This is What Treason Looks Like

NSA leaker Snowden is creepy and a traitor.

One thing is to be concerned about the scope of NSA programs and their domestic impact, and quite another to reveal US and UK collection efforts overseas. From press reports it seems Snowden has provided the Chinese specific information about US efforts against Chinese targets, has revealed UK collection efforts at international conferences, and discussed details of the US/UK intel sharing arrangement. The British would be right in questioning the "special relationship" that exists between their intel agencies and ours; it seems their info is not safe with us.

These actions by Snowden are outrageous. It all makes one wonder what sort of people we have working in our security agencies and points out again the poverty of our vetting procedures for those employees.

He is a traitor. Heads should roll at NSA, Booz Allen, and anywhere else with responsibility for the vetting of Snowden.

The Immigration Debate Misses the Point

I have been trying to follow the immigration debate in Congress and the media, but with little real success. It is almost impossible to figure out what exactly is being proposed, opposed, and modified. The one thing that does come through, however, is the burning desire to reward people who have broken our laws and heavily strained our public assistance budgets. This idiocy must stop. Under the Reagan Administration we went through an almost identical debate which produced the "one-time-only-never-again" amnesty that would solve the illegal alien problem for all time. It failed, otherwise why are we having this debate again?

Amnesty is not the answer. Sappy, historically and economically ignorant speeches by our extraordinarily ignorant President are not what we need. A better border defense is part of the answer but not the whole enchilada of reform that we need. I am very sorry to see Senator Rubio, for whom I have a great deal of respect, getting himself tricked and trapped by the Democrats and politically hurt by his apparently well-intentioned but naive effort at immigration reform.

I do not hear discussion about whether we need none, little, some, or a lot of immigration, and if we do, what type of immigration we should seek. Do we need millions more of semi and unskilled people from Mexico and other poor countries? Absent widespread elimination or reduction in minimum wage, taxation, public assistance, and zoning laws, how will these people contribute to the economic growth of our country? This is not nineteenth century America with small factories and workshops on every street corner, and belching smokestack industries eager for cheap workers. This is the America of EPA regulations, OSHA bureaucrats, job killing minimum wage and health insurance laws, outsourcing, and of a growing ethos that sees single parents living on the public dole as an honorable existence. It is also the America of multiculturalism whereby immigrants are encouraged never to become Americans.

The rubbish being put out by Obama and others on the taxes that these new immigrants will pay is just that, rubbish. They will draw public assistance and not pay taxes. What impact will this continuing flood of poor migrants have on the job and advancement prospects of struggling poor and middle class black, white and brown Americans? I haven't heard much said about that, but I predict it won't be good.

Is our immigration law going to continue based on the idea of family reunification? Will adults be able to petititon for their adult sublings and those siblings families? Will we continue to ignore promises that the new immigrants will not become a public assistance burden? If so, we are in for an endless cascade of new immigrants petitioning for their relatives and on and on and on. Yes, sure, technically we will have solved the "illegal alien" problem by making them all legal. Is that what is best for our country, I stress for our country not for the Democratic party?

I know, I know. Anybody who says this stuff is instantly accused of being a racist. Rubbish. My parents and my wife were immigrants, and I know a lot of very decent immgrants who have come to the United States. Immigrants built whole industries, e.g., Hollywood, and made invaluable contributions to American arts, sciences, letters, etc. But is that the sort of immigrants we will be getting today? Is America's culture and society not worth defending from the immigrants of the sort who planted the bombs in Boston, who run the violent gangs in Los Angeles, who provide the Democratic party its foot soldiers for its campaigns of electoral fraud?

The country deserves better than what we are getting from our politicians and "leaders."

On the NSA Leaker

Just a quick post while I wait for my ride to the airport.

I have been reading about the fellow, Edward Snowden, who claims to have leaked the NSA's PRISM program to the Guardian.

