Category Archives: Portents and Warnings

It’s Monday!

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Urg!

That was my usual response before I retired. I was fortunate during my last working years to be able to work from home. I told people my morning commute was thirty steps downstairs to my home office. After I retired, I continued most of those habits…writing this blog being one.

Last Friday, I wrote a post about the apparent downward spiral to war in Eastern Europe. It is arguable whether the Ukraine is European. My definition is that all of the territory west of the Ural and the ‘stans, are European, if only by religion and heritage. The major religions are the Catholic varieties—Roman, Greek and Russ ion Orthodox. Those areas mark the furthest extent of the Turkish/Islamic advance of the 16th and 17th Century.

But Eastern Europe is not the only area where war warnings exist. WesPac is a potential point of conflict as well. Finally, someone in the Pentagon and Washington is looking westward instead of eastward.

Amid Chinese Aggression, Obama Affirms U.S. Defense of Japan’s Senkaku Islands

April 24, 2014 at 3:49 pm

During his trip to Japan, President Obama publicly affirmed long-standing U.S. policy that the bilateral security treaty applies to the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands. China claims sovereignty over the islands and, in recent years, has tried to intimidate Japan—much as Beijing has bullied the Philippines in pursuit of its extralegal territorial claims in the South China Sea.

President Obama’s statement was a welcome and proper confirmation of U.S. support for a critical Pacific ally.

During a joint press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Obama declared, “let me reiterate that our treaty commitment to Japan’s security is absolute, and Article 5 [of the bilateral security treaty] covers all territories under Japan’s administration, including the Senkaku Islands.”

While this was the first time Obama publicly affirmed the parameters of the U.S. defense commitment to Japan, it is consistent with the long-standing policies of his predecessors. As Obama pointed out, “this isn’t a ‘red line’ that I’m drawing; it is the standard interpretation over multiple administrations of the terms of the alliance…There’s no shift in position. There’s no “red line” that’s been drawn. We’re simply applying the treaty.”

In 2004, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage stated that the U.S.-Japan Mutual Security Treaty “would require any attack on Japan, or the administrative territories under Japanese control, to be seen as an attack on the United States.”

During a 2010 flare-up of tensions between China and Japan over the Senkakus, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated, “we have made it very clear that the [Senkaku] islands are part of our mutual treaty obligations, and the obligation to defend Japan

The Obama administration’s public reassurance to Japan is meant to deter China from behaving aggressively. In recent years, Beijing has used military and economic threats, bombastic language, and enforcement through military bullying to extend its extra-legal claims of sovereignty in the East and South China Seas.

In November 2013, China declared an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over the East China Sea, including the Senkaku Islands. Beijing threatened to use its military to enforce the ADIZ. Washington condemned this declaration as a provocative act that exacerbated tensions in the region and increased the risks of a military clash.

Beijing is also attempting to divert attention from its own actions by mischaracterizing Japan as a threat to regional security. China’s bellicose actions have fueled regional concern and triggered a greater Japanese willingness confront Chinese expansionism and strengthen its military. This willingness to defend its territory has been mischaracterized as a resurgence of Japan’s 1930s imperial militarism.

One of Japan’s problems isn’t with Chinese aggression. Their problem is toothless assurances from the United States when a significant portion of the US Naval Fleet…is along dockside, awaiting repairs, upgrades, or lacking the funding to return to the fleet.

According to sources, there are 430 ships believed to be in active service. That includes ships under construction and in reserve. The majority of these ships were built in the late 20th Century, some dating as far back as the 1960s. The Fleet is aging.

USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69), USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77), USS Enterprise (CVN 65), USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75), and USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) — Norfolk Naval Yard, December 2012.

During the Bush years, we had twelve carriers afloat, each carrier being the center of a battlegroup. That number has been reduced to ten. The photo to the left, taken over the Christmas and New Years holidays in 2012. Reduced those battlegroups on the high seas, from ten to five for a short period.

