Often the truth we sadly miss

           As we see only what we know.

           Nor each occasion could reveal

           The gravity of what we feel,

           On things we dare and dare not do.

           Yet, though in vain, let me express

           One simple thought, one sincere wish

           That may with love and peaceful bliss

           Replete you find the Holidays!

          And may the seasons thereafter

          Be seasoned with mirth and laughter.

          The rare occasioned somber sky

          May not but serve to amplify

          The happiness of days gone by,

          And glories of unyielding prime,

          And promises of days that lie

          Uncharted in the blue abyss

          And daunting vagaries of Time!

          May each grief find sweet redress;

          Alien to fears, much less to tears,

          May triumphs and exploits increase

          All through the fast succeeding years!

 The sentiments maybe recycled but they are no less wholeheartedly felt

from me and my family (all three generations of us)

 Coram, NY, Yultide '09

__________________________________________________

<c> 1994 Constancio S. Asumen, Jr.

          Original, New York, NY

          Christmas Eve '82

 Last Revised:

          Port Washington, NY

          Christmas Eve '92

____________________________________________________

 LVII
Ah, but my Computations, People say,
Reduced the Year to better reckoning?--Nay
'Twas only striking from the Calendar
Unborn To-morrow, and dead Yesterday.

          -- Omar Khayyam, The Rubaiyat

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,

 

 To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,    

Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride       

With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.  

Then the most prevalent speculation in the media was: “where could he be going at 2:30am”? To which, the near-billion dollar valuation of the Woods estate notwithstanding, my retort was: “he was probably trying to be at the head of the line of black weekend (pun not intended) shoppers at the nearby mall.” This is not entirely preposterous considering that Tiger Woods has been rather notable for his go-getter demeanor.

However the proverbially Clintonian “Bimbo Eruptions” promptly kicked in. The saga unfolded far beyond the traditionally tolerable envelope of tabloid titillations to become unquestionably tantamount to moral turpitudes of the grossest order. Traditionally, golf and moral turpitude would not fit harmoniously in the same sentence. But then again, in the age of Obama, adherence to tradition has increasingly and alarmingly become rather taboo. 

If the point needs illustration, until the ascendancy of BHO into the Oval Office, apologizing for America was never a part of Presidential rules of engagement, either domestically or, least of all, abroad. Neither was selective financial “bailout” of the private sector on the premise that some organizations are “too big to fail;” after which some of them did fail anyway (cf, e.g., Chrysler with Fiat as the sequel). It has to be noted parenthetically that the Oslo acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize was the rare and most welcome exception.

This is by no means to claim that Obama invented the “reset button.” On the contrary, as Andrew Fogg, the Golf Hypnotist, has sufficiently documented, it has been a valuable widget in the arsenal of most great champion golfers. In politics, it has been a valuable tool since Adam and Eve were driven out of Paradise. Or in the original formulation of John Milton, the classic “reset button” was sanctioned by the Devil himself:

To Tiger’s laudable credit, he elected to own up to the shenanigans and vowed to make amends when he announced his decision to take “an indefinite break” [from golf] to repair his marriage. We can only wish him well. It is indeed heartening that he seems to have the support and encouragement of his fellow professional golfers. By contrast, the POTUS does not seem to lose any opportunity to disown the pitfalls of his administration and blame his predecessor. The POTUS also enjoys the support of most of his fellow liberal Democrats in Congress and in the beholden corridors of punditland. Is this just a simple case of badge of honor among thieves and thugs in the latter; and of looking after your source of revenue in the former?

On the ledger of accountability, at least EldrickTigerWoods has proved the better man than Barack Hussein Obama. As I have pointed out in an earlier blog post, on the ledger of race and racial identity, Eldrick Tiger was way ahead of Barack Hussein. Maybe there is a lesson to be learned here. The next time we elect a president, we should make certain that the fellow (or lady) is an accomplished golfer. We shall then at least would be more likely to have a president who owns up to the administration’s mistakes and shortcomings rather than commission a search for a scapegoat.

I delved into the subject of accountability earlier elsewhere, albeit perhaps in a slightly different context, but nonetheless relevant:

(XVIII)              [4]

            To put the fault on my ill-attitude

 So-called, yourself you find acquit from blame

            Yet blameless be, what worth a fortitude? --

            Mischief breeds malice, should itself disclaim!

            Were conscience from all blemish fully free

            Its force of judgment should all times prevail,

            And so prevailing, would perforce decree

            Exclude such things bedeemed as boding ill

            From all affairs you deign to undertake;

            So undertaken, merits are your own

            To cherish; else, for ills amends to make.

            Laurels anon, save such as Laurels won:

               Self-absolution but redeem in pain

               The sinner -- not the sinning, nor the sin!

It can hardly be overemphasized, that the opportunity to redeem oneself with another chance is an integral part of the American Dream. As long as we do not forget the transgression, the transgressor can be forgiven. In the specific case of Tiger, I contend that the ultimate judge and jury should be Elin and her children. I would hasten to add that barring being absolved by these judge and jury, Tiger’s place in the hallowed pantheons of golfing history has been irreparably diminished and damaged and his quest to surpass Jack Nicklaus’ records has practically ended with the escalade affair.

Should that eventuality come to pass, his records should be adorned with a multitude of asterisks. And for all Tiger’s greatness in golfing skills and demeanor, he shall have been reduced to a mere footnote to the accomplishments of great and near-greats: people who by a confluence of both designed and fortuitous circumstances have somehow managed to get the better angels of their natures reign supreme over the baser devils of their decadence.

Some Corollary Angles

Mary Grabar, writing in Pajamas Media, had painstakingly deplored the appearance of giving a pass to Tiger’s co-conspirators in sin:

. . . Some black media commentators have criticized Woods for excluding black women.

Woods’ mistresses and flings, ranging from cocktail waitresses to porn stars, are being made into minor celebrities. They share attention with the prostitute, Ashley Dupre, who brought down Governor Eliot Spitzer.

But rarely are these women the objects of opprobrium. When one TV commentator called these women “bimbos,” he was shot down by the host for his lack of respect. . . .

 To this I had replied in the “comment” section (edited accordingly for the sake of clarity):

Forget about the women. As far as we know not one of them took a celibacy vow. Even if they did, they were only “pursuing their happiness” as in the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, prescribed for and enshrined in The Declaration of Independence.

On the other hand, if memory serves from the vows I took, Tiger would have sworn to “forsake all others, etc. etc.” Besides, the cocktail waitress is only responsible for the drinks being served with the most titillating ambiance practicable. The golfer on the other hand, is responsible to the integrity and honesty with which the game of golf is traditionally perceived and appropriately associated.

Tiger’s escapades have just made golf compatible with moral turpitude, an association not traditionally heard or seen in the annals of the exalted game.

This is coming from someone who has won exactly one golf hackers’ tournament and a party to three marital vows (serially of course).

I regret not having pointed out that Ashley Dupre did not bring down Eliot Spitzer. Spitzer was taken down by the cumulative weight and inertia of his hypocrisy so characteristic of the typical liberal Deomcrat: publicly crusading to close down prostitution while cavorting as one of the prostitution industry’s most high profile patron.

It is very easy indeed, to get sidetracked by collateral considerations. That the feminist movement has irreparably damaged the essence of American womanhood, is to my mind beyond any debate. Nevertheless, some people, myself definitely excluded, call that progress. It has, at the same time effectively castrated the American males’ potency respecting societal and social graces. The death of chivalry as ushered in by the feminist movement has robbed American society of the more pleasant graces of social decorum and is a definite disservice to traditional civility.

Indulgence in the most prurient of our reflexes is as old as humankind itself and certainly predated Tiger Woods and his picadillos by ages if not eons. The Garden of Earthly Delights, by Hieronymus Bosch at Madrid’s Museo del Prado is dated approximately circa 1500 A.D. In fact we need not document the Hedonistic rituals of antiquity to come to terms with the reality that we all came into being as results of the prurient indulgence of exactly one generation prior to our own.

When all is said and done, we all fit into the catalogue concocted by the brilliant wit of Omar Khayyam, in the ageless Rubaiyat:

LXVIII
We are no other than a moving row
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go
Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held
In Midnight by the Master of the Show;

LXIX
But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays
Upon this Chequer-board of Nights and Days;
Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.

In an earlier article I inadvertently volunteered the information that “I am no longer a church-going Christian.” Before some family and friends would inquire on what exactly did I mean by the ‘confession’, or maybe just for my own edification, I deem it necessary to elaborate on that state of affairs to the best that my selective memory can muster.

