Month: January 2016

Architects of Libya fiasco should be pilloried

Bruce Fein writes
full article in Washington Times

Excerpts:
The president, i.e., the Commander in Chief under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution, should prohibit offensive use of the military not in self-defense unless two conditions are satisfied.

First, victory must be defined with mathematical exactness including the month and year of accomplishment. The prevailing practice, appropriately borrowed from Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of obscenity in Jacobellis v. Ohio, is to define victory as “We’ll know it when we see it.” Thus, neither President Obama nor his national security team can describe what victory will look like or when it will be achieved in the many Middle East, Asian and North Africa nations in which we are militarily engaged.

Presidential candidates for 2016 are equally criminally clueless. One defines victory over ISIS as making the “sand glow in the dark.” Another boasts of a “secret plan” to defeat ISIS like Richard Nixon’s “secret plan” for victory in Vietnam during his 1968 campaign. He did not dispute Sarah Palin’s characterization of his secret plan as “kick ISIS’ ass.” A third candidate amateurishly described victory over ISIS as doing “whatever it takes,” including terrifying the organization by prohibiting Syrian refugees from entering the United States and expanding the intelligence capabilities of the agency that detected mythical weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Let the market provide prior restraint

Often people ask their politicians to ban peaceful but potentially dangerous activity.

Recent political controversies include: fracking, owning a bit bull, carrying a gun, not being vaccinated, selling vaccines, etc.

I recommend that legislatures (state or local) be able to require liability insurance when people want to engage in what the political process deems potentially dangerous activities? (States already do this for driving an automobile).

The liability insurance would cover all damages without a monetary limit. If the activity is truly dangerous, the cost of such liability insurance will be very expensive. If the the activity is not dangerous, than the cost of insurance will be low.

There would be no need to ban these activities. The penalty for not having insurance for designated activities and the cost of insurance would effectively ban dangerous activities from concerned communities. We would still have the political process to decide what is considered dangerous, but the market would decide how dangerous is it.

From Jo Ann Vaccarino on Facebook 1/23/2016

Many of us agree that sharing and caring are essential to human survival. The major difference in our opinions seems to boil down to: should we force sharing or encourage sharing? Libertarians believe that we can encourage it via empathy and freedom; socialists believe that it needs to be forced via government and restriction. The good news is, more people are looking at libertarians and socialists because we’re talking about a wider range of problems than the democrats and republicans are. We’re not beating the same dead horses. That is the beginning of a paradigm shift.

Benghazi Deaths Due to Gun Running by US Government

Here is a report from the Washington Post that explains why there were US personnel in Benghazi based on a confidential (ie hidden from the American public) report.
Washington Post Article
Excerpts: “A highly classified annex to the [Senate] report, not made public, described a secret agreement reached in early 2012 between the Obama and Erdoğan administrations. It pertained to the rat line. By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria. A number of front companies were set up in Libya, some under the cover of Australian entities. Retired American soldiers, who didn’t always know who was really employing them, were hired to manage procurement and shipping. The operation was run by David Petraeus, the CIA director who would soon resign when it became known he was having an affair with his biographer. (A spokesperson for Petraeus denied the operation ever took place.)

The operation had not been disclosed at the time it was set up to the congressional intelligence committees and the congressional leadership, as required by law since the 1970s. The involvement of MI6 enabled the CIA to evade the law by classifying the mission as a liaison operation.” …. “also noted that this is not a partisan issue … both parties greenlighted regime change in Syria years ago, and both parties have tried to cover up what was really going on in Benghazi.”

My comment:
What Gowdy and others should tell the American public is that, since you are willing to accept an American empire that intervenes anywhere and everywhere in the world, you need to expect that operatives will get killed and hurt. The US personnel in Benghazi were not doing innocent public service, they were gun running. Shades of the Iran-Contra affair.

J. Hornberger Gives a History Lesson

Published on the fff website 05-Jan-2016:

OUR ANCESTORS WERE DIFFERENT, ESPECIALLY ON IMMIGRATION

by Jacob G. Hornberger
click here for full article

Excerpts:

Unlike the America of today, the concept of our ancestors was to limit the federal government’s jurisdiction to the United States and unleash the private sector to work, produce, travel, and interact with the people of the world. Thus, although unfortunately there were protective tariffs (and much worse, slavery), there were no sanctions, embargoes, or other restrictions on the freedom of the American people to travel around the world and trade with others. Why, this unusual group of people didn’t even believe in passports, which is why they lived without them.

You can disagree with their political and economic philosophy, including on immigration. You can criticize or condemn it if you wish. But one thing is indisputable: The political and economic philosophy of our American ancestors was totally different from the statist philosophy that now holds our nation in its grip and that has held the world in its grip throughout recorded history.