Reply to MD Eastern Shore: Four And Twenty Blackbirds

MD - You make a great point! Look, either there is coincidence or there’s not. If not, then nothing could possibly exist. So, obviously there must be a guiding hand behind everything. As far as people who just love to claim credit for nearly everything are concerned, their credit generally extends to no more than simply being there.

Same with people who do things that they may wish to distance themselves from. Therefore, the most plausible excuse is to say, “I wasn’t there.”

But we were all there! We elected Obama. We never bothered to find out who he was and what he was trying to do. All that has happened to date since Obama took office is to a large extent - not only his, but - our fault. There are no coincidences.

While we may heap either praise or blame on any specific individual (or individuals) for ‘being there’ we cannot remove ourselves from the equation. As far as all that’s happened since Obama’s been in office - none of it good for America - I, at this point, would not put anything past our leadership. There have been oil spills, rising unemployment, rising fuel and food prices, rolling blackouts, constitutional crisis, stolen elections, housing slumps, terrorist threats, Wikileaks, revolutions, and the head honcho of China even flipped us the bird to boot; and Obama was there the whole time, and so were we. And I don’t see things getting any better. If you ask me, the whole bunch of them should be thrown in jail for one thing or another.

Wikileaks was said to be a factor in the Egyptian revolution and in various other diplomatic unpleasantness (mostly involving us), yet I never heard the president say much about it. An executive of Google was said to have played a role in getting the people of Egypt all riled up. And I see Google itself closely tied in with this administration. And it smacks very much of incest. Wall Street is said to be thriving; and, there too, I see a connection - while my 401K remains on life support. Now they’re thinking of moving Wall Street lock, stock, and barrel over to Germany.

In other words, I’m growing extremely suspicious of the way the president is handling things. Even though we’re out here too, asking questions; we seem to have been shunted aside and denied a fair hearing.

To me it’s criminal what has happened to our nation. Assange is not the only one at fault here. To focus on him alone is missing the point. There are lot of hands involved in the making of this pie. And we, as it turns out, happen to be the blackbirds.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Pay-Off

I’m not surprised that the administration has decided to bail out European banks. Europe still sees Obama as the bright, young articulate; noble descendant of slaves who has come (back) to exact his revenge. They don’t yet see him as the radical bomb thrower - too lazy to do his homework - most of us have now come to know.

European bankers are not stupid. They know exactly that the whole financial mess started in the U.S. with the housing crisis; which in turn affected bank balance sheets; which then caused bankers to spread the damage around by disseminating toxic IOU’s all over the world - including Europe - hoping that no one would notice.

European bankers are not lapdogs of the American government. They are free to speak out and expose certain truths, especially in regard to who might have been involved in the initial fraud; and they could name the names of the corrupt institutions (Fannie and Freddie) and politicians (Frank and Dodd among many others) who perpetuated and protected these schemes to their own advantage. These have not gone away and crawled under rocks in abject shame. They are still with us and, in many instances, still formulating policies that rob the American worker of the fruit of his labors - all, in name of some half-baked anti-capitalist notion of ‘social justice‘.

Our paying off the Europeans amounts to a tacit admission that none of it has worked as advertised; that we were essentially at fault for having promoted such claptrap under questionable guise. We are paying them off to buy their continued silence and thus save the skins of our guilty. If they (European bankers) were to talk, the revelations would put even Wikileaks to shame.

The global financial meltdown (which we started) can no longer be blamed on capitalism alone. Socialist and communist countries have not been immune. I am not one to blame America at the drop of a hat, but this has been our fault from the start. If we are to apologize for anything, this is it; if we are on the hook for reparations, this is it. If we should not be able to afford the cost of making amends, or if there is a political price to pay, so be it. What we have done to get this slime ball rolling is criminal - entirely worthy of Interpol investigation and subsequent World Court proceeding - and the Europeans are well aware of it. And we know that they know.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Where Are the Republicans?

Good news indeed! But, unfortunately, the bad news overwhelms it. America is now effectively out of the oil business. Without oil, America’s economic engine grinds to a halt - like a car that will coast for a while after it’s run out of gas.

It doesn’t seem like anything can stop this president. He will soon sign legislation that effectively transfers Wall Street from New York to Washington; this, without having read even a single line of it’s 2000+ pages (just like every Senator and Congressman who voted). He will also get comprehensive immigration reform (amnesty) passed and more. Each turn of the screw will be hailed a blessed victory for a president determined to bury America six feet under. (They’re already out shopping for the marble slab.)

Not one Republican member of Congress has spoken out against Dodd-Frank - not that I‘ve heard anyway. (Maybe some have and it was just never reported.) On the contrary, three Republicans voted in support of the effort. That makes it bi-partisan. Everyone can now smile and pat each other on the back, and look forward to going home to brag about all the wondrous things they’ve accomplished for their indentured constituents. Meanwhile, Kagan advances like greased lightning.

