Category Archives: America

UPDATE VI: Miserable, AWOL, Mama Obama (Pimps Puncture Urostomy Bag/Remove Prosthetic Breast )

America, Barack Obama, Constitution, Criminal Injustice, Family, Fascism, Feminism, Gender, Homeland Security, Regulation, Terrorism

MAUL MALIA; SCAN SASHA. NO, DON’T. Having seen the children down whose miniature trousers TSA goons have been reaching; having witnessed heroic little Mandy Smith’s ordeal (and her father’s reprehensible abdication); being in possession of a keen sense of justice and rights—I could never-ever condone such futile, en masse, state sadism and fascism. Not ever. Not against innocent adults. And most certainly not against children, not even the president’s kids, who seem sweet, and whose only flaw is to have been born to a miserable excuse for a human being.

Make that two.

The First Lady has seemingly not experienced a visceral reaction against what is being done by her husband’s administration (begun under his predecessor) to the American people. She has, at least, failed to give voice to a gut reaction to this mass contagion; this moronity, if indeed one was experienced.

This is the same FLOTUS of the “Fat-Based Initiatives”; the woman who so cares for America’s bloated kids. In this post I asked, “Why no white butterballs?” Even Michael Savage hasn’t dared to ponder what would Michelle say if more kids who looked like hers were being mauled by malevolent state workers.

As a mother—as a human being with a heart—I cannot stand to see kids being subjected to the cruelty of strangers. What a miserable excuse for a mother is this woman, Michelle Obama.

SAVAGING THE SAVAGES:

MORE PUTRID, PUSHOVER PARENTS

UPDATE I (Nov. 22): WHERE ARE THE MEN? This is no country for men, any men. You emasculate them, feminize them, make them over in the image of woman, and they’ll offer up their own children as sacrifice. Liberal men have been “liberated” from the natural instinct to protect their own. You can’t blame them. Women most certainly can’t blame men. This is what modern women have worked for; the state as parent and protector.

UPDATE II: RADIATION REALISM. Every doctor I’ve known has tried to persuade me that his particular brand of diagnostic radiation was just dandy for my health. When quizzed about the cumulative effects from the radiation prescribed by his colleagues to keep me in good shape, the medical man would become less cocksure. A cursory perusal of the literature on the additive effects of any radiation confirms that it is anything but safe. The issue here is that no innocent human being should be made to choose between “the Scylla of the scan and the Charybdis of the ‘enhanced pat down,'” even if the first boosts his health (as if). It’s a matter of choice. I have always chosen skepticism when it comes to invasive modalities when used liberally on healthy people.

Now comes a scholarly study, first reported in the The Daily Mail, according to which “full-body airport scanners are just as likely to kill you as a terrorist’s bomb blowing your plane out of the sky”:

Peter Rez, from Arizona State University, said the probability of dying from radiation from a body scanner and that of being killed in a terror attack are both about one in 30 million.
He said: ‘The thing that worries me the most, is not what happens if the machine works as advertised, but what happens if it doesn’t.
A potential malfunction could increase the radiation dose, he said.
Rez has studied the radiation doses of backscatter scanners using the images produced by the machines. He discovered that the radiation dose was often higher than the manufacturers claimed.
Rez suggested that the statistical coincidence means that there is really no case to be made for deploying any kind of body-scanning machine – the risk is identical.
But he added: ‘They’re both incredibly unlikely events. These are still a factor of 10 lower than the probability of dying in any one year from being struck by lightning in the United States.’
Critics say the low level beam used delivers a small dose of radiation to the body but because the beam concentrates on the skin – one of the most radiation-sensitive organs of the human body – that dose may be up to 20 times higher than first estimated.
A number of scientists have already written to to the Food and Drug Administration to complain that the safety aspects have not been properly addressed before the nationwide rollout of the scanners.

UPDATE III: TSA THEME SONG, again. I still think that “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” best captures the TSA’s mission, conduct, and the mien of its mindless supporters. Do you disagree?

UPDATE IV: I’ve been remiss, and so have you for not pointing this out to me: even if you choose what to you is a lesser evil, the photons as opposed to the fondle (as Myron puts it), your TSA dominatrix could still pull you over for a once-over. It’s not like your decision between “the Scylla of the scan and the Charybdis of the ‘enhanced pat down'” is honored:

After “electing to go through the airport’s new full-body scanner,” “a bladder cancer survivor from Michigan who wears a urostomy bag that collects his urine,” “was pulled to the side to be patted down by a TSA agent.”

CBS:

The 61-year-old retired special education teacher said he asked to be examined more discreetly.
Sawyer told WLNS correspondent Jessica Maki that after being taken to a private area, he alerted the TSA agents about his urostomy bag and the danger of its lid being undone, but they didn’t listen.
And when the pat-down began, Sawyer says the agent was so rough, the cap on the urostomy bag came off, spilling urine on him.
“No apology, no recognition – Is that urine? – no nothing, no offer to help me,” Sawyer said. “And I had to face the fact that I had to walk through the airport with urine.”

Do the hos who support this—other than the Fox blond squad, and polls point toward a majority in favor—detect a critical mass in the incidence of abuse travelers have experienced?

