Checkmate!

It has since come to my attention that Mr. Strauss-Kahn was the front-runner socialist candidate to oppose France’s Sarkozy. It occurs that socialists – like moderate Republicans - have a difficult time of it these days. On one hand, they are still wedded to the notion that money (paper) equals power. On the other, they are tasked with maintaining this illusion even as the power of money seems in decline. They find themselves between a rock and a hard place, attempting to satisfy two opposing currents: conservatives, who tend to be supply-siders, clamoring to save the system by next-to-impossible cuts in government spending; and Communists/Islamists, demanding that we jettison traditional economic theory altogether.

Between saving the system and jettisoning it is where socialists make their home. They represent the moderates – the wavering and undecided - in a war that one side or the other is destined to lose. Either way, socialists are already road kill. If the incident making headlines this morning on the front pages of virtually every daily [save the (Hometown) Coffee News] has been engineered, it might have been done by either side.

Socialists are especially vulnerable because of their inability to commit. Academe is full of them and so is the media. If there should come a conflagration, socialists will be the first to feel it. They will be targeted by both sides. They will be forced to proclaim their allegiance. To them, that will be akin to stripping naked. Some will refuse to do it.

I’d like to think that an actual shooting war can still be avoided; that we will fight it out on a political and economic level. If this be the case, Bush Derangement Syndrome was the prelude. Virtually everybody in America and around the world fell for it and drunkenly played along. It brought us Obama. Now that we’re well into the first movement, the stakes are already higher.

Winning this war will not depend on who we are against. It will depend on whom we are for. We have arrived at the heart of the matter. People are attacking us throughout the world. Why? Because we – America – are perceived as being supportive of Israel. All over the world, Israel has become the pariah of our time. Even many of us have begun to waver. It has become chic to support revolution in the Middle East and promote the idea of a Palestinian (terror) state on Israel’s doorstep. We do not realize that by supporting these things, we chip away at Israel’s ability to defend itself. We can no longer afford to laugh when Israel is attacked or made fun of the way we stood back and allowed it to happen to Bush.

No use crying over spilt milk. We’ve already lost too many battles. Our educational system is in ruins; our Constitution barely exists; our government barely functions; our economy limps along. The next battle will be fought over Israel. The final phase started with the demonization of Bush to which we all happily acquiesced. After Israel has fallen, the next and final target will be America.

The last shoe to drop before America falls is Israel. And almost nobody talks about it. George Mitchell has quit. Hillary is off in Pakistan. Our president plays golf.

If we commit now to standing by Israel in its hour of need, we still have a chance of saving America. It’s not going down in the way one may think. The last battle – as all the others - will be won by attrition. It is my contention that if Israel falls, it will rip the soul out of our nation and we won’t be inclined to raise even a finger in our own defense.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

A Jumble of Nine

It has become easy to connect the dots in the Middle East. We already see the outlines of the end game. Michael Vlahos is right when he says that underlying it all “is a search for dignity”. I did not hear the show but, I assume, he did not go so far as define ‘dignity’ as seen from the Islamic perspective.

At the same time, we refuse to connect the dots here at home. Most conservative pundits and political hopefuls openly state that our nation cannot survive another six years with Obama at the helm. What they really mean to say is ‘two’ (years). Most do not yet connect the chaos in the Middle East with the chaos in Wisconsin and elsewhere. Yet, clearly, the demonstrators themselves have made the connection. Their talk and signage shows that they are keenly aware of what’s happening in the Middle East and are in solidarity with it.

Last week marks the first time a major, nationally known politician raised the ‘I’ word in an interview with Newsmax TV. He did it in a sort of circumspect way, suggesting if President Sarah Palin had done what Obama did (re: DOMA), there would be immediate calls for her impeachment. Then, immediately backing off, he went on to say that, in Obama’s case, calls for impeachment are not warranted.

So, which is it Newt? Is it the old sock-in-the-mouth double standard again? With talk like that Newt cuts his own throat. And DOMA is not the only issue on which Obama finds himself on thin ice - constitutionally speaking. And that’s not even the sum of it. Look at where we are today domestically as well as internationally. Are we really better off now than when Bush left office? Or is the calliope crashing as we watch? Do we have a Plan B, or C, or D…? Or has what we are seeing been Plan A all along?

Come on Newt! You can do better than that. Say it like it is and then stick to it come hell or high water. Show some spine!

Kudos for getting the word out there, anyway. Hopefully, it’ll get the ball rolling (even though we all know that it won’t be you to roll that ball).