With those ship’s crews on leave for the holidays, how quickly could they have responded if the Chinese chose to ignore the treaty between Japan and the US? My guess would be a month to retrieve the crews, top off consumables and sail to the trouble area.

Does Obama’s, Kerry’s and Hillery’s statements affirming that US/Japanese alliance hold water? I don’t know. The question really is, does the Chinese believe it does.

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Clive Bundy is in the news again. He stepped in it, big time. He had an interview with a reporter from the New York Times. The NYT did it’s usual hatchet-job, taking Bundy’s words out of context, changing the order, doing their usual job putting Bundy in the worse light possible. The MSM took it an ran with it.

In the end, Bundy did say those things. However his statements does not change the facts about the BLM’s aggression and overt attempts of land grabbing.

In response to the NYT interview, this column appeared in The American Thinker.

Why It’s Okay to Hate Cliven Bundy

By J.R. Dunn, April 28, 2014

It has become clear that Cliven Bundy was transgressed by the New York Times, his words taken out of context and retailed in such a way as to mean something they were not. Bundy is no racist, and the attempt to make him look like one is another step downward in the collapse of American national media.

But conservatives still have a right — in fact, a responsibility — to be annoyed with Bundy.

To wit: Bundy did not walk, not stumble, did not swerve into the trap set by the New York Times.  He was not ambushed, he was not taken by surprise. He instead ran full tilt and threw himself into that trap, exactly like the kid at the end of Million Dollar Hotel.

Bundy sat across from a reporter for the NYT, the most vicious, calculating, untrustworthy, and dishonest nest of vipers in the entire U.S. media network, and talked straight to him about matters of import and controversy, under the impression that he would understand and transmit his thoughts the way that he actually expressed them.

Nobody, a full century into the progressive era, seventy years into the epoch of big government, and fifty years after the mass media turned anti-American as a matter of course, has any right to do this. Nobody has a right to be that stupid, to be that ill-informed, or to be that self-centered.

Granted that Bundy, a lifetime Nevada rancher, is not the epitome of sophistication. He is not the typical Times reader, even for Nevada. He may well have never held a copy of the paper in his hands, much less read it. But that’s no excuse, because the status and nature of the New York Times has become a truism of American political culture. It is the bastion of left-wing thought in the media, the source from which everyone else takes their cue. In conservative circles, it’s what amounts to a punchline.

Bundy must have heard of this, at least vaguely. And yet he went out, and kindly loaded up Adam Nagourney’s pistol for him, then turned around, took his hat off, and waited for the bullet. The living portrait of middle-American conservatism in the 21st century.

How many times does this have to happen? How many Todd Akins do we need giving bizarre lectures on female biology exactly as if he knew what he was talking about? How many O’Donnells do we need providing ammunition to Bill Maher? How many Mourdocks? Even Sarah Palin, one of smartest political figures we’ve got, fell for this her first time out. (Granted, she was given plenty of help by McCain’s staff.)

I have been interviewed by newspaper reporters several dozen times in my various careers in business, writing, and conservative politics. How many times was I quoted correctly? Not once. Not a single time. Reporters typically mangle quotes, misunderstand what you’re saying, shift contexts, or deliberately rearrange statements to make them work the way they want. (And there’s nothing you can do about this. Once you speak to a reporter, what you have said is the newspaper’s property.  That’s right. Your words no longer belong to you — according to their interpretation. Your statement is theirs, to do with as they see fit, with no input from you, the schmuck who merely spoke the words. Of course, there’s no legal backing for this whatsoever. But there’s no legal backing for airline baggage handlers destroying expensive musical instruments. Yet they still get away with it.) The first time you see this it’s annoying. The second time it’s infuriating. The third time it’s expected.

Why do they do this? Not necessarily out of maliciousness or stupidity. (Though  that’s true often enough.) It’s the culture. The idea that newspapers are there to print “facts,” Who-what-where -when-and-why, is mythology gone with Jimmy Olsen and His Gal Friday. Today, reporters work with certain formats, to which they are expected to fit any related story.  One such concept is “every conservative is a hate-filled, fanatic Neanderthal.”  A corollary of this is “All Nevada ranchers are demented racists.”