[Myron, do not expose Anna to this. Traveling for a wedding is not an emergency. Take a stand.]

Writes Thomas DiLorenzo at LRC.COM: “We’re All German Jews Now.”

When you hear the usual suspects on Fox wax about the land of the free we’re so blessed to live in; switch off. America is a fascistic state by any other name.

UPDATE V: REMOVING A PROSTHETIC BREAST. CBS: “A flight attendant and cancer survivor said she was forced to remove and show her prosthetic breast to a TSA agent during a security pat-down.”

However, what I’ve termed “sectional interests” have piped up again. Instead of arguing for the rights of all customers who purchase an airline ticket constrained by a state-monopolized system—cancer survivors are engaged in special pleading. Ditto airline pilots, flight attendants, etc.

UPDATE VI: As to Myron’s suggestion about special permits; I’ve been trying to make the point that special interests-based rights to pass without pain are bad for everyone and wrong. No one other than the suspicious should be searched. Why do you think Israeli security gives out special permits to those with cancer, the elderly, the pilots, the pretty… They don’t. See “TSA: Home Grown Terrorism (& Cretinism).” They do not molest people as we are doing; they question them politely.

Zombie Zakaria Has Some “Ideas” For You

Affirmative Action, America, Education, Europe, Government, Labor, Multiculturalism, Outsourcing, Political Economy, Science, Technology

Fareed Zakaria: is there anyone more inane and wishy-washy than he? Zombie Zakaria’s “Restoring the American Dream” presentation is in the tradition you’ve come to expect from this CNN pundit.

Thus, Fareed vows to “bring you solutions” to “the hollowing out of the middle class” by growing the state’s role in R & D, for, as he concludes, “Almost all of the science and technology research that we take for granted now came out of the Defense Department spending post World War II.”

But surely, and logically, we cannot assert that because the DOD (the Department of Defense) gave rise to certain technologies, without it these inventions would not exist, as ZZ claims? It might be the case that sans state intervention, there would be even more innovation than with it.

This guy’s “ideas” are festooned with similar falsehoods.

Another of ZZ’s lessons comes courtesy of the super-productive German workforce.

“Despite some of the highest wages in the world, strong unions, lots of regulation, Germany has maintained a very powerful manufacturing base, employing millions,” ZZ opined. “It has held in good stead during this economic crisis. Germany’s unemployment rate has actually fallen for the past 15 months straight, an unbelievable record in this economic climate.”

As ZZ narrated the above passage, images of industrious German factory workers flashed on the screen, and were contrasted with the long lines of the unemployed in America. Guess what the American assembly and unemployment lines look like? You are right: By comparison, the German workforce so famous for its industry looked relatively homogeneous.

Still, ZZ hopes to apply efficiencies learned from the German cohort to America’s increasingly third-world, imported, underclass of workers. (“The United States,” we are told, “now ranks 52nd in the world in quality of science and math education.” It used to have “very high levels of performance in math and science.” What happened other than suffocating unionization in education, third-world immigration, and affirmative action?)

As Fareed and his well-to-do, high-achieving (indubitably high IQ) guests conclude, and I paraphrase, opportunities are indeed boundless if somebody has the smarts and the motivation; everybody can be the designer of an iPod or a programmer at Google; this essentially, is not a rarified group. Any one can get to be at “the top end of America.”

ZZ’s smart panel, which can never be called an interest group plumping for government/taxpayer subsidies (no never!), included Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google; Muhtar Kent, chairman and CEO of Coca-Cola; Lou Gerstner, who has run R.J. Reynolds, American Express and IBM; and Klaus Kleinfeld, CEO of Alcoa, the aluminum giant.

All were agreed that laborers are interchangeable in as much as potential is concerned, and if given the right conditions by government.

I have advocated in my writings for “a natural shift from a credit-fueled, consumption-based economy, to one founded on savings, investment and production.”

ZZ favors only a shift from consumption to investment; massive federal-government investment.

UPDATED: A Vote For Chile’s President

America, Barack Obama, Bush, Free Markets, Government, Media, Technology, Trade

The following is from “A Vote For Chile’s President,” my latest WND column:

“President Barack Obama took to the podium well before President Sebastian Piñera did. Chile’s president bided his time patiently with the group of rescue workers in hard hats, until all 33 miners had surfaced from deep within the San José copper-gold mine, in northern Chile, where they had been entombed for 69 days.

If not for the translator’s running commentary, I would not have guessed that the man with a beaming smile—so different from Obama’s gleam of dentition and Bush’s demented grin—last in-line to meet and greet the miners who ascended from hell, was no other than Chile’s president. Sebastian Piñera wife, first lady Cecilia Morel, was equally low-key, fading into the background and ceding to the heroes of the unfolding drama.

The images transmitted from Camp Esperanz showed no swat teams, personal body guards, or retinues of handlers and props—the sort of ‘presidential comitatus’ that accompanies the head of the American hyperpower everywhere.

