National Statism: Just say No

Obama's hospice America, I guess that's supposed to be the inspiration for the new greatest generation. So, predictably, the the spike heels and fishnet illusions are there only for the suckers for snake oil and confidence schemes. True believers. So I wonder, are Barack Obama and Bernie Madoff really any different? I don't think so. Am I alone in thinking that all of the good party ass is moving onto the dole in their best over-sized and nationalized corporate form? Yes, its true, but there are still a few of us, the lonely entrepreneurs, very few--who think of a more attractive option which might be expressed in this fashion: No Representation Without Taxation. Since we're to be the devoted ones.

Our legislators and President are meant to be the guardians of our freedom, not the engineers of our lives… or merchants who trade entitlements for power.  The thick web of puppet strings which spread from our titanic State reach deep into the 53% who still pay taxes.  Ignorance and ideology led us to this moment, not just the selfish votes of our permanent dependency class.  The government needs to shrink, not the electorate.

Hey, if the inverse works, why not the obverse? Well, with the Democrats, its heads they win, tails, you lose, that's why. National Statism. Just say no.

Napolitano Is Thrown to the Wolves at Fox

Fox News interviewed Janet Napolitano, President Obama's Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security over the weekend. Pajamas Media has a devastating Dan Riehl story that includes the news of the interview, and more importantly, who aired it. Plainly sent specifically to Fox News by the White House to expiate her earlier sophomoric official response to the Flight 253 Undi-bomber incident,  Napolitano was surely cast into this, the vulpine den of cable news as a piece of red meat, knowing its large and talkative audience would be certain to shred her. This will no doubt incline her to understand, going forward, how much easier it will be for her to resign.

Here she is with a shotgun and ear protection, pretending to enjoy shooting at a campaign outing.

Which contrasts with these, those who are not pretending, whom she is, in part, currently charged with protecting us against:

 

As compared to...Winston Churchill, an iconic bust of whom--a previous gift to the White House from London--President Barack Obama, as one of his first acts upon taking office, repatriated to the British government, while simultaneously hiring Janet Napolitano for the job she will soon be exiting.

 Winston Spencer Churchill, superbly pinstriped homeland security expert and son of a New York mother. Led the British Empire to victory against the Nazis.

The Peary Polar Expedition Of 1909: a Forgotten Centennial

All the claims of the several polar expeditions of the time seem to have been similarly frought with the same controversy as to outcome. Did he really make to the Pole? Admiral Robert E. Peary's expedition of 1909 was no different. Peary, after brilliantly studying, and then utilizing Inuit clothing, sleds, and techniques made his 1909 dash for the Pole, on this, not his first expedition, starting on the 1st of March 1909, traversing moving ice and arriving at 90 degrees north latitude on the 7th of April by his reckoning, before turning back to Ellesmere Island on the return trip. That the ice under the feet of his party was moving south as he mushed north was no small factor in their intrepid endeavor.

Peary, a Navy man, was in many ways, a bonafide claimant to the mantel of Christopher Columbus (celebrated at the recent World's Columbian Exposition of 1893) and of John Wesley Powell, the navigator and mapper of the Colorado river through the canyons of the American Southwest. Peary set out with 23 men, 133 dogs and 19 sleds about the cusp of the vernal equinox with a crew of Inuit mushers and former Navy men including Matthew Henson, an intrepid and highly skilled African-American civil engineer.

Despite the subsequent technical arguments made against his claim of success, Peary and Henson will always remain American adventurers of the highest order and iconic exemplars of the American spirit of exploration and courage. Without them it is difficult to imagine either Charles Lindbergh's Atlantic crossing of 1927 or the Apollo mission of the 1960's.

Just Shoot Them

And be done with it. News today is that a US Predator Drone brigade has taken unprecedented offensive military action in the tip of the Arabian peninsula in Yemen against al-Qaeda operatives on the orders of US president Barack Obama. Meanwhile, also today, we learn that Guantanamo Prison will soon be releasing six Yemeni jihadists to their home country, also on the orders of the President. Unless, on the off-chance they have been implanted with tracking devices for larger purposes, would it not make better military, political and economic sense to just shoot them now, while we have them in custody? Why expend the precious carbon to send them home only to spend millions more later to hit them with drones? Yemenis are perhaps the most recidivist of the previously released Guantanamo jihadist prisoners. Bullets are cheap. A clearer message could not be sent to Osama bin-Laden, if the president were interested in sending one. Osama, as a Yemeni himself, would understand.

