Category Archives: Law

Uncle Sam: ‘The Greatest Purveyor Of Violence In The World’

America, BAB's A List, Family, Government, Individual Rights, Justice, Law, Military, Pop-Culture, Race, Terrorism, War

BAB contributor MYRON PAULI agrees with MLK, who said: “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today–my own government.”

‘The Greatest Purveyor Of Violence In The World’
By Myron Pauli

“The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government” is the revered Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior saw America. Well, we are now a country where millions go to the movies to applaud “terrorists” being tortured by the CIA which, apparently, enabled us to lynch Osama bin Laden (the “terrorists” do not deserve to be put on trial since our government tells us they are “guilty” and it is none of our business to ever question the government but just to shut up and applaud). We have a secret and unaccountable organization, the CIA (instead of our own military which has more accountability) conducting secret undeclared wars all over the planet. Some people objected when Nixon did this in Cambodia – rather that Nixon be hailed as a Prophet of what was to come. Gadhafi comes clean on his nuclear program so WE OVERTHROW HIM and scatter his forces into Mali where …. – “Good Golly Miss Molly” – now the “terrorists” are destabilizing Mali – send in the French and troops and airplanes and drones. Like a proverbial tube of toothpaste, it will probably spread to Niger or Mauritania or who-knows… – remember when Cambodia was a quiet neutral ignored country until the US and the Vietnamese Communists decided to use it as a battleground and 2,000,000 Cambodians later died?! Collateral damage!

Meanwhile, the Washington Post of January 11 told of how foreign governments and our own are cracking down on parents who want to adopt orphans from overseas. Yes, ostensibly there are rules to prevent foreign kidnappings – but 2 hours of investigation by a reputable orphanage should be sufficient. A couple spent $45,000 over 5 years and came up with no child! The Homeland Security Department made them submit their fingerprints twice because the first set of fingerprints “expired”! And the foreign governments use the children rotting in their orphanages as fodder for their own corrupt political aims. Any cretin can give birth, and any other cretin can have an abortion, but G-d help us from those evil people trying to adopt babies. They are now on the lookout for single parents, the obese, elderly, divorced parents, gays, or whatever. Imagine a kid being adopted by a single old fat divorced lesbian – call out the drones. Perhaps we should be thankful for abortion since it prevents these kids from being adopted?!

Nowadays, 55% of black American developing children get aborted, and 70% of the rest are born out of wedlock. Whites are lagging behind but gradually catching up. Naturally, we will be subjected to the 40th Anniversary “discussion” of that random exercise of Harry Blackmun’s stream-of-consciousness, “Roe v. Wade,” in spite of its irrelevance. Even if Utah could outlaw abortion, a woman could hop on the Greyhound bus to Nevada to dispose of her developing child. Additionally, it is highly dubious that a jury of 12 in any jurisdiction would ever convict when 65% view abortion as less morally objectionable than burping at the dinner table. Heck – just announce that the fetus is part of “Al Qaeda” and the audience will cheer! Kill, kill, kill!

But perhaps the aborted babies are not missing much. Any child born in America comes into the world owing $50,000 of national debt and about ten times that in promised obligations to current Americans. Government grows in secrecy while Americans are regularly spied upon. Prosecutors threaten a jerk like Aaron Schwartz with 180 years in jail for computer “crimes”, e-mails are read, due process of law is disposed of entirely, laws are passed without being read and subject to arbitrary “interpretations” by the executive. We can celebrate Martin Luther King day because instead of Lyndon Johnson conducting idiotic wars in far-flung places, we now have a half-African origin President conducting new idiotic wars in far-flung places. We can celebrate because thanks to technological advances, we can conduct new idiotic wars with less American casualties.

America has advanced to the point that a dark skinned American can now be “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” and even do it “on the cheap” – out of view from the public which focuses more on the phony girlfriend of some Notre Dame football player than our trillion-dollar war budget and the dozen or so ongoing perpetual wars.

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Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.

100 Pages of Redacted Material

Barack Obama, Constitution, Fascism, Government, Law, Technology, The State

Over 100 pages of redacted material: That’s what you get from the US government if you ask what guidelines its FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) agents follow in determining when to surveil American citizens using GPS (Global Positioning System).

The American Civil Liberties Union, reports RT, filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in which it asked for specifics, for right now none of us knows what can trigger long-term surveillance without a warrant.

The written report omits the flare and cultural references the journalist, Gayane Chichakyan, makes. (What a novelty.)

“To the question of how, when and why the government can track its citizens, the FBI responded with this [holds up blackened pages]. It takes a lot of ink to print out something like this,” says Chichakyan, also one of my favorite reporters (because she’s super smart and goes after the story).

“Some artistic souls may think of the painting ‘Black Square’ by Malevich,’…” she adds. [“Think”? Now that’s optimistic.]

