Category Archives: The State

Our Father Who Art In 1600 Pennsylvania

Our Father Who Art In 1600 Pennsylvania
By Myron Pauli

Americans are religious zealots and politics is our common religion. And while we have two rival religious factions, both focus on that object of veneration or cursing, the Presidency. Together with His Winged Angels (e.g. the trillions of dollars of federal bureaucrats, invisible “contractors,” and drones), His Holiness can perform miracles or wreak punishment upon the nation at his complete whim. No mere obstructions such as laws of nature, common sense, or the US Constitution can impede His Divine Will to bring utopia to America or to punish us for our wickedness.

The Dow goes up – get on your knees and pray to the Heavenly Father of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. If the Dow tanks, go ahead and curse that evil President Mephistopheles. If something bad happens when your good God is in the White House, it is clearly punishment brought upon by the wicked idolaters of the Evil Party. If Satan is in the Oval Office, you can pray for redemption, political power, and “hope and change”.

No problem is too small, too remote, or too impossible for our Heavenly Father of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Yes, you might be sitting on your butt in your basement ignoring warnings when Hurricane Katrina comes but it is up to President Dubya Bush or his Winged Angels of FEMA to come and sweep you to safety. Hundreds of local municipal buses sitting in low-lying areas while the elderly are ignored in nursing homes and the local cops and firemen have scrambled away are clearly the fault of Bush and his Chief FEMA Angel and former horse judge Michael “hell of a job” Brown to haul everyone’s ass out of New Orleans.

While the President is, of course, omniscient and perfect, it is the wicked “American Haters” or “Racists” or “The One Percenters” or “Alien Welfare Bums” which caused that supernova to blow up 5,000,000,000 light years away. The latest plague is Ebola, either brought on by Satan Obama and flying monkeys from Africa or the evil racist Koch-Brothers who cut the budget for the Center for Disease Control. Even your toilet backing up is political. Our divine government can do ANYTHING– our NSA can track every terrorist, our TSA keeps our airplanes safe, or CDC solves all illness, our FEMA handless all emergencies, the Agriculture Department puts food on our table, the State Department makes us beloved throughout the world, the FBI catches all the bad guys, the CIA are all prophets, and the Marines can turn Afghanistan into the Switzerland of central Asia at the will of his Holiness. As the old saying goes, “we put a man on the moon”.

Our presidential libraries cost hundreds of millions of dollars and rival the ancient pyramids for the faithful to make pilgrimage to and genuflect at the greatness of the previous Holy Provider of all that is good.

And the media serves as the Yeshivas and Monasteries for the Faithful. Archbishop Hannity and Rabbi Maddow can lead us, the righteous and loyal, in our prayers “Blessed be Bush” and “Cursed be Obama” – Amen! – or is it the other way around?

Over 40 years, while Watergate was “testing our faith” (yes, we must have “faith” in the national government), I wrote up a Prayer For the President – albeit with a little help from King David. Picture a despondent H. R. “Bob” Halderman in search for a miracle and I leave you with this bit of inspirational satire:

The PRESIDENT is my shepherd, I shall not want
He maketh me lie before Senate Committees
He leadeth me before the Grand Jury
He restoreth my office
He leadeth me in the paths of eavesdropping for His re-election’s sake
Yea, though I walk through the valley of Watergate, I will fear no jail;
For thy re-election victory and executive privilege art with me
Thy clemency and thy staff, they comfort me
Thou preparest a coverup before me in the presence of thy enemies
Thou annointest my office with power; my zeal runneth over
Surely a light sentence and a good corporation job shall follow me all the days of my life
And I shall dwell in the White House forever.

******
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.

UPDATE II: Decouple From Deadly CDC & Central Government (CDC Crusades)

Federalism, Government, Healthcare, Homeland Security, States' Rights, The State

Another government agency, this time a good, more overarching, yet entirely neutral one: Is that really what that cool brain Steve Sailer is advocating to counter “Ebola Guy”? Tell me it isn’t so.

… there is no organized system, no National Immigration Safety Board to “conduct investigations and makes recommendations from an objective viewpoint. … An official government agency issuing an official government report would be extremely useful in terms of media dynamics.

Tweaking the Gulag of government, with its systemic perverse incentives, is not the answer to the corruptions and malfunctions that are inherent to central government.

Less is more.

Decentralizing; decoupling from the deadly CDC and its federal overlords is what it’ll take. States across the country are rediscovering and reasserting the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

If, in the ensuing chaos, states reclaim 10th Amendment rights to manage their affairs, responsibility will be returned to smaller, more accountable units. Watch state officials scramble to deport and quarantine for fear of reprisal from local citizens to whom they are beholden. Privatize healthcare and observe hospitals scramble to put in place the best screening and treatment facilitates, for fear of being put out of business by law suits and by competition.