Papers higher on the food chain, along with magazines and broadcast and cable networks, have agendas which these stereotypical patterns are used to support. I doubt I need to detail the nature of these agendas.

From these realities certain rules can be derived.

1) These people are not on your side.

2) Anything you say can and will be used against you.

3) Nothing you say will ever be used to support your position (or any conservative position at all.)

So what can we do in this situation? A friend of mine long experienced in public relations puts it very simply: you tell them exactly what you want them to say in the exact words that you want them to say it with. No ambiguity, no complications, no diversions. Then you stop. You don’t say any more. You add nothing. You don’t answer their questions. Their questions are not intended to shed light on your ideas or to develop detail. They are meant to trip you up and that is all. Anybody who acts as if they are truly interested in what you think about them there Negroes or legitimate rape is speaking as the enemy. You don’t feed them. You don’t hand them the weapon to strike you down with. You say “good afternoon” and turn on your heel.

The article continues at the website. It is a lesson to be learned. The media are not our friends, regardless of the medium and the reputation of the reporter. You are always on record and the media, like rapacious piranha, are waiting to feed upon you.

Politicians and candidates take note. Be careful what you say. If you are a conservative, the bottom-feeders are waiting for you to make a mistake or to misspeak.

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Trends and Portents

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Mark Levin’s book, The Liberty Amendments, has triggered a lot of discussion on the state of the nation, the Constitution and the constant violation of the Constitution by the federal government. Just scanning national opinion pieces this morning led to these headlines. One is a piece on the state of the government, another is on national trends and polls, still another proposes the country is in a pre-revolutionary state.

What Has Mark Levin Wrought?

By James V Capua, August 18, 2013

In The Liberty Amendments Mark Levin has delivered more than advertised. He promises a credible agenda for reinvigorating constitutional government based on an approach to the amendment process which avoids the liabilities of better known options.

Continued here…

Obama Flouts the Law

By Clarice Feldman, August 18, 2013

From his first presidential campaign to the present, the president, his party and his administration have openly flouted existing laws, and it doesn’t seem there is any legal means of stopping him short of impeachment.

Continued here…

America’s Tyranny Threshold

By Eileen F. Toplansky, August 19, 2013

As he finishes up his Martha’s Vineyard vacation, Barack Obama would be well-served to recall the fiery words of Jonathan Mayhew, who is famous for his sermons “espousing American rights — the cause of liberty, and the right and duty to resist tyranny.”

Continued here…

And finally, this one. Its subject is one few want to discuss all the while its one that is being discussed more every day.  Is a second American Revolution on the horizon?

Time for a New American Revolution?

By Richard Winchester, August 19, 2013

The United States of America was born in revolution. The Declaration of Independence asserted that people have a right of revolution. According to The Declaration, “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [such as “life,” “liberty,” “the pursuit of happiness,” and “the consent of the governed”], it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

The Declaration acknowledged that people should not, and will not, seek to overturn “long-established” governments “for light and transient reasons.” After “a long train of abuses and usurpations,” however, which are clearly aimed at establishing “absolute Despotism,” people have not only the “right,” but the “duty,” to “throw off such Government, and provide new guards for their future security.”

The U.S. has not experienced a successful revolution since the one between 1775 and 1783, despite Thomas Jefferson’s hope that “[t]he tree of liberty should be refreshed from time to time by the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

Some think it’s time for a new American revolution. Moreover, many of the preconditions for a revolt exist.

Continued here…

One of Levin’s common quotes is that we are living in a post-Constitutional era. In other words, government, at least at the federal level, Congressmen and the Supreme Court no longer follow the constraints of the Constitution. The Obamacare decision forced by Chief Justice Roberts is a prime example of that latter segment of government. There was NO Constitutional basis for his decision. But, with his vote, he joined the liberal Justices and overrode the strenuous objections of the remaining Justices. Roberts followed the liberal diktat that the Constitution is whatever the Court says it is.