Update 12/24/09. Another Yemeni Gitmo recidivist dies in the second strike in Yemen this week. Also taken out was Nidal Hassan's Yemeni contact and "spiritual adviser" Anwar al-Awlaki. A small hive is exterminated. Al-Awlaki had just been interviewed by Al-Jazeera. Fame is fleeting.

The Strategy of Jihad

When all is said and done, it is the the Koran, and how it is weaponized that will decide the fate of the Ummah. It is the Koran which creates the Ummah, and it is the Koran that enjoins the Ummah of all  Muslims to the cause of Islam, and its increase. The Koran provides both a strategy of acquisition and warfare as well as a strategy of negotiation. The imperative to the acquisition of people and land is called jihad. The Ummah is a trans-tribal concept created by Mohammad. A part of the acuity of its invention is that the Ummah explicitly creates a larger political entity than the tribe. The tribe was Mohammad's conundrum. Imposing Allah's primacy, from among the shared deities of the competing tribes in the pantheistic world of the 7th century Arab peninsula, was his key to selling the bargain to the tribes. His unique and personal intercession with Allah was his key to personal political durability and supremacy. For the Arab tribes, the benefits would be huge.

The essence of jihad is extortion, intended to inflict an opt-out or opt-in duality of choice on its subjects. Both choices are accounted for in the Koran to the benefit of the Ummah. The mechanism of jihad is personal violence. Capitulation is to be its own reward, as the wealth and women of all of the kuffar--non-Muslims, are progressively subsumed into the Ummah, at ts pleasure. Those blessed Muslims who die in the furtherance of jihad will have sold their lives in a guaranteed bargain with Allah, for a worry-free eternity in paradise, with all expenses paid and with on-demand access to 72 eternally virgin concubines, thrown in for good measure. Go to sea on jihad, and a shahid's virgins double to 144. For the kuffar who refuse capitulation it means execution for the crime, or dhimmitude: 2nd class legal status, humiliating cash-tax penalties and constant apprehension within your family, if you choose to live.

Individual Muslims, as part of the Ummah, are solemnly enjoined by the Koran to refrain from attacks upon other Muslims, so as not to fracture the interests of the Ummah against the kuffar. This injunction is often breached in practice when recalcitrant Muslims, themselves, need further instruction on the seriousness and severity of jihad, or, if they just get in the way. Islam is a total belief system, encompassing and mandating specific personal moral, physical, dietary, sexual and hygienic behaviors, as well as the public, political and "religious" expressive aspects of life. Those "rightly guided" Muslims who die as incidental collateral damage in the pursuit of jihad by their betters, also get a pass to paradise. Allah sorts them out.

Al-Qaida Snorts at China-& Calls for Jihad

The Chinese, as they have asserted their right to defend themselves from the Islamists, are now finding themselves in the cross hairs of the सिक्क Al-Qaida Islamic tribalists. China, on a per capita basis, consumes more pig meat than anywhere else on the planet. Abu Yahya al-libi, a Libyan national, has spoken:

A leading Al-Qaeda militant on Wednesday called on Muslims worldwide to defend Uighurs in China's restive northwestern region of Xinjiang. He told Uighurs to prepare for a holy war or Jihad and urged a "vast media campaign" to raise awareness of their fate at the hands of "oppressive" China.

In the video posted to jihadist websites, Abu Yahya al-Libi appeared to launch a frontal assault against China.

"This massacre is not being carried out by criminal Crusaders or evil Jews who have committed crimes against ओउर नेशन," al-Libi stated.

"Today, a new massacre is being carried out by Buddhist nationalists and communists against the Muslim population in eastern Turkestan," said al-Libi.

"Thousands of people have died from the radiation emitted by the many nuclear missiles that have been launched and the experiments carried out in the area," al-Libi concluded.

One can only hope they have enough tin-foil hats--and pork spits.

LIBERAL AVG

Does nothing ever change? Looking back on the so-called "Golden Age" of the Roman Empire, 50 years after the death of Nero, here is the emperor Hadrianvs Avgvstvs (Hadrian), the second of the adoptive emperors advertising his standard method of mollifying the Roman population to keep them quiet in the face of his foreign and domestic policies. Like Barack Obama, Hadrian toured Europe and visited Egypt, giving speeches and making his presence known. And like Barack Obama, Hadrian used his government to provide cash handouts for his clients and supporters. He issued coins like the one above and similar ones, in their millions, commemorating his every exploit, as if they were tweets, the better to remind the people of his generosity and his patronage.

