The Pool Empties

(The following can be read in conjunction with 'On A Silver Platter'.)

It was remarkable to see: a foreign head of state giving our president a public schooling yesterday. Some were outraged that this could even happen. Others were jubilant. All felt somewhat uncomfortable.

For far too long Obama has been getting away with it, just saying things for the mere sake of talking without anything to back it up. And we were expected to become all wobbly and swoon at the mere strains of ‘Hail to the Chief' marking his entrance. We’d grown tired of waiting for the oft promised manna from heaven while most of the time it’s been raining stones.

Yesterday, someone finally took it upon himself to stand up to the charade. It’s not that Obama was fooling anybody anymore. All the other world leaders noticed the utter lack of substance in the man. But they just smiled and discretely turned away, pretending to blow their noses while laughing out loud. “Be careful, we’ve got a nut case here,” they said to each other.

Israel couldn’t take it so lightly. Its very existence depends upon a viable partnership between our two nations – now more than ever, as the Middle East is preparing to rise up against it. It cannot continue to play childish games that have no basis in reality.

In what was billed as a major foreign policy statement last week at the State Department, the president reiterated America’s long-standing position toward Israel. “Our commitment to Israel’s security is unshakeable,” he said. Three paragraphs later, he went on, “…and Israel must be able to defend itself – by itself – against any threat.” What the hell does that mean? - that we now will or won’t support Israel if she were to be attacked?

It’s the same with our economy. On one hand, Obama says that private enterprise is expected to pull our nation back from the fiscal brink. On the other, he is singularly responsible for placing roadblocks in the path of every private enterprise and condemning the very notion of capitalism at every turn.

No wonder everyone is left scratching their heads by this American Shiva’s eternal skull dance. And we do know that confusion and uncertainty keeps everything from moving forward.

Desperate to land on some green twig, he’s got us grasping at straws. We pick and choose from his torrent of words to find those that would signal a positive turn, ignoring all others. It’s impossible for us to believe that our very own leader does not have a plan – easy to do as we hear him talking out of both sides of his mouth. He exhorts industry to hire. Industry is reluctant. They don’t just hire to pad payrolls. They expect to see results, even as planning has become impossible in this fog. Consequently, they’re not hiring. They’ll wait until the air clears at least enough to discern some direction.

Netanyahu did us a favor yesterday. He introduced some urgency into the mix. Will our president now feel compelled to sharpen his pencils? Or will he harden his stance toward an ally who has cared enough to expose this administration's treading water while the pool empties.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Sick of Hearing Gibberish

There's something going on. Last week it was the moon being too close to the earth. This week it's Saturn. In Iran they're predicting the Madhi's return within months if not weeks. NASA is out watching for meteorites and space junk converging on earth. Batchelor is announcing the meltdown of Japan. Republicans are predicting financial collapse in the U.S. In New York they’re finding the remains of dead prostitutes along a remote beach road on Long Island. Can a major DOH announcement be far behind?

We've heard virtually all of this before and yet we’re all still here. Y2K never materialized, neither did swine or bird flu ravage the planet as predicted. This just goes to show, that every run of excess carries with it its own natural antidote; something working to keep things in check. Sometimes it's as brutal as starvation, war, and pestilence.

We're not quite there yet, but excess is invariably programmed to self-correct. Man can only stand by and watch excesses wax and wane. Often excess is met head on with excess and the two cancel each other out.

The tea parties, for example, arose out of excess by government. Liberalism arose from an excess of conservatism. Now we’re moving the other way. Any move has chaos as for a brother. Inertia is death. The stock market moves up and down, but it moves.

Where there is movement there is life. Where there is life there is death. Is there a balance?

Most assuredly so: We are always in balance. Sometimes it’s weighted to the left; sometimes to the right, but balanced nonetheless.

Shiva dancing in the bone yard: Someone always dances. Someone always provides the inert platform for the performance. Kaddafi is performing, and will do so until his legs are cut out from under him. Then, it will be Osama's turn to dance for a while.

Are we dancing? Individually (perhaps), yes. Some of us are. As a group, though, we've slunk out of the ballroom; wallflowers peeling away from the wall; sick of hearing gibberish.

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/

Hot-Button Issues

This president does not retreat. He dances: Two steps forward, one step back. What are we going to say if come January the Bush tax cut are not extended; if benefits run out for the unemployed? You got it! It’s the Republican’s fault. They wouldn’t play ball.

Everybody agrees, if nothing happens, it would be a disaster for the economy. So, according to Obama, nothing should happen. He doesn’t want the economy to improve. Neither can he say so directly. Therefore he must offer the fig leaf of impossible compromise. This is his policy. If the Republicans can be tagged with failure, it’s a bonus for the president.

I predict nothing will happen beyond what’s already been set in motion. The Bush tax cuts will expire, as will unemployment benefits. Republicans will be blamed along with the Dems who’ve gone over to the other side. Effectively, this will also demonstrate the futility of elections and the impotence of Congress. This, in marked contrast to the power of the presidency.

