Fabulist O

Obama in Never-Never Land
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online

The chief tenet of postmodernism is that truth and facts are arbitrary constructs, set up by the privileged to manipulate others less fortunate. In the case of our first postmodernist president, Barack Obama, there cannot be facts, past or present, only a set of shifting assertions that gain credence to the degree that they prove transitorily useful for progressive causes. A sympathetic biographer, David Maraniss, noted that almost all the touchstone events in Barack Obama’s mythographic memoir were fabricated. Of course, Obama would object to such a value-laden term and instead call them composites, impressions stitched together and presented as truth to serve the higher moral narrative: a young biracial idealist searching for his identity in a mostly racist and oppressive America. To the degree that Dreams from My Father enhanced that narrative, then all of what was in it was “true” — even the literary agent’s bio attesting that the exotic author was born in faraway Kenya.

For the fabulist (liar) Obama, the past is a vague mess with shifting narratives that can serve noble contemporary causes. Take World War II — the old war that supposedly proves that victory is now an obsolete term, since, as Obama explained, Japanese Emperor Hirohito capitulated to General MacArthur, apparently on the deck of the Missouri, in a rare act never to happen again. Obama’s own grandfather was in the forefront of stopping Nazism, and the more dramatic the circumstances the better — so who cares whether the Russians, and not an American unit, liberated Auschwitz and Treblinka?

Indeed, the war is a sort of a vague haze where Nazi death camps become “Polish” and Pearl Harbor was hit with “the bomb.” If it is useful while speaking in Cairo to pretend that the Islamic world helped to prompt the European Renaissance (which benefitted enormously from the flight of Greek scholars as Constantinople was threatened by the Ottoman Turks) and Enlightenment (which ignited a Romantic interest in freeing Greece from Islam), then so be it. If Córdoba had few, if any, Muslims during the Spanish Inquisition, who cares, if we wish to hold up the Muslims there as beacons of tolerance in comparison to murderous Catholics?

No American has any idea whether recess appointments, executive privilege, executive orders, or filibusters are to be considered good, bad, or indifferent, since Senator/President Obama has damned and embraced them all. I vaguely remember that at one time Guantanamo, renditions, tribunals, and preventive detention were either of no value or unconstitutional, and trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court and prosecuting CIA agents for supposedly too harsh interrogations were good. But that was all more than three years in the past, and hundreds of “Make no mistake about it”s and “Let me be perfectly clear”s ago.

I recall that there were once admonitions that President Obama could not by fiat enact amnesty or special programs for African-Americans based on race, and that he could not come out unequivocally for gay marriage. But who knows, since someone did enact amnesty, set up a special bureau for African-American education, and use support for gay marriage as a wedge issue in the 2012 campaign.

It is demagogic to suggest that anyone in the Obama administration deliberately leaked national-security secrets to favored New York and Washington reporters, so leaks about Predator-drone targeting, cyber war against Iran, double agents in Yemen, and the details of the Osama bin Laden mission were not really leaks at all, or, if they were, they came from non-administration sources.

The Obama healthcare plan was once different from Hillary Clinton’s in that it never included an individual mandate, but then it did have a mandate, then it had a tax instead, and it ended up with a penalty. The only constant is that names change as circumstances dictate. Barack Obama does not take money from oil companies, hire lobbyists, approve of earmarks, or raise money from Wall Street, but somebody with that name did. The new civility is “punish our enemies.” Voter intimidation is asking for an ID at the polls — it is not trying to make it more difficult for those in the military to vote. Developing domestic energy means canceling the Keystone pipeline and putting vast areas of federal lands off limits to gas and oil production. If the private sector goes ahead, despite federal regulations and discouragement, with new fracking and horizontal drilling, then the Obama administration achieved record levels of domestic oil and gas production.

Someone said something about cutting the deficit in half within four years and, through borrowing, forcing unemployment under 6 percent, but I am not sure any more who it was — given that that was 42 months of 8 percent-plus unemployment and $5 trillion in borrowed money ago.

No one knows what “reset” with Russia was, or is, or will be; it didn’t so much fail as simply got erased. Nor can anyone figure out whether the dissidents in the streets of Tehran in 2009 were noble or to be ignored, or why exactly we belatedly supported the ouster of Mubarak, or what exactly turned Qaddafi from a monstrous oil exporter who had to be appeased to a really monstrous oil exporter who had to be removed, or why we had to reopen our embassy in Damascus as a gesture to the “reformer” Assad, who is now a murderous non-reformer who must go.

I am sure Presidents Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush flip-flopped and did things that they had said they would not, but there was always the clear sense that their hypocrisies were adjudicated by some sort of standard. With President Obama there is neither a reality nor a standard, just words that so often have no connection to the real world, past or present.
©2012 Victor Davis Hanson

Noonan Aug 3, 2012

Noonan: The Life of the Party

What Bill Clinton could add to the Obama re-election effort.

• By PEGGY NOONAN

From a friend watching the Olympics: "How about that Michael Phelps? But let's remember he didn't win all those medals, someone else did. After all, he and I swam in public pools, built by state employees using tax dollars. He got training from the USOC, and ate food grown by the Department of Agriculture. He should play fair and share his medals with people like me, who can barely keep my head above water, let alone swim."

 

The note was merry and ironic. And as the games progress, we'll be hearing a lot more of this kind of thing, because President Obama's comment—"You didn't build that"—is the political gift that keeps on giving.
They are now the most famous words he has said in his presidency. And oh, how he wishes they weren't.

***

There was lots of chatter this week about the decision to have Bill Clinton speak in prime time on the penultimate night of the Democratic Convention. Is it a sign of panic? Would the president give Big Dawg such a prominent spot if he wasn't nervous? Does it gall him to ask for help from the guy who said of his 2008 candidacy, "This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen"?
But all this kind of misses the point.

