Ash Wednesday

How is the world to heal itself, in the current economic ... implosion? -- melt down? -- catabolism? Let's just take two cases, straightforward. We heard the elegant President Obama. President Obama. President Obama. We heard him tell us to, uh, stay in school, and, I don't know, use healthcare or something. Have healthcare. As if it were something you could have. Uh, we should, er, not beat our wives, or our babies' mamas. We should at once stop being so ghetto, and be more dependent on, um, him.

This is the message that a community organizer knows how to give. We should take a very limited amount of personal responsibility, like using condoms, and he'll handle the big things, like our paychecks. Or maybe it's the paychecks that are the little things, and the condoms that are big. Whatever. So that's America. Spend spend spend. It is a sort of trickle down economics, albeit from the government. Supply side, certainly, if we understand that all resources are government owned. Of course they are. We are all socialists now.

So that's the American solution, the New American solution. What is the New Russian solution? Same old thing. Russia will fix itself by doing what it knows how to do. Build an empire. Here we go again. So, per Charles Krauthammer, Kyrgystan has been pressured to close the US airbase in Manas -- the NATO gateway to Afghanistan. Some of you may know that Afghanisan in recent months and years has been in the news. A "rapid reaction force" -- read "strike force" -- has been formed to retake control of Moslem Central Asia -- you know, some of the S's in the acronym USSR. A naval base is planned in a Black Sea port of Abkhazia, which last summer conveniently broke away from Georgia mysteriously. These expansions have gone unnoticed by Mr. Obama's administration.

Iskander missiles will be deployed to Kaliningrad if anti-Iranian US missiles are allowed in Poland or the Czech Rep. Bush was firm against this plan. Obama is much more reasonable. Biden, a facile tool, mouths the position by saying they want to "press the reset button" between the West and the Soviets I mean the Russians. Russoviets.

Well, I didn't lie, but I've changed my mind. Not just the US and Russia. A slightly wider view. That Krauthammer -- I just want to repeat everything he says. "Iran has been similarly charmed by Obama's overtures. A week after the new president went about sending sweet peace signals via al-Arabiya, Iran launched its first homemade Earth satellite."

By way of thanks for Obama's honeyed phrases, the US women's badminton team that had been invited to Iran was denied entry. Sorry, infidel babes, we can't have you polluting our sports fans with your naked legs and decadent exposed Western shaved armpits. We like our women hairy and unseen. Well, we don't like our women at all, but you know what we mean.

"Then, just in case Obama failed to get the message, Iran's parliament speaker rose in Munich to offer his response to Obama's olive branch. Executive summary: Thank you very much. After you acknowledge 60 years of crimes against us, change not just your tone but your policies, and abandon the Zionist criminal entity, we might deign to talk to you.

"With a grinning Goliath staggering about sporting a 'kick me' sign on his back, even reputed allies joined the fun. Pakistan freed from house arrest A.Q. Khan.... Ten days later, Islamabad capitulated to the Taliban, turning over to its tender mercies the Swat Valley, 100 miles from the capital. Not only will sharia law now reign there, but the democratically elected secular party will be hunted down as the Pakistani army stands down."

There's more, of course, of course, but enough should be enough. The leech is never satisfied, but not all Americans are leeches. As for the Russians, you do see it. That's what empires do. They use the satellite country's resources to resupply the fatherland. Or is Russia a motherland. Whatever. The milk flows inward. It's a sort of protection racket, and it's certainly a zero-sum game. But what the hey. It worked before. Time for round ... well, I've lost count. Another round. That huge sucking sound is Russia vacuuming up power. We most certainly do understand that it's always been about power -- money, oil, tanks, nukes, armies, have just the been tools.

What, you thought Satan was a sensualist? He doesn't mind Hell, if he can rule it. All he minds is that it's not big enough. Every empire is dust -- a sentiment that only sounds wise. Memento, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris. You will pardon my sullenness. I've seen the future, and I've promised to keep it secret. (But it has something to do with dust, or maybe ashes. The vision is unclear.)


J