Here’s a prediction: The first one who owns the ball and takes charge of it wins. If no one is willing to do this much, then we’re even worse off than I thought we were.

How many glossed-over low blows will it take before we lose all appreciation of four corners (as in a ring)? How long before the number ’8’ becomes just another meaningless cipher among a jumble of nine?

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/

A Condo For Hillary (in Brasilia)

The difference between Republicans and conservatives is that conservatives know that present policies will not bring the economy back. As present policies are in control, the jobs picture will not improve. What’s left, is to determine who gets the blame.

POTUS will blame Republicans for obstructing. Republicans will blame POTUS and Democrats for policies already in place. Stalemate, so far. Enter the press. This tips the balance in favor of the Dems.

I’m telling you, Obama has it sewed up unless we get serious; meaning, starting immediately with impeachment proceedings.

Bolton is my guy as well. He is smart, serious and articulate. He knows his stuff. He is a patriot. He is practical. He is not a politician. He’s everything that I would want an American leader to be. As such, he is unelectable. America no longer elects competent leaders. America elects only show horses. The ideologues among us know this.

Where would you say Hillary Clinton is right now as we speak? Nobody knows. But I know. She’s down in Brazil, hobnobbing with the likes of Hugo Chavez and Dilma Rousseff, a Chavez client. Rousseff is taking office today. Hillary is there to make a down payment on a condo in Brasilia just in case things don’t work out here.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Vamshavriksha

We may never know if Rahm was pushed or if he is fleeing. Not only Seib, but the MSM in general have portrayed the event as bitter-sweet. Unlike departures from the Bush White House - which were generally viewed as evidence of confusion and abject failure - Rahm’s leaving is being hailed as fresh and exciting opportunities for both Rahm and Obama.

It has become a mark of supreme enlightenment to couch every political criticism (especially on our side) in phrases such as “both Republicans and Democrats…” or, now, more to the point, “past (Republican) presidents as well”. By doing so, we are hoping to triangulate and place ourselves above the fray. This can only be a winning strategy if our side has the advantage. It is unclear at the moment just who holds the advantage. Certainly, as far as midterms are concerned, Republicans can be expected to reap huge numerical gains in Congress. But take elections out of the equation and one finds that the same conditions that brought Obama to power in 2008 still exist today. The country is deeply divided along ideological lines.

When scientists scratch the earth in remote regions of our planet and unearth the bones of our ancestors, they then try to connect the dots between what they have discovered thus far and what they continue to find. As such, they are hoping to construct a lineage that would explain from whence we arrived at this point in time.

When all they would really need to do is to study in minute detail the developing fetus. Therein lie all the clues to every stage of development the human species has undergone to date, from single-cell organisms, through our reptilian stage, all the way up to what we are today. Every human being precisely replicates every single stage of his (or her) development since the beginnings of time while gestating in his (or her) mother’s womb.

It’s the same with ideas. All we have to do is ask ourselves why we believe in what we believe - do it doggedly and systematically - and we would find that we have come to accept certain assumptions and hold them as truth. At some point we branched out into two distinct beings: liberals and conservatives. Liberals have further (d)evolved into the Left of the political spectrum; conservatives into the Right. By failing to ask what has created this divide, we are obscuring the origins of what has made us so different.

We no longer question the assumptions that support our position. We simply regurgitate what we are told that most closely approximates our natural leaning.

Once the tree branches, it never grows together again unless the branches are cut and are heaped together for the purpose of a kindling. Then fire consumes them both equally.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Destiny Demands a Decision

In some ways Paul Ryan and pols of any persuasion are like Obama: ideologues. They present themselves as right or left cut-outs and hope to sell it to a multifaceted public. The public resists. It understands the ruse. They ask, "Why should anyone reduce the rich and complex organism of himself (or group) to a formula so simple, so rudimentary, so primitive?

"And if ever the suspicion of his manifold persona should dawn on him… and break through his illusion of the single ideology he espouses, and perceive that every individual self is made up of a bundle of selves and interests, he has only to say so and at once the media puts him to pillory, calls science to aid, establishes the efficacy of padded cells, seeking to protect humanity from the necessity of hearing the truth. Why then waste words on proclamations, plans, pledges, and roadmaps that every thinking man accepts as self-evident, that America totters on the edge of existential threat, when a mere utterance of it is a breach of taste?”

What was true in Hermann Hesse’s day (in italics) is certainly true now. Perhaps even more so. For far too long we have used a shorthand for governance - Republican and Democrat; conservative and liberal; etc - while glossing over the fact that we were spinning the mesh of our web in an increasingly tighter and suffocating weave.

