Category Archives: The State

Updated: Michelle’s Fat-Based Initiative

Barack Obama, Bush, Family, Government, Healthcare, Racism, The State, The Zeitgeist

For Bush it was the faith-based initiative; for the current First Lady it’s the Fat-Based Initiative. From where Michelle is perched, it’s nice to be able to have the president sign an order establishing a federal task force to tackle a problem she’s made her own. What power.

Michelle’s latest quest is to exercise Our Children, feed them healthier food and label foodstuff big and bold for their dopey parents. These busybody schemes comport perfectly with the Obamas view of the role of government (cutting back on spending can wait).

Question: Why no white butterballs in the press photo op?

Update: You get awards for being a meddlesome bore.

CNN: Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver on Wednesday called for an overhaul of America’s food system, saying the country’s poor decisions about what to eat are shortening life spans and increasing health care costs.

As I observed, “Idiots have come into their own in a big way, courtesy of depraved consumers, and complicit TV producers and publishers, of pixel and paper alike. The duller you are and the louder you crow in contemporary America, the better you do.”

Updated: ‘The System’ Did It

Free Markets, Government, Homeland Security, Intelligence, Propaganda, Regulation, Terrorism, The State

“A nimble adversary” is how Obama characterized a bunch of rag-tag terrorists—Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula—who had resorted to recruiting for their mission a clumsy, inept boy, about whom ample warnings existed in “The system.”

Mr. Abdulmutallab was not placed on the no-fly list “despite the government’s having information that showed him to be not only a threat, but also a threat with a visa to visit the United States.”

Inflating 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s abilities does wonders to lessen our failings, which are legion.

Remember and rehearse: What failed was the (intelligence) system. No flesh-and-blood was involved in the many monumental mistakes. All there was was an amorphous thing called “The system.”

Pray tell if you know of a private company, subject to market forces, getting away with assigning blame to their “system,” rather than to its constituent parts—individual operators. Such a firm would be without customers.

(And people who know they’d get fingered and fired from their private-sector jobs for such failings are clamoring for a public option to serve as competition to the health care insurance industry.)

Under the stumble-bumble Bush administration, we experienced, and forgave, the criminal negligence that facilitated the most devastating terrorist attack on US soil.

Condy Cow (CC) ignored “a 1999 report by the Library of Congress stating that suicide bombers belonging to al-Qaida could crash an aircraft into U.S. targets,” stating that it belonged to the realm of analysis, and wasn’t ‘actionable intelligence.'”

We’re still debating the same disconnected darn dots.

CC then blamed her ineptness on the need to reform Washington’s atrophied alphabet soup of intelligence agencies. Ten years on, the Obama administration is doing the same, although to his credit, the president has taken responsibility for the failures; says they embarrassed him, and accuses his people of letting him down (brownie point for Barack).

The bare-bones truth is that the National Security Council, headed by Rice, was an office created to advise the president on anything relating to national security and to facilitate inter-agency cooperation. “If suspicion existed – analytic, synthetic, prosaic or poetic – Rice should have put the squeeze on the system she oversaw.”

The same goes for the people (the same folks, really) operating “The System” today.

On Condy’s watch America experienced perhaps the worst intelligence lapse ever: Remember the Phoenix FBI agent who wrote a memorandum about the bin Ladenites who were training in U.S. flight schools? Agent Ken Williams’ report was very specific. Over and above the standard sloth the memo met in the Washington headquarters, it transpired that the FBI was as concerned about ‘racial profiling’ then as it is today.

Since Bush, the way we talk about security failures has changed little, bar some semantic tweaks. Neither will it. There are simply no incentives in a government “system” to make it amenable to corrective feedback. The reason nothing changes is because of the nature of “The System.”

Update (Jan. 8): And the concept of terrorism in its aspirational stage? What state-speak is that?

Updated: 'The System' Did It

Free Markets, Homeland Security, Intelligence, Propaganda, Regulation, Terrorism, The State

“A nimble adversary” is how Obama characterized a bunch of rag-tag terrorists—Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula—who had resorted to recruiting for their mission a clumsy, inept boy, about whom ample warnings existed in “The system.”

Mr. Abdulmutallab was not placed on the no-fly list “despite the government’s having information that showed him to be not only a threat, but also a threat with a visa to visit the United States.”

Inflating 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s abilities does wonders to lessen our failings, which are legion.

Remember and rehearse: What failed was the (intelligence) system. No flesh-and-blood was involved in the many monumental mistakes. All there was was an amorphous thing called “The system.”

