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/

Why Not Again?

There is a house in Thiruvanmaiyur along the beach road where I usually take my morning constitutional – a big house of indeterminate color, with all kinds of frills, picture windows and Rapunzel towers; one, that stands out and would catch the eye of sidewalk artists and movie audiences – that seems mostly abandoned. The yard is choked with weeds and refuse; neighbors heaving their trash over the wall. It is said to be used occasionally for photo shoots for some of the oodles of movies the highly successful Tamil film industry cranks out on a daily basis.

One time I was out there early morning, watching the fishermen unloading their catches and I noticed a helicopter hovering over that particular place. I didn’t think too much about it at the time; but lately, I’ve been thinking that it could also very well function as India’s version of our witness protection program or as a safe house for Tamil Tiger plotters. Hide in plain sight. Why not make the lie so big, so obvious, that no one will question it?

Mockery is one of the most potent weapons in the human arsenal. It has always been so. Christ on the cross was said to have been mocked. Obviously, Bush was mocked constantly. Since Obama’s election, mockery has been pretty much off the table as the president has shown himself to be far more adept in the art (of mockery) than any of his critics.

Besides, it’s in bad form to mock a black man. One might be accused of racism. Though, this too might be dependent on other factors as we are discovering that black or white may not be the issue at all. Justice Thomas, for instance, might be mocked and no one will say much about it. It’s only Obama that cannot be mocked. What’s the difference? Both men – last time I looked – are black. Here we come to the nub or it: only certain black men can be mocked while others can’t. The modifier that explains all this appears to be ‘conservative’.

Note how liberals strut around, routinely mocking tea parties, Republican lawmakers and presidents, popular talk show hosts and commentators, second amendment supporters, presidential aspirants, religious leaders and their congregations, etc. Make no mistake, these are attacks and they do damage.

You might say that Limbaugh (and some others) mocks the Left. The difference is that Limbaugh gives reasons for his mockery. The Left gives no reasons. Ordinarily, the press would step in to mediate. But, we all know that the media tilts the playing field to favor the Left. Limbaugh’s words and audience are routinely treated as if they do not exist. Instead, people like the girls on ‘The View’ are given star headline treatment.

The day after Osama’s killing, Limbaugh went on air and mocked Obama. There it was! The Left was outraged (if they said anything). What was supposed to be America’s proudest moment since the start of the war on terror, was being mocked unabashedly. Other talk show hosts, known for being critical of the president, refrained from doing so. Not Limbaugh!

Maybe it’s just me, but I too found the whole deal somewhat hollow. For me personally, it did not seem to rise to the status of a significant event. And any attempt to see it as such seemed somehow contrived and cheap, and quite worthy of mockery – an ‘emperor has no clothes’ moment, if you wish. A proper trial would have sat well and settled it. The subtext is, of course, that we can no longer expect a proper trial in this country. Obama has taken that from us as well.

It should have been a moment of quiet restraint and reflection. It needed to be handled with much greater fineness than simply dumping a corpse into the drink. Mike had it right, I think: ‘Defeat snatched out of the jaws of victory’, he wrote. Neither does it impress that al-Qaeda confirmed the kill publicly. I seem to remember AQ websites being largely supportive of Obama winning the election in 2008. They got their wish. Why not again?

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/

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/

We Will Never Change Them

Polls suggest that Americans on the whole like the president. They just don’t like his policies. Why, then, do we really want to win in November? Answer: To send a message; to get Obama to change direction; to change his heart and mind. It’s the same reason we stayed in Iraq as long as we did. It’s the same reason we are in Afghanistan.

We need to accept the fact that there will always be enemies who want to hurt us. The extent to which racism exists within our own country must be acknowledged and dealt with reasonably. Ditto, anti-capitalism; anti-Americanism; poverty; ignorance; liberalism. All these reflect a minority view or condition. In a free society, this will never go away entirely. We are not obliged, however, to elect groups with such fringe concerns to high office and hope they will be satisfied and leave us alone.

They will continue to make noise and that noise (along with our own noise) is protected by our Constitution. The problem is, their noise is amplified by the media. It makes it seem that there are more of them than there are of us. Not true. We (the majority) own the country and it has worked tolerably well for us. No reason to change course now and become socialist, communist, Marxist or Islamic.