Now we have arrived, at a particularly virulent form of socialism, one that seeks to quash every dare of liberty and we ask ourselves, How has this happened? We were more than willing to entertain strange, even alien, notions. But we did so primarily out of curatorial interest, to be able to wag our fingers and proclaim ourselves better. American exceptionalism was ingrained in us. We never thought there was ever the possibility of letting it slipping away.

Now we find ourselves engaged in a great struggle. It is composed of a myriad of smaller struggles and each skirmish we win produces yet another head - or three. Are we willing to invest everything, or will we accept something as insipid as compromise. It seems to me we’ve been compromising all along. It’s even gone beyond face-saving. We’re into the real stuff now. Destiny demands a decision.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Shattered Windows

Actually Obama, a cold, heartless ruler, came along just at the right time, to remind us of just how bad it can be while our government is still functioning in a way as to give us some leverage. In a way, we can still say he’s inept. He has revealed his stripes (or spots) all too readily. He and his entourage of Democrats (I use the term loosely) will be defeated at the polls - eventually.

What is still unclear is our own capacity to learn - to remember - as to not fall for the twin ploy of promises that no one can keep, and lies. In an opinion column in today’s WSJ entitled “Why Obama Is Still the Favorite in 2012”, Michael Medved makes the case that the whole thing hinges on the Hispanic vote. No matter how desperate conditions in our country get, will Hispanics, Blacks and Asians still insist on voting race to the exclusion of all other (more weighty) factors? Clearly Democrats think so. That’s why a recent comment by Harry Reid, ('I don't know how ANYONE of Hispanic heritage could be Republican'…) raised such eyebrows - especially in conservative circles.

Whites themselves are divided. Though there is some indication the white liberals are having second thoughts, the rest apparently are content to tough it out. A steady stream of dismal economic data will not convince them. The popular media will continue to drive the narrative: blame Bush, Republicans, conservatism; etc. As Kenneth Stevens so artfully explains in post after post, race is fast becoming the driving force behind everything. Perhaps it already has.

We still have a chance to turn it around, but the window is closing. The re-election of Barack Hussein Obama in 2012 would shatter the window and replace it with bars.

Too Many Good People Are Getting Hurt

Current popular lore has it that Democrats, Leftists and liberals are nurturing and caring, always looking to curb human excesses, exploitation, and the oppression (by industry) of their adoring masses. On the other hand, Republicans and conservatives are seen as predatory, smart, solitary, and dangerously self-reliant. In truth, it’s not quite as simple as all that. Within each category there exist both leaders and followers. The leaders on either side have actually more in common than what both have in common with each of their assumed disparate flock. Simply put, it all boils down to leaders and followers, ideology representing the pigskin for each team to advance for the pleasure of the delirious, cheering crowd in the stands.

All this would be very nice if after the game we could just go home, put our feet up in front of the telly while downing a couple of brews. The problem arises when the deadly serious, highly motivated men on the field demand their share of the take way beyond the fair value of the ticket price - win or lose - from the good folk who consent to watching the game.

The inflated egos of the players demands that their followers tow the party line and wear the team colors both on and off the field. They see to it that anyone refusing to go along be stripped of their innate right to belong.

Thus ideology is assigned - Democrat or Republican - while the game rages on in Washington. Independents are courted ceaselessly by both sides. It is beyond either side to imagine that someone would actually opt to choose ‘neither of the above’. Yet, as it becomes increasingly obvious that the game is fixed, ‘neither of the above’ increasingly becomes the appropriate choice.

It has become virtually impossible to ignore the game. Our last election made it obvious that elections set the tone. While it remains a matter of dispute just what the song should sound like, most of us have come to regret our choice. Naturally, we will choose a different tune the next time around - but we will do so with reservations. After all, we’d already tried the other one that, in the fog of time, now seems to have been better than what we have now; but which nevertheless fails to fully explain how we’ve managed to get here so fast. Clearly, Republicans are licking their chops in anticipation of a major blowout favoring them.

This in itself is worrying. Who among us expects Republicans to do much to turn things around? Who among us does not suspect that it’s all just a set-up for Obama’s second term?

Liberal leaders are just as crafty and resourceful as their conservative counterparts. They could match wits with each other any time of day. Do not put it beyond them to collude with each other behind the scenes trying to pull off a ‘good cop/bad cop’ routine.

