[OCREGISTER] Way back in January, when it emerged that Beyoncé had treated us to the first-ever lip-synched national anthem at a presidential inauguration, I suggested in this space that this strange pseudo-performance embodied the decay of America's political institutions from the real thing into mere simulacrum. But that applies to government "crises," too -- such as the Obamacare "rollout," the debt "ceiling," and the federal "shutdown," to name only the three current railroad tracks to which the virtuous damsel of Big Government has been simultaneously tied by evil mustache-twirling Republicans.
This week's "shutdown" of government, for example, suffers (at least for those of us curious to see it reduced to Somali levels) from the awkward fact that the overwhelming majority of the government is not shut down at all. Indeed, much of it cannot be shut down. Which is the real problem facing America. "Mandatory spending" (Social Security, Medicare, et al) is authorized in perpetuity -- or, at any rate, until total societal collapse. If you throw in the interest payments on the debt, that means two-thirds of the federal budget is beyond the control of Congress's so-called federal budget process. That's why you're reading government "shutdown" stories about the Panda Cam at the Washington Zoo and the first lady's ghost-Tweeters being furloughed.
Nevertheless, just because it's a phony crisis doesn't mean it can't be made even phonier. The perfect symbol of the shutdown-simulacrum so far has been the World War II Memorial. This is an open-air facility on the National Mall -- that's to say, an area of grass with a monument at the center. By comparison with, say, the IRS, the National Parks Service is not usually one of the more controversial government agencies. But, come "shutdown," they're reborn as the shock troops of the punitive bureaucracy. Thus, they decided to close down an unfenced open-air site -- which, oddly enough, requires more personnel to shut than it would to keep it open.
So the Parks Service dispatched their own vast army to the World War II Memorial to ring it with barricades and yellow "Police Line -- Do Not Cross" tape strung out like the world's longest "We Support Our Troops" ribbon. For good measure, they issued a warning that anybody crossing the yellow line would be liable to arrest -- or presumably, in extreme circumstances, the same multibullet ventilation that that mentally ill woman from Connecticut wound up getting from the coppers. In a heartening sign that the American spirit is not entirely dead, at least among a small percentage of nonagenarians, a visiting party of veterans pushed through the barricades and went to honor their fallen comrades, mordantly noting for news hounds that, after all, when they'd shown up on the beach at Normandy, it, too, had not been officially open.
One would not be altogether surprised to find the feds stringing yellow police tape along the Rio Grande, the 49th Parallel and the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, if only to keep Americans in, rather than anybody else out. Still, I would like to have been privy to the high-level discussions at which the government took the decision to install its Barrycades on open parkland. For anyone with a modicum of self-respect, it's difficult to imagine how even the twerpiest of twerp bureaucrats would consent to stand at a crowd barrier and tell a group of elderly soldiers who've flown in from across the country that they're forbidden to walk across a piece of grass and pay their respects. Yet, if any National Parks Service employee retained enough sense of his own humanity to balk at these instructions or other spiteful, petty closures of semiwilderness fishing holes and the like, we've yet to hear about it.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/05/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
Mark Steyn: Manning the Barrycades of punitive liberalism fascism
FIFY. Punish the people, really? The state exists to serve the people in a true republic. Under the fascist state, the people exist to serve it and those who run it. These were never 'liberals' in the classical sense, these were socialist, clear and simple. Now their inner fascist is coming to fore.
#2
Soros is mad as hell because his huge bet on the options failed when events like a Syrian war didn't conspire to make his bet succeed. We know who Soros owns.
Soro's options were the largest block of options ever placed. If they all win he gets $1 trillion becoming the world's first trillionaire. For that to happen the markets need to take a huge hit before the end of the year.
The first ploy was War in Syria. That hasn't gone well enough. The second collapse the US credit rating so we are currently in this game. What percentage of that $trillion has he promised the Prez, Pelosi and Reid if he pulls it off?
#5
You don't need any math for me. I'm a veteran and a Christian.
Hardly worth wasting NSA resources on such as I, since we're already identified.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
10/05/2013 10:10 Comments ||
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#6
Phfft. What do I care what they think? They didn't stop the navy shipyard shooting, aurora or any of the others. So either they know everything and don't care or they don't know much.
And when the time comes to chose sides it will be too late for those bastards anyway.
#7
What does it matter when the President and Senate Majority Leader, House Minority Leader think so? Because balancing the books and not being a debtor is anti-government? Because the IRS targets individuals?
Or are they a bit pissy because 68 years later the socialists still can't stop Third Army? Hat tip to Pacific Theatre, that was crazy legs over there.
Pay my bills, volunteer fire, employ people, mow my yard, walk my kids to school and read them books at night. If you think I'm part of the problem or some crop to harvest, you need a re-evaluation. Especially if you are reading this before I post it.
#8
Interesting article. It suggests that 99.98% of US residents picked out by the NSA are false positives.
SwksvolFF,
This is why it matters: The chances are 5000:1 that they will pick out an innocent person than will find a terrorist.