Suffice to say, memory is, of necessity invariably selective. As an organism with instincts for self-preservation, we only retain what serves to reinforce the prolongation if not perpetuation of existential well-being. No conspiracy theory here. It is just how the cookie crumbles. No grandiose designs or sophisticated schemes on how life is supposed to unfold. For which a bit of background is in order.

I grew up in a small farming/fishing village of fewer than a hundred households, of mostly relatives with the exception of two or three families. Close family ties were so pervasive one had to reach out to the adjacent town to get married. In terms of societal and civic activity, it would compare most appropriately with the fictional village of Anatevka in Fiddler on the Roof, but for three qualifications that need to be stressed. It was a catholic community; it was a farming village by the sea; and it definitely was not fictional.

These first two attributes are more important than one would ordinarily suspect. Firstly, my father converted a sizable tract of homestead virgin forest into a coconut plantation by spear-fishing at night and using the night’s catch to hire help during the day to work the farm. This required proximity to the sea to be remotely practicable. Having grown up ‘by the sea’ has a definite indelible influence on my psyche, so much so that I have not lived more than an hour’s trip to the sea my entire life. To a boy, the sea always presented the promise of infinite possibilities. By contrast, farm work invariably gave me the feeling of being hopelessly and helplessly grounded, with no prospect of liberation from the clutches of the soil and the vagaries of the weather.

Secondly, the catholic aspect of it is important in the sense that mother was a devout catholic and father was a nominal practitioner. As a pre-school boy I would go to town with mother and father and I would end up spending the Sunday afternoon with father at the town cockpit. (Then, cockfighting was one of the most popular pastimes in the old country, and father was one of the acclaimed accomplished minder of fighting roosters in the town.)  Mother would invariably spend the Sunday afternoon in church.

Nevertheless, I grew up a devout catholic since around third grade, circa the time when I went through catechism leading to my first communion, up through sophomore high school. Being devout meant as early as a third grader, I was one of two boys in town who could lead the novena, and frequently did so in public without embarrassment or reservation, notwithstanding that the chore was traditionally assigned to girls. The other boy was my brother, two years and eight months older than me. The point is, I took religion rather seriously starting quite early on. Going to church was a weekly ritual until my high school sophomore year.

Around that time, they stopped conducting the catholic mass in Latin. The veil of mysticism was lifted off the mass as a ritual. When I started to understand what was said and done in church, I began to gradually realize that my main reason for being in church was to get close to Evangeline, the prettiest damsel and best dancer in campus, the girl I courted with the proverbial passion of first love. Somehow the realization made me extremely uncomfortable. Increasingly, the burden of inventing stories for the priest at confessional, so I could take the Sunday communion, became toilsome and intolerable. Sans provocation, my conscience started to kick in.

At the end of my sophomore year I was sent to represent my school at a national conference of students who were aspiring to pursue farming for a lifetime vocation. As a congratulatory gift, one of my maternal uncles, a practicing Seventh Day Adventist (SDA), gave me a bible. I spent a good chunk of my third year in high school reading that bible, which is one of the few books I have read cover to cover more than once. I may not be that much the wiser for the experience, but that was the first year of my not being a church-going Christian.

This was the first introspection phase of my religious meanderings. The days spent in the wilderness, so to speak. Or to borrow Omar Khayyam’s  brilliant formulation,

LXVI
I sent my Soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that After-life to spell:
And by and by my Soul return'd to me,
And answer'd "I Myself am Heav'n and Hell:"

Having quit following her to church and miserably failing to learn the tango, or any dancing skills for that matter, I of course began to drift apart from Evangeline, the love of my life. But my love affair with the bible persisted through my final year of high school. It eventually led me back to church. During the first two and one-half years of college, I found myself a guest member of an SDA congregation right in the heart of the largest Muslim city in the country.

The congregation consisted exactly of four resident families, with two to six members to a family, and four to five students from my newly opened university, as guest members. The fifth member of our group went to church rather irregularly. The four of us, more often than not, walked the five to six kilometers separating the campus from the city, both ways every Saturday regardless of the weather.  There were times when we got an occasional break from the motor pool personnel and were able to hitch a ride, but they were too few and far between.

The congregation elder was a medical doctor and we held the worship services at the waiting room of his clinic. I was positive that he was not a pastor or an ordained minister because we never addressed him as such. Although I did not quite have a chance at a one-on-one dialogue with him, (I was only a taciturn college kid, he was the accomplished elder of the bunch) I held him in high regard and respect.

The congregation on the whole had a very congenial informal ambiance. The resident families took turns hosting us, the student guest members, for lunch each Saturday. I was content and comfortable with my new identity as an SDA congregant. I even managed to leverage my religious entitlement to have ROTC deferred for two semesters because a Saturday drill violated the SDA Sabbath protocol. Ditto with any special examinations, like the competency classification tests (which landed me into remedial English course) scheduled for a Saturday: we were allowed to take them some other time.

During this period, I however admit to cringing with consternation and resentment every time I heard somebody remarked that I was a person who could be trusted because I went to church every week. This was, to my mind, the cliché case of putting the cart before the horse. To date I hold the deep seated conviction that I went to church on a regular basis because I was a decent person, mainly due to my upbringing. To formulate it otherwise would be an affront to the honor and achievements of my parents, the most monumental of them I consider to be the success of their children.

I was blessed with loving and caring parents who inculcated into my consciousness an appreciation of the notion of the good, the beautiful and the true, along with the value of hard work and the mental habit to examine the merits of any proposition that needs to be acted upon or taken as gospel.

This is seriously important because my parents got married when they were in grammar school. Father was nineteen just on the verge of being promoted to seventh grade. Mother was sixteen, still in the sixth grade. Both of them were scions of farming/fishing families. Their moral and spiritual moorings essentially consisted of the goodness of their hearts and the desire to do what was right, tempered by the rigors of the elements associated with farming and fishing life.

It was against the backdrop of these introspections (my second over the last five years) that I was caught off guard by a sermon. The occasion was the Saturday following the second anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s death. The congregation elder chose the life and death of the iconic celebrity as the subject of his sermon. His thesis was that no amount of glamour, glitter, wealth and fame can work to your benefit if you live a life of sin. The thesis as such was fine. But in the process of expounding on it, he proceeded to berate her judgment and vilify her character and probe into every conceivable aspect of her memory and legacy to prove his point.  In his passionate eloquence he managed to impute the most negative nuance to every facet of her life.

Somehow this violated every fabric of decency that was planted in my soul by my parents. It took every fiber of self-restraint for me not to walk out of the service right then and there. From my farm boy upbringing one just should not speak ill of the dead. I cannot remember being taught the specific reason for the proscription, but I hasten to guess: that it is because the dead is inherently incapable of defending itself. Or if you subscribe to the wisdom of Shakespeare’s formulation that

“The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;”

the evil deeds have ample chance to speak for themselves. Therefore it becomes incumbent upon common decency to highlight the good deeds, especially when they are buried with the carcass. Thus the practice of delivering a eulogy at a funeral is a protocol of decency.

What I even found more outrageous was the fact that no other person seemed to have found the sermon objectionable. It might of course be that everybody was just as taciturn and reserved as I was then. Be that as it may, that was the last time I attended a church service as a congregant. Since nobody asked me why I stopped going to church, I did not think I needed to come up with an explanation, till now.

The “fault,” at this juncture, is giving credibility to Al Gore. It was understandable that Bill Clinton would sell Al Gore as a presidential timber. When he was picked for Vice President, I chalked it up to Clinton’s attempt at getting a life insurance. With Al Gore in line for succession to the Oval Office, who was going to want to harm a President William Jefferson Clinton? The Democrats have such a perverted sense of reality.

The point is, after reading Al Gore’s “Earth in the Balance,” it is one of the few “wonders of the world” that anybody could give Al Gore an iota of credibility. That book established Gore’s bona fides, beyond any shadow of a doubt, as a certifiable charlatan. But then again, not very many people may have read it. (Full disclosure: I got it from a $1-book stand and I read it commuting to/from work in the NYC subway.)

Some might deem it an exercise in futility to focus on Al Gore at this juncture in history. With the advent of the transformational, transcendent Obama, Gore himself is history. I wish it were quite that simple and harmless. Gore, being the self-proclaimed high priest of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) duly ordained by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, has successfully charmed the public into accepting his balderdash as gospel.