Right now we’ve just finished witnessing a classic case of crony capitalism. The government indicts a major investment firm to much fanfare while promising them untold billions (just out of earshot). The investment house takes it lying down. Meanwhile, the government passes finreg, largely on the strength of said indictment. The very next day the case is resolved with a ceremonial slap on the wrist. Could anything be more obvious?

It’s not ideology; it’s become outright theft. And we’re the one’s left holding the bag. I wish I could laugh, but too many good people are getting hurt.

Betrayal

When we are first born we are nothing (as well as everything). We are equipped with specific tools chief of which is a sense of identity. It’s noteworthy that the first thing that usually happens is that we are given a name. The child opens its eyes and sees. And all it sees (it thinks) is a part of itself. It is only by learning the names of the people and objects around it that the divide between it and the outside world is established.

From there the child begins to make certain assumptions. He learns to manipulate specific objects - his mother, for instance - to get what he wants. She presumably knows what she must do in order to attend to his needs. He needs to eat; his diapers need to be changed. His dependence on her continues not as demand, but as expectation. It would never occur to him to say, “Thank you.”

The child’s name circumscribes his identity. His first allegiance is to himself (which now includes his parents). He does not see them as separate from himself. Later, as his world view expands, he must determine his own proper place within it.

No matter how complicated it may get, no matter how many paradoxes arise - all due to and resting on false assumptions - the shadow of his first life experience remains: I am (singularly responsible, either through my action or inaction, for) all I see.

Religion derives from identity and the desire to secure for oneself a place within eternity. In this, one’s assumptions become critical. Clearly the lion’s share of one’s efforts go towards achieving and maintaining one’s target position. The time may come when previous alliances and dependencies are no longer useful. These are then jettisoned. Guilt may arise from such acts as abandonment or betrayal that may have become essential to the service of one’s perceived (greater) self. Meanwhile, the shadow of one’s very first assumptions invariably come back to haunt.

Only saints are spared this dilemma. At this juncture ordinary people are faced with a choice: either to recognize and accept their limitations; or to strive for ever greater control on one hand, or utter dependence on the other.

Hinduism recognized this dilemma from the start. It created the caste system within which everybody is assigned their place. The promise of a higher entry into the next life (provided that one adheres honorably to one’s duties) helps the lower casts to endure. Only wise men realize that it is only a matter of appearances; that suffering as well as joy is spread out evenly among all.

In the West every individual is held responsible for his own fate, which (whether one admits it or not) extends to the afterlife. As we are our own severest critics the question of salvation comes into play. Liberals tend to fall victim to ego from which stems the infantile presumption of utter co-dependence with the universe. Therefore, for just one to be saved, all must be saved. Conservatives tend to harbor more modest ambitions. They are content with saving only themselves and perhaps a few others. They also tend to be happier, successful and self-satisfied.

Point of note: Identity drives all. This is why only a man of outside lineage can agree to commit an act of betrayal.

Set Ourselve On Fire

Lou - There's really not much Republicans can do legislatively; and, as this presidential term drags on, they'll be able to do even less - even with a majority in both houses. In case you haven't noticed, the czars and courts are taking over the running of everything.

The least we Conservatives/Republicans can do is to stick together and stop sniping at one another (thank you Mr. Batchelor, Mr. Savage, Mr. Levin). Additionally, we could do things to bust through the major media smoke screen and protest; shout; resist; set ourselves on fire; educate; hobble; slow; block; march; withhold our taxes; organize; fill the prisons (with ourselves) if need be. Shout 'liar!' every chance we get without apologizing afterwards. I swear; it's as if the Republican Party is and has been on a permanent vacation. You don't hear so much as a peep out of any of them. Scrap the bi-partisanship! We can't convert them; their minds are made up. Neither can we give in. This is war!

Granted, the media isn't helping matters. But that didn't seem to bother Reagan much. He managed quite nicely to get his points across. Mark Levin is filing lawsuits against the government predicated on the proposition that our Constitution is being shamelessly violated on all fronts. That alone should give the Dems pause or, at the very least, provide us with a platform to speak our piece. Why should only terrorists have that privilege?

I don’t have all the answers. In fact, I don’t have any. I’m just a regular guy (despite what Spencer says) who can see what’s happening and what is about to happen. Can it be stopped? I think so. I think there’s overwhelming support out there just waiting for the right leader to emerge. So far, there hasn’t been anyone. McCain? Palin? Dobbs? Huckabee? – lightweights, each and every one. Among those I’ve mentioned, Palin appears to be the best at the moment. But the media would turn her into road kill. Still waiting for someone who can dodge the traffic.