Pray tell if you know of a private company, subject to market forces, getting away with assigning blame to their “system,” rather than to its constituent parts—individual operators. Such a firm would be without customers.

(And people who know they’d get fingered and fired from their private-sector jobs for such failings are clamoring for a public option to serve as competition to the health care insurance industry.)

Under the stumble-bumble Bush administration, we experienced, and forgave, the criminal negligence that facilitated the most devastating terrorist attack on US soil.

Condy Cow (CC) ignored “a 1999 report by the Library of Congress stating that suicide bombers belonging to al-Qaida could crash an aircraft into U.S. targets,” stating that it belonged to the realm of analysis, and wasn’t ‘actionable intelligence.'”

We’re still debating the same disconnected darn dots.

CC then blamed her ineptness on the need to reform Washington’s atrophied alphabet soup of intelligence agencies. Ten years on, the Obama administration is doing the same, although to his credit, the president has taken responsibility for the failures; says they embarrassed him, and accuses his people of letting him down (brownie point for Barack).

The bare-bones truth is that the National Security Council, headed by Rice, was an office created to advise the president on anything relating to national security and to facilitate inter-agency cooperation. “If suspicion existed – analytic, synthetic, prosaic or poetic – Rice should have put the squeeze on the system she oversaw.”

The same goes for the people (the same folks, really) operating “The System” today.

On Condy’s watch America experienced perhaps the worst intelligence lapse ever: Remember the Phoenix FBI agent who wrote a memorandum about the bin Ladenites who were training in U.S. flight schools? Agent Ken Williams’ report was very specific. Over and above the standard sloth the memo met in the Washington headquarters, it transpired that the FBI was as concerned about ‘racial profiling’ then as it is today.

Since Bush, the way we talk about security failures has changed little, bar some semantic tweaks. Neither will it. There are simply no incentives in a government “system” to make it amenable to corrective feedback. The reason nothing changes is because of the nature of “The System.”

Update (Jan. 8): And the concept of terrorism in its aspirational stage? What state-speak is that?

Updated: No More Making Whoopy In The Military?

Classical Liberalism, Feminism, Free Speech, Gender, IlanaMercer.com, Iraq, Military, Morality, Private Property, Sex, The State

Oh dear, some industrious Army general in Iraq wants to limit the wages of whoring in the military. Maj. Gen. Anthony Cucolo III, quite reasonably, reports ABC News, issued a policy on Nov. 4 “forbidding pregnancy among his soldiers.”

His policy statement said violation of the rule could be punishable by court martial, and that it would also apply to the men who get female soldiers pregnant, even if the couple is married.
Pregnant soldiers are immediately redeployed out of combat zones to bases where they can get comprehensive medical care.

“The true purpose behind this is to cause them to pause and think about, ‘Okay wait a minute. It was written in the order and I’m going to leave my team. I’m going to leave an outfit shorthanded,'” Cucolo said.”

[SNIP]

NO MORE MAKING Whoopy In The Military? What next? Leaving Iraq for lack of recreational outlets? We can only hope.

Anyone with a brain cell knows that the military, other than being an arm of the state, subject to all the malignancies that entails, is one of the Biggest Whore Houses around.

The authority on the subject is “Stephanie Gutmann, a Jewish woman out of Manhattan,” as Fred Reed forthrightly fingers her. Reed writes the following about Stephanie’s apolitical “reportorial” effort, which,

[D]escribed perfectly the fraud and double standards used to make women look successful in the army. Much of it would be hard to credit, except that I had seen it from outside … In the course of events I met Steph a couple of times, chatted on the phone, and lost contact with her. The book got few and bad reviews because it was not what the media wanted to hear. It was a fine book.

As is “Steph’s” Other Book. Read about it here. (I too have had a pleasant exchange or two with this lovely lady.)

Update (Dec. 23): To the distracting diversions in the Comments Section, including my responses (by necessity), let me repeat: The Posting Policy of BAB states: “Please note that ‘Barely A Blog’ is private property. Posts are published at the proprietor’s discretion.” Apparently this requires explanation, as participants prefer the fun of expressing themselves without the discipline of acquaintance with the philosophy espoused here.

THE CONFUSION about this statement demonstrates even more the need for participants to become “vaguely familiar with the political philosophy championed on this forum and the Mother Site, ilanamercer.com. Accordingly, there is no such thing as absolute free speech; there are only absolute rights of private property. Speech is circumscribed by private property rights. I’m afraid you may deliver a disquisition in my virtual or tangible living room only if I let you so do.