Sundering What’s Left Of The Founder’s Senate

Constitution, Democracy, Democrats, Founding Fathers, Law, Politics, Republicans

I once harbored hope that due to self-interest, the Stupid Party, Republikeynesians, may just tackle the 17th amendment (as in repeal it), a 1913 abomination that sundered the republican scheme of governance put in place by the Founding Fathers, whereby senators were to be elected by the respective state legislatures. But I was operating under the naive assumption that Republikeynesians may have had a stake in the Constitution’s original intent.

Since they don’t, it is understandable that Republican senators would align themselves with Majority Leader Harry Reid and other Senate Democrats in furtherance of Senate “reform.”

In particular:

A group of liberal Democrats had been pushing Reid to trigger the so-called “nuclear option” on Thursday, the first day of the 113th Congress, to make it more difficult for the minority to stall legislation and nominees.

Say bye-bye to the legislation-stalling filibuster.

The filibuster is a powerful parliamentary device in the United States Senate, which in recent years has meant that most major legislation (apart from budgets and confirmations) requires a 60% majority to head off a filibuster. In recent years the majority has preferred to avoid filibusters by moving to other business when a filibuster is threatened …

Efforts to retard legislation are a good thing, unless the legislation being sabotaged is legislation to repeal and nullify other legislation.

“Junior Democrats, including Sens. Tom Udall (N.M.) and Jeff Merkley (Ore.),” have been successful in recruiting to their nefarious cause some familiar sickos such as the too-decrepit-to-filibuster (as in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington)”Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), as well as Sens. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and John Barrasso (R-Wyo.).”

This lot “favor[s] using the nuclear option, which they call the ‘constitutional option,’ to effect this change through a simple majority vote. But they need 51 of the 55 members of the Senate Democratic Conference to back them.”

“You need a two-thirds vote in the Senate to change any of the chamber’s rules,” laments sympathetic statist Ezra Klein of the WaPo. Like the politicians, Klein dislikes any minor obstacles still extant to mob rule.

Other vile leftists like Klein complain bitterly that, “The Senate is in a prolonged, self-induced coma. It does not produce creative legislation.”

It is a well-known fact that US Senators are comatose. But we’d like their legislative efforts to be as still as their comatose minds.

Indeed, both Americas deliberative bodies are in a comma, but that’s not because of a deficit in democracy driven, legislative Brownian Motion (besides which the Founders were no fans of democracy).

The news reports are as muddled as ever on this issue. Some reports claim that the colluding quislings wish to force senators who filibuster to actually speak on the floor. That sounds good. However, can “the majority leader call for a simple majority vote on the pending business once the debate stops”? That I do not know.

UPDATED: Armstrong’s ‘Very Strong’ Post-Office Culture

Drug War, Ethics, Law, libertarianism, Sport

A friend of Lance Armstrong assured fans of the disgraced cyclist, who has been accused of doping, that Armstrong “is doing O.K. for a guy that has had his livelihood and his life torn from him, but he’s very strong.”

Armstrong may be strong but he’s also very weird.

Disgustingly weird.

Armstrong is the Michael Jackson of sport. The late Michael Jackson had hired a doctor to feed narcotics directly into his bloodstream. Taking his “milk” is how the disturbed, body dysmorphic, drug-addicted Mr. Jackson referred to this necrophilic practice.

Armstrong is alleged to have resorted to “saline and plasma transfusions,” as well as blood transfusions, where “an athlete re-injects stored backup units of blood for a red blood cell boost.”

Via The NYT:

Lance Armstrong and two of his teammates on the United States Postal Service cycling squad flew on a private jet to Valencia, Spain, in June 2000, to have blood extracted. In a hotel room there, two doctors and the team’s manager stood by to see their plan unfold, watching the blood of their best riders drip into plastic bags.
The next month, during the Tour de France, the cyclists lay on beds with those blood bags affixed to the wall. They shivered as the cool blood re-entered their bodies. The reinfused blood would boost the riders’ oxygen-carrying capacity and improve stamina during the second of Armstrong’s seven Tour wins

The guy from the loopy webzine Slate concludes that “Lance Armstrong Is Like Lehman Bros,” and that there are “striking similarities between the culture of cycling and the culture of Wall Street.”

Come again?

Armstrong was riding for the US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team.

He and his teammates had a strong Uncle-Sam culture.

Of course, there should be no United States Anti-Doping Agency. There should be no ban on doped-up games and competitions. These events should be held openly and be funded privately. Some spectators will want to watch souped-up sportsmen compete; others will prefer unenhanced athletes. Organizers can cater variously to these preferences. Athletes will have a choice: compete for the title of Tour de Frances au naturel, or on drugs.

UPDATE: Oh yes “blood doping” is weird and wacky. As I understand it, “blood doping” is not merely about removing a vial of blood. It’s about draining a whole lot of it, re-engineering it and then transfusing it back into the body. It’s easily more repulsive than mainlining. As I said, Armstrong is an athletic Michael Jackson. Imagine the track marks Armstrong sported on his arms.