Open Treason

It's one thing to question the conduct of operations in Afghanistan; it's quite another to desert a combat unit, then beg for rescue. Bergdahl is a traitor. And this was clear before he was rescued. But, then, it was also clear that Obama was a traitor before we voted him into office. DOD allows itself to be humiliated by the Leftists once again. It has suffered ideological capture at the highest level.


It is interesting, as a matter of PR strategy, that they have not wished to push this incident in our faces. The media ignores it--and we know they do not ignore issues just because they are on the wrong side. They were on the wrong side in Ferguson, yet they continue to push it. But, they submerge the Bergdahl story--maybe because they cannot think of a spin that even the typical Leftist would consider sane.

Leftist Cannibalizing

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/tv-ratings-state-union-333-675413

Yes, obviously, he's terminally mendacious to the point of tedious predictability--ergo retains active support only from dysfunctional black supplicants and SWPL Cathedralists with their zombie thralls.

But, what's interesting is the tenor of the comments--on The Hollywood Reporter! It's a running contest to denigrate BO, BO's wench, BO's regime. Wouldn't you expect this to be a Leftist publication with Leftist readers?

America and Its Fate

http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/02/13/singapores-lee-kuan-yew-talks-americas-strangths-and-weaknesses/

The most successful world leader of the last 50 years informs the Obamite degenerates that their two great dream-delusions, "multiculturalism" and socialism, will destroy America. He is precisely correct. But, I wonder if he understands the underlying power dynamic which has produced this hegemony of "Progressive" ideology in America. I judge that it is undergirded by a prevailing moral philosophy of cultural Marxism actioned by the Polygon or, as the great Mencius Moldbug has renominated it, the "Cathedral." This is Moldbug's concise demarcation of the Cathedral:

The Polygon might be defined as the "extended civil service." It consists not of those who hold actual formal GS rank, but those whose position demands a sense of civic responsibility - real or fake. The major vertices of the Polygon, by my count, are the press, the universities, the judiciary, the Fed and the banks, the "Hill" (congressional staff), the civil service proper, the NGOs and transnationals, the military, the Beltway bandits (defense and other contractors), and corporate holders of official monopolies (such as "intellectual property").

These are the people who "manufacture consent" in America, and they are the people who write the rules by which all elements of society are to abide, and the people who dispose of the sums annually redistributed by the government. And they believe or pretend to believe in political correctness, which is a kind of pacifist-Marxist version of Christianity minus God.

En Bref

http://www.halfsigma.com/2012/10/homosexual-propaganda-campaign-working.html

Look at how young women have bought into this idea. Consent manufactured. Conformists par excellence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Obama's Son

How could it be surprising that Obama would compare Trayvon Martin, a criminal in training wheels, to the son he might have had? That Obama would implicitly promote Trayvon as a typcial young black man? Black leaders have not promoted the interests of their people since at least 1965. They are in league with the socialist project to corrupt and debase their character. Socialists undermine blacks to prove that more government is necessary. The economic incentives created by the welfare state strongly promote family dissolution among the working and lower-middle classes of all races. It's too difficult for these people to cut against clear economic advantages in favor of the less tangible advantages (all but forgotten among multi-generational black single mothers) of family cohesiveness. Socialist policies create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And, actually, Trayvon is typical of half of black men--but, he ought not to be and the Obamas and Sharptons, the race-hustlers, ought not to encourage this as a black self-image. A third of black men are felons. What percent serve in the military or make significant contributions of any kind? How many even support their children?

This is the Way the World Ends

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/magazine/how-ready-are-we-for-bioterrorism.html?pagewanted=1&ref=magazine&adxnnlx=1320145648-K5idnXUdyKqBqlIIQsGvhw

The Bio-Defense establishment’s official position seems to be that a smallpox outbreak would be the worst case scenario bioattack. The article mentions a simulation of such an attack done a few years ago, which concluded that a million Americans would die. Calling this the “worst case” might be right if the simulation were modified to “a genetically engineered smallpox outbreak”—the toll would be higher. No one knows by how much!

