A Supremely Ugly And Evil Oligarchy

Constitution, Gender, Healthcare, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Religion, The Courts

“Decent people are sick and tired of conservatives in their bedrooms and liberals in every other room.” This applies to the tyranny that is the U.S. SCOTUS (Supreme Court). It also covers the Court’s philosophical complexion, unless Justice Anthony Kennedy deigns to injects a tiny smidgen of libertarianism, if you can call it that, into this oligarchy’s debates. Via SCOTUSblog:

This morning, the [SCOTUS] heard a new and different challenge arising out of the Affordable Care Act: can a business be required to provide its female employees with health insurance that includes access to free birth control, even if doing so would violate the strong religious beliefs of the family that owns the business?

Said Ugly and Evil (behold. Or under “Recent Headlines and Pictures”):

“Those employers could choose not to give health insurance [to all their employees] and pay not that high a penalty – not that high a tax,” Sotomayor said. … “And in that case Hobby Lobby [plaintiff] would pay $2,000 per employee, which is less that Hobby Lobby probably pays to provide insurance to its employees,” Kagan said. “So there is a choice here. It’s not even a penalty by – in the language of the statute. It’s a payment or a tax. There’s a choice.”

Yes, push the poor male victims of Obamacare and all right-thinking women onto the Zerocare exchange, just because some females wish to screw themselves sillier on the public dime. These despicable women “have the right to purchase the stuff, but not to rope other Americans (including insurers) into supplying it.”

UPDATED: Putting Lipstick On The Pigs At NSA*

Constitution, Democrats, Homeland Security, Propaganda, Republicans, Technology, Terrorism

We’re doing the right thing; we’re not doing anything illegal,” said Four-Star General Keith Alexander to Fox News’ Bret Baier. An otherwise good reporter, Baier has been asking some poignant questions of the very clever, dissembling, outgoing director of the National Security Agency’s unconstitutional, naturally illicit and all-round reprehensible spying programs. However, Baier, another bright lad, seems to be merely going through the motion; making sure he does journalistic due diligence without any forceful follow-up. A less than obligatory follow-up would be: “I know that what you do is probably ‘legal,’ but is it ‘moral’?”

The occasion of the interview? Obama’s likely bogus “calls for an end to NSA’s bulk phone data collection.”

“What would you do to Edward Snowden if you were alone in a room with him” was more revealing of Baier’s sympathies. Alexander vaporized about the assorted entrapment operations to which hoovering up trillions of messages have led. (More about “The Dynamics of Entrapment.”)

BAIER: Former President Jimmy Carter saying he writes letters instead of sending e-mails because he’s worried that you’re listen — you’re reading his e-mails.

ALEXANDER: Well, we’re not. So he can now go back to writing e-mails. The reality is, we don’t do that. And if we did, it would be illegal and we’d be found, uh, I think accoun — held accountable and responsible. Look at all the folks that have looked at what we’re doing, from the president’s review group to Congress to the courts to the DNI, DOD, Justice. Everybody reviews what we do to see if anybody is doing anything illegal like you suggest. No one has found anything, zero, except for in 12 cases where people did that and we had already reported those.

* With apologies to pretty pigs.

UPDATE (3/26): The great Glenn Greenwald seems surprised that, much like Republicans, Democrats are opportunistic, lying, bottom-feeders. He notes that “what rational people do, by definition, is” this:

if a political official takes a position you agree with, then you support him, but when he does a 180-degree reversal and takes the exact position that you’ve been disagreeing with, then you oppose him. That’s just basic. Thus, those of us who originally defended Obama’s decision to release the photos turned into critics once he took the opposite position – the one we disagreed with all along – and announced that he would try to suppress the photos.
But that’s not what large numbers of Democrats did. Many of them first sided with Obama when his administration originally announced he’d release the photos. But then, with equal vigor, they also sided with Obama when – a mere two weeks later – he took the exact opposition position, the very anti-transparency view these Democrats had been attacking all along when voiced by Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney.
At least for me, back then, that was astonishing to watch. It’s one thing to strongly suspect that people are simply adopting whatever views their party’s leader takes. But this was like the perfect laboratory experiment to prove that: Obama literally took exact opposition positions in a heated debate within a three week period and many Democrats defended him when he was on one side of the debate and then again when he switched to the other side.

“The Leader is right when he does X, and he’s equally right when he does Not X. That’s the defining attribute of the mindset of a partisan hack, an authoritarian, and the standard MSNBC host. …”

MORE.

UPDATED: We’re From The Government & We’re Here To Rescue You. NOT (How About Saving People In Unsafe Circumstances?)