We have to accept that we will never change them. Trying to do so, will inevitably enrage them even more. But we need not play second fiddle to them either. We need not read their newspapers, buy their books or watch their films. We need not patronize their pundits. We can marginalize them just as they marginalize us. At the same time, we need not apologize for our own. We need not say ‘over the top’ to something that’s precisely on point.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Winner Takes Nothing

Like it or not, whatever strides the U.S. has made since WWII has had a tremendous impact on the rest of the world. In every way, America has defined the standard of modernity. Every success, every setback, receives huge coverage in the foreign press. Often our political travails influence the policies set by governments around the globe.

It is normal for us - even regarded as inconsequential - when our political parties bad-mouth each other. Republican administrations are regularly attacked by Democrats who have been known to say anything they think they can get away with. We pretty much expect as much: Bush accused of favoring the rich; Bush labeled as war-monger; Bush blamed for Katrina; Bush blamed for the World Trade Center bombing. We take it all in stride, even if The New York Times, standard bearer for the Democrat Party, presents it as truth and then retracts it on page 47 a month later. Then there is ‘global warming’, a clever send-up to label America as excessively wasteful, even to the detriment of the planet. There’s the perennial issue of the poor, the homeless, the hungry (never mentioned during Democrat administrations) and, now, the overtly greedy that are said to deny the rest of the planet its daily bread.

Every bit of such claptrap originates from within our own borders. We can identify it as an effort to score points against the opposing party. Much of it is eventually discredited as pure rhetoric. But once its out there in print or on the net, others pick it up and build their case against America.

A prevalent notion abroad, for instance, is that America is a racist country. In fact, any opposition to Obama’s policies, for whatever reason, is liberally portrayed as racist sentiment against a black president. The fact that we elected a black president in the first place is conveniently forgotten.

You hear it everywhere - in India, in South America, in Africa - that America is a racist nation. They get it from reading the likes of Paul Krugman and Frank Rich, whose opinion columns are read widely throughout the world. It is only those who have actually traveled and lived here who know that race is not an issue for ordinary Americans; that England and Russia are far worse when it comes to that.

We’ve been accused often enough to understand it’s just a political ploy. We no longer take it seriously and tend to ignore it completely. It’s simply our own political operatives attempting to score points, points that are then picked up overseas to serve more sinister purposes.

It might have been good if we had nipped our tendency for engaging in some of our more extreme rhetoric in the bud sooner. Democrats, now turned Fabian socialists, in particular have succeeded in turning the domestic propaganda wars into a worldwide crusade. What started as domestic political rhetoric has grown hotter and is now threatening to topple the very foundations of our way of life. They have recruited allies among the ranks of our enemies; and, now, we are finding our nation in peril.

To a large extent, what we are experiencing today has been self-inflicted. The poison wells up from within our own institutions which have been infiltrated (by ourselves) and corrupted. Our present troubles are a consequence of our two-party system being at war rather than cooperating. It’s a repeat of Sherman’s (march to the sea) scorched earth policy. Winner takes nothing.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Nikki Haley

Nikki also hails from an Indian tradition of hard work and achievement. The subcontinent is a crowded place. Every Indian learns early on that one’s elbows are worth their weight in gold. Coming in second in any (academic) competition is utterly worthless. Any Indian speaker attending any forum is preceded by someone who reads his or her entire resume. It is often more voluminous than the speech itself. Indian families tend to wax proudly about relatives having made it in the U.S. They tend to look on America as the gold standard of business practice as well as governance. Indians were jubilant when Obama was elected. It was meant to put to rest incessant accusations of racism (in America) by India’s Left.

Indians are smart. They were quick to recognize the disaster that is the Obama administration. They understand the potential consequences world-wide. The news has been filtering back to India via the Indians working here.

It’s not outside the realm of possibility that Nikki’s Haley’s ambitions exceed the obvious; that she hopes to be able to help stem America’s slide into irrelevance. No doubt she maintains contacts in India. No doubt she is well aware of the threat China poses to all its neighbors. No doubt she acknowledges the vital role the U.S. has traditionally played in keeping China in check. No doubt, seeing U.S. influence ebb in the region concerns her.

Nikki’s roots are Punjabi Sikh. Punjabis are proud and strong. Punjabi women work as hard as their men. Sikhs are fearless; they are fiercely loyal. The Indian army is made up in large part by Punjabi Sikhs. It’s not a stretch to think that by inserting herself in America’s political process Haley hopes at some point to be in a position to save the free world from itself.

No Compromise

>"POTUS does not believe in nukes as a weapon."