Diseases can be “improved” for virulence or communicability or survivability or vaccine resistance or treatment resistance—or, theoretically, any other imaginable traits—by means of genetic manipulations. This has been possible since the 70s. And, today, it’s not even difficult to modify diseases. It is difficult, however, to achieve genetic modifications that will produce desired results. That is, transposing genes within an organism’s DNA, as a mechanical operation, is cheap and easy. Finding out which modifications will “improve” the beast remains difficult and expensive because so many non-linear variables come into play, and precise calculation of their interactions is impossible—the Soviets had to do extensive animal testing to determine what effects various modifications would have when exposed to animal immune systems and the natural environment. So, the worst case might involve a more virulent, more communicable disease not susceptible to conventional treatment, a disease that might kill far more than a million Americans. Even back in the 60s, per the article, before genetic engineering was possible, America had achieved weaponized tularemia (presumably by means of rapid, selective, experimentally-guided evolution) to the point that 50 pounds of it, properly disseminated, would wipe out 60% of a megacity.  

Protection against crude attacks with unmodified agents may well provide a high probability of effective defense for a couple more decades (though something more than a black swan risk is present already). The Muslim world is unlikely to muster anything but amateur-hour efforts within this time frame. Attacks from other quarters are improbable. But, back to the lingering black swans. The thing is, there are multiple black swan risks out there. A sample of contingencies: an accidental release of a bio-agent from a government lab (dozens of governments work on dangerous pathogens, offensively or defensively, and America alone has dozens of such labs), a pathogen developed in an “entrepreneur’s” garage and released, a deliberate release into the environment that escapes intended limits (eg, a controlled test of pathogen characteristics), a government employee deliberately steals, then sells or releases a bio-agent.   

The article discusses the dilemma of whether to focus resources on vaccine defenses or therapeutic defenses. Yet it fails to mention one of the prime determinants of the relative efficacy of these two approaches: the impact of the threat of genetically modified disease agents. Do vaccines against the variola major strain of small pox, for example, have a high probability of success against a genetically modified variant of the disease? And how difficult, in the context of a bio-arms race, would it be to develop small pox variants that would resist a known, stockpiled vaccine? I suspect the answers to these questions, if they’ve been considered and if they’re knowable, are classified.

The article concludes with a hint at the clash between political decision-making processes and cost-benefit processes. What translates into political capital tends to starve ugly, obscure issues until the piper comes round at last. “How to balance the unlikely but catastrophic potential of bioterror with the steady advance of natural disease is one of the most puzzling challenges for biodefense policy going forward.” This is an unavoidable question, except I would say the “steady retreat of natural disease.” The only significant inroads natural disease has made in the last 100 years are those related to poor nutrition—consequent upon mere stupidity (including the stupidity or conspiracy of doctors) and torpor. Natheless, sichlike common health issues, never out of sight and never out of mind, exert great gravitational pull on the common politician.  

Another part of the problem seems to be a matter of bureaucratic influence on policy decisions—like this Fauci genius spending 70% of biodefense funding on common diseases afflicting public health. Fauci is a public health bureaucrat, not a defense bureaucrat—so he spends what he can on public health. Bureaucrats generally fit the mold of defective wind-up toys—little action, no thought. Also, moving up a notch to the political sphere, it’s lovely to discover that Obama has ended centralized direction of biodefense. What we have is a few part-timers in the White House overseeing the program and trying to coordinate multiple mutually antagonistic bureaucracies. Well, I suppose it’s over-optimistic to expect Obama to take an interest in something other than handouts and labor unions.   

After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What’s not believed in, or if still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.

--Gerontion

Obama Logic

http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2008/09/barack-obama-on-bell-curve.php This is one of the very few things Obama has actually put his name to. It makes for totally unoriginal propaganda along the main line of political correctness. How surprising. Obama says (circa 1994): 1. IQ tests are illegitimate 2. cancelling affirmative action and welfare is racist 3. blacks need to take responsibility for their lives 4. blacks have never had equal opportunity in reality 5. equal opportunity would require heavy (or heavier) government spending/intervention in the lives of the poor I agree with #3. #1 is a harmful form of denial. #2 presumes that America owes reparations to blacks, which it does not. I might add that calling others racist without clear cause and justification is itself racist. #4 blacks have received more than they've given since 1965 in financial, professional, and educational terms--and it is a pregnant symbol of the self-defeating attitude of the black community that by the second generation, every non-black group of immigrants (having started with less) has surpassed American blacks in all measurable socioeconomic statistics. #5 government intervention has been so pervasive and is so incompetent and psychologically damaging that it has been, is, and will be counterproductive.

