Category Archives: Nationhood

UPDATED: State of Disunion Stars Two Chief Dividers

Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, History, Nationhood, Politics, Republicans, States' Rights, The State

A most divisive president, Barack Obama, will be devoting his last State of the Union extravaganza to dispelling the conviction that he, Obama, has been an extraordinarily divisive and antagonistic president. Even Obama’s decision not to mention the capture, today (1/12/2016), by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard of 10 American marines will prove divisive. But hey, legacy before loyalty. In that tradition, hubristic Obama will be speaking to the things that unite America, namely his legacy.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who’ll be delivering the Republicans’ SOTU response, is an equally divisive figure, having chosen, last year, to excise a part of Southern history: Haley tore down the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia from the State House grounds, even though the Confederate flag “never flew over an official Confederate building,” and “was a battle flag intended to honor the great Robert E. Lee.”

I won’t be dignifying Il Duce’s last SOTU address. Instead I’ll excerpt the 2010 WND column about this “Stalinesque Extravaganza.” Just about everything in the column, “Barry Soetoro Frankenstein: Spawn of the State,” still obtains:

Barry Soetoro Frankenstein: Spawn of the State

Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution requires that the president “shall from time to time give to Congress information of the state of Union.” Like everything in the Constitution, a modest thing has morphed into a monstrosity.

A “Stalinesque extravaganza” that ought to offend “anyone of a republican (small ‘r’) sensibility” is how National Review’s John Derbyshire has described the annual State of the Union address. “American politics frequently throws up disgusting spectacles. It throws up one most years in January: the State of the Union speech,” writes Derbyshire in “We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism,” in which John (he’s a friend) goes on to detail how “the great man” is announced, how he makes an entrance; the way “the legislators jostle to catch his eye” and receive his favor. (This year, the most repulsive among the representatives staked out aisle seats for themselves, starting early in the morning.)

“On the podium at last, the president offers up preposterously grandiose assurances of protection, provision, and moral guidance from his government, these declarations of benevolent omnipotence punctuated by standing ovations and cheers from legislators” (p. 45). The president of the USA is now “pontiff, in touch with Divinity, to be addressed like the Almighty.”

The razzmatazz includes a display of “Lenny Skutniks” in the royal box. These are “model citizens chosen in order to represent some quality the president will call on us to admire and emulate.” Last year it was the family of the girl who was murdered by the Tucson shooter. This year’s “Lenny Skutnik” was Debbie Bosanek, Warren Buffett’s secretary. Bosanek is supposed to embody the Barf(fett) Rule, described by the Divine One thus: “If you make more than a million dollars a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes.”

“We Are Doomed” deconstructs this monarchical, contrived tradition against the backdrop of the steady inflation of the presidential office, and the trend “away from ‘prose’ to ‘poetry’; away from substantive argument to “hot air.” In Obama’s simplistic scheme of things—as measured by the Flesch-Kincaid readability test, “for the third straight Address, the President’s speech was written at an eighth-grade level”—to recreate the glory of America, it is essential to reinvent the state. Since Obama has no understanding of how the economy works and why it collapsed, he honestly thinks that centrally planned political projects are every bit as productive as profit-driven investments of private property.

Ever the source of deafening demagoguery, the president promised pay dirt to businesses that heeded his call to greatness. Should a company “relocate to a community that was hit hard when a factory left town,” the president will plunder (private property), print (funny-money), and beg (borrow) in order to help these friends-in-fascism to “finance a new plant, equipment, or train for new workers.”

In the spirit of brute-force statism, the POTUS also promised a Trade Enforcement Unit to police “unfair trading practices,” and a “Financial Crimes Unit to “crack down on large-scale fraud.” And he, BHO, will corral corporations into “model partnerships” with community colleges, while simultaneously redesigning the curricula and websites of said colleges.

Il Duce’s next derring-do? Send him the bill, and Obama will even instruct the provinces to incarcerate local kids in high school “until they graduate or turn 18.”

To keep the student-loan bubble afloat, America’s potentate wants to mandate more loans at fixed prices, as well as expand federally financed research and development. Nowhere is it authorized by the Constitution, but—don’t you know it?—without “federally financed labs and universities” and “public research dollars,” the Internet and assorted “technologies to extract natural gas out of shale rock” would never have come about.

Having used the military to great political effect, Obama now intends to deploy the Department of Defense, no less, in the “clean energy business.” In Obama’s very elementary thinking—eighth-grade elementary—the DOD is bound to do a bang-up job.

From financial aid (for foreign students) to an affirmative-action placement in Harvard Law School, Barry Soetoro is a Frankenstein of the state’s creation. If not for government, Obama would have never managed to write himself into history. As a product of the state, Barry Soetoro sees it as the source of all possibilities.

And so the president forges ahead with plans to grow the Dead Zone of government.

(From “Barry Soetoro Frankenstein: Spawn of the State.”)

UPDATE: So was it good for you? Did the earth move? Barack Obama’s presidency was to be, by his account “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth. This was the moment – this was the time – when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves, and our highest ideals.”

