Birth Control

H/T iOTW

12 States Tell Obama to Sod Off

From Top Right News:

Barack Obama went way too far with his unconstitutional overreach in attempting to require “transgender-compliant” restrooms, showers and locker rooms in all public places across America.

And the massive backlash is spreading fast. So far 12 states have condemned Obama’s outrageous decree.

Most of the controversy began in North Carolina, where the state’s new HB2 law – requiring people to use restrooms consistent with their biological sex – was challenged by the Justice Department, who threatened the state to back down…or else. North Carolina was not intimidated, and immediately filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department for executive overreach.

H/T iOTW

The Deep State

This essay, "Anatomy of the Deep State," was written almost two years ago but it is still a very interesting read. The Deep State is defined as follows:

In British author John le Carré’s latest novel, A Delicate Truth, a character describes the Deep State as “… the ever-expanding circle of non-governmental insiders from banking, industry and commerce who were cleared for highly classified information denied to large swathes of Whitehall and Westminster.”

In America the essay posits that the Deep State exists outside the normal channels of government but pervades it and exerts influence over key members. It is a vast network of financial, military and industrial operators - the puppet masters if you will - that preserves a political circus side show for the public/electorate but plots the course of our nation for their own purposes.

There is the visible government situated around the Mall in Washington, and then there is another, more shadowy, more indefinable government that is not explained in Civics 101 or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol. The former is traditional Washington partisan politics: the tip of the iceberg that a public watching C-SPAN sees daily and which is theoretically controllable via elections. The subsurface part of the iceberg I shall call the Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power.

[...]Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose. My analysis of this phenomenon is not an exposé of a secret, conspiratorial cabal; the state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the light of day. Nor can this other government be accurately termed an “establishment.” All complex societies have an establishment, a social network committed to its own enrichment and perpetuation. In terms of its scope, financial resources and sheer global reach, the American hybrid state, the Deep State, is in a class by itself. That said, it is neither omniscient nor invincible. The institution is not so much sinister (although it has highly sinister aspects) as it is relentlessly well entrenched. Far from being invincible, its failures, such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, are routine enough that it is only the Deep State’s protectiveness towards its higher-ranking personnel that allows them to escape the consequences of their frequent ineptitude.

How did I come to write an analysis of the Deep State, and why am I equipped to write it? As a congressional staff member for 28 years specializing in national security and possessing a top secret security clearance, I was at least on the fringes of the world I am describing, if neither totally in it by virtue of full membership nor of it by psychological disposition. But, like virtually every employed person, I became, to some extent, assimilated into the culture of the institution I worked for, and only by slow degrees, starting before the invasion of Iraq, did I begin fundamentally to question the reasons of state that motivate the people who are, to quote George W. Bush, “the deciders.”

I don't agree with all of this essay, certainly not the voter identification laws that are pending in several states, and the issue of Congressional deadlock; as a NY judge wrote in an 1866 court opinion, "No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the Legislature is in session."

Also, you may want to spend some time reading the comments  section to this essay, some are very well written.

Invasive Federal Snooping Laws Do Not Benefit Public Safety

Why doesn't this surprise me.

FBI agents can’t point to any major terrorism cases they’ve cracked thanks to the key snooping powers in the Patriot Act, the Justice Department’s inspector general said in a report Thursday that could complicate efforts to keep key parts of the law operating.

[...] “The agents we interviewed did not identify any major case developments that resulted from use of the records obtained in response to Section 215 orders,” the inspector general concluded — though he said agents did view the material they gathered as “valuable” in developing other leads or corroborating information.

Source.

The New S.A.

Verizon Speaks Out On New FCC Regulations

WASHINGTON – Today (Feb. 26) the Federal Communications Commission approved an order urged by President Obama that imposes rules on broadband Internet services that were written in the era of the steam locomotive and the telegraph. The following statement should be attributed to Michael E. Glover, Verizon senior vice president, public policy and government affairs:

“Today’s decision by the FCC to encumber broadband Internet services with badly antiquated regulations is a radical step that presages a time of uncertainty for consumers, innovators and investors. Over the past two decades a bipartisan, light- touch policy approach unleashed
unprecedented investment and enabled the broadband Internet age consumers now enjoy.