The Non-Debate

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/02/how-the-other-half-thinks/

Krugman is perhaps too kind in this post: the other half by and large does not think. Republicans have been consistently stupid or dishonest on the economic issues we face. Their policy solutions are an invitation to a prolonged slump a la Japan over the last 20 years. On macroeconomics, the democrats have a better approach right now--except insofar as they intend to expand entitlements. But, apparently, the story Krugman has clearly explained on multiple occasions is too counterintuitive for most to grasp.

There may also be some deeper motives at play--deliberately extending the recession to discredit Obama, for example. Or, squeezing government revenues so hard as to force a reconsideration of the whether we can afford an ever-expanding welfare state. Or, waiting for increasing unemployment to lead to an anti-immigration political consensus that will evolve at least far enough to end illegal immigration, preferably all non-strategic immigration. All worthy motives to my mind. But, are they worth the price? Also, can they be this way achieved? The second and third seem unlikely to happen, and they are more important in the long run than Obama's political fortunes. The welfare state strategy may even backfire. FDR invented the welfare state during the Depression.

A Couple of Pieces

A couple of laudably uncharacteristics articles from the NY Times.   Here is a demonstration of how the government can exceed its usual mandate of merely wasting obscene amounts of other people's money (the great commonality of Washington and Wall Street) and enter into a new business: wasting other people's lives. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/opinion/21fleming.html?src=me&ref=homepage   And here we have an odd political perspective: a Times article that is relatively objective about the teachers unions (objectivity paints an ugly picture) and shows by what sly maneuverings Obama has attempted to reform their priorities to achieve a some reasonable balance between their selfish unionist obsessions and educational quality. Personally, I think Obama will push the unions further than they've ever been pushed before--because he can and because, by doing so, he may be able to score a rare political victory. After all, who else can they turn to? http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/magazine/23Race-t.html?hpw

Political Cycles

A couple of things occurred to me after reading a WSJ editorial about Obama's birth certificate issue, with a diatribe postulating Obama as a mere puppet of greater powers. The former issue is a joke on the two digit IQ redneck crowd, the latter an assertion with no more basis than could be presented for any other modern President. I find the WSJ editorial page a bit mysterious, though it's little worse than the NY Times editorial page. Who reads this stuff? Who buys it? Both papers offer such superficial propagandizing for the most part. Given the typical level of discourse in the "best" newspapers in this country, it sometimes surprises me that we have not experienced a still more pronounced collapse in the standards of governance than even Bush or Obama have managed to achieve.

Contra the WSJ's promotions, Obama is not a stupid man. His political and moral principles, however, are not traditional in America. He promotes socialism, in speech and action. Collectivism is not characteristic of America politically, socially, economically, psychologically. It represents an ever-advancing imposition of the elite upon the American people. And Obama has made himself a figurehead in one of the periodic revivals of the elitist tendency to promote socialism in America.

Pro-Union Economic Micro-Management

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/business/26procure.html?hpw This policy is a terrible idea: an invitation to corruption, inefficiency, inflation, union growth, preferences for big business over small business--basically, a massive incursion of populist-socialist government tyranny.

Another Bush Legacy of Incompetence

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/world/asia/03afghan.html?ref=world 20 different, incompatible police training programs operate in Afghanistan. Bush had the responsibility to rationalize this system and he did not. This incompetence costs lives (including American lives) and money. The former Moron in Chief is culpable. Obama has now required standardization to fix another of the Bush disasters.

Harry Reid the Political Philosopher, Obama the Doormat

From a New York Times article on "special provisions" in the health bill for "special constituents": White House officials have generally acquiesced in the provisions, which they see as a normal part of the legislative process, required to secure votes for a bill overwhelmingly opposed by Republicans. Republicans complained of “sweetheart deals,” payoffs and kickbacks. But the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, brushed aside the criticism. “There’s a hundred senators here, and I don’t know if there is a senator that doesn’t have something in this bill that was important to them,” Mr. Reid said. “If they don’t have something in it important to them, then it doesn’t speak well of them. That’s what this legislation is all about. It’s the art of compromise.” Apparently, Reid's philosophy amounts to this: if you're not corrupt like me and my friends, you're not a good representative and you're failing your country. And anybody who fails to make the government more active, through new laws, regulations, taxes, handouts, is failing in his work. I swear that the underlying political philosophy of these socialists is that man is a born slave and requires his master's (government's) help and discipline in all aspects of life, not excluding the life of the mind (see, political correctness). The best that could be said of any of them is that they are oblivious and profoundly naive as to the effects an ever-expanding nanny-state has on the thoughts, actions, and character of the people.