The same intellectual dysfunction and disconnect that were dismissive of “Earth in the Balance” have embraced the movie “An Inconvenient Truth” and allowed it to creep into our educational system. It is analogous to making “Earth in the Balance” a required reading material for high school seniors as a pre-requisite for graduation. 

It is noteworthy that this same dysfunction allowed the elevation of BHO to the Oval Office to become the Ditherer-in-chief and make America the laughing stock of the world, not to mention the de facto betrayal of our troops who are holding forth in Afghanistan.

It matters little that Al Gore is gallivanting around the globe with his huge ‘Carbon Footprint’ making millions of dollars in the process, peddling fictitious literature billed as gospel. What is most crucial is that the Obama regime with all the powers and resources of the Federal Government at its disposal is buying into and espousing the Al Gore agenda hook, line and sinker. Anybody who dares to sound a note of alarm or caution is vilified as naysayers intent on obstructing the President, or worse, as racist opposing the President’s agenda because he happens to be black.

It behooves to keep in mind that one of the premises of “An Inconvenient Truth” is the mantra that the science of Global Warming is a settled issue. That there is an overwhelming consensus within the scientific community does not make the belief a well established body of knowledge. Science is not a matter of faith and consensus. It is a matter of verifiable facts and phenomena that can be replicated repeatedly under carefully controlled constraints.

It used to be that scientific theory was established by a preponderance of verifiable evidence. Not anymore. In the age of Gore and Obama, science is established by a preponderance of repeated incantation, followed by a preponderance of favorable media coverage.

Consensus does not a science make. Carbon Footprint and Carbon Offset, are not scientific concepts. They are political constructs, concocted for propaganda, designed to politically and financially benefit their proponents. It has as much basis in reality as did mortgage-backed securities which obliterated the real estate market and the entire financial system needed a multi-billion dollar bailout.

Beneath the Veneer of Hypocritical Rhetoric

Anthropogenic Global Warming, as postulated by the Kyoto Protocol is not even a scientific theory. It is only an unprovable hypothesis. The notion of "Greenhouse Effect" postulated in the context of the entire planet earth is, at best, an extrapolation of boundary value conditions, not otherwise warranted by experimental constraints.

It is the process of experimentation that elevates an hypothesis into a theory, i.e., when replicable results supportive of the hypothesis are obtained, repeatedly. No such experimentation has been deployed in support of Anthropogenic Global Warming. A computer simulation is not an experiment. It is nothing but an exercise in modeling reality. Its validity depends largely on the set of assumptions that govern the set of process relationships stipulated in the model. It does not prove anything, by any stretch of the imagination.

At the time of this writing, there is a brewing scandal surrounding the apparent falsification of ‘scientific’ data by the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglea in the UK, known to be the intellectual brain thrust for AGW.  It is a breach of protocol governing scientific inquiry that would have warranted sending the offenders to the stakes, if not for the fact that doing so would be a serious sacrilege to the noble memory of Giordano Bruno.

For the sake of pedagogical integrity, let us disregard the potential ramifications of such a scandal and confine ourselves to verifiable facts. Carbon dioxide accounts for 0.0314 vol % of the atmosphere and ranks fourth in the distribution after nitrogen, oxygen, and argon. This amount constitutes 1.5% of the total carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere and hydrosphere, the dissolved component accounting for 98.5% of the total.

People exhale carbon dioxide all their lives. Lower forms of being in the biosphere generously discharge it from the other end, an activity most notably attributed to cattle. Plants use it in photosynthesis. Coral reefs use it to produce more coral reefs, to eventually become limestone and marble, eons hence.

With all these multitude of phenomena in which carbon dioxide is involved, where is the research that isolates in a quantifiable format, the human contribution? The answer appropriately brings to mind a quatrain from Omar Khayyam:

 XLVII 

When You and I behind the Veil are past, 

Oh, but the long, long while the World shall last, 

Which of our Coming and Departure heeds 

As the Sea's self should heed a pebble-cast. 

Notwithstanding the bloated egos of most politicians and some 

punditocrats, our physical universe as pertains to the planet earth, 

is still heliocentric. Much of what is going on that affects the 

temperature mostly is influenced by solar activity, or lack thereof.

Temperature fluctuations are well documented in the historical geologic record. They are somewhat loosely correlated with solar magnetic storms or sun spots (emphasis mine):

“At over 1.4 million kilometers (869,919 miles) wide, the Sun contains 99.86 percent of the mass of the entire solar system: well over a million Earths could fit inside its bulk. The total energy radiated by the Sun averages 383 billion trillion kilowatts, the equivalent of the energy generated by 100 billion tons of TNT exploding each and every second.”

Not even all the messianic powers of Barack Hussein Obama, reinforced by all the major bloviators in Capitol Hill (think Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Harry Reid, Chuck Schummer, etc.) has any prayer of reversing the influence of these staggering numbers.  So, where does the urgent call to action by the Global Warmists come from? Let’s take a look at another, rather longer, historical record (emphasis mine):

“Based on a combination of historical trends over the last several thousand years with the recent trends reasonably attributable to anthropogenic causes of temperature increase, it appears that some small additional increase might be reasonably possible (but not certain) by 2100, but most likely within a range < 0.4^OC, which would put it in the range of several warm periods in historical times that were particularly productive times.”

On a normal day in either winter or summer, when my HVAC system is engaged in the house, I suffer through a greater temperature variation going from the first floor couch to my computer room on the second floor. The answer is painfully obvious. The urgency is analogous to the avowed need to pass the stimulus bill of thousands of pages without being read, let alone analyzed by those who have to vote on it.

To propose to deploy inordinate resources for Global Warming is political folly worthy of celebration only in The United Nations. Let American taxpayers not have anything to do with it.

          Due faith and courage for your future course,

          Be best prepared to emulate with pride

          The brave defenders of your sacred shores.

          Allow not blunt your own awakening

          By rhetoric that politicians use

          To thwart your conscience into weakening

          The selfsame vehemence of vengeance's cause,

          The which would break the fetters of your soul

          And tear the mask of shameless tyranny.

          Default's the cross of falsehood bearing all

          Unreason for your seeming destiny

                   To drown, in surfeit, bliss of ignorance,

                   To crown, in glory, sweet irrelevance!!        

Having introduced this locution in an earlier article, I hasten to stake my claim as the one to have originated the phraseology. Thus, if and when it wiggles itself into an unheralded immortality in the hallowed pantheons of political discourse, there should be no mistaking on who first minted it.

Mistaken attribution may not lead to a distortion of history with momentous repercussions on the subsequent unfolding of events. But accuracy in reporting is important; otherwise injustice becomes an acceptable integral part to the praxis and history of scholarship. Becoming so would, ipso facto, defeat the very sine qua non of history.

For instance, the catchy "nattering nabobs of negativism" is often mistakenly attributed to Vice President Spiro Agnew just because he was the first on record to have uttered it in public. However, it was minted behind the scenes by then speechwriter William Safire, whose “On Language” column justified The New York Times being delivered to my doorsteps for several years.

The Agnew attribution may not have changed the course of history. I however deem it an injustice to Safire’s contribution to the national political discourse in particular, and to language scholarship in general.

I have come to the inevitable conclusion that President Obama’s ascendancy to the Oval Office was made possible mainly by a failure of the majority of the American electorate to recognize a multitude of patterns concerning Barack Hussein Obama, the individual, his modus operandi, and its cumulative impact to our national polity. These include, among others, his associations, his teleprompter enhanced eloquence, his penchant to obfuscate information obstinately, his flair for the dramatic and sensational, etc., in endless litany.

Granted, there were countless enablers along the way. But the genius of Obama lies in his gambit that taken as a litany, or a laundry list of seemingly harmless lapses of judgment, his modus operandi could not harm him politically. He was in effect counting on the statistical certitude that the majority of the electorate could not muster a gestalt perception of himself as a politician. Therefore Americans as the electorate are inherently incapable of knowing how harmful Obama is to America.

It is a certainty because the electorate as a collection of minds and individual conscience and consciousness, constitute a few drops of genius in a bucket of mediocrity. This is not to denigrate the intelligence of the American electorate. It is just to recognize the undeniable brutal reality that statistically, the nonchalant John and Jane Doe “cannot care less” amongst us do vastly outnumber the “you never can fool me” Einstein and Heisenberg amongst us.