“The FCC today chose to change the way the commercial Internet has operated since its creation. Changing a platform that has been so successful should be done, if at all, only after careful policy analysis, full transparency, and by the legislature, which is constitutionally
charged with determining policy. As a result, it is likely that history will judge today’s actions as misguided.

“The FCC’s move is especially regrettable because it is wholly unnecessary. The FCC had targeted tools available to preserve an open Internet, but instead chose to use this order as an excuse to adopt 300-plus pages of broad and open- ended regulatory arcana that will have unintended negative consequences for consumers and various parts of the Internet ecosystem for years to come.

“What has been and will remain constant before, during and after the existence of any regulations is Verizon’s commitment to an open Internet that provides consumers with competitive broadband choices and Internet access when, where, and how they want.”

Source:

More here from Power Line:

Nope

JIBO - your friendly, all knowing, never sleeping, always watching, always listening household spy robot.

You might as well place a direct line from your house to the NSA.

Wherefore Art Thou Chick-fil-A?

I can't believe it. There is only one Chick-fil-A restaurant in the entire state of New York? But that's what the Chick-fil-A locator states. The closest one for me is in Scranton, two hours away. Other than that, New York City has one.

I really wanted to try their sandwiches ever since the queers and the First Lady have disparaged them.

From Townhall:

The First Lady of these United States has declared war on Chick-fil-A.

It seems the home of plump juicy breasts and hot buttered buns has run afoul of the new Smart Snacks in School program.

Okay. Hold it right there. Just the mention of "plump juicy breasts" and "hot buttered buns" is going to set Moochelle's teeth on edge. Put breasts and buns in conjunction with a school lunch program and it's going to get ugly early. You might even get the DoJ involved.

The program is a component of Mrs. Obama’s Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010.

The new government regulations require snack items served in public schools to have less than two hundred calories.

I don't remember Congress voting on this; anyone else? The Snack Act?

That includes vending machines, lunch rooms and other campus food venues.

And that’s really bad news for kids at South Carolina’s Socastee High School. They’ve just learned they will no longer be allowed to buy Chick-fil-A sandwiches at school.

“They don’t meet the standards,” Principal Paul Browning told the Myrtle Beach Sun News. “We’re struggling with it.”

The standards are this: let the kids eat playground grass. It's low in calories and you get oodles of carbon credits since you don't have to run the lawn mowers.

Hunger pains aside, there’s another consequence to the Chick-fil-A ban – all the profits funded field trips for the school’s special education students. 

“The Chick-fil-A profits went directly to the field trips,” the principal told the newspaper. “We’ve got to raise some money, but we will figure something out.” 

Maybe they could get the math students to figure out how many carrot sticks they’ll have to sell to send the youngsters to Six Flags.

Obviously the only solution is for these kids to declare themselves illegal aliens. The sky's the limit then.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

From Breitbart:

Former Alabama quarterback A.J. McCarron, who is preparing for the NFL Draft, was watching the Grammys on Sunday and felt that the "really demonic" performances showed that "there is a lot of evil in the world."

True, the images portrayed during the Grammy awards ceremony may have been disturbing to those who are aware of their portent, but to most of the world it was just an amusing off take on religious beliefs - a form of ridicule.

But true evil does not come bathed in flames, neither clothed in revealing garb nor clasped in the arms of homosexuals.

A drooling Satanic mask and gaudy costume does not a demon make.



True evil is not accompanied by bedlam. Bedlam is for raucous believers for whom a Nuremberg style mosh pit is assembled for their amusement.

Much evil confines itself to hidden places where the light does not reach. Much evil can be found in the abode of moral cockroaches who recoil at truth and scuttle back into dark places. But these are only the foot soldiers of evil.


True evil exists in high places, places where the planners and implementers dwell. Lofty places where voices are muted and calm; where Armani suits, soft, polished shoes and silk ties reign at business meetings.