That is a lie. Few, however, were reluctant to stand up and say so.

Perhaps one of the best statements of the condition of our government and the accelerating discussion of revolution, is this article by In her article she cites the acts of Obama and the democrats in government that supports Levin’s premise that we no longer have a governing Constitution.

Today’s post as turned into a long one. I’ll close with this from Betsy McCaughey.

King Obama vs. Rule of Law

By on 8.14.13 @ 6:08AM

Have we ever seen such presidential contempt for constitutional principles and our nation’s history?

At an August 9 press conference, President Barack Obama said that when Congress won’t agree to what he wants, he will act alone. That statement, which he has made before, should send shivers through freedom-loving Americans.

The President was asked where he gets the authority to delay the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate, even though the law states that the mandate “shall” go into effect January 1, 2014. The Obama administration had announced the delay on July 3, without seeking Congress’s help in changing the law.

In response, Obama said that “in a normal political environment, it would have been easier for me to simply call up the Speaker and say, you know what, this is a tweak that doesn’t go to the essence of the law… so let’s make a technical change to the law. That would be the normal thing that I would prefer to do.” 

But Obama explained that he took a different route because Republicans control the House of Representatives and ardently oppose Obamacare.

Obama’s statement reveals how disconnected this president is from this nation’s history and constitutional principles. Divided government is the norm in the United States. Most modern presidents have had to govern with an uncooperative Congress or at least one house of Congress controlled by the other major party. With the exception of Richard Nixon, these presidents — from Eisenhower, to Reagan, to Clinton, and both Bushes — have not tried to exempt themselves from the Constitution.

Article II, Sec. 3 of the Constitution commands the president to faithfully execute the law.

Courts have consistently ruled that presidents have little discretion about it. President Obama can’t pick and choose what parts of the Affordable Care Act he enforces and when. 
 

The framers duplicated the safeguards their English ancestors had fought hard to win against tyrannical monarchs. Most important, the English Bill of Rights of 1689 barred an executive from suspending the law. 

The tug and pull between the president and an uncooperative Congress is what the framers intended. It’s checks and balances in action. Obama has no patience for this constitutional system. In June 2012, the President announced that he would stop enforcing parts of the nation’s immigration laws, because “We can’t wait” for Congress to offer relief to young illegal immigrants brought into the country by their parents.

Now the President is rewriting the Affordable Care Act. Delaying the employer mandate is not a mere “tweak.” Because individuals will be required to have insurance as of January 1, 2014 or pay a penalty, some ten million currently uninsured or underinsured workers who would have gotten coverage at work under the employer mandate will now have to pay the penalty or go to the exchanges. That means more people enrolling on the exchanges, more dependence on government and a bigger bill for taxpayers. It’s not the law that Congress enacted.

Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) has urged Congress to vote against any continuing resolution to fund the federal government after September 30, as long as it funds this distorted version of Obamacare.

“Laws are supposed to be made by Congress, not… (by) the president,” Lee explained. If the administration is not prepared to fully enforce Obamacare as enacted, including the employer mandate, it should agree to delay the entire law and remove its funding from the budget.

Sadly most members of Congress are too busy looking out for themselves to stop the president from chipping away at the Constitution. Last week Republicans and Democrats conspired with the president to weasel out of Sect. 1312 of Obamacare, which requires members of Congress to get health coverage on the newly created exchanges. Congress was happy to let the President unconstitutionally give them a special taxpayer funded subsidy that no one else in America earning $174,000 would get.

Such self-dealing brings to mind what Benjamin Franklin warned about, as he and his fellow framers finished writing the Constitution. It’s a republic, said Franklin, “if you can keep it.”

If Congress refuses to use its power to restrain the Executive branch, we then reside in a dictatorship. No one with the ability to enforce constraints is willing to do so and thus participate in the dictatorship.