On the reverse of the coin above, a silver denarius, the emperor is shown sitting on a raised platform behind two officials, one with an abacus, while the other dispenses cash to a citizen who stands, unapologetically before the dais, the folds of his robe open to receive the coins. Under the dais the inscription reads LIBERAL AVG, a commemoration which remains to this day, 1,890 years after the minting of this coin, an easily understood paradigm for political success.

Like Hadrian, Obama is a famous patron of the arts. Like Hadrian, Obama has the the support of the glitterati and the governing elites. Like Hadrian, Obama has forbidden torture.
Like Hadrian, Obama is a fervent (albeit hetero), supporter of gay rights. As Hadrian did, so is Obama in the process of surrendering his predecessor's conquests in Mesopotamia to the Persians. Like Hadrian, Obama has taken the side of the Palestinians against the Jews. In fact, it was under Hadrian that the land formerly known as Judea came to be called Palestine for the very first time. Like Hadrian after his death, Obama has been "deified", despite being still in office. It remains to be seen whether Obama will continue to channel Hadrian, that most benevolent of autocrats, in forming his own version of the frumentarii: loyal followers who, at the the emperor's insistence acted as his personal spies.

Despite being called by some of his critics ignorant of the past, it seems pretty clear that Barack Obama is well on his way to re-enacting almost verbatim, a fairly sophisticated slice of history. Of the ancient and imperial variety.

Sustainability: Graft for the Earnestly Spiritual, Planet-Saving Rent-Seeker. Green is the new Gold

All too often, in today's greenspeak parlance, "sustainable" means subsidized. It doesn't have to be, but it has been and continues to be the most disingenuous and egregious of eco-jargon patois passed-off as earth-friendly by the progressive non-profits , corporatists, and other rent-seekers of the left. All of the HOV pomposity of the planet-savers and the LEED certified architects at their conventions can't make it otherwise, despite all of their earnest declaiming and seriousness of purpose.

Here's the reality: if a green system, concept, product or energy solution is being offered as "sustainable", and its use therefore imperative, it should be assumed unless it can be demonstrated otherwise, that there is a government subsidy embedded somewhere within it to propagate it. It might be a mandate, it might have its production or labor costs underwritten, its competition may be abolished or selectively taxed, or perhaps some level of government is its primary customer. If any system or concept or energy solution is being referred to as "unsustainable", then, almost invariably, it is privately financed, already, or about to come under government oversight, and probably involves hunting, mining, drilling, manufacturing, cropping or fishing, in one form or another in exchange for money at market prices. The trendier opponents of such "unsustainable" activities will tend toward, or even fully embrace, the beliefs that carbon dioxide is a pollutant and a poison and contraception is "the cheapest way" to combat "global warming". Doomsday is right around the corner.

Rent-seekers are completely predictable (and sought after) by government bureaucracies, and their goals are therefore "sustainable". They are the segment of society the bureaucrat can most readily plan for--and measure. Instead, the entrepreneurs, the wildcatters, the venture capitalists, the innovative production farmers and independent inventors of all stripes, who, by engaging in risk-taking endeavors beyond legislative imagination create and maintain with their hard work and incremental improvements the technical and theoretical bases of all advances in civilization, these are the "unsustainable" ones: yet they are as indispensable as they are incommensurate. These are the people who have no need to fill in the endless and intricate government grant and assistance forms that keep the union bureaucrats at their desks working so diligently day-in and day-out. They ask for nothing more than an opportunity and a marketplace. In a politically-driven economy such behavior is discouraged to the point of being unsustainable.

The Magic Beans of ObamaCare

The Democrats controlling the U.S. Congress are ready to trade the worn-out cow of economic sanity for the magic beans of ObamaCare. For many of us, like silly Jack, magical thinking transcends good sense and a hopeful and enticing story is enough to persuade. Leading us along down this road, are our representatives, and others with a callous will to power and political advantage.

The story is that the American "healthcare" system is "broken" and can only be fixed by falling one and all, into the welcoming arms of the federal government. As has become customary, the government will use private businesses to the greatest degree possible to implement their plans, just as they currently compel them to be their (uncompensated) revenue collectors and record keepers for sales, income and excise taxes to fund everyday government operations. Yet the proposed government plan can only claim success by virtue of adding more regulation.