Government, Private Property, The State

“We have people who are yelling for our help … We suspect that people are out there, but it’s far too dangerous to get responders out there on that mudflow.” So said Travis Hots, Chief of the Snohomish County Fire District, in a news briefing about the “massive mudslide in rural northwest Washington State.”

The rescuers who’d lined-up behind Hots for a photo-op nodded vigorously as their chief described the dangers to themselves, dangers that might preclude them from heeding the cries for help of the residents still buried beneath a “135 feet wide and 180 feet deep landslide, near the town of Oso, about 55 miles north of Seattle.”

This is not to say that “local rescue units, plus units of the Washington State Patrol and US Army Corps of Engineers” are not trying. But they’re probably not trying as hard as they would had they been in the employ of a private rescue company.

In the case that residents or neighborhood associations had contracted with a private rescue company, company employees unwilling to risk their lives to save their clients would soon be out of a job. If residents felt they’d been failed by Rescue Inc., they’d seek out a new contractor, staffed with daredevils (like retired special-forces soldiers) who’d do anything to save their charges, while being paid handsomely for doing what they love doing and what they do so well.

“Rescue me. Not now”: That’s the reply these poor mudslide victims are getting from their government. They’ll perish before it’s “sufficiently safe” for a state-employed rescuer to risk his neck for another.

The incentives for a state-employed rescuer to risk his life for others are simply not there. Failure is not punished; its costs socialized. Should the country be sued by relatives, the taxpayer will shoulder the financial settlement, and not the likely extra-cautious rescuers.

UPDATE (3/24): More devastating news. The bold text below goes to the point of the blog post. Isn’t the idea of rescue to send in individuals who are prepared to save people in unsafe circumstances?

“Crews were able to get to the muddy, tree-strewn area after geologists flew over in a helicopter and determined it was safe enough for emergency responders and technical rescue personnel to search for possible survivors, Snohomish County Fire District 21 Chief Travis Hots said Sunday evening.”

“108 people may be missing in Washington state mudslide”:

Authorities are searching for more bodies after a massive mudslide in a rural part of Washington state killed at least eight and possibly left more than 100 missing, while crews battle uneven ground and rising waters.

A 1-square-mile mudslide struck Saturday morning in Snohomish County, critically injuring several people and destroying about 30 several homes. Eight bodies have been pulled from the scene and authorities described the search for additional survivors to be “grim.”

John Pennington, emergency response managing director, said there are reports of up to 108 people missing in the mudslide but noted that number is unconfirmed.

“This is a large scale disaster event,” Pennington said. “We have 108 individual names, or likeness … It’s a soft 108.”

“It was Saturday and probably a higher number than what you would see on a week day,” he said of the victims during a press conference Monday. Pennington said it remains unclear how many structures were impacted at the time.

Vagina-Centric, Tax-Sponsored, Monument To Republican Mindlessness

Constitution, Feminism, Gender, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Republicans, Taxation

Forget about upholding the Constitution, Republicans can’t even uphold the interests of their primary constituency. Instead, they insist on stalking and courting identity groups—women, for one—that can’t stand the Grand Old Party.

As deficient as it is, there is no warrant in the Constitution for stealing from taxpayers in order to aggrandize women. But leave it to House Republicans to plot a vote “this year on legislation promoting construction of a National Women’s History Museum.”

Perhaps they’ll get the women’s vote? Forget about it. “Sisters love Uncle Sam,” and while Republicans do too, sisters don’t perceive the GOP to be as statist as they’d like.

… The move lends enormous momentum to the years-long push to establish a memorial to women’s history near the National Mall — a proposal that’s lingered in Congress for nearly two decades without ever reaching the president’s desk.

Congressional supporters from both parties have been working behind the scenes to rally backing and pressure leaders to stage a vote on the bill this year, even as Congress’s shift into campaign mode has left little appetite for most non-essential legislation ahead of November’s midterms.

Cantor spokeswoman Megan Whittemore said the congressman supports the bill and intends to bring it to the floor.

Museum supporters wasted no time praising the announcement, with Rep. Carolyn Maloney — a New York Democrat who’s been working on the proposal since 1998 — saying she’s “thrilled” by Cantor’s move. With top House Democrats already behind the proposal, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (Md.), Maloney predicted it will sail through the lower chamber.

“This is a huge boost to our efforts,” said Maloney, the bill’s lead sponsor. “Leadership from both parties in the House has now come out in favor of this bill, and I’m hopeful we can secure a large, bipartisan vote in favor of its passage. …”

THE HILL.

A society founded on individualism does not promote individuals based on their sexual or racial identity. If private companies wish to promote females purely because they are women, and often at the expense of better males—that’s the prerogative of private property. Sensible sorts can shun these establishments. However, politicians have no right to steal from one group (taxpayers) for the benefit of another (females), in the course of increasing their own sphere of influence.