 

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A Whiff of Grapeshot

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The title of today’s post is attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte when, following orders of the revolutionary convention in 1795, he used cannon and grapeshot to clear the narrow streets of Paris and ended a Royalist insurrection.  The tactic has been used several times—once, during the riots in Paris in 1848 and again, in 1863, to end the draft riots in New York City.

Today’s American Thinker e-newsletter has two articles concerning civil insurrection, the weaknesses of government and portents of revolution. The articles struck a cord because they mirror my own concerns and observations.

One article concerns the riots in Stockholm, Sweden.  There, the constabulary stood aside and didn’t intervene—until counter attacks occurred by those defending their lives and property. SwedishHotdogRoast2WebCR-5_28_13-thumb-600xauto-3185Then the constabulary intervened—not against the original rioters but against those defending their homes, lives and property.

 

 

Riots and Liberals

By Christopher Chantrill

After a few nights of “youth” riots in Sweden, the ordinary Swedes had had enough. So they took to the streets to protect their property. Fortunately the police knew just what to do. They attacked the “vigilantes.”

You can see the logic of that for our modern liberal ruling class. It’s one thing for youths to riot in their welfare ghettos. Nothing much you can do about that except search for root causes and implement midnight basketball programs.

But when the crypto-fascists in the middle class start a sensible and practical effort to defend themselves from mayhem, that’s different. There is no excuse for taking the law into your own hands.

…

Nobody in the ruling class is telling the rioters that their behavior will be stopped and their rebellion crushed by any means necessary. That would be racist, or classist, or anti-religious bigotry. No, the ruling class immediately clamped down on the ordinary people that were responding to the age-old problem that when seconds count the police are minutes away.

The article is long and meanders a bit but it is an indictment against socialist government that has become too steeped in its own rhetoric. I urge you to follow this link and read the entire column.

The second article hits closer to home. The theme of it can be isolated with this single sentence. “Most regimes began to fall when they lose legitimacy.”

The reference is toward the Czarist Regime before the 1917 revolution in Russia. The statement, taken alone, applies to many regimes from the that of Louis VIII to our own, each suffering purposeful, liberal mismanagement.

The thoughts of regime failure engage me because of what I see as a continual separation of elites from ordinary people in Western democracies.  There are many facets in our own polity where this occurs, from the economic meltdown laced with fraud and greed, for which no executive has been held accountable, to the current administration’s seizure of the institutions of government to harass and hinder legitimate political opposition, to make journalism a crime, and to apparently  lie about it with impunity, as the attorney general appears to have  in the case of James Rosen. — The American Thinker.

The loss of legitimacy can occur not only by what the government does, but also by what it does not. The column continues with these observations.

…I am more concerned about Western regimes denying the fundamental internal threat to security — the rise in our midst of radical Islam and the refusal to grapple with it.  There are the recent bombings at the Boston Marathon, the beheading of a Lee Rigby on the streets of Woolwich, in broad daylight; a similar attack in France where the perpetrator prayed before he stabbed a French soldier in the throat, the Muslim riots in Sweden, still ongoing as of this writing, similar to riots in France, and the creation of Sharia no-go areas in Amsterdam and London. 

Throughout each of these episodes and earlier ones going back to 09/11, the public is told that this has nothing to do with Islam.  We are told that the massacre at Fort Hood by a Muslim fanatic is workplace violence, that an Afghan Muslim who drove from his neighborhood in Fremont, California some forty miles through heavy urban traffic to run people down near San Francisco’s Jewish Community Center was simply a deranged individual, that the shooting by an Egyptian Muslim of the El Al ticket counter at LAX had nothing to do with Islam, and neither did the shootings by a Muslim at the Jewish Federation in Seattle. 

It is beginning to sound as if the Spanish Inquisition had nothing to do with the Catholic Church, and the Reformation had nothing to do with Protestantism.   Such nonsense does not make us feel safer; it makes us feel that the government has deserted us. — The American Thinker.

It is that last sentence that affects us more…that the government has deserted us. Our immediate security concerns is not just Islamic infiltration but includes our open borders and the refusal of government to enforce existing immigration law.