Congress has been marginalized to the point where what it says hardly matters anymore. We might as well scrap it and save our money. The same can be said of the Supremes; media and education. Curiously, every dictator who’s ever lived has found it useful to maintain the fiction of justice and representative (rubberstamp) government.

Our Justice Department has gone erratic and rogue. We are left without recourse. We are living under a dictatorship. People are saying it openly now; admitting that the executive branch holds all the reigns. To think otherwise is delusionary.

At this point, what matters most about elections is what Obama thinks about them. If he thinks they’re good for his image, he’ll make an effort to turn the results in his favor. If not, he’ll just ignore the whole thing and pretend it never happened. Either way, it comes out to the same.

Driving the Point Home

Would it not be ironic (in a strictly literary sense) if the SEC were to lose its case against Goldman-Sachs? Its indictment of the financial giant helped to cement the government’s position that Wall Street is corrupt and in desperate need of draconian reform. When the president signs the new financial regulation act, the government will assume sweeping and open-ended powers over America’s financial industry.

This is as big a deal as health care reform was. But, unlike the health care bill, it did not arouse Tea Party ire except in a strictly peripheral sense. It fit neatly into the evil ‘fat cat’ narrative that is currently sweeping the country. The details of the SEC indictment fell well outside the understanding of most casual observers. Unlike universal health care that would affect every citizen on some level, Wall Street is still seen as being quite another planet where ‘obvious’ mischief is casually concocted. Only well-dressed Wall Street insiders ventured to express carefully worded reservations; along with Mayor Bloomberg, of course, who sees city coffers emptying by the hour.

If GS should be acquitted, the damage will already have been done: Our current incompetent and arguably corrupt Federal government will effectively control New York’s Wall Street top to bottom. … and chameleon Bloomberg will continue to wonder where the money went.

The saga of Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut brings us back down to earth. Overtly lying to constituents about one’s resume is disgraceful; getting caught at it is unpardonable. Whether these NYT revelations will hurt Blumenthal in November is still up for debate. My guess is yes (it will hurt). People are less likely to remember a health care grab or the torpedoing of Wall Street (both of which will have been seamlessly woven into the fabric of modern socialist America by then) than a Harvard swim team captain who wasn’t – especially if there is a privately propelled incentive (as there is certain to be) to drive the point home.

Ban Wall Street?

I don’t think it’s a joke. Betting long; betting short; what’s the difference? It’s still betting. Sometimes you win; sometimes you lose. The smartest players among us understand risk management; dollar cost averaging, diversification. Sure bets are only apparent in hindsight. There are too many factors to consider.

The real issue is ‘winning’ – or the flipside: ‘losing’. Should we now ban Wall Street; risk; speculation? Should we now ban profit; value – capitalism in general? Should we ban elections?

The biggest fraud ever perpetuated on the American people has been the election of Barack Hussein Obama. Should we now hold hearings? Or should we just accept that we rolled the dice and lost? Should we let it play out? Or should we huff and puff; and point the finger of blame; scrunch up our faces and hold innocents responsible for having followed a hunch; berate them with foul language and rhetorical flourish?

Have we lost the capacity to appreciate the pratfall? Should we deny ourselves the ecstatic release of guffaw - the freedom to bleed? Or will we allow ourselves to be wheeled around on rubber-tipped, stainless steel gurneys through endlessly gleaming hospital corridors and on to our liberally padded storage cubes?

White Elephants

Yesterday, Barack Hussein Obama went to Wall Street. It reminded me of a king surveying yet another of his now long list of conquests. Though there was some grumbling among the assembled, an overall willingness to play along was clearly evident as everyone there recognized that power had effectively shifted from New York to Washington.

Now the president’s plan for his own re-election bid is slowly beginning to emerge. No doubt November will sweep record numbers of new faces into our legislative branches. These will blush like new brides at having been afforded control over the various fiefdoms the president (along with his Democrat majority) has managed to carve out. In the euphoria of the moment, they will fail to recognize that these are merely “white elephants", designed to keep them busy and off the president’s back. They will fail to reverse the fortunes of the various enterprises that have fallen under government control.

Come 2012, the public will note that nothing has essentially changed; that the country as a whole continues to spiral into the abyss. Only this time, Obama will see to it that Republicans get the blame. …and he will be re-elected overwhelmingly.

Internationally, POTUS clearly has the last word. He is not now and has never been a friend of Israel. I would not be surprised if it were ever found that the Sunday bulletins at Rev. Wright’s church had on occasion featured maps of the Middle East with Israel missing. Aside from the Palestinians, there are many within our own country (and some within Israel itself) who want to see Israel gone. Even those with no strong opinions concerning the matter are being quietly led to accept the notion that if Israel were to disappear, all would be right with the world.