P.S. Actually the chances are considerably higher.
Al
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
10/05/2013 13:11 Comments ||
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#9
Vet? Check. White? Check. Owns guns? Check. A bible? Check. Supports the constitution? Check. Holds the government accountable for their actions? Check. Guess what? I made the list...
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
10/05/2013 13:38 Comments ||
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#10
Its a tool, and only as good as those who weild it. As a passive system it didn't stop Boston, though the bad guys once identified were tracked rather quickly. As an active system, targets could be analized rather thoroughly I'd guess.
I'm not a lover of somebody in the NSA, so I guess I don't have to worry about my webcam being hacked and pictures taken of me shirtless watching a ballgame with a beer and brat.
#14
I am sure the NSA is not allowed to use variables such as gender or religion in their model due to political correctness. If they could it would improve the model tremendously.
But then again when terrorist events are ignored it becomes increasingly more difficult to predict as well.
[Dawn] THE news from Iraq is chilling -- nearly 1,000 dead in one month. That the casualty toll -- 979 -- is less than July's 1,057 fatalities is hardly a matter of consolation. Iraq is now in the grip of anarchy, with sectarian killings nearing the 2008 peak. That all this should have happened when an elected government is in its second term shows that mere elections do not guarantee rule of law. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ... Prime Minister of Iraq and the secretary-general of the Islamic Dawa Party.... has failed to give peace, much less a better life, to the people of his oil-rich country. There is, of course, one major reason why sectarianism has re-emerged as Iraq's scourge -- the civil war in Syria. Even though there is now a stalemate between the rebel and government forces, and the accord on chemical weapons has served to slightly lower tensions, the 30 months of fratricide in Syria has generated forces which are going to stay in the region for quite some time. As in Syria itself, so in Iraq, elements loyal to Al Qaeda have created space for themselves and are on the offensive.
Clearly, the Shia-dominated Maliki government has failed to win the confidence of all sections of Iraqi society. Sunnis complain that security agencies abuse the already vague terms of various anti-terrorism laws and target them. The government denies this, but it has little credibility. The prolongation of the present anarchy would constitute a threat to the unity of the Iraqi state and further strengthen secessionist forces in the autonomous oil-bearing Kurdistan. The solution lies basically with the Iraqi people's elected representatives. It is they alone who can serve as an example to their people by rising above parochial loyalties, countering the bad turban elements and focusing the people's attention on the task of healing Iraq's war wounds.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/05/2013 00:00 ||
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[WASHINGTONTIMES] The games politicians play: Barack Obama Ready to Rule from Day One... is having a lot of fun using the government shutdown to squeeze the public in imaginative ways. The point of the shutdown game is to see who can squeeze hardest, make the most pious speech and listen for the applause. It's a variation on the grade-school ritual of "you show me yours, and I'll show you mine."
President B.O. is not a bad poker player, but the man with all the chips always starts with the advantage (and he gets all the aces). He has closed Washington down as tight as he dares, emphasizing the trivial and the petty in making life as inconvenient as he can for the greatest number. It's all in a noble cause, of course. Access to most of the memorials is limited, and often in curious ways. The Lincoln Memorial is easy to reach, with the streets around it remaining open. But the Martin Luther King Memorial is made difficult to reach, relegating it, you might say, to the back of the bus. Not very nice.
The Park Service appears to be closing streets on mere whim and caprice. The rangers even closed the parking lot at Mount Vernon, where the plantation home of George Washington is a favorite tourist destination. That was after they barred the new World War II Memorial on the Mall to veterans of World War II. But the government does not own Mount Vernon; it is privately owned by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. The ladies bought it years ago to preserve it as a national memorial. The feds closed access to the parking lots this week, even though the lots are jointly owned with the Mount Vernon ladies. The rangers are from the government, and they're only here to help.
"It's a cheap way to deal with the situation," an angry Park Service ranger in Washington says of the harassment. "We've been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It's disgusting."
The Republicans, fighting with smaller-bore weaponry, keep trying to get some things reopened with carefully targeted legislation. The Senate, under the thumbs of Sen. Harry Reid ... the charismatic senator-for-life from Nevada, currently majority leader ... and the White House, refuses to budge from the trivial and the petty. It says here that Harry Reid's critics, and they are legion, should give the guy a break. No man in Washington is under the pressure he is, and it doesn't seem quite cricket to do that to an old man, even one who deserves it.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/05/2013 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[OCREGISTER] Way back in January, when it emerged that Beyoncé had treated us to the first-ever lip-synched national anthem at a presidential inauguration, I suggested in this space that this strange pseudo-performance embodied the decay of America's political institutions from the real thing into mere simulacrum. But that applies to government "crises," too -- such as the Obamacare "rollout," the debt "ceiling," and the federal "shutdown," to name only the three current railroad tracks to which the virtuous damsel of Big Government has been simultaneously tied by evil mustache-twirling Republicans.
Nouri al-Maliki
[WASHINGTONTIMES] The games politicians play: 
Harry Reid