The essence of low intensity conflict is to make a people feel that the government, corrupt, inefficient, and inattentive, cannot protect the people. Guerrilla warriors go to great lengths to create this message, but in the Western world, the government itself is formulating this message at the expense of its own credibility and ultimately its legitimacy.

When British Prime Minister David Cameron says that the beheading of a British soldier is an insult to Islam, when the police stand by in Stockholm while Muslim youth burn cars, and when President Barack Obama tells us that the Fort Hood massacre was an example of workplace violence, the inadvertent messages they send is that they are more concerned about protecting Islam than protecting everyone else.  And the mixture of silence and euphemism with which a compliant media advances these ideas only reinforces public cynicism.

In each of these actions, the government tarnishes and diminishes its own legitimacy. In doing so, it paves the way for an alternative political narrative, one that will say: the truth is what you are not being told; the truth is what is obvious to you but hidden from the public agenda by corrupt elites who will not protect you from the next act of violence perpetrated by radical Muslims.  

Amid such perceptions, social movements arise outside of the political mainstream.  Fear is the appropriate motivator and hate is the great unifier. The two reinforce each other.  If the mainstream political system is unraveling, the consequence of that interaction is an alternative political reality, an alternative more credible explanation of events and, most of all, a more credible interpretation of the otherwise inexplicable behavior of elites.

Revolutions are not made by those who desire them, but — as  Tocqueville notes — by the stupidity of those who least want them to occur. — The American Thinker.

The column concludes with this paragraph. It addresses “Western Democracies” as a whole. Taken out-of-context, it can apply equally to our situation here in the US.

The legitimacy of mature democracies is strong, but it is not unbreakable. Whether those who view themselves on the periphery will be mobilized is ultimately not up to those willing to go into the streets, but up to those who control the levers of power.  Regimes blunder into revolution.  It remains to be seen what course Western democracies follow in confronting the challenges presented by the Islamists.

We still, here in the US, have time and means to alter, or at least defer, this drift towards revolution—if we choose. We must also be aware that our foes are not just liberals and the democrat party but includes the entire establishment entrenched in Washington and in the states of both parties.
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Forward!

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Today’s post title was Obama’s campaign theme in the last election. We are now in Obama’s second term and what is the headline across the internet? Our GDP—that is our Gross Domestic Product, the sum of all our country produces is down 1/10th of a percent.  It’s the first contraction of our nation’s economy since…the beginning of Obama’s first term. After five years of Obama’s rule…administration, our economy has made no progress and we’re worse off than we were during G. W. Bush’s last year in office.

The democrats believe that shrinkage is a good thing.

In response to the news today that the economy contracted -.1 percent in the final quarter of last year, Democrats are touting the claim that this is “the best-looking contraction in U.S. GDP you’ll ever see.” The claim was originally made by chief U.S. economist for Capital Economics Paul Ashworth.

“The drag from defense spending and inventories is a one-off. The rest of the report is all encouraging,” Ashworth also claimed.

The claim was quickly seized upon by Democrats, looking to share good news about a contracting economy. — The Weekly Standard.

If Ashworth is correct, the downturn was due to a decrease in military spending, what is likely to come when Sequestration fully kicks in? More shrinkage and more job losses.

Job losses?  Yes. Along with this report is another one. The jobless claims went up too. After the usual “readjustment” in a week or two, those figures could reach the 400,000 mark again.

Instead of moving forward, we moving backward and the dems think that’s a good thing. The Luddite wing of their eco-wackos must be ecstatic. Less is More! Let’s retreat to the good old days before nasty technology ruined everything. Of course they conveniently refuse to acknowledge that the nation cannot exist today using 16th Century technology—those years of plague and starvation.

I noticed that in Colorado, some students were forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in Arabic. Perhaps the target century for the dems is the 7th Century, the days of Mohammad, instead of the 16th.

