Some Thoughts On Tea Parties On April 15th

Victor, a Russian immigrant with a PhD in philosophy, recognized in Obama the playbook used during his youth in Russia during the rise of Stalin. He was a random caller on the Rush Limbaugh show on April 14th. He thanked Rush for being a shining light for his listeners while we’re ‘pulling out our hair’ as the supposed disaster of the President’s deception unfolds, since we don’t have the advantage of retrospect yet. I don’t have a stake in my words here beyond the unpleasant possibility that we may lose our way of life, as we’re all either benefiting from free enterprise, or hired by others that figured it out better than we did. The decision makers usually have the advantage of a financial cushion in the event things don’t work out as they thought. I don’t wish to be the object of a tyranny that supplants a possibility of a comfortable retirement, which won’t exist if the middle class disappears, as it may with incentives removed from what some see as “the rich”. The middle class grew out of WWII, which was the impetus that dragged the USA out of the depression, finally. It was not, as is thought, the product of Teddy Rosevelt’s New Deal.
Victor told Rush he was ‘spot on’ in his understanding and presentation to his listening audience. A most telling element mentioned by Victor on the air and the reason I felt the need to write, was the relaying of a specific memory from his youth in Russia. When atrocities were discovered by Victor’s parents, his parents used to say, “Stalin can’t know this is happening. We need to make sure Stalin knows what is going on,” when now he knows, from history and the advantage of retrospect, that Stalin was the source of the atrocities. Victor is sickened to see the current events unfolding after successfully making a new life for himself in America. Just as his parents did, liberals are in the dark about their boy, Obama; their mesmerizing speaker and hope for humanity that they found so lacking in the former President. I hope I’m off-base with this article.
I always found it mysterious that Bush’s Secretary of State, Condaleza Rice, an extremely accomplished woman, was considered by the left as irrelevant because of her party allegiance. The hate of the former Presidency has been replaced with a similar strong emotion of the opposite variety for the current President. Be careful what you wish for.
Retrospect is a handy tool that is unavailable now, because there is no track record for the speed that liberals are trying to catch up with where they could have been had Bush not interfered with the direction of policy implementation Clinton had initiated. There’s always a period of inertia that must be overcome as critical mass is reached for change to occur. The economic crisis, according to Rahm Immanuel, a terrible thing to waste, has added a layer of obfuscation** on top of regular platitudes that hide what to some (Constitutionalists) is subterfuge (KFI)*, while to others (Liberals) is progress (KPFK)*. That one little thing that has layers of obfuscation** thrown on it is…. The removal of incentives, barriers to free enterprise and the subsequent destabilization of the dollar are at risk. Our currency is not referenced to a definite amount of gold, thus is by fiat only as is the rest of the world, except, maybe Dubai. Since the government is in control of printing money, because of the massive bailouts, this puts the government in the center of relief from debt for generations to come. The money being spread around is sold as relief when actually it is immeasurable debt leading to subservience to government, by those unwilling or incapable of growth in a free market, a concept too complex for a bumper sticker, thereby sold in obfuscation rather than debated openly with full disclosure. This obfuscation is part of the reason behind the Tea Parties of April 15th. Some things can be affected by the swing of the pendulum from left to right and back every eight years, some things can’t. Are we willing to let someone unskilled experiment with our future? I think not.



*Radio stations are L.A. based
** A big word meant to act as a deterrent of further investigation. One look at that word, “obfuscation”, and even those who don’t see jumping letters from dyslexia will easily ignore or just get fuzzy about the details following. It’s intentional to get readers to dig out their dictionary and familiarize themselves with the concept, because it is a common political strategy.

Tea Party Genesis

Rick Santelli of CNBC started the idea of a Tea Party, as a derivative of "The Boston Tea Party" of old. Here on April 15th in the steamy year of 2009, we have action from just a bunch of regular citizens tired of being steam rollered!

