Bad Liar Black Hats

Don’t expect Boehner and Republicans to turn things around. For one thing, they don’t have the power. All the power has been consolidated by the White House. For another, they may not be riding the white horses either. They may just be losers in a race consisting entirely of black horses.

I’m wondering how many of you feel that you’re just hanging by a thread; that you’re just one paycheck away from ruin - or one illness; one car accident; one death in the family; one natural disaster? The feeling has become palpable for more than a few people. You are not alone.

We are a proud people and not given to complain. We tend to believe that the neighbor across the street is doing alright. As we watch neighbors increasingly packing up and moving away, we realize that the hooded man with the scythe is on the loose. He just hasn’t gotten to our house yet.

Fear sells. You know that yourself. Don’t tell me you’ve never been tempted to buy gold (and not just because it’s pretty); store food and water in the basement; subscribe to Lifelock; First Alert; and to whatever the name of that company is that claims to save your files when your computer crashes.

Now there are those who will not readily submit to fear-mongering of any kind. Good for them. But even the most confident and self-reliant among us now know that something’s wrong. Look at Trump. I’m sure he’s taken care of for life. Yet, he too thinks that something should be done to hobble the political class (left and right) that’s running away with our country.

We now build government policy around fear. We allow ourselves to be in effect strip-searched at airports; now there’s talk about doing the same thing for people using trains. All the while, we know very well who bad apples are. (I’ve raised this point before, but still haven’t got an answer: Why are Muslim women exempt?) No, it is we, our wives and mothers, and our children who have to prove we are innocent at these unconstitutional checkpoints! What gives?! It doesn’t add up. The guy who tried to blow up Times Square was granted U.S. citizenship barely a year before, while my own wife is denied the same courtesy. People who cross our southern border illegally will now be granted blanket amnesty, while all those who submit to the ‘process’ are told to wait - seemingly forever.

They’ve got our own phones keeping track of us. They can listen in any time they want. They’ll be reading the odometers in our cars. They’ll tell us where we can build factories and where we can’t build our houses. They worship snail darters before letting us sow our seeds. They won’t let us drill holes in our own ground. It just goes on and on. We’re increasingly kept on a very short leash.

Let me suggest that those who denounce Barack Hussein Obama may very well be racist after all. He’s a black man, to be sure; but he isn’t all that different from previous presidents we’ve had; this new miracle Congress isn’t all that different from previous congresses; the candidates the Republican Party appears to be fielding for the 2012 election cycle aren’t that much different from Obama.

They’ll all do as Tim Geithner tells them: raise the debt ceiling (which, btw, has been raised over a hundred times before since its inception). So what’s the big deal this time around? Despite all the posturing, they’ll raise our taxes and find another name for it.

I now understand why the people were so desperate to get rid of Bush. They wanted someone different; someone who would change our direction; to make it better – not worse. What we got was worse - at a lightning speed, no less. Obama’s only crime is that he’s a bad liar. We can see right through his schemes. And it doesn’t end well.

How much are you personally prepared to give up when the hammer finally falls? What are you willing to do for that sandwich, that gallon of gas? Are you ready to sell out your neighbor to save your own skin? These are questions you must be prepared to answer when it becomes apparent that the white hats have been ambushed and delayed; or, when you realize that we’ve just plumb run out of white hat material.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Peter Koelliker replied to comment from John Batchelor

I take it you have watched Trump’s show. I have not. Therefore, your references to his show escape me. I base my assumptions on what I do see: Trump Towers in New York and Trump Casino in Atlantic City.

Given our current economic conditions, his claim that he still has enough money to manage a presidential campaign also speaks volumes. In addition, I hear what he says. I have heard nothing, since embarking on his quest for the presidency, with which I disagree. What he said previously, is of no importance to me since it was not said as one who would hoodwink the public in a political sense. From now on, I will pay attention.
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It is now generally accepted (mostly by conservatives) that raising taxes does not necessarily translate into more revenue for the government; that, in fact, what the government collects is likely to stay the same as a percentage of GDP no matter what the tax rate is. This is not fantasy. It can be documented by historical example. Therefore, the emphasis should be on growth.