To invoke the original far-reaching conclusive formulation of Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, in its entirety, "Inequality of endowments, including intelligence, is a reality. Trying to pretend that inequality does not really exist has led to disaster. Trying to eradicate inequality with artificially manufactured outcomes has led to disaster. It is time for America once again to try living with inequality, as life is lived: understanding that each human being has strengths and weaknesses, qualities we admire and qualities we do not admire, competencies and incompetencies, assets and debits; that the success of each human life is not measured externally but internally; that all of the rewards we can confer on each other, the most precious is a place as a valued fellow citizen."

I deem it pointless to dwell again on the litany of sins. Aside from having peripherally dealt with it earlier elsewhere myself, the internet literature alone is replete with brilliant and incisive documentation. To single out the most notable few I recently found: Victor Davis Hanson has repeatedly analyzed Obama’s lapses in judgment. Thomas Sowell pointed out with unmistakable emphasis how ruinous Obama’s czaring of America is to the country. Joan Swirsky pushed the envelope even further by delving into who could possibly be calling the shots.

The enablers demand revisiting because they, too, constitute a pattern. It requires getting to the forest without being distracted by the trees. The so-called main stream media, exemplified to notoriety by the “tingling legs” of Chris Matthews, being blatantly functioning as a de facto propaganda outlet for Obama does not need any journalistic sourcing. That the “hope and change” mantra took political traction, thanks to the acolyte media has become a common knowledge.

It is however usually under-appreciated that the Clinton Paradigm ushered in with facility the arrival of the Obama Paradigm. The ultimate political insider Richard Morris architected triangulation as an effective tactical maneuver to attain the strategy of political survival. This enabled the Clinton presidency to recalibrate its bearings, to survive Newt’s “Contract for America” revolution and introduce a new standard for Presidential behavior. The Clinton era effectively corroded the nation’s sensibilities.

After the nation have accepted the mantra that the Lewinsky Affair was about “only just sex,” “everybody does it,” “does not amount to impeachable behavior,” the crush and burn methodology of Rahm Emanuel became as benign to the nation as a cub scouts fire drill. On his inauguration speech, Obama enjoined the nation to help him remake America and more than half of the nation gave him a standing ovation.

Little did the applauders suspect that what he had in mind was to convert America to be the leading debtor nation after a long tradition of being a reliable creditor nation. Little did the nation suspect that what he had in mind was to downsize the private sector, the very dependable engine of wealth creation, in order that union and government bureaucracies, become the undisputed purveyor of the perverted “golden rule,” that he who has the gold makes the rules.

As a matter of pedagogical illustration let us take the recently passed House Bill which is popularly deemed the PelosiCare version of ObamaCare.  I had neither the latitude nor the forbearance to deal with the thousands of pages of the full text. Hence, I searched the CRS summary page for the text strings “establish” and “prohibit.” The search returned ten hits for “establish” and five hits for “prohibit.”

Without going into a tedious and toilsome cost-benefit analysis of the implications of the search result, it is safe to conclude that at the very least, when PelosiCare becomes the law of the land, we are guaranteed five more constraints to what can be done, without fear of violating the law. Whether they be czars, commissions, committees, or panels of sorts, there shall be ten more units of bureaucracy to function as instruments of governance.

Let me remind, in passing, all those who breathed a sigh of relief on the report that Sen. Lindsey Graham pronounced the Bill a DOA (dead on arrival) in the Senate, to take the relief with the proverbial grain of salt. The venerable Senator issued a similar verdict on the Sotomayor confirmation. She was then the nominee. She is now Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Would calling Senator Graham’s office for an explanation serve any purpose? I suspect it would be an exercise in futility.

Finally, recognizing a paradigm is one thing; being cognizant of its enduring legacy is quite another. I deem it proper and fitting to apply the modifier repugnant to emphasize the reality that every facet of the Obama agenda has the guaranteed effect of undermining the principles which serve as the foundation of Americanism, the vaunted last best hope of mankind on earth.

With Iran being in the crosshairs of international concerns and the preponderance of what I dub the Repugnant Obama Paradigm, which includes, inter alia, the recent groveling and pandering of this White House towards the Moslem world, I deem it essential to share the sentiments herein with as wide a public as I can possibly reach.  

I therefore solicit your indulgence and present the original piece in its entirety, neurotic trappings included.

{*******}

By now I gathered from your messages that you are pretty much disappointed with the websites I routinely visit and the tendencies I’m inclined to read and indulge my fancy at. I know that you know that you are not alone in that regard. Since quite a few of my messages were left unanswered, I don’t know where to begin. 

Let’s start with the question of moderate Moslems: where are they, what are they doing a propos of the Jihad that is unleashed at the West, what is the most likely influence they will have in the direction and outcome of conflict resolution.

Let us stipulate, for the sake of argument that they exist. I submit to you that to the extent that they are silent on the issues, they render themselves irrelevant to the process, let alone to its outcome. The silent majority become de facto collaborators to the factions that drive the events that set the agenda.

I have to concede: my over all knowledge of Islam is limited to a one-semester course on the Cultural History of Islam in the Philippines. This is supplemented, perhaps by three semesters of working as a Research Assistant to a professor doing her doctoral desertion on the subject. I therefore would not presume to give an analysis of the various sects of and tendencies in Islam to probe into and prove or disprove were moderation lies.

Rather, I’d propose to speak from real life experience with our version of Islam in the Philippines. Admittedly, this experience is not as extensive as yours. Garnered between the ages of 18 and 29, I submit to you however, that it is equally instructive and diverse: as a student, an office worker, a manual laborer, and a faculty member in a prestigious university. I had classmates, professors and students who were Moslems.

I have shared working and lodging quarters with both the politically active and the completely apolitical. I had argued with them, fought with them, played with them, joked with them, negotiated with them, lobbied with them. At one point I even fancied romantically courting one of them. I had my life and limb threatened on more than one occasion resulting from differences in opinion on rules of procedures in Student Government elections.

The conclusion gleaned from this experience, as obtains in the Philippines, at least: there are no radical and moderate doctrines of Islam.  There are only varying degrees of adherence to the same doctrine. This distinction is by no means academic.

It is one thing to have an institutionalized deliberation of what the doctrine entails, teaches and promotes or prohibits, i.e., an institutionally conscious architecting of a belief structure and its societal and sociological implications. It is quite a different story to have individuals decide to adopt or discard certain parts of the doctrine as a matter of practical convenience.

The former is wont to produce religious/ideological enlightenment. The latter, more often than not, results in political and/or commercial opportunism and cultural relativism of the worst kind. In effect, the typical Moslem intellectual assumes a split identity: one when he is conscious of his adherence to Islam, (his “Islamhood” so to speak), and the other when he discards, wittingly or unwittingly, the religious affiliation and constraints.

To state it mildly and kindly, it is extremely difficult and problematic to make long-term programmatic political allies out of people with lukewarm convictions. They can reach out and deal with the outside world in a less than antagonistic manner only to the extent that they are able to transcend their identities as Moslems.

This translates into always having an ulterior motive in their dealings with the outside world, i.e., with the infidels such as you and me. Whatever alliance you made with them should be understood to be in the context of a specific set of circumstances. Any bonding that ensues from such alliance is non-transferable to the next set of conditions.  In other words, you cannot expect any form of loyalty from them because you cannot expect that they will shed off, even temporarily, their Islamic identities for your sake.

When you are in conflict with any one of them the notion of who is at fault is decided by the fact that you are not one of them. You should not expect that any one of them would voluntarily look after your interest and intercede on behalf of objective facts of the conflict. When an atrocity is committed on someone who is not one of them, nobody protests, and nobody bears witness for the victim so the perpetrator is tolerated.

Incidentally, I should mention that the university where I studied and later worked in was established for the express purpose of promoting integration between the Moslems and the rest of the nation. When five Iranian students were robbed, murdered and mutilated in a nearby town, it was the non-Moslem constituents of the university who demanded that the local and provincial (roughly comparable to State here in the U.S.) authorities at the very least condemned the atrocious deed. The rest remained silent. Presumably those Iranians were not Moslems. Or if they were, not the version of Islam preached and practiced in the locality. Of course nobody got arrested or answered for what happened.

 It is entirely possible, indeed, I think it is most likely that the Islam practiced amongst the Iranians and the one practiced in the Philippines are different. I am not going to venture into the difference between the Suni and the Shiite sects. That is completely beyond my domain.

I can say this for certain: of the different nationalities of Islamic cultural backgrounds I have been exposed to in Japan and here in the U.S., Filipinos (in general, and I in particular) seemed to have gotten along rather more easily with people from Iran and/or Turkey.  The fact that, by a confluence of circumstances, I got along well with Farid has very little influence in this observation. If anything, it probably is an indirect result, or at least an illustration of its verity.

