Thursday, October 13, 2011

Assassination Attempt in NYC or Gulf of Tonkin Redux?

The Department of Justice and the White House announced the thwarting of a plot to assassinate the Saudi Foreign Minister today.  Understandably the Saudis are beside themselves, Hillary Clinton wrung her hands and, wonder of wonders, the Obama administration has an excuse to bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities just before a Presidential election, an option the administration publicly eliminated some time ago.

I am not much of a conspiracy theorist but I am going to hold fire on this for awhile and see if the White House does the same.  I am skeptical for the following reasons:
  • It is too convenient:
    • It allows Holder to have been "preoccupied" when the Gunwalker memos crossed his desk;
    • It reactivates the option of bombing the Iranian nuclear facilities;
    • It occurs just before the 2012 election cycle and allows O the opportunity to be a War President.  (We seldom replace a President during a major conflict)
    • It creates a convenient crisis for an administration that has repeatedly demonstrated that it will "never let a crisis go to waste".
  • If the Administration is seriously suspected of running an operation to flood Mexico with guns to implement legislative attacks on the 2nd Amendment why would we believe it incapable of this kind of charade as well.
  • The plot itself was rudimentary and amateurish:
    • The Iranian government is very aware of the vulnerability of cell phone and internet communications to NSA and the Patriot Act:
    • There is no cut-out.  The Iranian government routinely uses Hezbollah to take responsibility for terrorist acts and shield direct connection to senior leadership.
    • The Al Quds Force has been in Latin America for over 20 years and has extensive contacts with Mexican drug dealers through the FARC and the Venezuelan government.  They did not need an operative to blindly contact a DEA informant in the Texas border regions where they know that surveillance is pervasive.  They could come from the south.
    • The operative immediately is cooperating?  He lives in the US for decades, reads the newspapers and hasn't lawyered up?
This is very preliminary but at this point I would say the whole thing seems unlikely.

Iranian Plot or Gulf of Tonkin redux?

Monday, October 10, 2011

Secret Video: Dear Leader briefed on "Fast and Furious"

Leaked video recorded President Obama's reaction to the news that Operation "Fast and Furious" was going mainstream.

The President Reacts to News that CBS is covering Fast and Furious

The Left Eats Its Own: Leftist Zombies at Occupy Atlanta

The Left eats its own as they have done throughout history.

Marxism in the form of chanting conformist Zombies, deny Rep John Lewis the opportunity to speak in Atlanta.  Given his civil rights creds, I am not sure the RNC National Convention would not have allowed him to say a few words.

"Many curious citizens and media outlets came to the first Occupy Atlanta event, and were visible shocked and confused by the consistent Marxism employed by the group. People abandoned their individuality and liberty to be absorbed into a hypnotizing collective. The facilitator made it clear that he was not a "leader" and that everyone was completely equal; words often spoken by leftists, but in this case they actually applied their philosophy. Into this surreal and oppressive environment, Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights hero and icon of American leftism, came to speak as has so often done at left-wing rallies and events in Atlanta. He is practically worshiped in Democrat circles, and was visibly stunned to see these Marxists turn him away. It was reminiscent of previous Marxist revolutions in history when those who ignorantly supported the revolutionaries are, over time, purged and rejected for the "good of the collective", when their usefulness has expired."
The "Occupy..." movement revealed as its own true self in a manner that devastates its claims to legitimacy.

The humiliation of Rep. John Lewis by Occupy Atlanta

Sunday, October 09, 2011

Chief Justice Rehnquist on "The Notion of a Living Constitution"

What follows is an excerpt from "The Notion of a Living Constitution" by former Chief Justice William Rehnquist.  I recommend that you read the entire piece.  It is fifteen pages of elegant logic in support of the Constitution.
Should a person fail to persuade the legislature, or should he feel that a legislative victory  would be insufficient because of its potential for future reversal, he may seek to run the  more difficult gauntlet of amending the Constitution to embody the view that he espouses. Success in amending the Constitution would, of course, preclude succeeding transient majorities in the legislature from tampering with the principle formerly added to the  Constitution.
I know of no other method compatible with political theory basic to democratic society by which one’s own conscientious belief may be translated into positive law and thereby obtain the only general moral imprimatur permissible in a pluralistic, democratic society.  It is always time consuming, frequently difficult, and not infrequently impossible to run successfully the legislative gauntlet and have enacted some facet of one’s own deeply felt value judgments. It is even more difficult for either a single individual or indeed for a large group of individuals to succeed in having such a value judgment embodied in the  Constitution. All of these burdens and difficulties are entirely consistent with the notion of a democratic society. It should not be easy for any one individual or group of individuals to impose by law their value judgments upon fellow citizens who may disagree with those judgments. Indeed, it should not be easier just because the individual in question is a  judge. We all have a propensity to want to do it, but there are very good reasons for making it difficult to do.