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The resistance to the Obama/Feinstein gun-grabbing continues. Various states have legislation to block any anti-2nd Amendment actions by the Feds. Wyoming’s law has passed their legislative House. A similar law is Arizona has passed out of committee. Missouri has a similar bill pending in committee as well as bills to allow teachers with a CCW license to carry in school.

The dems retreated to their usual theatrics. Senator Feinstein had a carefully scripted dog and pony show include numerous “evil” military-styled weapons.

Republicans tried to counter these cheap theatrics. As freshman Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas explained, “Emotions in Washington often lead to bad policy,” and the Senate often “operates in a fact-free zone.” Mr. Cruz and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina wanted to bring actual firearms to the hearing to demonstrate the absurdity of the laws currently being proposed.

Unlike Mrs. Feinstein, who had four local and federal law enforcement agencies aid her bringing rifles that are banned in the District to her Senate news conference, the Republicans were not able to do so.

So Mr. Cruz used a photo of a standard wooden hunting rifle and held up a plastic pistol grip to demonstrate how one irrelevant part transformed the item into a scary and creepy “assault weapon” under Mrs. Feinstein’s definition.

Day One in the legislative battle over the nation’s firearms laws ended with proof liberals will say or do anything to gut the Second Amendment. — The Washington Times.

Durbin and others directed their questions to the usual hackneyed subjects. Their pet Baltimore Police Chief said it was “scary” and “creepy” answering calls without knowing what’s behind the door. He ignored the fact that that situation would still exists for every domestic disturbance call they would make. A gun ban would not change that situation.

The real issue for the democrats is they don’t have all their own members, those from Red or Purple states, in line. If Feinstein’s bill every came to the Senate floor, they have no guarantee of getting 50 votes.

Speaking of 2nd Amendment issues, the Eastern Sporting and Outdoor Show, scheduled to open February 2nd, has been postponed. Reed Exhibitions, the British company managing the show has refused to rescind their no “military styled rifle” and hi-cap magazine ban. So many vendors have dropped out, at their great financial cost, that the show will not open as scheduled.

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Does the Rule of Law still exist?

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I was listening to the news this morning and heard that a group of illegal “immigrants” were protesting outside the office of the Kansas Secretary of State, Kris Kobach.  Their complaint? Kobach insists on upholding the law and helps other states, like Arizona, formulate legislation to curb illegal entry into this country.

This particular group, some from within Kansas and others imported from out of state, want Kobach to resign because he enforces existing law. While they were protesting, ICE did not appear.

“We the People…”

This post, however, is not about illegal immigration, per se. It is about the failure of government to uphold and enforce existing law. The example above and the refusal to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, are just two of many failures by the federal government. If such actions, the refusal to enforce selected law and legislation, becomes institutionalized by the FedGov and the states, what are the consequences?

Let’s take an example from the international stage. Last February, Obama was in a lather accusing Communist China of not following international trade law. Obama called, “the soon to be president of the a country that is the world’s second most powerful and that highly values “face” (pride,dignity) a cheater.” In light of Obama’s actions these last four years, that statement was the height of hypocrisy.

Clyde Prestositz, the author of the sentence quoted above defines the failure to enforce the rule of law as playing with the rules.

The phrase “all must play by the same rules” implies that all are playing the same game, but in actuality they are not. In many instances there are no rules or the rules are vague, untested, and unclear. Even where there are rules, many countries have been ignoring them for a long time and there is thus strong precedent for not playing by the rules or even for interpreting the rules such that they are actually said to bless the apparent violations.

The rule of law operates under the assumption that all parties have the same understanding of the law. If that is not so, how can any commonality of thought exist?

A long time ago, there was a science fiction short story about a murder case…the willful killing of a peaceful extraterrestrial alien. The killer proudly admitted killing the alien because it wasn’t human and was therefore a “varmint”. Killing a “varmint” was not illegal (in that story.)  The story ends with the Sheriff approaching the killer, pistol in hand, and tells the killer, “We’ve just redefined the description of ‘varmint’.”