Conversely, we seemed to experience more difficulty with people from Pakistan. In fact at the Chiba Foreign Students College, there was open enmity between the Pakistanis and the Filipinos. Granted, this might have been caused by specific incidents. So let us put this aspect of the issue aside and refocus on the treatise of the article, which triggered all this.

Maybe it is true that Iran has all the socio-political institutions conducive to the emergence of an Islamic moderate as a political force. Indeed, there were reports of Candle Light vigils on the streets of Tehran in reaction to 9/11 as compared with celebratory dancing on the streets in the rest of the Middle East. More recent reports of anti-Taliban demonstrations in Tehran also reinforce this encouraging tendency.

Unfortunately, however, political ferment of the sort that can reverse the tide of ideology takes at least a generation to take hold. The terrorist network is actively waging a war on Western civilization now, ironically using some of the tools only Western civilization could conceivably produce.

Are we then to wait around for another generation of enlightened intellectuals to decide whether or not it is a war worth fighting and another generation to actually fight this war? Or shall we deny that there is a war being fought!   The events of 9/11 changed a lot of things. The principle of self-preservation was not one of them.

When somebody comes to my house to cut my throat, my first order of business is to prevent it from happening.  I’m not going to debate on the merits and causes and motives of the mission.  I can take care of that after the mission has been successfully foiled.  It is too late to prevent 9/11 from happening.  It is imperative that we deter the perpetrators from making a habit of it.

And here lies my quarrel with Islam. A crime has been committed in its name. Where is the rest of Islam to at least condemn the deed? Where is the outrage? It is not forthcoming. The rest of Islam, as a doctrine, is simply incapable of condemning it because it does not see it as a crime. It sees it as an achievement in the name of Islam, something worthy of a jubilant celebration.   I definitely am not one of those who would argue that there is the slightest possibility to justify or explain away 9/11.

The role of American Moslems needs to be looked into in this connection. The only protest I have come across from that community is about its being victimized, resultant to, or as a “fallout” of 9/11.  In a way this is understandable if pathetically pathological in its absurdity.  It stresses the fact that this would be the last place to look for Islamic moderates.

At this juncture, I contend, assert and maintain that to convert into Islam from religions associated with the Judeo-Christian cultural traditions is a definite act of intellectual regression. The fact that geographically and historically Islamic cultures have been associated with repressive governments is no accident of history. It is rooted on the proscription of the notion of Free Will from the tenets of Islam that makes its adherents exceptionally vulnerable and susceptible to fear and repression.

Conversely, the assimilation of the concept of Free Will into the doctrines of Judaism and Christianity has undeniably made these religions hospitable and conducive to the flourishing of liberty and kindred values associated with democratic cultures and institutions. This in and of itself makes the latter religions decisively superior to Islam.

It was the liberation of the power of the mind from the clutches of ignorance and religious dogma that propelled Western Civilization, as we know it. Converting into Islam is tantamount to renouncing the benefits, accrued by default, from the moral and intellectual legacy of the ages of reformation, renaissance, and enlightenment.  It is, ipso facto, a tragic and pathological intellectual suicide of the grossest order.  One must have been utterly and completely disenfranchised from such traditions to become an Islamic convert.

I think I have spoken my peace or have beaten this horse dead many times over.

"All politics is local," is a truism attributed to the late Tip O’Niell. He was Speaker of the House when Ronald Reagan was President. I believe Chris Matthews of "tingling legs" fame may have worked for him, in some important capacity.

I hasten to add, however, that in a land like America, where individualism is supposed to flourish and reign supreme, "All Politics is Personal." (It sounds so delicious I should get this trademarked.)

The essence of what the Obama administration is doing respecting health care is an assault on individual liberty. All the machinations and lawyerly schemes buried in thousands of pages and a mesh of cross references impact every citizen in the most personal way.

I Got Lucky Once

On August 30, 2007, less than one year after I started collecting Social Security, I underwent an open heart surgery with aortic valve implant and a quadruple coronary bypass. This was the byproduct of an attempt to get an inguinal hernia fixed surgically.

The cruel dollars-and-cents scorecard was rather staggering. Upwards of $149k paid for by my insurance provider and our co-pay in the neighborhood of $15k, an obligation we are still struggling to meet.  All this cost for another lease on life, now as a card-carrying member of that exclusive club of people with artificial implants bearing the manufacturer’s serial number.

Beyond the cost, even more staggering was the realization that this was the result of discrete individual decisions made by professionals practicing their professions under the free market system. Mainly the patient’s best interest and the highest integrity of their respective professions were the deciding factors.

As the debate on ObamaCare unfolds or heats up, what haunts the inner chambers of my reverie is this: The outcome could have been drastically different had the decision been made by a Health Care Czar or any low-level bureaucrat concerned only with cutting costs from wherever it can be done in the domain.

With triage driven strictly by a cost-benefit analysis, denying me the heart surgery would have represented multiple savings: the cost of the surgery itself and the monthly social security check due me if I continued living. 

It would have been a sort of accomplishment to eliminate what can be construed as a potential useless eater. It’s a gruesome thought that betimes besets me even while playing an occasional round of golf with my nine-year old granddaughter (which she seems to immensely enjoy).

The Tedious Narrative

It all started with the need to have my hernia fixed, before the health insurance coverage lapses as a result of my wife, Krystyna changing jobs. Not that she had another job to go to but she was very unhappy with the working conditions at the job she held for the time being. She was seriously thinking of going for a change.

I had scheduled a surgery for Tuesday, 21-Aug-07. I reported for the pre-op procedure on Friday, 17-Aug-07. The anesthesiologist said he did not like the looks of my ekg., and wanted a cardiology clearance for the surgery. So, instead of going for the hernia surgery on Tuesday, 21-Aug-07, I went for a cardiac stress test. At which point, the cardiologist said he did not like the looks of the frontal area of my heart and wanted a closer look.

There really was not much of a choice but to abide by the cardiologist’s prescriptions. After all, I consulted him for his professional expertise. The cardiologist secured a 28-Aug-07 appointment for a Cardiac Catheterization for the coveted ‘closer look.’

Meanwhile, while taking a shower in the early evening/late afternoon of Saturday, 25-Aug-07, I experienced all the telltale symptoms of a stroke reminiscent of the one I suffered on 1-Feb-93 which had me out of commission for a month. (Then I was paralyzed for two weeks, I spent the third week doing in-patient rehab at Beekman Downtown Hospital, the fourth week outpatient rehab at home.) I was admitted to the Emergency Room at SBUH (Stony Brook University Hospital). I underwent a battery of tests which turned out negative for stroke but was kept in the hospital for observation in light of my appointment for cardiac catheterization.

Whether inadvertently or by design, during cardiac catheterization I was only half-way sedated. I could hear the conversation of the people conducting the procedure as if it was taking place in the adjacent room. But my recollection of what I heard is as vivid as my mother’s words when I bid her my final goodbye back in April 1974. I can see it engraved in marble in the inner chambers of my mind:

Voice A: “I cannot do this anymore. It’s too far gone. I want the surgery team to take a closer look at this. Can you do this?”

Voice B: “We are looking. Yes, that’s doable.”

Voice of my mind’s I: “Hey, guys, are you talking about me? I’m still here. Can somebody please fill me in on what it’s all about?”

I got my wish. I was wheeled into the waiting/staging room to wake up from my sedation. Some thirty minutes later the surgeon (Voice B above) informed me that I need an aortic valve replacement and a triple, possibly, quadruple coronary artery bypass. If I had any questions, this was the time to ask:

Me: “So doc, what are my options?”

Surgeon: “Not too many. You can take either a metal or a tissue implant.”

Without losing a breath, I picked tissue. Somehow the idea of inorganic object implanted in my body, other than dental, did not sound too appealing.

Surgeon: “Good choice. That way you don’t have to be on blood thinner all your life.”

He proceeded to inform me that he can do the procedure the following Thursday as his second patient for the day. Under the inertia of hospitalization, I accepted the schedule but deep down in my soul I was struggling for a moral justification for the attempt to extend my physical life with an artificial implant.

Although I am no longer a church-going Christian, somehow, I had apprehension that the impending procedure violated my perception of Divine Providence. I have to come up with a reason to justify what I then considered as making a mortgage of my soul with the Devil. Then came the epiphany. I need to sing at Nikki’s wedding. Nikki is my granddaughter who was seven years old (and four months) at the time.