Packer's Take

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2009/09/reading-the-mcchrystal-report.html This is a good summary and analysis of the McChrystal report and its implications. As with Iran, and Iraq, and Pakistan, in Afghanistan too the President has no good options. He cannot be seen to retreat in face of terrorism. But, if he commits to victory he faces grave costs on many levels and the distinct possibility of failure to achieve victory by 2012. A contradiction in our first premise (ie, that our withdrawal means victory for the Taliban and a consequent increase in the terrorist threat): the Taliban already have a sanctuary in the North-West Provinces of Pakistan--what does it matter if their sanctuary is enlarged to include Afghanistan, or the Pashtun part of Afghanistan?

Fight or Flight

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/228250/spreading-wealth/stephen-spruiell
The key line here is "This is welfare for the middle class." That is Obama's goal. Once the middle class is sufficiently swaddled in a comfortable little welfare blanket, the road to socialism is cleared and paved--and the American tradition is fled.

The Tradition of Improving the Truth

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/228267/does-he-lie/charles-krauthammer
Obama's guerrilla warfare form of mendacity reminds me of Clinton's moment of apotheosis: "It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is." Krauthammer here presents a quality expose of the Obama style of persuasion. He is too clever to lie outright, but deliberately misleads that part of his audience susceptible to being misled--which is the great majority of it. A far left President and a far left House leadership are the wrong people to reform our health system. Obama's rhetorical efforts cannot conceal this socialist reality.

President of the Rest of the World

BO has come up with a new justification for blanket legalization of all illegal immigrants: they have to be legal to benefit from Obamacare. This is nuts. We're already far too generous with illegal immigrants. This would certainly increase the flow of illegals and thereby increase the tax burden of citizens. We have the most generous legal immigration system in the world: why should we reward these illegals whose first act, invading our national territory without legal permission, was a crime?

Illegal Health Care

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/health/policy/06immighealth.html?hpw Illegal immigrants are supposedly not subsidized for low income under the Obama plan, but they can enroll in the "public option"--which is by definition subsidized. This will not only effectively legalize illegal immigrants, it will clearly encourage more to illegals to come so to avail themselves of their "legal" rights as illegals. This proposal is especially audacious (or shameless) in the current economic circumstances. Who does this guy work for? Something like this doesn't even benefit the blacks (BO's favorite recipients of nepotistic patronage), except indirectly insofar as more Mexicans may abett long-term Democratic political power.

A Democrat Contra the Democrats

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/camille_paglia/2009/08/12/town_halls

This is a better critique (and certainly a livelier one) than I can remember seeing from a Republican.

Racial Politics

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/nyregion/11settle.html?hp This is really a warped line of reasoning: because minorities cannot afford to move to Westchester county, the federal government forces the county to pay for affordable housing that must be marketed primarily to minorities. Essentially, the local taxpayers are forced to give handouts to minorities because segregation by wealth has resulted in segregation by race. Once again group rights trump individual rights, federal power overwhelms local government, and welfare cases get priority over taxpayers. At the end of the day what the socialist regressives now running the government really want is pure equality of result: equal numbers of blacks, whites, asians, hispanics; equal income for all paid out through a federal clearing house for GDP; equal educational results (which means allocating the most resources to the worst performers); equal housing with perfectly proportioned racial mixing; equal health outcomes (not equal health care); equal rights among nations (ie, U.S. = Liberia). In other words they want the Soviet Union, but neutered. The problem is that all this affirmative action and social engineering has swung the pendulum from the modes of injustice prevalent in the Jim Crow era to new modes of injustice: rather than simply shedding the snake skin altogether, before quite slipping their tail out these socialists return to it again headfirst slithering into the nasty rotting thing--a sick, stupid, back-tracing snake self-hindered and crippled by its own device and trick of perception. I call them socialist regressives because their instinct to increase equality at all costs is fundamental to the socialist ethic. The regressive aspect is found in the consequences of this instinct run amok: it acts as a leveler, devaluing the importance of the individual and the achievement of excellence in every field; also, their perpetual search for new invidious distinctions and perceived inequalities between groups (not individuals, about whom they do not care) engenders greater divisions among them and increased consciousness of group identity--the result of which is destructive envy and resentment rather than the creative powers and positive incentives that would result from an emphasis upon individual competition.