UPDATE II: Live By The Sword, Die By The Sword (Ron Paul Agrees)

Media, Military, Pop-Culture, Propaganda, The State, The Zeitgeist, War

He sculpted a career out of killing for Uncle Sam. A former Navy SEAL, Chris Kyle’s claim to fame, by the news media’s telling: He “held the record for number of kills by an American sniper. The Pentagon has confirmed more than 150 of his kills. The previous record was 109.”

Nobody is prepared to say that it is NO astounding accomplishment to have killed so many individuals, in the service of the US state. So consider it said.

Now Kyle is dead, “shot point-blank” by “another soldier who is recovering from post traumatic stress syndrome.” The therapy “sometime involved taking these veterans to the shooting range.”

Live by the sword, die by the sword. Or in hippie speak: Kyle had bad karma.

UPDATE I: From the Facebook thread:

Kyle (and his kill-for-Uncle Sam supporters) reminds me of a real-life Jack Bauer “Federal Zombie”: “the unstoppable, undead agent who has actually been killed and brought back to life, in service—and in thrall—to the state…”

To be a man is to defend your family and community. Not the empire and its “goals.” Men like Joe Horn are American heroes.

UPDATE II (Feb. 4): Ron Paul agrees, down to the adage, tweeting out, on Monday, 9:05 AM, 4 Feb 13, the following:

Chris Kyle’s death seems to confirm that “he who lives by the sword dies by the sword.” Treating PTSD at a firing range doesn’t make sense.

America’s chosen heroes are either killing someone in far away lands, or crying on TV, here at home. Crying—and coming out about private, personal matters—this imbues someone with goodness, even conferring him with the status of a hero.

And always: Be they your grief, your struggles, or your Iraqi culling expeditions—the key to everlasting honor is to be public about it.

I hope you realize that these deformed values are exactly inverted.

He Lied About Life On The Border

Barack Obama, Crime, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION

Imagine having two or three parties of illegal aliens traipse across your property daily. Imagine going into your backyard, only to be jumped by a few such soon-to-be amnestied migrants on the move, and hit in the head with a two-by-four, after which your home is burglarized. But, as the North East elites keep arguing, ordinary American do not need and should not have the same right of self-defense afforded to politicians.

Barack Hussein Obama, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, goes so far as to deny the nightmare that is daily life on the border between Arizona and Mexico, claiming the following:

“We strengthened security at the borders so that we could finally stem the tide of illegal immigrants. We put more boots on the ground on the southern border than at any time in our history. And today, illegal crossings are down nearly 80% from their peak in 2000. Today, deportations of criminals, is at its highest level ever.” (Via CNN)

Erin Burnett doesn’t usually “investigate” the Haloed One. But she broke with CNN norms, and dispatched reporter Casey Wian to the small border town of Naco, Arizona, for an OUTFRONT investigation. Here’s the transcript (one of the few good features offered by CNN):

“ROBERT LADD, ARIZONA RANCHER: It’s bull. It’s not true. This border is not secure until they want to have harsh treatment and penalties for coming illegally. They’re never going to be secure.

CASEY WIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): John Ladd’s cattle ranch spans 14,000 acres along the Arizona/Mexico border, which here is a dirt road and a 13-foot high fence.

LADD: This is the hole they cut last Friday afternoon to bring two-truck full of dope in. They torched the metal and then they just break it with a toe strap on the truck. Then they use a portable grinder to cut the mesh.

WIAN: They then took off through his property. He says it was the 28th and 29th smuggling vehicles crossing his ranch in the past year.

LADD: People traffic is down. There’s no doubt about that, but we still have two or three groups a day.

WIAN (on camera): Two or three groups a day?

LADD: Yes.

WIAN (voice-over): Ladd scoffs at claims of dramatic improvements in border security based on fewer border patrol apprehensions and he says it’s too soon for comprehensive immigration reform.

LADD: There has got to be a bunch of people coming across that wall to try to get here while they can, take advantage of the pathway to citizenship.

WIAN: Sheriff Mark Dannels’ deputies chased and lost the drug smugglers on Ladd’s land Friday.

SHERIFF MARK DANNELS, COCHISE COUNTY, ARIZONA: There’s a lot of unrest in this county, especially in the rural parts. People just don’t feel safe because of the illegal flow, the criminal elements that are floating through Cochise County and entering our nation. It’s scary.

WIAN: Dannels blames the nearly two decades’ old border patrol strategy of pushing illegal traffic into remote rural areas.

(On camera): The border patrol vehicle just drove right by. You said there are not enough agents on the border. What would it take to get this border secured sufficiently where you would feel comfortable as sheriff?