At ‘Camp Hope,’ the pensive group of rescuers and their president looked like a band of brothers. The media scrum did nothing to shatter what was almost a religious atmosphere. All present—mining men, the rescued and the rescuers, and their families—seemed oblivious to the din from the outside world. Nobody appeared star-struck; few were playing to the cameras. All present had eyes for one another alone. Expressions of joy were all the more poignant because so dignified. There was no slobbering, no Geraldo-Rivera hyperbole.” …

The compete column, now on WND.COM, is “A Vote For Chile’s President.”

Next week I hope to introduce you to the work of a dear friend, Professor Dennis O’Keeffe, who has just written a gem of a book about Edmund Burke. My conversation with Dennis will be the first of a two-part interview. You’ll enjoy it.

And do read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

The Second Edition features bonus material and reviews. Get your copy (or copies) now!

UPDATE (Oct. 16): Star Parker in “What Chile can teach America about freedom”:

But back just a little less than 40 years ago, Chile was a typical, poor South American nation, with intrusive government and sluggish growth.
How was it transformed?
Read a short essay called “How the Power of Ideas Can Transform a Country,” by one of the leaders that made it happen – Jose Pinera.
He relates how, in the mid-1950s, the Catholic University of Chile signed a cooperation agreement with the Department of Economics of the University of Chicago, then home to the world’s top free-market economists, including the legendary Milton Friedman.
Milton Friedman’s classic “Capitalism and Freedom” explains how individual liberty can only thrive when accompanied by economic liberty
Thus began the education of a generation of young Chileans in the wisdom of economic freedom.
Beginning in the late 1970s, these young leaders, with newly minted Ph.D.s, helped implement new economic reforms in Chile protecting private property and promoting free trade.
A graph showing annual economic growth in Chile over the last hundred years looks like a hockey stick. From the early part of the twentieth century until 1980, the line is flat, averaging less than 1 percent growth per year. But beginning 1980, growth takes off in a vertical surge, averaging over 4 percent per year.

Danish-Style Welfare

America, Democracy, Europe, Multiculturalism, Nationhood, Political Philosophy, Socialism, The State, Welfare

“The pigs to which the politicians pander outnumber—and are electorally stronger than—the productive whom they plunder. The first are feeding off the second and will not let-up. To remove or not to remove the teat of the Welfare State from its primary beneficiaries: that will be the question on the Tuesday following the first Monday, in November.” Indeed, fewer and fewer are working to feed more and more Americans. USA Today has the latest astounding figures:

“Government anti-poverty programs that have grown to meet the needs of recession victims now serve a record one in six Americans and are continuing to expand.

More than 50 million Americans are on Medicaid, the federal-state program aimed principally at the poor, a survey of state data by USA TODAY shows. That’s up at least 17% since the recession began in December 2007.

“Virtually every Medicaid director in the country would say that their current enrollment is the highest on record,” says Vernon Smith of Health Management Associates, which surveys states for Kaiser Family Foundation.

The program has grown even before the new health care law adds about 16 million people, beginning in 2014. That has strained doctors. ‘Private physicians are already indicating that they’re at their limit,’ says Dan Hawkins of the National Association of Community Health Centers.

More than 40 million people get food stamps, an increase of nearly 50% during the economic downturn, according to government data through May. The program has grown steadily for three years.

Caseloads have risen as more people become eligible. The economic stimulus law signed by President Obama last year also boosted benefits.”

[SNIP]

Statism Starts With Us!

Some time ago Oprah Winfrey discovered that the welfare state of Denmark was home to the happiest people in the world. She and others (Bill O’Reilly and his “Cultural Cretins” opposed her observations for no intelligent reason) have put this happiness down to “Free health care, education and long leave for new parents … A simple life and a strong social system.”

Copenhagen is one of the world’s most environmentally conscious cities. A third of the population rides bikes, many with groceries and kids in tow. Homelessness and poverty are extremely low here. If you lose your job, the government continues to pay up to 90 percent of your salary for four years. You’re never going to be homeless on the street.

I suspect that what makes “Denmark one of the best places on earth to live, according to American talk show star Oprah Winfrey” has quite a bit to do with fellow feelings of unity. Denmark is still relatively homogeneous, with a migration rate of 2.48 migrant(s)/1,000 population.

Multiculturalism immiserates.

It is also a tiny country of only 5.5 million people. A welfare state can chug along if it is small and well-managed. A welfare sytem consisting of 310 million people is doomed.

More importantly: If a good majority in a culturally homogeneous country has agreed on such a system of welfare, it is more likely to make them happy.

Moreover, direct-democracy initiatives on crucial matters are more prevalent in Europe than in the US. I mean, if you are going to suffer the blight of democracy, at least make it a direct democracy as a representative one is on par with tyranny:

“Of the constitutional provisions for mandatory constitutional referendums, those of Denmark, Ireland and Switzerland have been put into practice. In these states, mandatory referendums are required on all constitutional ]matters], whereas in Spain and in Austria mandatory referendums required only on fundamental changes to the constitution, and in Iceland only on certain types of constitutional amendments.”

“The Danish case illustrates how the referendum has been adopted as an institution that limits the powers of parliamentary majorities. The mandatory referendum was first adopted in Denmark in 1915 to compensate the abolition of the requirement that constitutional changes should be passed in two subsequent parliaments.”