Places like corporate board of director meetings or conference rooms in the highest seats of government.

In order to truly control people, to force them to do as you will, you need the power of government. But government needs the backing of powerful financial institutions in order to be able to hire and equip its workers, to build prisons and armies. You want to find evil? Don't look for it on television unless it's a press conference.

Our Government in (In)Action

To be sure, I never link to the LA Times, but here I make an exception. This is an article written in response to a NY Federal judge who wants to know why the perpetrators of the 2008 recession - the CEO's and CFO's of large American financial institutions - have not been prosecuted.

As the five-year statute of limitations approaches for the wrongdoing that bequeathed us the Great Recession, the question of why no high-level executives have been prosecuted becomes more urgent.

You won't find a better, more incisive discussion of the question than the one by U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff of New York in the current issue of the New York Review of Books.

Rakoff, 70, is the right person to raise the issue. He's a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan, where he handled business and securities fraud. A Clinton appointee, he's been on the bench for more than 17 years.

Judge Rakoff has tossed out SEC settlements that he thought were too lenient and did not address the problems of corrupt management.

"Companies do not commit crimes," Rakoff observes; "only their agents do...So why not prosecute the agent who actually committed the crime?" He's witheringly skeptical of prosecutions of corporations, which usually yield some nominal fines and an agreement that the company set up an internal "compliance" department. "The future deterrent value of successfully prosecuting individuals far outweighs the prophylactic benefits of imposing internal compliance measures that are often little more than window-dressing."

But Rakoff's most severe criticism is not directed at greedy corporations,he is incensed at the lack of government action to punish the movers and shakers that make profit from the destruction of millions of savings accounts belonging to people who cannot afford these losses.

He dismisses the Department of Justice rationale that proving "intent" to defraud in the financial crisis cases is difficult: There's plenty of evidence in the public record that banking executives knew the mortgage securities they were hawking as AAA were junk.

He doesn't buy the excuse that criminal prosecutions involving major financial firms might have damaged the economy -- no one has ever contended that a big firm would collapse just because its high-level executives were prosecuted. And he notes that the government doesn't dispute that some of these executives may be guilty -- it just comes up with excuses for not prosecuting.

Why? Rakoff posits that there are several reasons for the lack of prosecutions. One is that the FBI and SEC are both understaffed because of budget cuts, and in the FBI's case with the diversion of much of its workforce to anti-terrorism efforts after 9/11. And he speculates that the government may feel abashed at its own complicity in the crisis, arising from the easing of financial and mortgage regulations over the years.

I've been saying this for years to people who are all about corporate greed but leave the government out of the equation; they ignore half the problem:

1. All corporations exist and operate within a well-defined regulatory environment that allows them to steal and manipulate their competitors and customers. This environment was created and is constantly modified by our so called representatives at the state and federal level as well as a Byzantine structure of quasi-legal regulatory agencies.

2. The financial activity of these corporations is monitored by the government who, for the most part, makes only a token effort to enforce the regulations created to control them.

Under the Obama administration, even minimal enforcement of the biggest offenders has ceased. Instead, the enforcement efforts of our government has been focused at political opponents.

And let's not stop there. After the abject failure of our federal law enforcement agencies and the intelligence community to identify and interdict the 9/11 attack:
No one was arrested.
No one was demoted.
No one lost their job.
No one was disciplined.

The 9/11 Commission Executive Summary states:

The 9/11 attacks were a shock, but they should not have come as a surprise. Islamist extremists had given plenty of warning that they meant to kill Americans indiscriminately and in large numbers. Although Usama Bin Ladin himself would not emerge as a signal threat until the late 1990s, the threat of Islamist terrorism grew over the decade. [page 2 ~ sig94]

[...]Moussaoui aroused suspicion for seeking fast-track training on how to pilot large jet airliners. He was arrested on August 16, 2001, for violations of immigration regulations. In late August, officials in the intelligence community realized that the terrorists spotted in Southeast Asia in January 2000 had arrived in the United States. [page 7 ~ sig94]

