Sold Down The River

Get this!

I may be slow on the up-take, but I’m still way ahead of the American public that still believes that by simply substituting a few political heads on Election Day, we can set things right again.

Scanning the headlines this morning, I happened to run across one that said “New Call To Greece To Sell Off Its Assets”. With all that’s going on, why did this particular item set my alarm bells ringing?

How much land does the U.S. government own? According to www.answerbag.com, “The United States government owns approximately 650 million acres of land, according to NationalAtlas.gov. That total amounts to about 30 percent of the total land area in the U.S. Some large categories of federally-owned land include national parks, national forests and national wildlife refuges.” Even if this answer is wrong, we all know it’s a lot. Out West, the percentages are even higher. In Nevada, for example, privately held land amounts to barely 20%.

Who owns or controls most mortgages? Don’t know the exact answer to this one, but you can bet the Feds have their fingers in this one as well (via Fannie and Freddie).

Who is it that keeps private industry from mining and drilling, keeping our land pristine and valuable to the max? Again, the answer is government.

After our currency has collapsed under the dead weight of unserviceable debt, what will be left to trade? Answer: land.

We’re being set up to be sold down the river, folks!

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Genius Hairstyles

Genius has consequences. It is often regarded as heretical. Genius is thinking outside the box: If someone can think it, it usually can be done. It just needs lots of people to work out the details. Drones. The trick is coming up with the idea in the first place.

When talking about genius, Einstein immediately comes to mind. He taught us to see ourselves in a completely new way. There was nothing sinister or controversial about Einstein. He was not known for making overt political statements. Yet the politics of his day drove him to seek more fertile ground. Princeton, where he theorized and taught till his death in 1955, provided a fitting bucolic backdrop to his ever engaging harmless hairstyles.

Einstein’s research also led to the development of nuclear weapons. There is no reason to assume that this alone spurred his intellect. In fact, had he known, he would probably have aborted his research.

Facebook was born out of an infantile impulse. It quickly turned into a legitimate tool for social networking. Of late, it has been accused it of being responsible for toppling governments.

Skype is said to serve millions, including many who have relatives living abroad. It is a way to communicate over the net. Initially, the ability to see the person you were talking to was novel enough to download the program. Now, I dare say, most people using the service leave the camera turned off. A more tangible lure is that the service is free, bypassing post office queues and telephone charges. Governments are stymied. They are forever threatening to tax such services. But how is it possible to tax something that’s free?

Perhaps therein lies the ultimate solution that Utopian new worlders have in mind: everything free. With the collapse of economies it almost seems like a given: Free services for all. Success or failure would then hinge solely on the number of subscribers; rate of activity; polls; readers; watchers; bell curves, etc. Governments, wedded to old-school money and regulation for fuel, would collapse.
Amen to that.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Bleatings From The Leper Colony

Ever since George Washington, we have always had presidents with some overarching vision of where they want to take the nation. They might have gotten bogged down in the minutia of governance, or they might have made mistakes that would eventually require retreat. But the basic vision nevertheless remained and focused on bringing America to a better place.

We, the people, more or less accepted the fact that we were not policy wonks; that we were not necessarily privy to all the things that our presidents were privy to – nor would we want to be. We could more or less assume that our president was doing his best to move us forward while keeping our best interests in mind.

We always accepted a certain amount of change – even downturns in our personal and collective fortunes - as being an integral part of life. We even accepted small, incremental deviations from the principles on which our nation was founded. We accepted the slow creep of socialism to accommodate the needs of the poor, the sick and the otherwise unfortunate.

All this changed with the election of Barack Hussein Obama. As the continuing controversy about his birth certificate suggests, there is now a growing concern as to just who this man actually is. Are we better off now than we were just two years ago? The resounding answer is no.

The tea parties were the first to sound the alarm. They were summarily rebuffed and dismissed. As more and more people dared to raise questions, more and more people were labeled ‘extreme’ and, therefore, illegitimate. Everybody knows at least a part of the threat our nation faces. And yet, every citizen is treated as guilty – at airports, for example – while the obvious culprits are excused from our scrutiny in the interest of maintaining a veneer of tolerance – tolerance for whom? The only ones not tolerated are us! It almost seems like our world has been turned upside down where a declaration of obvious criminal intent somehow provides immediate immunity.

Meanwhile, the rest of us must carefully maintain our resumes, and closely monitor our words and actions lest we stand accused of racism, hate crimes and various sundry sins that might well result in our exclusion. A natural bent towards conservatism in some precincts would practically confine one to the modern equivalent of a leper colony.

Meanwhile, too, we watch our fortunes fading, even as the media celebrates great strides toward some unspecified unknown. Should we venture to connect the dots and project our path to some seemingly alien experience, we are slapped down by harsh voices laced with severe accusation and ridicule. Since when, in America, has anyone not been allowed to speak openly without having to fear intimidation; especially, when what we say, points out gross contradictions in policy objectives; and particularly as these might relate to the fundamental contract we have with our government?

It has not gone unnoticed that this contract is now in serious jeopardy; that our government has gone rogue; that our own leadership is now on the brink of labeling us as illegitimate. We, of course - now that the contract has been broken - can say the same.

We never thought it could come to this – not in America.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

The Lottery in Babylon

At some point someone will dare to write the truth about our government. It may go something like this: “In those days, as now, the government, with divine modesty, avoided all publicity. It’s agents, as is natural, were unelected and secret. The orders which it issued continually ( perhaps incessantly) did not differ from those lavished by impostors: the drunkard who improvised an absurd accusation leading to indictment; the dreamer who awakened suddenly and strangled the woman by his side. Did they not execute, perhaps, a secret decision of the government? That silent functioning, comparable to God’s, gave rise to all sorts of conjectures. One abominably insinuated that the government has not existed for centuries and that the sacred disorder in our lives was purely hereditary, traditional. Another judged it eternal and taught that it will last until the last night, when the last god annihilates the world. Another stipulated that the government is omnipotent, but that it only has influence in small things: a bird’s call; the shadings of rust; in the half dreams of dawn. Another, in the words of masked heresiarchs, 'that it had never existed and will not exist'. Another, no less vile, reasoned that it is indifferent to affirm or deny the reality of shadowy government, because Babylon has never been anything else than an infinite game of chance.”*

As for me, I have practically run out of words to describe a man (corporation, government) who receives a life-threatening wound on his right arm and seems totally absorbed in administering to his left. I have begun posting music videos on my websites.
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Passage taken from (and loosely translated to fit intent) Borges’ “The Lottery in Babylon”.