Sorry, but I don't like him or what he did. The United States has the right to defend itself and people who swear an oath to protect the nation's secrets must honor that oath. I don't like it when senior people, such as Panetta, give out details which should remain secret, and I don't like it when worker bees, such as Snowden and Manning, take it upon themselves to give all sorts of sensitive data to the media or Assange. There are still ways, even under this corrupt thuggish Obama misadministration, to handle matters without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I think the NSA, IRS, DOJ, etc, are out of control. If Snowden saw things that should not be, and he did not trust his agency's IG or other administration offices--understandable--there are Congressmen and staffers with the proper level of clearances to whom he could have turned before dumping everything on a rabidly anti-American newspaper, and then fleeing to China. The manner in which he acted undermines Snowden's credibility, and opens him to charges of treason, Chinese espionage, sabotage, etc. Not the way to go.

Travel

Will be on the road for the next nine or so days. Will have my trusty if clunky IPad with me, so I hope to get in a couple of posts. I want to write something about Rice going to the NSC.

If you want to know where I have gone, call the NSA. I bought my tickets online, they will know . . .

One and Half Cheers for the "New York Times"

Will wonders ever cease? It seems the liberal editorial board over at Pravda West the New York Times has begun ever so slowly to come out of its coma. We see an editorial that is "scathing"--by liberal standards--re the Obama administration's abuse of the Patriot Act,

Within hours of the disclosure that federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation, the Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every time President Obama has been caught overreaching in the use of his powers: Terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us to deal with them because we have internal mechanisms (that we are not going to tell you about) to make sure we do not violate your rights.  

Those reassurances have never been persuasive — whether on secret warrants to scoop up a news agency’s phone records or secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism — especially coming from a president who once promised transparency and accountability. 

The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue.

To all of my fellow neanderthal conservatives and libertarians out there in blogoland, please join in welcoming the NYT to the planet earth, and to the reality that is the Chicago way of politics. Please read the entire editorial. Try, however, not to keep asking yourself, "What took the NYT so long?"

The editorial, as "scathing" as it is, still manages to pull its punches. It gives no credit to the warnings over the past several years re violations of basic rights sounded by libertarian/conservatives such as Ron Paul and Bob Barr--neither of whom, frankly, is my cup of tea on many other issues. It, furthermore, does not connect the dots clearly with the administration's other actions--e.g., voter fraud, the political use of public assistance, the political use of the IRS, the political use of the ATF to undermine gun ownership via a secret war in Mexico, the political use of the Benghazi disaster, the promotion of the cult of Obama--and does not, therefore, draw a complete picture of what this administration is about. Any thinking person, however, already knows exactly what this administration is about. We don't need the NYT to tells us that this administration is about power, pure and simple. All of these scandals, as well as the Obamacare train wreck and the relentless assault on the second amendment, are about increasing the power of the liberal state over everything and everyone. 

Having the NSA and other intel agencies go on vast fishing expeditions to collect data on American citizens' phone, email, and other internet usage has little to do with the "war on terror." Hasn't Obama already declared that war over, or nearly so? Read his murky May 23 speech on the subject. Certainly the impression I got was that from now on our effort against terror would be more focussed, more narrow in scope given that we successfully have dismantled much of the AQ infrastructure. So does this new revelation about how the administration actually acts show us an administration that is more focussed? Is collecting information on millions of American citizens Obama's idea of preserving our rights and not allowing vigilance to become a straightjacket on freedom? 

He doesn't give a damn about the war on terror. Look at how he and his Rice puppet blithely lied about events in Benghazi for political gain. This is the Chicago Way of Politics on a scale never before attempted on the American political scene. Have the IRS, the NSA, FBI, CIA, ATF collect information on millions and millions of Americans; the blackmail potential is huge. Imagine all the big and little foibles they are picking up and storing away, ready for leaking or other action as the liberal machine deems fit. 

So now the New York Times thinks the President has lost "credibility." That is like saying that upon deep reflection one now suspects that Hitler might have had a hand in the Reichstag fire; that Stalin played a role in the death of Trotsky; that Charles Manson would not make a good boyfriend for your daughter. The NYT and the rest of the vast media/Hollywood industry have been protectors and enablers of the Obama monster. Now they realize that Moloch has turned his hungry jaws in their direction. He might eat them last, but he will eat them.

Regardless of our beliefs, none of us is safe with this hideous administration in control.

New Jersey's Rino Rhino

Well, it's official.