[...]Operational failures — opportunities that were not or could not be exploited by the organizations and systems of that time—included:
•not watchlisting future hijackers Hazmi and Mihdhar, not trailing them after they traveled to Bangkok, and not informing the FBI about one future hijacker’s U.S. visa or his companion’s travel to the United States;
• not sharing information linking individuals in the Cole attack to Mihdhar;
• not taking adequate steps in time to find Mihdhar or Hazmi in the United States;
• not linking the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui, described as interested in flight training for the purpose of using an airplane in a terrorist act, to the heightened indications of attack;
• not discovering false statements on visa applications;
• not recognizing passports manipulated in a fraudulent manner;
• not expanding no-fly lists to include names from terrorist watchlists;
• not searching airline passengers identified by the computer-based CAPPS screening system; and
• not hardening aircraft cockpit doors or taking other measures to pre-pare for the possibility of suicide hijackings [page 8 ~ sig94]

As late as September 4, 2001, Richard Clarke, the White House staffer long responsible for counter-terrorism policy coordination, asserted that the government had not yet made up its mind how to answer the question: “Is al Qida a big deal?”

A week later came the answer.[page 9 ~ sig94]

When and where it really mattered, no one did their job. The system failed to protect us at various levels, at operations and analytic functions but, I believe primarily at the political level. As far as assigning responsibility, the 9/11 Commission was nothing but a white wash intended to deflect blame by identifying system faults which were imposed by politician in the first place - ie., the "intelligence sharing wall" imposed between the CIA and FBI under the Carter administration in 1978 and greatly strengthened by Clinton appointee Jaime Gorelick-

In 1995, while America’s intelligence agencies were still investigating al Qaeda's 1993 terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center, the Clinton administration strengthened FISA to a degree that was unprecedented. Specifically, Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick called for increased restrictions on information-sharing between intelligence (CIA) and law-enforcement (FBI) agencies. In a 1995 memo to then-FBI Director Louis Freeh and U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, titled “Instructions on Separation of Certain Foreign Counterintelligence and Criminal Investigations,” Gorelick wrote the following:

“We believe that it is prudent to establish a set of instructions that will more clearly separate the counterintelligence investigation from the more limited, but continued, criminal investigations. These procedures, which go beyond what is legally required, will prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance that FISA is being used to avoid procedural safeguards which would apply in a criminal investigation.”

Wonder of wonders, Gorelick is appointed as a member of the 9/11 Commission to investigate the carnage created by her devices. Her name is on the page following the cover of the report.

So ultimately, what action was taken by the government?

To take our freedoms.
Effectively suspend habeus corpus almost whenever the government feels like it. This was last done during the Civil War by President Lincoln.

To declare the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution invalid within a hundred miles of the US border. According to Google Maps, I live 99.2 miles from the Canadian border. What other Amendments will bite the dust under the guise of security?

It Doesn't Take A Genius

H/T LL

Just The Right Man For Administering ObamaCare

Coming soon to a medical evaluation board near you! The Death Panels - earnest bureaucrats, not medical doctors or nurses - who will determine who gets the new hip, the pig heart valve, the expensive cancer treatment drug or your dead aunt's cornea.

This will be a high stress job and there are few people who can take the strain of such a position. That's why Hajj Abd Al-Nabi is Obama's go to guy for ObamaCare.

In a revealing interview, Egypt’s chief executioner spoke of his childhood past-time that led to his career taking the lives of those sentenced to death in the Muslim-majority country. Hajj Abd Al-Nabi, who serves as the chief warrant officer in the Egyptian prison system, claims that he has executed approximately 800 persons during his days as chief executioner. Speaking on television, Al-Nabi said “I have placed [the noose] around some 800 heads – tough people, big people, young people … All the despicable crimes—killing, adultery, premeditated murder, and so on.”

It's a busy day in Nooseville for the Hajj-man!

Al-Nabi has the experience, the will, the aptitude and most important, the lack of compassion required to get the job done.