UPDATE I: Nurse Vinson Vindicated (BREAKING): “The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reportedly told Amber Joy Vinson, the second nurse at the Texas hospital that treated Thomas Eric Duncan to come down with Ebola, that it was okay for her to fly even after she told the CDC that she had a low-grade fever.”

MORE lies from The Center.

UPDATE II: CDC Crusades: “Everything But Disease Control.” Superb investigative journalism from Michelle Malkin:

At $7 billion, the Centers for Disease Control 2014 budget is nearly 200 percent bigger now than it was in 2000. … [some of its] recent crusades: Mandatory motorcycle helmet laws. … Video games and TV violence … Playground equipment … “Social norming” in the schools …

MORE MM.

* Ebola-Infected Nurses Amber Joy Vinson and Nina Pham, one of whom was reassured by … the CDC that she could travel.

Jihad’s Homegrown Enablers

Homeland Security, Islam, Jihad, Natural Law, Terrorism, The State

“Jihad’s Homegrown Enablers” in the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

“Is this treason?” asked Megyn Kelly. The Fox News anchor was referring to American citizens who had joined the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and expected to return to the U.S. upon completing their tours of duty abroad.

Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation James Comey believes that “unless [his] passport is revoked,” an American citizen who holds an American passport and who has fought for ISIS—maybe even decapitated a dhimmi or two—“is entitled to come back” to the U.S.

Comey was discussing these American exported fighters for ISIS on “60 Minutes.” He promised to “track them very carefully.” At least, as carefully as the intelligence community tracked the brothers Tsarnaev. Also known as the Boston bombers, the Tsarnaevs’ fealty to their American friends and neighbors drove them to murder three and maim many more.

Judge Andrew Napolitano’s retort, on “The Kelly File,” was (oddly) first to praise this FBI director’s mettle as a man and a lawyer, while disputing the legal grounds for Comey’s odd position:

“Comey forgot there’s a statute called providing material assistance to a terrorist organization,” explained Napolitano. “So if he knows that Americans have been fighting with ISIS and he also knows that the secretary of state has declared ISIS a terrorist organization—that is more than enough evidence for him to arrest them upon their re-entry to the U.S. It is crazy to let them back in and wait and see what they do.”

Judging from the tenor of her popular show, Kelly believes that American citizens owe allegiance to the U.S. government. I’d counter that it is to his countrymen—neighbors, coworkers; community—that an American owes his loyalties, as expressed in the practice of civility and non-aggression. The chances are good that a veteran of jihad à la ISIS will reoffend: resort to the intimidation, terrorization, even decapitation of innocents stateside. Thus, based on his criminal history and religious proclivities, the homegrown jihadi ought to be kept OUT of the U.S. The right to venture wherever, whenever is no more than a positive, manufactured right, forfeited on the violation of authentic negative rights.

As to Kelly’s initial question regarding treason: Indeed, the case of FBI Director Comey is clear-cut. He betrays the people who pay for his keep.

Still on the topic of the home-grown jihadi, conservatives are losing their heads over the classification of a Muslim butcher from Moore, Oklahoma. …

… Read the rest. “Jihad’s Homegrown Enablers” is now on WND.

UPDATED: FBI: The Face of Treason

Government, Justice, Law, libertarianism, Natural Law, Political Correctness, Terrorism, The State

FBI Director James Comey believes that “unless [his] passport is revoked,” an American citizen who holds an American passport and who has fought for ISIS—maybe even decapitated a dhimmi or two—“is entitled to come back” to the US.

Comey was discussing American exported fighters for ISIS on “60 Minutes.” This traitor to the people who pay for his keep promised to “track them very carefully.”

That makes me feel much better. How about you?

Judge Andrew Napolitano’s retort, on “The Kelly File,” was to praise this FBI director’s mettle, in general, while disputing the legal grounds for Comey’s odd position:

“He forgot there’s a statute called providing material assistance to a terrorist organization,” Napolitano said of Comey. “So if he knows that Americans have been fighting with ISIS and he also knows that the secretary of state has declared ISIS a terrorist organization, that is more than enough evidence for him to arrest them upon their re-entry to the U.S. It is crazy to let them back in and wait and see what they do.”

“Is this treason,” Kelly wanted to know. She was referring, of course, to the returning ISIS terrorists, and their position vis-a-vis the US.

What about the clear-cut case of Comey?

UPDATE: “Lite libertarians” or “thin libertarians” live in la-la land and don’t much care about the rights to property and life of innocent friends, family and neighbors. Let me make this simple: Individuals who want to behead Americans: yes, the nightwatchman state has a case of limiting their access to heads. To limit their access to American heads is not aggression. To say, “No, you creep, you can’t come in,” is not aggression. OK, leave “creep” off if it offends left-libertarians.