Obama is one of those who harbor an all-consuming hatred of Israel and all she stands for: capitalism, sovereignty, the ability to protect herself – and, above all, religion. These, in leftist and Islamic circles, are considered the four evils of the apocalypse that must be made to heel before peace and salvation can be unleashed upon the world. It is the point at which Islam and communism join forces and strive toward a common Utopia.

With regard to Israel: Rather than wielding the hammer himself, Obama is quite willing let others do it. He will not stand in the way.

Diverting Attention

You, John, and most of your round-table sophisticates, are tilting at shadows without seeing what else is going on. Only, you say it is POTUS who is tilting at shadows. The White House is well aware of the polls. And they applaud them. They are running around the country proclaiming their hatred for the rich - not to improve their poll numbers, but – to cement them. They couldn’t care less about poll numbers – which should tell you, they couldn’t care less about elections. Why?

Barack Hussein Obama is first and foremost (by profession) a street thug and agitator. That is to say, he knows how to agitate; to divide; to provoke. His current focus is on widening the class envy split. Should he succeed in getting his financial regulation legislation passed, he will have won control over yet another chunk of our listing economy. He will have consolidated additional power. Key players on Wall Street may be in on the ruse. It is called ‘crony capitalism’.

Getting back to the November elections: The key question that should be asked is why does POTUS not seem to care about the midterms? Answer: Because Congress has already discredited itself by having been forced to govern against the will of the people. This is not something that new faces can change. If Obama wanted to finesse the point, he would right now be seeking a way to indefinitely postpone the elections altogether, citing national security (or economic crisis, whatever…). But this won’t be necessary this election. But, mark my words; it will become an issue in 2012.

These guys are professionals. Do not sell them short. Right now, the plan is to agitate – to make things worse, to set brother against brother; son against father; poor against the rich; black against white. All these divisions will come into increasingly sharper focus as the economy continues to falter; as jobs continue to be scarce; as communities have to begin cutting into basic services.

As long as we view the Obama presidency as a series of failures to be endlessly evaluated and debated, we miss the import of Obama’s overall intent. To him, each failure accrues to the complete and total re-structuring of our nation which, by the time it’s done, can no longer be called ‘America’.

I’m not saying this is inevitable. We can either allow it or stop it. We allow it by refusing to see what’s actually happening; by refusing to note what has happened already; by blindly chasing after every flare sent aloft for the sole purpose of diverting attention.

Pin the Tail On the Donkey

If I remember correctly, "Hotel California" was an oblique rant against capitalism/consumerism (as most music back then was). As usual, we confused money with class. We watched Bill Clinton, whose presidency made him rich beyond his wildest dreams, utterly disgrace himself. We watched the Bush's - who were rich already - maintain a quiet dignity even under a hail of abuse. We consistently attacked what we thought was the easier target. Today, we have a president who is spending us into oblivion. The Hotel has become the nostalgic, but essentially worthless metaphor in a fire sale. Any house built on a mere body slab has no depth.

Our troubles began when AT&T bought off the old guard with early retirements. Then they rehired diversity by the numbers. It continued when we eased out the old lions on Wall Street with golden parachutes. Then we hired brash young guns and asked them to find new ways of cooking the books. It all worked out so well for us.

It all culminated, of course, with us printing a sign with the word “LEADER" on it and pinning it on the first black man to come down the pike. The only other requirement we were looking for was that he be capable of reading a teleprompter.

Black Swan

In the early 70’s singer-composer Tom Rush had a minor hit with “Circle Game” in which he talks about the cyclical nature of life.

There are essentially two ways of divining the future. Both involve looking to the past. Most fortune-tellers look to the recent past to make pronouncements about tomorrow’s weather or stock market. Others make bold leaps, taking into consideration such things as the ‘Big Bang’ and the rise and fall of empires. Either approach risks not seeing something that may be critical: the sudden and unexpected appearance of a black swan.

Take the stock market for an example. Looking to the recent past will show that markets go up and down. As we are currently clawing back from a low, conventional wisdom would have it that we should be investing now rather than later (when the markets can be expected to be higher). This view, however, assumes that nothing fundamental has changed with the election of Barack Hussein Obama. It assumes that he either will fail to deliver what he has promised; or that he doesn’t really mean what he says. I do not fall into that category.

I continue to believe that something has fundamentally changed. The free market has been discredited and will no longer be given the breathing room that it needs to survive. Instead, we will see market manipulation by men whose judgment may be flawed by emotion and skewed by bias. As competing interest are likely to undercut any given strategy every step of the way, we will see abortive rallies and reversals which will in effect grind the markets into chaotic bits.

We will look back with bitter longing for the predictable cycles of yesteryear as we find ourselves entangled in the chaos of someone’s slipshod vision from which a new world order will be said to have emerged. No yardstick will yet exist to measure the efficacy of this Utopia. It will be what it is, and what somebody tells you it is. You see, you will no longer have a brain with which to judge these things for yourself.