Al-Nabi said that as a child he was accustomed to strangling cats and dogs. “When I was young, about 13 or 14 years old, … my hobby was to watch a cat, to place a rope around its neck, place a rope around its neck, strangle it, and throw it into the water,” Al-Nabi said. “I would get a hold of an animal—even dogs. I would strangle these animals and throw them into the water, even dogs.”

“Strangulation was my hobby,” said Al-Nabi smiling.

And now he may have a new hobby - denying health care benefits.

It's far easier than finger painting and the sound of a terrified, howling 72 year old retiree who is going to lose both his legs is immensely more satisfying than hearing a kitty get snuffed.

His parents told him he would go to “hell” for killing animals, but he persevered in his hobby. “It’s a gift,” he explained. “I was a little Satan.” Once he was hired as Egypt’s chief executioner, Al-Nabi told himself “Congratulations, now grow a mustache.”

And what a beauty it is! Al-Nabi has strangled a half dozen cats, dogs and a ferret with his mustache.

Our Impoverished Congress

Congressional leaders haven't had a raise? God forbid.

WASHINGTON - Haven't had a raise in a while? Well, neither has your member of Congress.

This month, congressional salaries slid to their lowest inflation-adjusted levels since December 1990.

When congressional approval ratings are at historic lows, congressional pay - $174,000 for rank-and-file senators and House members - may seem high. But some argue that shrinking paychecks for public service perpetuates a political culture where mostly the rich can afford to serve in office.

Members of Congress have to maintain households in two locations, one being Washington, one of the most expensive housing markets in the country even for rentals.

Solution: subsidized Congressional public housing, the exact same kind of dumps they provide for poor Americans. Every third occupant must be a crack whore or a drug dealer. That's OK. No need to thank me.

While lawmakers' relative pay is declining, their wealth is increasing: Many in Congress have vast personal wealth. Since 1992, according to Stanford University and the Center for Responsive Politics, congressional net worth increased significantly. Average American household net worth during that time declined. Yet average net worth among freshman members first elected last November stands at more than a million dollars.

Solution: Charge every Congressman $174,000 a year for the privilege of serving their Country. They'd still be worth more than 95% of their constituencies.

Better yet, place Congressional salaries on a merit or performance based scale. We do good, you do good. We have to suck it up, so do you. Under the Constitution, Congress is responsible for administering the nations currency system, It abdicated this responsibility in 1913 when the Federal Reserve system was created. It's time to make them responsible again.

From the Harvard Journal of Public Law & Policy:

[...]The truth is that we have been drifting away from the Framers’ vision for a very long time. Even before the economic crash of 2008, we did not have anything resembling a truly free economy.
One of the most important sectors of the economy, the banking sector, was already quasi‐socialist or corporatist. The Federal Reserve, with its monopoly powers and its chairman and governors appointed by the President, has been an extraconstitutional branch of government since its creation in 1913.

The bailouts, and the government ownership that has come with them, are a direct result of the Federal Reserve’s policies. At the same time, this government body has been eroding Americans’ capacity for self‐government by forcing them to adjust their lives to an overall inflationary economy.

This is a vicious cycle: The central bank creates a series of booms and busts that makes business planning very difficult. As a result, more and more businesses fail and turn to government for bailouts. The public is told that capitalism is to blame and becomes accustomed to the idea that only government is capable of long-term planning. When the next bust hits, the cycle repeats.

Look at the following chart and see how well Congress and the Federal Reserve have been doing w/r/t the economy.

The chart shows the 1988 to 2010 change in the number of businesses that have one or more employees (employers) and the 1997 to 2010 change in the number of businesses who have no employees (nonemployers). While employers who create jobs have increased from about 4.75 million to maybe 5.6 million (an increase of 18%) , the number of nonemployers have increase by 64%, from 14 million to about 23 million.

Nice work Congress, you're fired.

Note: I'm  having trouble linking to the pdf that contains the above chart. It is from the US Small Business Administration's FAQ for September, 2012.