Leverage and Traction in Political Leadership

It’s a bit disarming to see President Obama chided by Europeans: He’s taking their own game too far. Ah, youth, “one upping” each other, as they do. Meanwhile Hillary attempts diplomacy with Russia, leading to a chiding from Putin on another continent. All we need is one more stooge to keep the comedy act alive.
The President may be bursting a balloon that has been kept afloat to obfuscate for class reasons; what’s really going on in the big picture, as it were. The Europeans have historically chided Americans who they consider “boorish”* when it comes to finesse. Indeed, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were tenuously respected because they understood diplomacy in Europe, while John Adams suffered from his directness, dispensing with finesse, driven by haste and impatient with the charade of the French courtesans. Consider that the members of the UN will have a good debate and call it a day, while Americans live in the world of action. But, now, Marie Antoinette’s, “Let them eat cake!” has never felt so close to our lives. As events unfold there’s a tendency to believe the possibility that freedom to protest is largely for theatre to keep the populace feeling influential while in reality they are focused on an eddy and dispersed from essential matters underway as our leaders pursue the power of an Oligarchy**? Please, history, prove me wrong!

* boorish - ill-mannered and coarse and contemptible in behavior or appearance; "was boorish and insensitive"; "the loutish manners of a bully"; "her stupid oafish husband"; "aristocratic contempt for the swinish multitude"
** Oligarchy- A form of government in which the supreme power is placed inthe hands of a few persons; also, those who form the ruling few.

Does The Emperor Have Any Clothes?

Any writer wants to be a lightening rod for his readers and avoid alienating them lest they pigeonhole too quickly and marginalize the message.  No one can be everything for everybody.  If a writer wants to capture a large readership, casting a wide net will certainly alienate a certain few.  Any viewpoint risks distrust especially now when we are all trying to make sense and recover from the financial meltdown.

These are challenging times and we find our lives, even the world in a state of flux rarely seen.  We have little confidence that rationality will rule as America rides the rough economy out.  We hope that our leadership will continue to be just and respected by free thinkers throughout the world.  Billions have been lost by investors as former University professors with no particular interest in finance are at the helm of our futures.  Dare I say, in this world of political correctness, that liberals, proud in their tradition of compassion have shown themselves to be like the emperor with no clothes as they delve into the rational world of finance.  Were this a screenplay, I'd insert a reference that some feathers would have been ruffled, "Ah, he's one of those," would smirk a scholarly type, deferential that those he considers his equals would surely be in agreement that the "less informed" live in the world of commerce.  All the arrogance and posturing are now merely window dressing to ACT II.  There is a real need to resolve issues that have real consequences.  No one welcomes such a challenge, but victory will be sweet.  I fear mere debate of Collegiate U.N. politics that resembles Chicago politics is functioning in our great nation as our president drops back to punt.  Will President Obama adapt to changing circumstances?  Will the fears of left wing pundits be realized that he has no intention of saving the financial world from ruin?  

Unfortunately, this is not a Saturday morning TV show on SciFi.  This is your life!  Even under a severe conservative belt tightening measured recovery, we're looking at 5-7 years before we reaccess.  Certainly a healthy financial world exists in a delicate balance as we saw whan the house of cards fell.  We will probably make lifestyle choices that will affect our outlooks well into the future abandoning our consumptive habits.  We must recognize indications of rapid recovery as bubbles, always under construction to serve a few.  We are still lucky to have the best conditions known to man under which to weather the storm.  We will see if President Obama does truly want a healthy future for his daughters rather than the effects of a grand experiment that history has shown to be a waste, potentially bringing suffering to the spirit of a free world.  Does the emperor have clothes?

Great Jimi Hendrix Live

While researching a previous post, I found such interesting formerly unavailable footage on uTube that I was inspired to write another.