Wrong! How is it possible not to believe!? POTUS believes in nukes alright, but he sees nukes it in terms of weapons to be used AGAINST AMERICA! Naturally, he does not want America to have nukes. America can hardly be persuaded to use its nukes against itself. By extension, therefore - in Obams’s mind - nukes are useless in America's hands.

It is clear that many in America have not yet figured out where we are headed with this president. We have only partially completed the jigsaw puzzle that is Obama’s enigma. We think that we have a pretty good idea what the final picture will look like. Yet some of the pieces are still missing. No matter how hard we try, the remaining puzzle pieces just don't seem to fit. The reason is because our assumptions about the competed picture don’t match the president’s.

It is easier for us to believe that the puzzle is somehow flawed; that we must return it to the store. It is easier for us to come up with excuses to ignore what the puzzle really shows: That this president does NOT have our best interests in mind. We sense trouble, but hope that in time the president will come to recognize it too, and change course. Maybe, we feel, it’s not up to us. This, after all, is what we elect a president for.

The tea partiers get it. They know we are the ones who are in danger. But it’s still not enough. That sense of doom churning in the pit of our stomachs speaks of something much more immediate than danger: We are being stalked. We are the target!

I just heard a speech by Arundhati Roy and Noam Chomsky at the 2010 Left Forum held a few days ago at Pace University in which they made reference to some of this. From what I can gather, their positions are in stark contrast to our own; and, as such, it sets the stage for a conflict that cannot be resolved. Compromise is not possible. Neither is it possible to defeat the base sentiment that America is inherently evil. This is an idea that bullets will never convince. What is the answer? Are we to suffer an endless war of attrition?


Here in America, we thought we'd solved everything by electing an avowed Marxist president. We didn't think he was a Marxist, though we might have suspected as much by his friends and affiliations. No, we only saw his skin color. We sought to slay the race demon for once and for all. Now we know better. If given even half a chance, we will not repeat the same mistake again.

Hell No; We Won't Go!!!

Let me say it again: No Democrat will be elected or reelected to office in November. Obama has poisoned the field. There will be exceptions, of course. But these will be few and far between. People who vote are now fully engaged and aware of the threat to our nation. Obama himself can make light of it, glibly pointing out that meteors have not struck the continent since he's been in office. The press can comfortably ignore the ramifications of allowing the Democrats to continue flaunting their contempt for the Constitution in word and action. Jerry-rigged numbers will no longer convince the un- and underemployed that we are heading in the right direction.

Obama's message has gotten out alright. Simply put, it is that he despises the America of pre-Obama days. By extension, he can be expected do his level best to see to it that we will never be able to return to that America (I am paraphrasing Michelle).

Here are some hard facts to consider: Whereas there have been no meteor strikes on the continent, our situation has not improved as promised. Internationally, there are troubles brewing on the horizon - specifically in the Middle East. While it is true that most Americans have difficulty locating other countries on a map, our traditional enemies have not softened their hostile stance toward us. Even our traditional allies are now raising concerns. Also here at home, divisions have only deepened. Unemployment is still unacceptably high. The private sector is under constant assault. Taxes are becoming oppressive. Racial frictions have not diminished. People who have never protested before have felt compelled to come out into the streets to voice their displeasure with the way things are going.

Never once has the president come out to assure the nation. In fact, he and his surrogates have been all too eager to fan the flames of discontent, accusing practically anyone who disagrees with his policies of racism, the only other explanation – implausible as it sounds - still credible to support a dearth of progress. It is a diversion of course; one, that ignores the blatantly obvious observation that the people of America elected Obama - a person of color - to the highest office in the land.

Even the canard of inexperience or incompetence is beginning to wear thin, leaving increasing numbers of Americans to conclude that what is currently being done by our government is not to fix, but to destroy.

Neither have Republicans escaped the nation’s misgivings entirely. Republicans are seen as having been complicit in creating our current mess. When Republicans had their chance, they failed to take a decisive lead, always caving in to Democrat’s shrill demands that have now brought us to the edge. While it is true, that Republicans are routinely ignored or mischaracterized by the media, they have failed to convincingly articulate an alternative. Conventional wisdom now has it that whereas Democrats are sending us into the abyss at hyper speed, Republicans would do the same, only at a much slower pace. There has never been any serious discussion about halting our descent, much less about changing course entirely.

Yet, course changes are in the offing. These have now been forced on us by circumstance. A new crop of leaders are now taking up the reigns. This is America. We will not allow ourselves to be marched into the ovens.