Lipstick On A Pig

Oh yes, I know, everyone is busy painting lipstick on a pig right now. It’s our version of celebrating Eid. We’re so hoping for Obama to make good, we’re even willing to gauge out our eyes just to make it so. The fact is that more of us still have jobs than don’t. This means that most of us can still be persuaded to pull Obama’s lunch wagon. (By the way, all this talk about us becoming more and more like Europe is a bunch of hogwash. If you ask me, we’re headed straight for Stalingrad.)

If it turns out that those with jobs should begin to feel the pinch, only then will the situation change. Only then will we all begin reading from the same page.

Apparently it’s all been forgotten: health care, the new EPA regs (regarding carbon emissions), higher taxes on the local level, FINREG, net neutrality, gas prices, etc. It’ll all kick in this year. A new norm for unemployment; immigration, border security, foreign affairs, inflation, energy dependence…

I honestly don’t see the optimism. True, the world around us appears to be digging out - at least they’re trying. We’re just digging deeper.

Stocks are up today. They generally rise in the third year of a presidency. Will they this time? The year has barely started. Some people have made money, it‘s true. This is supposed to be a bad thing - so this administration keeps saying anyway. And now they’re claiming a (minor) victory. Make up your mind! Which is it?

The fact is, it’s jobs that drive America. People working - creating value. Nothing I’ve heard will produce more or better jobs as long as Obama is president. Now it could well be that with the ‘net neutrality’ bandwagon gaining ground, there’ll be nothing but good news from here on in. That won’t necessarily mean it’s so. It just means that we'll be suffering in our bunkers - alone.
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Pete Postlethwaite died today. To my mind he was an actor’s actor. Loved the film “Brassed Off”.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

We Are All Socialists Now

We can now put another ornament on Obama’s socialist (mop) Christmas tree: net neutrality. Nobody can yet exactly say what it means. The full text of the new rules haven’t been released yet. But, putting yet another chunk of the free market under government control should tell you all you need to know.

As with other legislation that has passed this year, the new rules basically amount to a framework that allows government to regulate as issues emerge. “At the digression of…” appears to be a ubiquitous phrase in any such legislation. It is also important to note that no such legislation - from ‘health care’ to FINREG to START - has been assembled willy-nilly and without purpose. All of it has been carefully crafted and been filed away from public view for a long time to be taken out at a time most favorable to passage. Law makers have had virtually no way to assess the merits of any such legislation and were required to vote in hurried fashion, strictly along party lines.

Net neutrality, of course, bypassed Congress altogether. There was no opportunity to probe the past associations and affiliations of those who crafted and promoted it. Suffice it to say, that those of us who suspected Obama’s socialist bias all along were right. Vote socialist, and you get socialist - and worse.

At this pace, we can expect a seemingly legitimate bill to slip through a rubberstamp Congress within the next two years that gives Obama the presidency with unlimited power for life. It’ll all be done under the rubric of crisis - Chavez style.

Crisis is the mother’s milk of authoritarian regimes and as such we cannot expect much to improve our situation. Crisis is one of the easiest circumstances to manufacture. Socialism thrives on it. It has never played to finding solutions anywhere its been tried. It just dissolves the parameters by which to judge success or failure.

Republicans and tea party members will have their work cut out for them. Rolling back or de-funding existing open-ended legislation is, they will find, is much like trying to nail Jello to a wall. Their best bet will be to proceed with hearings, focusing on constitutional grounds. This will, however, leave them open to the charge of practicing McCarthyism. The public at large will not be encouraged to support such dramatic high-profile displays. It will judge any effort on the part of Republicans as grandstanding, racism, and rank partisanship. They can be expected to fold like cheap cameras and just go along.

It’s been coming for a long time. It’s all been planned so meticulously, down to the last detail. The shame of it is that we too had a chance to stem this socialist tide. Bush too had control of Congress for a time, but squandered the opportunity to gird us against the threat. The Right has done nothing but capitulate. We now face a situation not dissimilar to our fight against Islamic terrorism in which a whole roster of clarifying terminology has been swept off the table. Mention ‘socialism’ and the full weight of political correctness comes crashing down from the sky to stifle any further hope for honest debate.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/