UPDATE:
Okay, it is here.

Coming Soon To An Economy Near You

DUBLIN, Ireland — After the binge of the "Celtic Tiger" years, Ireland has been jolted awake with the mother of all hangovers, an empty wallet and a horrendous bill.

On Thursday the government shocked a bewildered nation with the disclosure that the final cost of bailing out the Irish banks could rise to 50 billion euros ($69 billion). This is much more than previously admitted, and the impact on the country and the population of nearly 5 million has quickly became apparent.

The bailout will cost every man, woman and child in the republic 10,000 euros. Ireland will have to endure savage cuts in expenditure. There will be hair-shirt budgets for at least four years. And the Emerald Isle, warned the European Union, can now no longer remain a low-tax economy.

Finance Minister Brian Lenihan agreed the figures were “horrendous," but said they "can be managed over a 10-year period.”

The reaction of the media in Dublin and the world’s financial capitals was pretty uniform: Ireland’s Celtic Tiger is dead.

The Celtic Tiger Is Dead. Long Live The Hungover Pussycat.

[...] The calamity in Ireland is the result of reckless lending by its banks during a boom that ended in 2007, and which, as property prices plunge, has become one of the biggest busts in history.

The cost of winding down Anglo Irish bank alone is estimated at 34 billion euros. Its directors lent outrageous sums to developers to buy sites and acquire properties that in many cases have become entirely worthless.

Even more shocking for a country where the banks were seen as solid pillars of the national infrastructure, one of the two biggest financial institutions, Allied Irish Banks, was practically nationalized with an injection of 3 billion euros and the brusque removal of its chairman and managing director on Thursday.

Near us? It is us.

And it will get worse, much worse, if something isn't done to derail the out-of-control socialist freight train, known as the US Congress, coming down the tracks.

The Chains Are Almost Off

"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first." -- Thomas Jefferson

Woodrow Wilson provided the key and now the chains are almost completely off. Once that happens, the shackles go on us.

Wilson got Congress to pass the Federal Reserve Act and the Revenue Act of 1913 which established the first progressive income tax in America.

Article 1, Section 8, of the U.S. Constitution states that "The Congress shall have Power:

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures.”

The Federal Reserve Act allowed Congress to abdicate its Constitutional duties. The Federal Reserve is nothing but a system for legalized counterfeiting. The Revenue Act of 1913 allowed the government to take whatever it wants from you.

And now Obama isn't bothering to use a key. He is taking a hacksaw to those chains.

Germany: Government Persecution Against the “Socially Maladjusted”

Quotes from LifeSiteNews:

Persecuted German Homeschool Family Facing September Custody Hearing Have had lien placed on their home by government

Human rights advocates are calling the case of a German homeschooling family "a critical human rights battle." On September 22nd, the Schmidt family of southern Bavaria in Germany will face a hearing in which government officials will decide if they may keep custody of one of their sons.

Hans and Petra Schmidt have been teaching their children, Josua, 16, and Aaron, 14, for more than nine years in an attempt to shield them from what they hold to be a hostile moral and heavily secularised environment in German public schools. To date the Schmidts have been forced to pay nearly 13,000 Euros (US $18,300) in home schooling fines and have had a lien placed on their home by the government.

But worse than fines is the threat by the Jugendamt, or Youth Office, to remove one of their children from the home entirely. […] It is commonly held by the German authorities that homeschooled children are socially maladjusted.

[…] Germany is undertaking a crackdown on homeschooling families who face crippling fines, the seizure of their children and even prison for continuing to teach their children at home. In 1938, Hitler's Germany outlawed homeschooling which ban is one of the few bills introduced by the Nazi regime that is still on the books today. […] Last year the parents of a homeschooling family in the state of Hesse, Juergen and Rosemarie Dudek, were each sentenced to three months in prison. In 2007 the case of the Busekros family became internationally notorious when 15 year-old Melissa Busekros was abducted by government officials, aided by 15 police officers, and locked up in a child psychiatric unit because she had been homeschooled.

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