Nominally accounting for some 20-30% of the current "healthcare" costs are the salaries of paper shufflers inside the care providers' offices who send (meaningless) invoices to patients, while at the same time processing claims upon their patients' insurance policies, all of which makes the satisfaction of a medical bill a lengthy process. These workers, while dedicated & skillful at what they do, are drawing-off some very big money which adds substantially to the cost of insurance premiums, without ever providing a lick of actual "healthcare" themselves. In addition, there are the government bureaucrats in their thousands, who, at every level, spend their lives as the polar opposites of their private counterparts, sorting, approving, collating and monitoring their reports. They, in turn, report to their current legislative and executive political wings who never stop creating evermore time-swallowing procedural mandates and substantive regulations requiring timely compliance from medical practitioners within the ever-larger loop they create. All government-driven costs.

Add to that the extra 10% or 15% Americans pay for all of the medical research and development financed by American medical device and drug companies that off-shore socialized governments don't perform but benefit from, and another 10% or so for individual state-mandated coverages, plus the aging, litigious, and increasingly risk-averse U.S. population that expects to live forever at any cost, (taking their treatments in the new standard marble-and-oak-paneled clinics and hospitals), and there you have the reasons that the healthcare sector is marauding through the U.S. economy and fast gobbling-up the rest of it. Not to mention the small army of actuaries and attorneys at $200K per year, both in and out of government, that are milking the system on a daily basis.

Lost somewhere in that cacophony of compliance behaviors, lawsuits, marketing costs and paper-pushing are the patients, their doctors and their nurses. Much of the conundrum is a direct result of the legal, financial and social interventions of today's government policies and prescriptions imposed upon the business of doctoring and patient care. So, as is typically the case in Washington, the solution for bad government today is even more government tomorrow.

As Mark Steyn has put it:

Well, says the president, shuffling his cups and moving the pea under another shell, we’re spending too much on health care. By “we’re,” he means you and you and you and you and millions of other Americans making individual choices over which he casually claims collective jurisdiction.

And that, ultimately, gets closer than anything else he says to giving the game away. For most of the previous presidency, the Left accused George W. Bush of using 9/11 as a pretext to attack Iraq. Since January, his successor has used the economic slump as a pretext to “reform” health care. Most voters don’t buy it: They see it as Obama’s “war of choice,” and the more frantically he talks about it as a matter of urgency the weirder it seems. If he’s having difficulty selling it, that’s because it’s not about “health.” As I’ve written before, the appeal of this issue to him and to Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, et al., is that governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture — one in which elections are always fought on the Left’s issues and on the Left’s terms, and in which “conservative” parties no longer talk about small government and individual liberty but find themselves retreating to one last pitiful rationale: that they can run the left-wing state more effectively than the Left can. Listen to your average British Tory or French Gaullist on the campaign trail pledging to “deliver” government services more “efficiently.”

When Jack finally climbs his beanstalk, ascending into the clouds, the giant he finds there will be a leviathan federal government, devouring everything it can grasp. And Jack will hear the giant bellowing as it bears down upon him, as children have heard since long ago, "Be he alive or be he dead, I'll grind his bones to make my bread..."

And that's what passes for "heathcare" reform under this Congress and this administration.

Playing the Hand That's Dealt You

Overlooked in the overwrought and often simple-minded debate over the nature of the now famous photo-shopped image of Obama as the Joker, is the underlying and essential playing cardness of it all. The Joker is after all, the quintessential wild card in the game. Even 5 of a kind is possible when the Joker is in the deck. Obama as the Joker strikes me as a possible metaphor for devious political shape-shifting or changability, and as such, is a completely legitimate means of graphically expressing a complex idea in a complex arena.

Is the image racist? I don't see it, but I can say that it's entirely irrelevant to the artist's message--that is, to the artist who seized the internet image from the original phot0-shopper and put the text SOCIALISM under Obama's photo-shopped face and turned the image into a political poster. As such the two of them became accidental collaborators in a type of gestalt pattern recognition relay of messages. In the aggregate it strikes me as more of a warning to the voters, not to Barack Obama. What he looks like isn't what he is--He can be anything.

Wikipedia states:

The Joker's use is greatly varied....Often, the joker is a wildcard, and thereby allowed to represent other existing cards. The term "Joker's Wild" originates from this practice, as does the game show of the same name....The Joker can be an extremely beneficial, or an extremely harmful, card.

In the Tarot deck there are different properties associated with the card, where it known as the Fool, and from that it's apparent that the figure of the Joker is an ancient one having varied and subtle cultural meanings over time. Batman's Gotham nemesis was fond of leaving a Joker behind as his calling card. Whatever else may be true, it is clear that when you decide to play with the Joker in the deck, the normal rules will no longer apply. In your hand, the Joker can be what you want. But what happens when the Joker can make you become what he wants?