The great English political philosopher John Stuart Mill observed:
The disposition of mankind, whether as rulers or as fellowcitizens, to impose their own opinions and inclinations as a rule of conduct on others, is so  energetically supported by some of the best and by some of the worst feeling incident to human nature, that it is hardly ever kept under restraint by anything but want of power. . . .
The brief writer’s version of the living Constitution, in the last analysis, is a formula for an end run around popular government. To the extent that it makes possible an individual’s persuading one or more appointed federal judges to impose on other individuals a rule of conduct that the popularly elected branches of government would not have enacted and the voters have not and would not have embodied in the Constitution, the brief writer’s version of the living Constitution is genuinely corrosive of the fundamental values of our democratic society.

Read the whole thing:  "The Notion of a Living Constitution" , William Rehnquist, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Vol. 29, No. 2

Saturday, October 08, 2011

The Constitution is not a "Living" Document


The Constitution is not a "Living" document as the term is generally understood when uttered by someone who doesn't like what it says. It is an intentionally constructed document that takes as its specific intent:

"... to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, ..."

The Constitution is, fortunately, a document that means exactly what it says about what is permitted and what is not permitted in our form of government. By doing so it succeeds in protecting individual liberty at the cost of some State power. This drives the Left crazy and has for 200 years.

Friday, October 07, 2011

Rousseau, Islam, Voltaire and the Democrats

I had dinner with an old friend a couple of days ago.  During dinner he brought up the the Constitution, the logjam in Congress and made the comment that we should consider suspending the vote for awhile just to get things straightened out.  Not permanently mind you, just for a couple of years, then we would go back to voting.  I asked him if he really wanted to hear my answer.  He made the mistake of answering in the affirmative.

Here is my answer:

The debate going on in Congress and in the Presidential election is a debate of political philosophy that dates back to the approximately 200 years that encompassed the Age of Reason and the French Enlightenment.  On the Left Rousseau is the main culprit. 

Rousseau's concept of a new Social Contract and the General Will have been the guiding lights of the political Left since early to mid 19th century.  Dr. Edward W. Younkins has produced an excellent discussion of these two topics in his paper ""ROUSSEAU'S "GENERAL WILL" AND WELL-ORDERED SOCIETY" at Le Quebecois Libre.  Dr. Younkins describes Rousseau's Social Contract as follows:

          Rousseau ... says that we should seek unanimous agreement with respect to a new social contract that eliminates the problem of dependence on one another while permitting each person to obey only himself and to remain as free as before. ... He calls for a total merger in which each individual gives up his right to control his life in exchange for an equal voice in setting the ground rules of society. Rousseau appeals to people to surrender their individual rights to a new moral and collective body with one will.
          The public person formed by social contract, the republic, has a will he calls the "general will." What it wills is the true interest of what everyone wants whether they realize it or not. When you are forced to obey it, you really are obeying yourself, the true and free you.

Wednesday, October 05, 2011

The Inevitable End Point of Carbon Credits and Offset Trading

What is the carbon credit value for the removal of a human being from the ecosystem? 
Lets face it, the problem isn't fossil fuels it is human beings.  Every single one emits CO2 with every exhalation.  Most of them don't even know how to make a good Latte and are smelly and unattractive.  Forget the Prius, many of them drive big pickup trucks and have ugly children.   
It should be easy to set up a carbon score for different categories of these lower echelon organisms and win bonus credits for taking their machines offline at the same time.  So many points for the human, so much for the a/c compressor, the pickup, the dogs, the cats, the wife, the brats.  Like a video game some carbon credit harvests would be worth more than others.
I know what you are thinking, many of our elite class emit a lot of carbon.  Everybody's favorite Mr. Gore for instance. But he contributes so much to the cause.  By trading credits his emissions become acceptable.  So why not just manage a renewable resource (humans) and let Mr. Gore bag a few credits and entertain his guests at the same time.
Why not cut out all the hard stuff and just go directly to offering a bounty on human carbon credits. Take care of the population problem, save the planet, trade carbon credits to get rich and create a new sport all at the same time.

What could possibly go wrong?
"The reported killing of 23 Honduran farmers in a dispute with the owners of UN-accredited palm oil plantations in Honduras is forcing the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) executive board to reconsider its stakeholder consultation processes."