The aortic valve (affectionately referred to as a “pig’s heart”) has a statistical longevity of fifteen years, give or take a couple. Fifteen plus seven makes twenty-two, and that is about a marriageable age, depending on circumstances. Nikki does not know this but she has been the main reason for my still being around. As far as she is concerned she is just happy that Pa (as she calls me) is here as opposed to being a distant memory.

It was under these circumstances that I submitted myself under the knife which in its essential components consisted of: nine hours of surgery, seventeen hours sustained by the respirator machine, eighteen units of blood transfusion, and my daughter getting hysterical that I might have been dead when the hospital staff finally allowed her to look at my seemingly lifeless carcass.

“We've become a very tolerant society, in which we don't judge people by their names any more than by the color of their skin. Assimilation still requires some accommodation by the newcomers  . . .  But it doesn't mean entirely giving up some attachment and affection for one's origins, even distant ones.”

--Linda Chavez, at, http://townhall.com/columnists/Column2.aspx?UrlTitle=whats_in_a_name&ns=LindaChavez&dt=10/30/2009&submitted=true&comments=true&sort=desc#comments

Roughly a quarter of a century ago, when the manager hired me to a much coveted job in the lowest echelons of management in a reputable corporation, I believed it was on the merits of my resume and real time presentation. It was the easiest conclusion to make, having been endowed with a healthy dose of self-esteem by my farm boy upbringing, reinforced by a series of academic scholarships through college and graduate school.

Then picking an “Americanized” name was one of the top three issues he addressed in the job orientation. He opined that most people would find pronouncing all three syllables of my first name, Constancio, as a project by itself, or in his words, “more than a mouthful.”

I was utterly flabbergasted. Only the fact that I already resigned from my previous job, where I was affectionately called “Mr. C” by my manager, constrained me from kissing the new job goodbye.

Again my farm boy instinct for adaptation kicked in and I settled for a compromise. During the first few years on the job I adopted the moniker “C.S.” This was conveniently consistent with the name on my driver’s license and the American Express card I carried at the time.

Moreover, the compromise did not involve any emotional stress. I am the fifth of eight siblings and the fourth of six sons. I have known for a fact that I was named after my father not because he had any special affection for me over his other sons. Rather it was because the Catholic Almanac of Names was not available the year I was born, thanks to World War II. So getting “CS” over “Constancio” did not bruise my ego in any way, shape or form.

I did not bring this up to suggest that the manager was a bigot by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, he was one of the finest human beings I was privileged to have encountered in my career meanderings. To date I hold him in high esteem. That I am no longer in contact with him may be blamed on what Spenser calls “The Ruins of Time.” I have that strong tendency to be overwhelmed by the inertia of the banalities of day-to-day existence, to keep abreast with the demands of social networking.

The manager who succeeded him promptly sent me to an accent correction tutor to get rid of my ‘thick’ Filipino accent. The premise being that speaking with a vernacular accent hindered my ability to communicate effectively. It allegedly jeopardized my chances for advancement in the corporate bureaucracy, or so he noted in a subsequent job performance evaluation report.

I must confess that he was proved correct. I subsequently resigned from the job shortly thereafter. I simply could not muster enough patience and forbearance to endlessly indulge in what I deemed the celebration of irrelevance just to stoke some peoples’ ego.

The point that can never be overemphasized is that an obsession with form over substance, as seems to be the norm of late, especially in the age of Obama, produces unintended consequences. One of them is a de facto appearance of bigotry, and its practice by default. It is a fine line that divides the much needed effort at cultural assimilation and the despicable sacrifice of your soul in the altar of multi-culturalism.

The former demands you galvanize all the useful aspects of your background to become viable tools to establish your role in the new cultural setting, thereby enhancing your chances at success. The latter is wont to embellish some of the primitive and provincial reflexes of your background to mystify and mythologize so that they become worthy of worship and adoration.

This is an unmistakable prelude to an historical revisionism which can create an alternate universe or pseudo reality in the lives of the practitioners.  As a first generation American, I am always, and will ever be categorically against the mindset that promotes hyphenated-Americanism.  It is the ultimate promise of meritocracy, inter alia, which makes me unapologetically, uniquely, and unequivocally proud to be an American.

It is this sentiment that makes the POTUS’ practice and inclination to apologize for America unpardonably offensive, and un-American. It is a practice definitely not worthy of his office. America deserves better.

Like fallen leaves scattered on the grass of autumn, the following are bits of comments and rejoinders I posted on some of the columns variously indicated by the associated url’s.  I gleaned them into a separate post as I occasionally found sparks of inspiration sparsely intermingled in the ubiquitous morass of tedious verbosity.

Contrary to popular myth, Al Gore did not invent the internet. I submit that his main contribution is in the field of scientific charlatanism, most typically illustrated by the currency and popularity of what is most conveniently known as the established (by consensus) science of “Global Warming.”

The Tragedy of Hyphenated Americans  

It is regrettable but not surprising that Judge Chen sees himself as an Asian-Pacific person who happens to be an American by a confluence of circumstances probably beyond his control as an individual person.
cf, http://townhall.com/columnists/JillianBandes/2009/10/16/aclu_pipeline_for_obama_judges?comments=true#comments

It would have been much more wholesome if he saw himself as an American who happened to have Asian-Pacific ethnicity in his biological hereditary DNA.

That he is an Obama appointment to the Bench is no surprise. After all the POTUS' highest profile nominee to the Judiciary is Justice Sotomayor who saw herself as a Puerto Rican first and an American, only attendant to circumstances beyond her control as an individual. This seems to be the pattern in Obama world. He nurtures the most provincial impulses and grooms the baser evils of our nature.

The most worrisome aspect of all these is how long can this American Republic endure this vicious attacks on all the moral fabrics that make us Americans and proud of being so?

It is noteworthy, that the POTUS as he repeatedly pointed out during, before and after the campaign, is the quintessential hyphenated American: the Audacity of his Hope is the Dream from his Father. His face is different from the other presidents you find on the US dollar bills. But don’t point it out else you are definitely race-baiting.

In essence, he is a Kenyan-American, and Alinskyan-American, a post-partisan-American, a communist-American, a trans-racial-American, a transformational, transformative-American, etc., etc.

A Compromise with Iran

Is like a coin toss where heads they win, tails we lose. It's pretty much akin to the Democrats' notion of "bipartisanship," that is what attends when the Republicans embrace the Democrats' position on any issue.

cf,http://townhall.com/columnists/Column2.aspx?UrlTitle=give_war_a_chance&ns=BillOReilly&dt=10/17/2009&page=full&comments=true&submitted=true

NATO has always been an American defense umbrella from the get go. With a toothless America, NATO is as benign as a Sunday Bridge Club of retired housewives.

With a POTUS who is obsessed with unilateral disarmament, you get a world without arms which results in a world without laws.

The fault, my dear Casius, lies not in our stars but in ourselves: we put a communist pacifist in the White House. That was oh, so nice of us:)

Desperately Trying to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons? The operative word is desperate. You are trying to recruit an ally in Russia who is obsessed with her grandeur of yore. For Russia, this is understandably tolerable. After all you can only aspire for things or a state that you don’t have or are not already. That we consider the Russians as potential allies on any venture, indeed, is desperation of the first order.

Hamlet in the Oval Office

Cf, http://townhall.com/columnists/SandyRios/2009/10/16/obama_is_sure_about_something

To send or not to send (troops to Afghanistan)?
To tell or not to tell (sexual preferences or orientation in the military)?

Will the winter of our discontent shortly follow this, our autumn of vacillation?

An anecdote popularly circulated in my college days tells of a politician who in the heat of a campaign speech passionately promised the audience that he would make sure to build a bridge when elected.

A heckler in the audience pointed out that there is no river needing a bridge in their locality. So the speaker vehemently insisted that he will also guarantee building a river once he is elected, no thanks for the impertinent interruption by the heckler.

The moral of the story is that Obama is the type of politician who promises anyone anything to get applause. That feeds the baser evils of his nature.

Hope and Hype

Cf, http://townhall.com/columnists/SuzanneFields/2009/10/16/the_nobler_nobels

If the Nobel Peace Prize to the POTUS were only for Hope and Hype, then we can breathe easier and dismiss it as one misguided Norwegian joke on America.

