Category Archives: Individual Rights

BHO’s Never-Never Debt-Payment Plan (Comments Section Restored)

Barack Obama, Debt, Democrats, Economy, Government, Individual Rights, Military, Political Economy, Taxation, Welfare

When President Obama mouths off about a “free society,” you know that the tokenism will be followed by a list of “liberties” that takes the “vision thing” away from private individuals, and leaves it to souped-up civil servants and voracious bureaucrats. After BHO took great care to tether his “vision” of America to the size of state social programs, here is what the president’s vague, debt-reduction plans entail. A “more balanced approach,” he called it, of “$4 trillion in deficit reduction over twelve years.” Or, the Never-Never scheme. [Transcript]

It’s an approach that borrows from the recommendations of the bipartisan Fiscal Commission I appointed last year, and builds on the roughly $1 trillion in deficit reduction I already proposed in my 2012 budget. It’s an approach that puts every kind of spending on the table, but one that protects the middle-class, our promise to seniors, and our investments in the future.
The first step in our approach is to keep annual domestic spending low by building on the savings that both parties agreed to last week – a step that will save us about $750 billion over twelve years. We will make the tough cuts necessary to achieve these savings, including in programs I care about, but I will not sacrifice the core investments we need to grow and create jobs. We’ll invest in medical research and clean energy technology. We’ll invest in new roads and airports and broadband access. We will invest in education and job training. We will do what we need to compete and we will win the future.

Meaningless so far.

Next in BHO’s noncommittal outline is a mention of the giant defense budget. No specifics are offered. And a centerpiece of the promise to get serious about such cuts is this cunning catch: cuts are in future spending.

As Commander-in-Chief, I have no greater responsibility than protecting our national security, and I will never accept cuts that compromise our ability to defend our homeland or America’s interests around the world. But as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mullen, has said, the greatest long-term threat to America’s national security is America’s debt.
Just as we must find more savings in domestic programs, we must do the same in defense. Over the last two years, Secretary Gates has courageously taken on wasteful spending, saving $400 billion in current and future spending. I believe we can do that again. We need to not only eliminate waste and improve efficiency and effectiveness, but conduct a fundamental review of America’s missions, capabilities, and our role in a changing world. I intend to work with Secretary Gates and the Joint Chiefs on this review, and I will make specific decisions about spending after it’s complete.

[SNIP]

Nothing ventured, a lot gained is the (mangled) maxim Obama follows.

You’ll buy BOH’s “third step,” which “is to further reduce health care spending in our budget,” if you were one of those people who bought the novel idea that an enormous entitlement program, as Obamacare is, will drastically reduce the deficit and debt. The poster person for this mathematical improbability was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Finally, “the fourth step in our approach is to reduce spending in the tax code,” preached the president. By which he and his menagerie of morons mean not to shorten the tax code to one page, and both reduce and flatten individual and corporate rates—but to sock it to the rich.

Reduction of government debt, in Obama’s perverse moral universe, translates into an increase in state-sanctioned theft.

[My appreciation goes to the New York Times, one of the few outlets that provides transcripts of anything, these days.]

UPDATED: I’m sorry comment section was disabled. it was unintentional. It is restored. Thanks, IronGalt, for the alert.

No Furlough For Fondlers

Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Regulation, Terrorism, The State

Aren’t you relieved that the TSA child fondling professionals will not be furloughed, now that our overlords in DC have come together to screw us all royally? (Link) As a mother—as a human being with a heart—it is particularly hard seeing children, like the little girl below, subjected to the cruelty of strangers. Watching footage of this kid between whose miniature trousers a TSA goon is reaching—I can’t help but wonder: Where in all this is the effing FLOTUS? If Michelle Obama has experienced a gut reaction to the ordeal inflicted by her husband’s administration (begun under his predecessor) on travelers and their tots—she is not letting on. The First Lady, as you know, is in touch with her gut—and the gut of every kid in the country. The FLOTUS of the fat-based initiatives “cares” enough to decide what America’s bloated babes will ingest, but not enough to weigh-in when their bodies are being invaded by state workers.

By the way, WHERE ARE THE MEN in all this?

UPDATED: King Tut(u) Not So Terrific

Anti-Semitism, Crime, Ethics, Individual Rights, Judaism & Jews, Morality, Racism, South-Africa

I’m aware of how charming Archbishop Desmond Tutu can be. I once took tea with him. (I mention it briefly in my forthcoming book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa”.) I was accompanying my father, Rabbi B. Isaacson, who was friendly with Tutu. (Dad was a well-known anti-apartheid activist.) With my father I also attended the inauguration of Archbishop Tutu in Cape Town.

Speaking about his New York Post article (“Why the Jews?”) to FoxNew’s Geraldo Rivera, Alan Dershowitz seemed to be struggling to reconcile the same Tutu’s so-called anti- Semitism with his heroics during the apartheid era.