I give up on New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

I hung on to the belief, well-beyond all rational limits, that he was a very clever Republican. That he was a good Republican. I said kind things about his performance at the RNC and thought--along with Ann Coulter, BTW-- that maybe, just maybe he would make a good president.

I belatedly realized towards the end of the last election campaign (here and here, for example) that perhaps my faith in him had been misplaced.

It is now official: I was wrong big time about him. He is just another northeastern machine politician, who admittedly did whoop the teachers' union, out to do whatever is expedient.

His decision not to name a Republican replacement to the late Senator Lautenberg is beyond comprehensible in terms of the good it could have done for the nation in the battle over Obama care, IRS, Benghazi, etc., in the Senate--where every vote counts. He would have given a good Republican a leg up in the 2014 mid-terms and might have sealed a GOP seat for New Jersey.

Instead, he did a McCain, i.e., seek the approval of the liberal establishment, by calling for an expensive special election to fill Lautenberg's seat. Would a Democrat have done that? Doubt it very much.

Did the lap band make him do it?

 

A Mishmash of Modern Disasters, or Things I Really, Really Hate!

As the nine regular readers can attest, this blogger has been in a dark and pessimistic mood for several days. That mood continues. To prove it, I list, in no particular order and with no particular rhyme or reason, SOME, only some of the things I consider the modern world's greatest disasters (and I won't even mention Islam . . or I might . . . don't know yet.)

1) The Telephone Answering Machine: This horrid device and its subsequent even more horrid offspring have ruined my life. As a career bureaucrat, for years and years, prior to this devil's device I could pretend not to have received calls or pretend to have made them. With the advent of that machine that evasion became virtually impossible. This invention is one of the greatest contributors to the decline of Western civilization. It has destroyed one of the great and useful white lies, "I tried calling you . . . "

2) Twenty-four Hour News: The arrival of CNN and its imitators helped create the atmosphere of perennial crisis in which we live. These news services run the same story over and over and over all day long, to such an extent that one cannot after a bit tell whether it is a new story or the old "tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury. . ." It has led to a couple of generations of news anchors who have become masters at filling dead air.

3) Universal University Education: How many people really need a university education? Better asked, how many people really need a budget-busting indoctrination "noneducation" which is what most universities now provide? Do we need hundreds, nay, thousands of these institutions producing millions of half-literate and arrogant idiots indoctrinated in the liberal orthodoxy and possessing no discernible skills? You know the answer . . .

4) Tax Withholding: Allowing the government to take its "taste" of our income before we even see it has helped produce the disastrous growth of government and the spiral of ever-increasing taxes. It has produced workers "grateful" every year when they get tax refunds, and made them almost oblivious to tax increases. Imagine how people would react if they had to save up the money and on December 31, write a check to the government for the full amount of taxes owed. The 1773 Boston tea party would be nothing in comparison to what would happen.

5) School Districts: Why should tax paying parents have to send their kids to schools in their "district"? Why not allow free competition so parents can send their kids to good schools, and force the bad ones to shutter or improve?

6) Texting: I remain convinced that horrid devices such as cellphones and "tablets" were designed by opticians and chiropractors. We are developing a generation of children who are going blind, hunchback, and bonkers staring at their hands even at the dinner table, not to mention while driving or even while "talking" with each other. I never see them with books, just IPhones.

7) Global Warming AKA Climate Change: Stop. Please, stop. To those die hard believers in this nonsense it is time to go back to believing in the power of triangles, chariots of the gods, and the peaceful, Gaia-loving essence of native American societies. Or better, just go away. As Einstein has shown us it is never wise to claim that "the science is settled" but it is just about as settled as it can be. The evidence is not there for the belief, and note I use that word deliberately, that human activity causes global warming or the even more vague and dishonest "climate change." Amazing ain't it? Finally, finally, scientists are breaking through the wall of censorship and grant terror to note that, well, ahem, it seems the sun, you know that big yellow hot ball in the sky, might, just might have more to do with changes in climate than does my SUV. This climate nonsense made Al Gore and others very rich; they should now just take their money and go away.

Sigh, there are so many other things out there that make a person sad and depressed. Can't possibly list them all . . . soon I will be back to my old self and ranting about jihadis and liberals . . . give me a day or so . . . where's my oatmeal?