Several of the protesters outside Kris Kobach’s state offices admitted to being in the United States illegally. They protested publicly confident the FedGov, in the form of ICE, would not intervene. They were correct. The federal government is actively redefining immigration law. When there is no commonality of thought—definition of law in this case, there is no law and the rule of law cannot exist.

When the federal government creates new law, whether through the normal passage through both Houses of Congress, or by edict in the form of federal regulations, how can the government reasonably expect the public to adhere to those laws when the federal government itself does not? It cannot.

Anarchy is the result.

I, personally, do not wish to live in a state of anarchy. If this trend of government, the failure to adhere to the rule of law, continues, we will have anarchy and that leads to civil war.

As an engineer, it was part of my job to perform risk assessments. To look, not at the best case, but at all cases including the worse case. Truly, civil war, is the worse case but I see it approaching if we continue on our current path. Along with risk assessments, I also looked at means for mitigation of those risks.

One mitigation is to establish, or perhaps re-establish the rule of law. If we cannot coerce the federal government to do so, then we must do so within ourselves, within our communities and states. Next, would be to extend the commonality of thought, the same rule of law to other communities and states and establish alliances to enforce commonality of law within our communities and states. Call it the Red States Alliance.

Numbers count. When we have sufficient numbers, individuals, communities, states, with the same commonality of thought, the same rules of law, we can then pressure the federal government to conform to our definitions, our rules, our commonality of thought, our rule of law.

Failure to ally ourselves with others of common thought and purpose means we must conform to the rules, the redefinition of the FedGov’s rules of law. That path leads to an authoritarian United States and the Constitution ceases to exist as our standard. It has already been grievously damaged but it is not yet irreparable.

To answer the question in my post title, does the rule of law still exist? Unfortunately, as much as I wish it weren’t so, it does not. When the federal government fails to enforce law, redefines law to make that law conform to an agenda contrary to its intent, the rule of law no longer exists. It’s not too late to reinstate the rule of law but the time is approaching when that option, too, ceases to be possible. Then our choice can only be to create new rules and impose them on the federal government.

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Once again I’ve been lax.  I should have written a post for today…yesterday.  I try to write a day ahead and queue them for posting. Well, I must be getting lazy since not queuing is beginning to be the trend, the norm, instead of an exception.

I was wiped out yesterday with sinus headaches most of the day.  I think the front that passed through was the culprit.  The headache woke me yesterday and I was still groggy from lack of sleep.  I spent the night in my old snooze 15 minutes then wake up, snooze, wake up.  It’s not restful by any definition.

Getting back to trends.  I’m reading Tom Kratman’s Countdown. It’s Mil-Fic instead of SF. It draws on Kratman’s experience as a retired Army officer, Ranger and troop commander.  I’ll not spoil the book other than to say it’s about a hostage rescue. 

The book does present some of Kratman’s views. One such view is that civilization is falling. I would say that our present world situation is close to that at the end of the Roman Empire.  Nation-states are failing and collapsing into factions, factions are collapsing into tribes and clans.  We even see evidence of that here in the US.

In the US we have three, maybe four main factions—liberals, conservatives, parasites and a smattering of other smaller groups.  The liberals are the elites and statists, mostly members of the democrat parties, unions and their hidden socialist supporters like Soros and others.  The conservatives are members from the republican, libertarian, and the Tea Parties—fiscal and social conservatives. 

The parasites are those who are out to get whatever they can from either of the other two sides.  You have the welfare class from the democrats along with members of the establishment like Lindsay Graham and the two Maine twins, Snow and Collins.

The result of these factions is the situation we have in Wisconsin.  The electorate booted the liberals from the state legislature and the Governor’s office.  When it came time to balance the budget, the dems/unions/liberals who had run the state for decades could not just abide by that decision. The disloyal opposition fled the state to create an impasse rather than heed the voice of the public.

Wisconsin is not the only state in this situation.  It’s just the first. Kratman is not optimistic about our future. I see where he could be correct but I believe we can still change our national course—if we have the will.  Kratman doesn’t think we do. I’m willing to wait and see.