I’m aware of the things Tutu has said since he no longer has to make nice with anyone. But, frankly, from the occasion I met with him, I took away that he was fond of my father and respectful of his Jewish faith and scholarship. Still, I have no problem reconciling the smart, suave Tutu I once met, with the man Dershowitz incredulously describes as follows:

Consider widely publicized remarks made by Bishop Desmond Tutu, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and the American Medal of Freedom, and a man openly admired and praised by President Obama. He has called the Jews “a peculiar people” and has accused “the Jews” of causing many of the world’s problems. He has railed against “the Jewish Lobby,” comparing its power to that of Hitler and Stalin.
He has said that “the Jews thought they had a monopoly of God: Jesus was angry that they could shut out other human beings.” He has said that Jews have been “fighting against” and being “opposed to” his God. He has “compared the features of the ancient Holy Temple in Jerusalem to the features of the apartheid system in South Africa.” He has complained that “the Jewish people with their traditions, religion and long history of persecution sometimes appear to have caused a refugee problem among others.” Tutu has minimized the suffering of those murdered in the Holocaust by asserting that “the gas chambers” made for “a neater death” than did apartheid. He has demanded that its victims must “forgive the Nazis for the Holocaust,” while refusing to forgive the “Jewish people” for “persecute[ing] others.”
He has has accused Jews — not Israelis — of exhibiting “an arrogance — the arrogance of power because Jews are a powerful lobby in this land and all kinds of people woo their support.”
Tutu has acknowledged having been frequently accused of being anti-Semitic, to which he has offered two responses: “Tough luck” and “my dentist’s name is Dr. Cohen.”

For one, it took Tutu no time at all to forget about my elderly father in the New South Africa, where the Archbishop is now supreme. The impious Tutu has also never piped up about the ethnic cleansing of rural whites, Afrikaners mostly, from the land in ways that beggar belief. Saint Mandela has also remained mum about these Shaka-Zulu worthy murders.

Tutu’s turnabout makes less sense to prominent liberals like Dershowitz, for whom a moral indifference to the horrible fate of South Africa’s much-maligned ethnic minority is not considered a litmus test for a man’s moral mettle.

UPDATE (Mar. 8): Robert below makes an interesting observation: “Israel was old South Africa’s only friend in the past, now that Tutu’s side has won, why not show his true feelings!”

By extension, this would mean that Tutu conflates Israel and Jews, which lends support to the contention that “the new anti-Semitism consists in the demonization of Israelis (often described as Nazis vis-à-vis the Palestinians) and the delegitimization of the Jewish State. Blaming Israel or the Israeli lobby for America’s foreign policy blunders, and alleging that Israel was founded through systematic ethnic cleansing and land theft are the centerpieces of their campaign.”

UPDATE II: Charlie Sheen’s Out of the AA ‘Troll Hole’ (“Medicate Mercer!”)

Celebrity, Drug War, Free Will Vs. Determinism, Individual Rights, Pseudoscience, Psychiatry

The following is an excerpt from “Charlie Sheen’s Out of the AA ‘Troll Hole,'” this week’s WND.COM column:

“I liked Charlie Sheen’s ‘Platoon,’ but not his comedic ‘work’ (that’s a pretentious word used by America’s self-aggrandizing entertainers and jesters to describe their occupation). Sheen does, however, get high marks for bucking the drug-addiction industry, which bullies drug users into treatment, and has fabricated a science in support of the disease theory of addiction. …

… Unlike the automatons of the entertainment industry — and the population at large — the intemperate Mr. Sheen refuses to accept as holy writ the teachings of a therapeutic cult that coerces its adherents into conformity. …

… Naturally, the Shamans, Left and Right, are furious with Sheen. … In thinking about addiction, opinions have converged. So-called social progressives and conservatives alike share the same ideological hangover from the Prohibition era (with a touch of AA sadism). Dr. Keith Ablo, like Drew Pinsky, is thus every bit as religious about roping the actor into abstinence and AA.”

The complete column is “Charlie Sheen’s Out of the AA ‘Troll Hole,'” now on WND.COM.

Subscribe to my newsletter, HERE.

Befriend me on Facebook.

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/IlanaMercer

UPDATE I: Heidi H. wrote on Facebook: “I’m baffled by your fascination and admiration for Charlie Sheen. He’s a pig. His excuse is fame and crack. What do you find so endearing about him?”

Me: “Heidi: where do you get fascinated? The war on drugs is a crucial issue to those who care about liberty. The addiction industry factors into that equation. Perhaps this will better explain:
http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article…_list_view.php?editid1=198

UPDATE II: If they could, they would chemically lobotomize me too. The reader below has diagnosed me with “Oppositional Defiant Disorder,” and bemoans the fact that I have not been duly medicated. I’m proud to be in opposition to tyranny, dependency and the decimation of free will by the therapeutic authorities (who often work hand-in-hand with the state).