future of our children. It has become pointless to argue about ‘wrong’ and ‘right’. Each side thinks it’s right and that the others are ‘wrong’.

Similarly, ‘left’ and ‘right’ on the political scale has become solely diversion and used by both sides to confuse and obfuscate. You either believe that America has been ‘wrong’ throughout its history or you don’t. You either want to see it torn down, destroyed, to let the phoenix rise from its ashes; or you want to preserve what has already been built.

There is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer. All that remains for us is to fight impeccably for whichever side we choose.

The winner of this battle will have the right to carry the banner of America. It will be either a ‘new and improved’ America or it will be America as it once was.

After the war has been settled, someone from the winning side will echo some version of President Abraham Lincoln’s stirring ‘Gettysburg Address’ in addressing the nation. It may not be at a cemetery, for (I should hope) we no longer fight our internal wars with guns and bullets. But we will have fought nevertheless. And the spoils will have gone to the victor.
----------------------------------------------------------
On the afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1863, at the dedication of the ’Soldiers’ National Cemetery’ in Gettysburg, PA, four and a half months after the Union armies defeated those of the Confederacy at Gettysburg, President Lincoln delivered what has come to be known as ‘The Gettysburg Address‘:

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

“But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Pray to God it will be someone from our side.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Governor Scott Walker: Not Intimidated

Wisconsin is the clearest indication yet of a game that has been unfolding for some time. The object of the game is to win. Thank God, in Scott Walker we have a governor who is intent on winning this battle! He seems not to be about kicking the can down the road; he is not easily intimidated; and he appears to remain focused on the job at hand despite threats and ungainly public displays (by vocal minorities).

This drama is bound to repeat itself in other state capitols as well. It’s good that this happened first in Wisconsin where, I predict, Walker will win in the end.

The game pits public service unions against taxpayers. Any reasonable observer must know that, in our system, the taxpayer cannot simply be shunted aside. States, unlike the federal government, cannot print money to gloss over fiscal carelessness. The good health of the private sector taxpayer remains essential to the good fiscal health of the state. Inequities must be addressed.

Democrats, their union supporters and welfare clients, continue to be ill informed about basic economic principles. They seem equally ill informed about the job they were hired to do. Teachers, for instance, are supposed to teach our children. I suspect that most are trying to make an honest go of it, but are constantly undermined by a bureaucracy whose only aim in life is to fleece the public, protect its turf, and promote agendas. In essence, you have the tail wagging the dog. Despite all the money spent, Wisconsin’s record of achievement in public education remains far from exemplary.

Democrats, too, seem uninformed about the basics of the democratic process. As such, elections mean nothing to them. They are quite willing to block any legitimate legislative process by outlandish tricks. We’ve seen the same on the federal level.

It struck me today that I’m not in the habit of counting my change before sticking it in my pocket. I realized that’s because it never made much difference to me. Now I wonder how many times I’ve been cheated; how much money I might have thrown away in this fashion over the course of a lifetime? Had I ever had to budget carefully (as most do), I might not have been so flippant.

Our governments have been doing the same. They’ve played fast and loose with our money for years. Now, suddenly, the wolf is at the door. A million here, a million there - it all adds up when you no longer have a million.

Wisconsin represents an important milestone in the fight to return to some semblance of fiscal sanity. There’s a minority among us who do not agree that this has now become important. They may be ignorant; or, they might well believe themselves to be operating under a system that has not yet been adequately explained. A third possibility is that they are deliberately trying to collapse our existing system and create chaos.

No matter who ultimately wins in Wisconsin, at least one thing will be clear: the players on both sides have had to show their faces. POTUS has demonstrated a definite preference. Might this not also explain our current approach to foreign policy?

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/