Those were the words of the Messiah himself, excerpted from the nomination victory speech in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Migrant Vetting & American Safety Outsourced To The UN

Europe, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, Nationhood, Republicans, Terrorism, UN

In November last year (11.25.15), I pointed out “that [House Speaker Paul] Ryan loves our refugee laws—they are important legislation, he said on that occasion.” I further alerted you to just what this affinity says about Ryan.

For “Like most positive law, US refugee law is written by and for special interests, starting with one of the most corrupt UN agencies, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Besides, who approved these refugee laws? Likely fewer than 535 law makers, legislating on behalf of 323 million people who have to live with the law’s consequences.” (Read “Why Does Paul Ryan Conflate Bill Of Rights With Refugee Bill Of Goods?!”)

A few months after that, the cutting edge Center for Immigration Studies confirms and fleshes out what you could read at BAB months prior (DONATIONS ARE NEEDED AND APPRECIATED SO AS TO KEEP UP THE LEVEL OF INTENSITY AND PREDICTABILITY ON BAB, AS WE HAVE SINCE 2005):

The CIS’s reports is “The UN’s Role in U.S. Refugee Resettlement: A ‘benefit of the doubt’ screening policy” By Nayla Rush January 2016.

Saudi Arabian Execution Is A Good Excuse For the US To … Leave The UN

Foreign Policy, Middle East, Nationhood, UN

The role the US should play in the execution by Saudi Arabia of a Shiite cleric is twofold:

First, make clucking sounds and issue empty statements. Here’s an example, via RT:

“Human Rights Watch strongly criticized the Saudi executions. Regardless of the crimes allegedly committed, executing prisoners [en masse] only further stains Saudi Arabia’s troubling human rights record,” Sarah Leah Whitson, the group’s Middle East director said, adding that al-Nimr was convicted in an “unfair” trial and that his execution “is only adding to the existing sectarian discord and unrest.” “Saudi Arabia’s path to stability in the Eastern Province lies in ending systematic discrimination against Shia citizens, not in executions.”

Next, use the occasion to get the hell out of the UN, where Saudi Arabia plays a prominent role in … human rights affairs.

Through its many agencies, the U.N. works tirelessly to undermine the values of economic freedom and individual responsibility and to consolidate a coercive global economic order. If the people ought to govern, then it seems obvious that a centralized administration like the U.N., with considerable sway over “sovereign” nation-states, is a danger to the freedoms of all nations and their individual subjects.

That the UN is a terrible enterprise with too much power over the US is nothing new. “The mass execution of 47 including the Shia cleric,” by a mover and shaker of the UN’s Human Rights apparatus, would have simply afforded any moral government the diplomatic opportunity to say adios to the UN blight, for once and for all.

The second response is as likely as a snowstorm in the desert. “That the U.N. is working diligently to homogenize laws the world over is a source of delight to national leaders. These leaders don’t want to have to stay competitive in order to keep productive people and their capital in their jurisdictions. The real U.S. sovereignty violators then are successive American governments. By becoming signatories to global wealth-distributing agreements and assorted schemes that place Americans under U.N. jurisdiction, our own governments continue to betray us.

Bibi Netanyahu’s Two-Faced, Brutish, Boorish Reaction To Trump

America, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, Israel, Judaism & Jews, Nationhood

Nationhood is for Jews, but not for gentiles. This is what disgusts about Israeli politicians, pundits and now Bibi Netanyahu, worshiped by neocons. The prime minister and his Knesset take as a given that Jews should be able to do what is necessary to protect themselves in their homeland. The protection of American lives in their homeland, on the other hand, is a far less urgent matter to these Israelis.

Netanyahu has openly declared that he wants to retain Israel’s national character. Well of course. And so he should.

He has rightly refused to absorb some of the region’s refugees, insisting that this would conflict with his obligation to his countrymen. Copy that, Mr prime minister. But when an American patriot so much as suggests stanching the flow of blood in the US, caused by this country’s laissez-faire immigration policies—Bibi and his pols protest boorishly.

CNN:

“Prime Minister Netanyahu rejects Donald Trump’s recent remarks about Muslims,” according to a statement issued by the prime minister’s office.

“The State of Israel respects all religions and strictly guarantees the rights of all its citizens. At the same time, Israel is fighting against militant Islam that targets Muslims, Christians and Jews alike and threatens the entire world,” the statement said.

Netanyahu came under fire from dozens of members of the Israeli parliament for planning to host the controversial GOP presidential front-runner. They called on the Prime Minister to cancel his meeting with the billionaire businessman.

As I wrote in “Cut The Cycle-Of-Violence Crap”:

Israelis seldom extend us the sympathy Americans so dearly deserve. The Muhammadan menace in the U.S. is, by default, downplayed when it’s portrayed by Israelis as part-and-parcel of the cross borne by a multicultural, multiethnic democracy: The U.S.

The largely homogeneous Jewish State is said to be entitled to live free of the Muhammadan menace. Not so our Anglo-American Christian civilization.

Let right-minded Americans remind their Israeli friends, however, that America was not multiethnic and multireligious by birth. Rather, the America we love and need every bit as Israelis love and need Israel has become a balkanized, multiethnic toilet by political design, by force.

This is no way to live. Not for Americans; not for Israelis.

Trump’s response was masterful:

He is reminding Israel that he’ll not forget this shameful episode if …