If our problem is that government does not have enough money to pay its bills – as we are told – then lowering taxes across the board would seem to be a significant part of the solution. Yet current policy makers insist that we go in the opposite direction.

There should not even be an argument about this. The same percentage taken out of a smaller pie will result in reduced intake by the treasury and vice versa. The fact that we cannot agree means that something else is at stake: social engineering in the form of the redistribution of American’s wealth as to achieve total equality (both domestic and globally).

Our politicians are loath to tell us of their true intent; our universities fail to educate. So we are sent out into the street to protest the mere possibility that our neighbor makes a dollar more a week than we do. This is considered ‘unfair’. Everyone should have the same after all. The next step is for all of us to start wearing matching uniforms.

It bugs me no end when politicians use this canard to bat around. Why don’t they just tell us outright that they want to make us all the same, discard all pretense of actually balancing the budget and raise the debt limit to infinity? This way, all of us would be cured of the compulsion to compete and concentrate on simply staying alive.
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“How I wish, how I wish you were here
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl,
Year after year
Running over the same old ground
What have we found?
The same old fears
Wish you were here”

--Pink Floyd

Straight Lines

This week we found out (what some of us already knew) that Obamacare will explode the Federal budget rather than save money (as we were told); that repealing it would cost us even more; that all the money in the world would fail to pay for it (along with all the other government programs already grinding our nation to a halt). So, the next step in the puzzle will quite naturally center on raising the debt ceiling once again.

I have a solution: Let’s just set the debt ceiling to quadrillions and get it over and done with. Or, let’s set it to a number that hasn’t even been invented yet; or, let’s set it to infinity and never have to undergo the unpleasantness of budgeting ever again (for as long as we live).

Why not? We now know that Obamacare was never about health; and neither was it (as has now become apparent) about saving money. We’ve been down this road before and have become quite comfortable with it. Tax policy, for instance, also does not seem to be about having sufficient funds to run governments (Federal and state). We’ve long ago managed to crush the life out of the proverbial golden goose. In any number of our states - you know the ones - taxes are so high already that people a fleeing to other states and taking their money with them, much less opening businesses in those afflicted areas most in need of inflating an ever-expanding tax base.

Similarly, science has been elevated to a new level (as some would say “it’s proper place“). The coldest winter anyone can remember is now put down to ‘global warming’ - a virtual treasure trove of carbon credits - and liberally (rhetorically) promoted as such in every college and university of (free) academic standing.

Similarly, it was reported last week that, California ushered in in excess of 700 new laws with the start of the new year. It was suggested that Californians themselves are not even aware of what all these might portend. It may all come to the same end: laws or no laws. Existing laws not enforceable or not enforced. New laws applied selectively and certainly adding to a climate of uncertainty; again, causing a flight to greener pastures particularly by those wishing to escape the choking grip of government regulation which (as has become evident) is out to destroy every last vestige of spontaneity.

We no longer trust each other. Above all, we no longer trust our government; the representatives of which - those young tykes we ourselves put through law school - who have come back telling us that it’s quite alright for us to say that two plus two equals five or any number (as long as it’s bigger than four).

Words too have taken a beating. There’s a whole bunch of them that now pose a personal risk to ourselves (like Limbaugh, Beck and Injun); and, even in private (industry), there are some now charged with exorcizing ‘politically sensitive’ material from books that were once deemed classics.

The word ’enemy’, for example, has taken on a new, much more benign nuance to apply only to ourselves; a nod, perhaps, to a notion that is gaining popularity by leaps and bounds: jihad, popularly defined as the process of self-examination and cleansing - a constant solitary struggle (we are told).

And so it goes. The only ones standing in the way of progress are those fuddy-duddy tea party types who still cling to their religion, guns, and the now thoroughly discarded notion of straight lines.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/