On the bright side: The longer Congress wrangles with the aforementioned issues, the less time it will have to finger other hot-buttons - all of which are already set to trip the wrong way. For the next session of Congress, the die has already been cast, the template set. Congress will be unable to stem the red tide. Congress will be blamed for any (deliberate) policy failure (sic). The people’s wrath will be directed primarily at Republicans in Congress. Only POTUS will appear to be acting in the people’s best interest (or not) - by fiat.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Obama, The Destroyer

Let’s stipulate that a general collapse of the United States would plunge the entire world into unfathomable chaos; that no nation would be spared from the resulting fallout.

I have since read various assessments of Barack Hussein Obama’s recent high-profile globetrotting and it’s pretty much unanimous: It was an unmitigated disaster for the U. S. Obama failed to deliver in all he set out to accomplish, leaving the general impression that Obama is far from being a prime-time player on the world stage.

The only bright spot was India where he was warmly received and his rhetoric was much applauded and appreciated. But even in India, on reflection, it is now acknowledged that his words were empty. Still, the major media in the U.S. have seized on Obama’s India visit and proclaimed it as a huge success, even going so far as Newsweek depicting the president as a god, specifically Shiva, juggling the demands of his office competently and with an abundance of good cheer within a halo of fire. (It is likely that Newsweek failed to grasp the irony of choosing Shiva as representing the American president for, within the holy Hindu trinity, Shiva is known as The Destroyer.)

We’ve already witnessed the world tearing at its seams since Obama’s election - nations jockeying for position in the absence of traditional restraints. We’ve watched the divides within our own nation becoming more and more pronounced. We’ve watched our economy going down the drain and no one stepping forward to stop the hemorrhaging.

We’re not the only ones watching. China is watching as well. They see us as rogue and unpredictable – not North Korea, which is totally under its control.

China may be sending us a message. By repeatedly exposing Obama’s reticence to act globally, his child-like impetuousness at home (playing fast and loose with the economy), they are trying to tell us that we better get our act together before it all falls apart.

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.

Vision Fails

Karzai calls for peace. But it’s not his call to make. Suing for peace is a call for surrender. Karzai is not a leader. Just like the American president, he stands at the mercy of events. War is a constant condition. From birth we learn to fight. We fight for our place at the trough; we fight for attention; we fight for a mate; we fight for resources, for market share; we fight for sympathy. The Left has it right: Competition, the essence of capitalism, produces inequity: For someone to win, somebody must lose. The difference is that on the parlor game battlefield of capitalism, the same players can begin another round right after one side declares checkmate.

Afghanistan is not so advanced. Whereas we use the abstraction of a ‘ball’ in all our various national pastimes, Buzkashi (the Afghan national sport) still uses the headless carcass of a calf or goat to define the action. They determine victory by the measure of blood spilled. And they will not stop until we have either gone or bled dry. And even then it’s unlikely to end as the terms of surrender will never be agreed to by all.

Wars are the milestones of human history. Wars mark beginnings. They also signal ends. As such, they chart our progress from one upheaval to the next. On a concept circle, war and peace are represented by a single point; they are two sides of the same coin. War is not the opposite of peace just as peace is not the opposite of war. Each is merely the (temporary) absence of the other. That is why war and peace can exist simultaneously – in different places; at different times; and within separate chambers of the human heart - each failing to appreciate the other in what essentially amounts to a charade of willful delusion.

It might even be said that peace is a precondition for war; that peace itself foments the poisons that eventually force men into battle; that the simmering chaos underlying outward tranquility allows for inequities to build unseen, until these then must topple under their own weight. The laws of survival during war are far less forgiving, after all.

Some have sought to break the cycle of history by (the) diplomacy (of delay) or by outright appeasement. This has only lead to even greater disasters as evidenced by past horrors. Success or failure in diplomacy eludes objective measurement (such as body counts) and can be manufactured by effective propaganda campaigns. The latest effort centers on a strategy termed containment; allowing conflicts to fester in the hope that they will simply go away. Clearly, so much discontent is currently being stoked the world over – such dearth of leadership; so many hearts aflame - it’s hard to know exactly where the firebreaks we’ve attempted to enforce will be breached first.

In human history one third is given over to war, while two thirds is given to peace (or the absence of war). War continues to be the domain of the young; the virile; the idealists. It is a tool meant to be grasped by those with the courage to pursue (or protect) a vision. Once one’s own vision has failed, the challenge is never far. One must either fight blind or yield. In the Hindu trinity, war is represented by Shiva (the destroyer) who is by far the most popular in the trinity of Hindu gods.

War is a wound that never heals. We are forever tempted to scratch it open for the fascination of watching it bleed. Even in peace, the memory of past wars continues to haunt us. Even in peace, the prospect of the next war is just over the horizon. That’s why we urge our populations to support armies that stand idle two-thirds of the time.