I came across this live Hendrix. This was filmed around the same time I saw Jimi up in Bern, Switzerland at a fantastic concert just prior to Monterey Pop of 1967. Cream was supposed to be at the concert in Bern, but Ginger Baker was under the weather, so Eric Clapton played with John Mayall instead, since he'd been with Mayall's band previously. Johnny Almond was also featured in the band, since Mayall was a conduit for many of the greats. I was a bit disappointed that Clapton didn't mention his appearance in Bern in his book, but he did mention being blown away with Hendrix while in London. Clapton's book is excellent and a great window into a life of a truly gifted musician. Traffic during their suitar period, Move and Anselmo Trend ( a local Swiss band) rounded out the evening. Blind Faith emerged a few years afterwards.
My friends and I saw John Mayall, a good sport, playing in a pub in the old part of town as we made our way to the concert hall. The air was electric with the anticipation of what we were to see. We'd taken the train up from Geneva as we were students at Ecolint (International School of Geneva). My own music evolved through the years through the paths of rock, blues, jazz, fusion, flamenco and folk.

Doing Due Diligence.

A few emotionally depleted days ago in joking with a friend, I quiped, " The stimulus package passed today.  I need to tell Michelle Obama that I’m gravely disappointed in my country today."   Yesterday, we found out that Daschle’s plan (part of Hillary’s plan for socialized medicine) was hidden within the stimulus package, found by Republicans doing due diligence, not by Democratic forthrightness. In fact, Dems told their party members that sliding the bill through with something else would be the only way to introduce it, much the same way as Obama told family members of those who died on The USS Cole disaster that he’d released the mastermind of the attack the day before. Heartlessness? Welcome to the Democratic version ‘change.’”
A couple of days ago, Obama told us not to worry about minor fluctuations in the stock market as it drops like a hydrodynamic rock into a black abyss. He misrepresented the “price/earnings ratio” for the “profit/earnings ratio” showing in one fell swoop that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about....as the stock market crashes.
The USA will recover, but it will happen in spite of our current leadership.
Dennis Miller and David Dryer are keeping me on life support….thanks, guys!

Obama May Be Lost In His Own Experiment

Both Obama and Hillary were avid students to the ideas of Saul Alinski; Obama through his mother's boyfriends with romantic formulative links to his roots. I hope I'm just wrong, but Obama may need to follow his idealized feelings of socialism through to conclusion, thereby destroying our lives, in order to prove to himself that he can make it work any better than the failed attempts throughout history. He is protected now from the effects of what may be his experiment because his future is assured, as president. Perhaps we can forgive Saul Alinski his support of socialism as he refers to Dostoevski, who was writing about the Bolshevik Revolution, the people’s revolt against monarchy; a period analyzed by pensive writers and history books. Saul Alinski did not have the advantage of having seen USSR fail and the wall between East and West Germany fall as it tore itself apart under it’s own weight with the catalyst of Ronald Reagan’s leadership. In light of our recent history, Obama’s and Hillary’s interests in Mr. Alinski send shivers down the spine.

In Rules for Radicals, Alinsky outlines his strategy in organizing, writing in the prologue,

"There's another reason for working inside the system. Dostoevski said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. To bring on this reformation requires that the organizer work inside the system, among not only the middle class but the 40 per cent of American families - more than seventy million people - whose income range from $5,000 to $10,000 a year [in 1971]. They cannot be dismissed by labeling them blue collar or hard hat. They will not continue to be relatively passive and slightly challenging. If we fail to communicate with them, if we don't encourage them to form alliances with us, they will move to the right. Maybe they will anyway, but let's not let it happen by default."^[4]

Alinsky codified and wrote a clear set of rules^[5] for community organizing. His rules for radicals are now used as key tactics to learn in the training of new community organizers and were the tactics used by then candidate Barack Obama to win the 2008 election. If Obama has given in to following principles set forth by Alinski and is following the path in honor of his mother’s boyfriend, has he allowed wiggle room in case things don’t work out? I think it’s entirely possible he’s willing to experiment to the end with our futures. We may find out too late if his legacy and experiment are more important to him than our former way of life, because, after all, he and his pals are imune from our future, since high ranking officials have their own medical and retirements futures and are not limited by the laws they create for the rest of us.