I submit to you that it is less benign than a joke and more sinister and malicious in intent: that is to declaw America, at least for the duration of the Obama Administration. What with the POTUS’ continuing buzz about unilateral disarmament, ad nauseam, the Prize is an attempt to leverage the rules of engagements that America adheres to in both international relations and domestic policy.

The message is: a pacifist you aspire to be, a pacifist you shall remain, and we even bribe you for it.

That the Nobel Committee awards a prize for bluster is consistent with the historical fact that the wealth which gave birth to the Nobel Prizes was largely derived from the manufacture and sales of TNT, dynamite and other explosives.

In Full Brutal Context

"There is a tide in the affairs of men

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures."
cf, http://townhall.com/columnists/MonaCharen/2009/10/16/the_democrats%e2%80%99_coming_defeat?page=full&comments=true

If the flood is the 2010 election, don't count the chicks before the eggs are hatched, or even laid. The Clintons also promised the most ethical administration in history. We got, among others, DNA on a blue dress and it was not even deemed an impeachable behavior, just rascally banal and worthy of late night comedy fare.

To prevail in the 2010 off peak elections, we need viable and practicable alternatives, comparable to the "Contract on America." Also, we need bone marrow transplants on the Republicans so that they can exhibit some political spine. Short of that, we get on the "Omitted" side of the Brutal quote.

The POTUS 44 has brilliantly succeeded on what he promised on inauguration day: to remake America in the image of Europe, to be acceptable to the rest of the world, to project the image that is acceptable to the United Nations. With his winning of the Nobel Peace Prize, this inaugural promise has been signed, sealed and delivered with a flourish. Now we Americans can be oh, so proud that we have become as sophisticated and civilized as Belgium.

The last U.S. President to receive a Nobel Peace Prize was James Earl Carter who shared the award with one of the greatest ambassadors for peace of them all, the late Mohammed Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini, popularly known as Yasser Arafat. Maybe from here onwards, for the sake of civility and sophisticated decorum, it behooves to formally call the POTUS 44 as Barack Hussein Obama al-Indonesia al-Columbia al-Chicago Abu-Malia Abu-Sasha.

The AP White House Correspondent Jennifer Loven was impertinent enough to ask wherefore the Nobel Peace Prize? Well, let us venture to count the ways:

1.    For apologizing at every opportunity for all that America traditionally stood for, the bastion of freedom and liberty and the successful champion in defense against Nazi fascism, Japanese militarism, and Soviet Communism.

2.   For groveling to the King of Saudi Arabia, for palling around with Hugo Chavez, for being deferential to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jung Il,  Moammar Gadhafi, and the Castro brothers Fidel and Raol while dumping on Israel.

3.   For buying up toxic assets with taxpayer dollars and for successfully mortgaging the future of generations of Americans (our grandchildren) in the name of ‘spreading the wealth around.’

4.   For institutionalizing within the Federal government the reign of all sorts of czars, more numerous in a mere nine months than Russia had established through centuries of history.

5.   For worshiping in the altar of environmentalism and adopting global warming prevention as a matter of national policy, with the ‘cap and trade (read, cap and tax)’ legislation, lending legitimacy to the notion of “carbon footprint,” no matter that it can bankrupt the domestic energy industry.

6.   For attempting to nationalize the health care industry thereby assuming life and death decisions over each individual American.

The litany can go on but it requires more intestinal fortitude than I can muster. For the fawning millions swift in the vainglorious tide of the cult of personality engulfing the Oval Office, the award might represent an endorsement of their adulation. It might cause the tingling in Chris Matthews’ legs to evolve into an epileptic spasm worthy of a commercial segment in CNN.

The deeper and more sober question is: can this Republic muster enough resilience so as to not allow the tide of vainglory induce an enduring institutional paralysis that would jeopardize our historical claim to be the last best hope of man on earth?

   XXII    Beneath the azure skies you slumber deep,

          Above the azure seas subdued you lie,

          In subjugation hear your meek ones weep,

          In indignation bear your bold ones die,

          How much your unborns' remonstrance you fear,

          How much of fallen heroes' wrath sustain,

          If you to villains your birthright forswear,

          If to your woes you nonchalant remain?

          Traditions prejudice in vain invoke,

          Nor lessons falsify from history

          To justify the poignance of your yoke,

          Or improvise some reasons that you stay . . .

                   A wretched penitent of one man's whims

                   Oblivious of your children's noble dreams!!

   XXIII   Should lessons gleaned from History provide

          Due faith and courage for your future course,

          Be best prepared to emulate with pride

          The brave defenders of your sacred shores.

          Allow not blunt your own awakening

          By rhetoric that politicians use

          To thwart your conscience into weakening

          The selfsame vehemence of vengeance's cause,

          The which would break the fetters of your soul

          And tear the mask of shameless tyranny.

          Default's the cross of falsehood bearing all

          Unreason for your seeming destiny

                   To drown, in surfeit, bliss of ignorance,

                   To crown, in glory, sweet irrelevance!!

   XXIV

Of friends and foes you earned the poets' praise,

          Your legend beauty fared romantic fame,

          Your languor proves the vanquish of your race,

          Your wants and woes, their very sins proclaim.

          The insolence of your perdition made

          An otherwise noble inheritance

          A mockery of aspiration's need

          To cross the threshold vagaries of chance

          That though subdued, undaunted yet in quest

          To brave the tide, sans fears of the unknown.

          Conquered yet undefeated, unredressed,

          Let grievance architect your own renown:

                   Or tears, or sweat, or blood, such price defray

                   For priceless proves the prize of liberty!

   XXV     So often did you pay the price before,

          What cause have you to now so hesitate?

          With cross and sword Magellan [1] reached your shore,

          With spears and sword, his death, Magellan met --

          Who came to make you vow to Philip’s [2] fame,

          Your sons, unbowed, preferred Magellan slain,

          For which you got the mark of Philip's name,

          Imposed by legions of the realm of Spain.

          The name you took, you fought the insolence

          With del Pillar [3] and Rizal’s [4] arguments,

          And Bonifacio [5] with more forceful means

          Imposed on Spain defeat's predicaments:

             Retreat, did Spain, in came th'Americans

             With Monroe's Doctrine [6] and George Dewey’s [7] guns!

   XXVI    Weakened, outgunned, you fought George Dewey's force,

          With precious lives defended Tirad Pass, [8]

          Your weak ones did provide the dismal course

          Of your demise, and Aguinaldo [9] was

          To self-exile consigned to negotiate

          Your sole surrender to an enemy

          Who promise of reforms did elicit

          In lieu of much coveted liberty.

          Reforms enshrined your glory as Rizal,

          And martyrdom enthroned, you idolize

          Inaction's cause and lose the wherewithal

          To build a nation strong, and free, and wise:

                   Martyrs are but a nation's mournful loss,

                   The nation must survive a martyr's cause!

   XXVII   Reform and martyrdom are curious twins,

          The both are consummate with serious sins:

          'Twas for reforms Ninoy Aquino [10] spoke,

          By martyrdom, Aquino's life you took.

          'Twas for reforms Rizal did set his pen,

          Without reforms, Rizal, a martyr slain.

          And through reforms, Rizal you sanctified,

          While Bonifacio's deeds you saw defiled.

          The Lava [11] brothers fought, all martyrs died,

          Reformed, Luis Taruc [12] you glorified.

          And for reforms the selfsame Ferdinand, [13]

          Invoked the law of force at his command:

                   Such are reforms made worth of Martial Law --

                   Long years of martyrdom to suffer through!!!

   XXVIII

          Reforms, the IMF demands austere

          As creditor's conditionalities,

          Reforms, the World Bank made you swear

          To make your credit seems as limitless

          As your endurance for the martyrdom

          Of unemployment and wasted resource;

          Such ills are seemingly beyond reform,

          Austerity cannot but make them worse!

          Who is to blame for gross mismanagement?

          Or mortgage of your whole patrimony?

          Your credit-worthiness long overspent,

          You beg to negotiate for charity!

                   With credits not applied to harness wealth,

                   You wreck a million times the nation's health!!!

   XXIX    Beyond reform is your predicament,

          It's time you venture forth a better way!

          Nor tears of bitterness, nor mute lament

          Can free you from your own captivity!

          That captors are your very native sons

          Is but insult added to injury

          And no excuse for patient tolerance

          Nor cause to languish in your misery.

          With debtors' need false leaders agonize,

          For credits, they may make your people bleed;

          Bleeding, you may yet seek to galvanize

          To life true leaders of a bolder breed:

                   By visionary men are nations built

   XXX     Such leaders of the "Opposition" kind

          Who only ridicule the Parliament?