DANNELS: Well, first of all, the first report card on that is when the people of Cochise County are not in fear to go out in their backyard like the gentleman I was talking about here three or four nights ago, went in his backyard and was hit in the head with a two by four while they burglarized him and took off.

Until I get the feeling from the citizens of Cochise County that, we’re comfortable, we’re confident that it’s making a difference. Right now that’s not the case.”

UPDATED: Football Frenzy (The Ravens And 49ers)

Aesthetics, America, libertarianism, Paleolibertarianism, Pop-Culture, Sport, The Zeitgeist

Piers Morgan, who is warring against a quintessential and meaningful American tradition—self-defense—has declared his affinity for another: the Superbowl.

MORGAN: “Listen, I know what this game means to America. It’s going to be a hell of a day on Sunday. I shall be glued to it, as always. I love the whole entertainment. I love the commercials. I love the football. I love the fact that it’s such a huge part of American culture. And may the best team win.”

The truth is that we foreigners do not get it—and will never get it. Also true: One can never really be an American unless one talks the talk about the game and the scene.

Oh well. Not belonging to the cool kids’ fraternity has never bothered me terribly. And at least one great American agrees about the obscenity of the whole scene.

“I don’t pay much attention to it, replied Ron Paul to a Piers Morgan question, in February of last year, during the 2012 campaign.

My sentiments exactly.

… the American football scene is obscene, starting with its incestuous fraternities, the rock-star status surrounding handlers and players, their pompom-waving, knickers-baring groupies, and the tantrum-prone fans who experience bare-fanged fury when their heroes let them down.

The ads are always a big point of contention. Thus, in 2012 too, Freedom Watch’s “J-Nap” (a coinage by Jack Kerwick for Judge Andrew Napolitano) struck a blow for “liberty” by calling on a middle-aged Madonna to challenge The Censor and repeat the feat of another peer, Janet Jackson. (Yes, “Libertarianism Lite” carries the day.)

The apparition the Judge wished upon us was described, in 2004 (“JANET’S SACK OF SILICONE & OTHER SYMBOLISM”), as a “sack of silicone-filled skin, awkwardly positioned on Janet Jackson’s chest. Few will forget how pop singer Justin Timberlake released The Thing from Jackson’s bustier during the Super Bowl halftime show.”

Add the effects of age and gravity to a surgically over-stuffed breast, and you end up with a veiny mass, mounted inorganically on the breastbone. Take my word: This is not something you’d want to wave about. It looks like a stretched-to-the-limits Bota Bag (also known as a wine skin), only not nearly as inviting. The photograph also captures the gaze on Justin Tinkerbelle’s girlie features. The reviewers, mostly groovy hip-hop heads, described the sequence as “a sex-charged duet.” Justin, Jackson’s partner in the “stunt,” looks as turned on as a surgeon removing a suture. The “sensuality” was, er, a bust.

Contra “J-Nap,” I was comforted to learn that a quaint Old-World, quintessentially American gentleman like Ron Paul was baffled by America’s annual football frenzy. (And is guaranteed to find the commercials as off-putting as the frenzy.)

UPDATE: I’m one of you. Hear me talk Ravens And 49ers.

The two coaches are brothers. One quarterback has been a starter for barely half a season. The sport itself is under a microscope for its violence, and the setting, New Orleans, is where the home team found itself recently caught up in a so-called bounty scandal — bounty — excuse me — scandal.
The spectacle and the game, Super Bowl XLVII, between the Ravens and 49ers, it’s all set for Sunday, with an expected worldwide audience of more than 160 million.

MORE at PBS.org. I won’t be reading this. It’s for you.

A Confetti Of Funny-Money & Confidence In Confidence Men

Business, Debt, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Inflation

Big media (BM) is making a big noise about the stock-market rally, which the same BM attribute to King Tut’s animal spirits. Reports Bloomberg.com: “U.S. stocks rallied, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average above 14,000 for the first time in five years, as data on the labor market and manufacturing boosted confidence in the world’s biggest economy.”

The “market’s” confidence in confidence men, notwithstanding, how are these “Big Gains” possible in “a debt-fueled economy”?

Easily: The consequence of Ben Bernanke’s non-stop monetary stimulus is a rise in prices, stocks included. Homes too. But an increase in the price of an item is not the same as an appreciation in it value.

“Markets are now driven by stimulus, not fundamentals,” notes investor Peter Schiff, who also expects “deficits to approach $2 trillion annually before Obama leaves office.” (His is a reasonable assumption based in evidence.)

“Monetary and fiscal stimulus [are] pushing up stock and bond prices.”

…it is important to look at the nature of the rally. Most significantly we would bring investors’ attention to the increase in gold and oil and other assets that are expected to outperform in an inflationary economy.