          For opposition every reason find,

          Except a plan for your development,{0}

                  Comments &Notes on Proper Names in the Text

[1]        Ferdinand Magellan was the commander of the Spanish Armada, which first landed on Filipino soil in 1521; was killed in the ensuing battle when the natives refused to pay homage to the king of Spain.

[2]        King Philip II of Spain's name is the origin of the name Philippines; the term Filipino originally meant Spaniards born in the Philippines, as opposed to ones born in Spain.

[3,4] Marcelo H. del Pilar and Jose Rizal were the main leaders of the Reformists, who argued for Philippine representation in the Spanish Royal Courts. Rizal was subsequently consecrated under American occupation as the National Hero.

[5]        Andres Bonifacio was the founder of the first organized revolution against Spain; later slain in an internal power struggle with factions supporting Emilio Aguinaldo.

[6]        By the principles of Monroe's Doctrine the United States declared war on Spain; the American colonization of the Philippines was a spin off of the Spanish-American War.

[7]        Admiral George Dewey was the commander of the Asiatic Fleet which sank the Spanish Armada in Manila Bay in 1898; most Filipino historians consider the encounter a "mock battle" since Spanish forces were already under siege by the revolutionary forces, and confined to a few blocks of Manila.

[8]        Tirad Pass was the only access to the Headquarters of the Philippine revolutionary forces in the Filipino-American war; the fall of Tirad Pass directly resulted in the surrender of the Filipino forces.

[9]        Emilio Aguinaldo, founder and only president of the First Philippine Republic, obtained exclusive command of the Filipino forces against Spain when Bonifacio was ambushed and killed by his men at a rendezvous where Aguinaldo and Bonifacio were supposed to meet to discuss strategy.

[10]      Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino was the leading political rival to president Marcos before and during Martial Law until he was murdered disembarking in Manila from self-exile in the U.S.

[11]      The Lava brothers were the brains of the uprising in the 1950’s, which sought to overthrow the then four-year-old Second Philippine Republic.

[12]      Luis Taruc was contemporary of the Lavas', commander in chief of the rebel forces; surrendered and subsequently toured the U.S. as spokesman for the virtues of Marcos's Martial Law.

[13]      Ferdinand Marcos, declared Martial Law on September 22, 1972; was finally deposed during the "People's Revolution" inspired by Corazon Aquino (wife of Benigno) who was defrauded by the Marcos Administration of her victory over Marcos in a general presidential election in which both sides claimed victory.

“…parents have every right to worry about their children being used as Political Guinea Pigs for Change.”

Michelle Malkin at http://townhall.com/columnists/MichelleMalkin/2009/09/02/obamas_classroom_campaign_no_junior_lobbyist_left_behind?page=2

There have been numerous historical precedents of this phenomenon: The Brown Shirts in Nazi Germany, Let A Thousand Flowers Bloom and the Cultural Revolution in Maoist China, The Juche Brigade of King Il Sung in North Korea, the Che Guevarra Brigade in Cuba.

Why should the U.S. of A be an exception? It was a well-documented fact that the POTUS was a neighborhood agitator (a.k.a. "Community Organizer") before he came on national stage. His associations with people who hate America as we love it, the bastion of opportunity, is a matter of national record.

It would be too much of a lunacy for the nation to expect that the "transformational" rhetoric that was spewed off in the campaign trail would end up only transforming the messiah himself into a patriot.  Is that not asking too much of a miracle, especially in the age of secularist liberalism?

Yes, I admit to accusing the POTUS of being counter-patriotic. His apologize for America tour, selective bailout of financial companies, the conversion of General Motors into Government Motors, quadrupling of the national debt, etc. are unmistakable signs of the concerted effort to destroy the free-market infrastructure which was the engine of wealth creation unparalleled in the twentieth century.

You elect as President a College Communist, you get government takeover of the means of wealth creation as a national policy. That is about as natural as day follows night and night follows day.

I do not suggest that the POTUS should be deprived of the chance to inspire the nation, citizens of all ages and ideological persuasions. But it is a thin line that separates providing inspiration to ignite the sparks of patriotism on the one hand and giving out subtle marching orders, on the other. Moreover, if the POTUS is reduced to asking grade school children to search their souls and find what they can do for the President (as opposed to what they can do for the country), is that not a perversion of what the presidency is all about?

Rather than an echo of the famous JFK call to “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” this is more reminiscent of James Earl Carter’s public confession that he solicited the advice of young Amy Carter on nuclear disarmament.

What else can we see next?

I woke up to a WLIW rerun of a Peggy Noonan interview with a TV host I didn’t know, who looked like James Stewart, the actor. The interview was centered on her book “Patriotic Grace.” I like Peggy Noonan a lot and her weekly column is in my must read list, even after she started dumping on Sarah Palin in the 2008 campaign. But I must admit this is the first time I’ve heard of this particular book of hers.

The title of her book hastened to clear the cobwebs in my head and brought into focus what the critical mission for my day was.  The most important item in my agenda was to follow the singles matches of the Solheim Cup which was at a dead even 8-8 after the second day of play.   

The golf bug got me more than two decades ago. I find golf the perfect metaphor for life itself. This is because the overall outcome of a round crucially depends on how well you can recover from any disaster along the way. But when I saw the LPGA’s Team America sporting on their cheeks patriotic patches like the flag and the Liberty Bell, golf assumed a different dimension in my mind.

It was such a breath of fresh air to see a group of Americans so eager and so determined to win for their country. The euphoria soaking the event was awesome especially at a time when President Barack Hussein Obama is so eager and so determined to make a ritual of apologizing for this country every occasion he gets.

As this was written Team America won and retained the Solheim Cup. Congratulations, golfers. You make America proudJ

"Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America."—Barack Hussein Obama Inaugural Address, 20-Jan-09.

“He is subtle and likes to kill softly. As such, he is something new on the political scene, which means he will require something new from his opponents, including, first, patience.”

--Peggy Noonan at http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html

Based on what has been exhibited so far: the parade of tax cheats proposed into the upper echelons of the administrative functionaries, an attempt to nationalize the economy by taking over bad debts, appointing czars of various shades from car manufacturing to government efficiency and resizing of the ‘middle class’, every American of all shades and sorts of persuasion should be apprehensive respecting what America is being remade into.

It appears that the celebrated architect of Brooklyn aphorisms, Yogi Berra, was correct when he opined that the more things change the more they seem to remain the same. For one thing, the prevalence of Clinton era rethreads amongst the Obama appointments does invoke the feeling of “déjà vu all over again.” It just seems so proper and fitting that tax cheats become the characteristic attributes of Obama appointments.

What does not seem proper is that Republicans in Capitol Hill do not find it incumbent on themselves to make an issue of it. It was supposed to be the function of the minority party to be scandalized by lapses of judgment committed by the ruling party. When there is hardly any sign of protest, the American public ought to be scandalized. As Bob Dole once asked, “where is the outrage”?

We should all be outraged that the Obama Administration is implementing the Europeanization of America. We once took pride in being known as the New World. There is no pride to take in becoming the New Europe.

There is nothing subtle about how the government is buying up the private sector. There is no denying that billions of TARP dollars have gone down the drain and there is nobody to account for in an administration that does not exhibit any need to account for anything. With a filibuster proof Senate and Republicans seemingly devoid of any ideas on what the country is all about, who is going to make the Obama administration account for anything?

When journalism had succumb to the Bush Derangment Syndrome, the nation lost a very valuable asset, namely a press corps whose reason for being is to be the fiscalizer of public policy. Now we have a press corps which acts as the propaganda arm of the Obama Administration. Instead of uncovering hidden agenda in whatever the government is doing, it strives to cover up and gloss over any unpleasant implications of administration policy.

What with the Republican brainstorm taking the Hillary Clinton playbook of a listening tour in order to get ideas on how to lead? They are not even embarrassed about it. Republicans seem to have forgotten that there are such things as first principles of governance. The Republic was founded on the principle that unleashing the creative powers of the individual is what opens the floodgates of productivity to bring about the unbridled creation of wealth.

It has been accepted wisdom that elections have consequences. Liberal presidents appoint liberal judges. A liberal congress rubber stamps a liberal president. But where did Obama get his mandate for Remaking America? An electoral victory cannot be construed as a constitutional amendment.

At which point does Remaking America come into conflict with the oath to “preserve protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God”?

Asumen Acumen at http://parallaxadhoc.blogtownhall.com/