The central fact of Bill Clinton is that he is really good at politics. And he has every reason to want to give a really good speech—to show he's still got it like nobody else, to demonstrate he's still the most beloved figure in the party, to do his wife proud. And of course to rub Mr. Obama's nose in it.

More Opinion:

What Obama Didn't Learn From the 1990s
The Chicken Inquisition
A Terrible Day for Chickens

The central fact of the Obama campaign is that they have not yet made a case for re-election. They haven't come up with a reasoned argument in common words that can be repeated by normal people. Ask an Obama supporter to boil it all down and he'll flail around and then say: "But Romney is awful" or "The Republicans are bad."

The White House and the campaign have not been able to make a case for their guy. They're just trying to make a case against the other guy.

But Mr. Clinton might actually be able to make the case, and he just may do it by making a case for the Democratic Party.

No one has talked about the Democratic Party in a long time. Democrats don't talk about it because they feel they're on the run, and have brand problems. The president doesn't talk about it either, which is remarkable. You'd think he'd want to rally the troops. But he doesn't seem to love his party all that much.

Mr. Clinton does, though, and that ol' man, with his white hair and reading glasses, can bring you back. He can ring. He can walk you back to FDR and JFK and Bobby, he can remind you why the party exists, what it's done, what it has always meant to do.

Because he's doing a favor, and because he's now a wise man of the party, he could be more or less candid about the Democrats' recent struggles and acknowledge a few things that haven't fully worked. And then he could be delightfully mean: He could say: "Much holds us together, not only the past but our dreams of the future. And now those low, shadowy operatives, those bundlers and billionaires with their big PAC money—those cold scoundrels are trying to steer us off course. But you can't make progress by going backward, you can't move forward by taking U-turns."
It could be a barn-burner. Love him or hate him, it could wake things up. Like there's an election going on. Which, by the way, there is.

***

In Mitt Romney's campaign—well, his supporters had high hopes for his overseas trip. It would show his size, show that he can move in the world, that he has the heft, weight and ease to be international. He didn't do as badly as his critics say, but he probably didn't do himself much good.

When he shared his concern that London might have problems with the Olympics it seemed unguarded, which he's always being urged to be, but it also came across as a sly little put-down of a new business by a guy who'd run an old business so well. It wouldn't have been such a big story if the British press weren't so hissy and pissy, but they are, and high-level visitors must operate with that in mind.

The trip to Israel, with the high-ticket fund-raiser and the casino magnate and the definitive speech that gave him no room to move as president, when presidents always need room to move this way and that, plus the unnecessary put-down of the Palestinians, which wasn't needed to make his point—all of it seemed lacking in size, in heft. Panderish.

An old-fashioned thought: There's something discomfiting in candidates for the American presidency going overseas during a crisis to campaign and fund-raise and make grand speeches. This was true in 2008, with Mr. Obama, and is true now. A Romney supporter might say, "But it's summer, the campaign hasn't even begun, it just broadens the picture."

But the campaign has begun, the clock's ticking.

***

The oldest cliché in presidential politics is that no normal person cares about the election until after Labor Day, when the kids are back in school. It's a cliché because it's always been true. I've seen it. But I don't think it's true anymore, and in fact has been changing for some time.

The cliché is replaced by a new one: The screens are everywhere. There's no place to hide from presidential candidates anymore. For a solid year they follow you from the TV monitor in the airport to the one in the taxi; you check your smartphone and they're in the inbox telling you their plans and asking for money. You get home, turn on the TV, fire up the computer, and they're there.

No one can hide anymore: politics will find you. And you wind up having an impression of a candidate sooner than you meant to, and it hardens into an opinion earlier than it used to. People don't make the decision after Labor Day anymore.

They're making their decisions now. They've been making them for months.
 
It's showing in the polls. A NYT/CBS swing-state survey that came out this week reflects the dynamic: In the three states they polled, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, when respondents were asked who they were voting for, only 4% of them said they didn't know. The number who said they might change their mind was in the low double digits.

In May through July, the Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project did a big national poll of 10,000 likely voters, and only 5% of the properly weighted sample said they weren't sure who they wanted to vote for.

Old-school thought says we're waiting for the campaign to begin. But we're in the campaign. We're kind of getting close to the end.
So everything counts, everything is important, and when a week passes when you do yourself no good, you do yourself some bad.
It's the way it is now.

A version of this article appeared August 4, 2012, on page A15 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Life of the Party.

Govt Coverup - Awalaki 2002 : Andrew McCarthy

The Government’s Awlaki Story Does Not Pass the Laugh Test

August 3, 2012 - 5:01 pm - by Andrew C. McCarthy

In the early morning hours of October 10, 2002, Anwar al-Awlaki, the notorious al Qaeda operative, was detained by U.S. Customs agents when he arrived at JFK International Airport in New York City after a flight from Saudi Arabia. At the time, he was a prime suspect in the 9/11 attacks and had been placed on terrorist watch-lists. Nevertheless, the Bush Justice Department directed Customs to release him. That decision enabled Awlaki to continue his jihadist campaign against the United States until he was finally killed in Yemen last September, in an American drone attack.
For nearly a decade since Awlaki was permitted to go free at the airport, the government has maintained that he was released because an arrest warrant for him, based on a 1993 felony passport fraud charge, had been vacated before his arrival, due to insufficient evidence. The government has suggested, moreover, that sheer coincidence explained the dismissal of the fraud charge right before Awlaki showed up at JFK: just a random assessment that a case was too weak, made by prosecutors and investigators who were unaware of Awlaki’s imminent arrival.
Now, Fox’s Catherine Herridge breaks the news that the government’s story is untrue. In House testimony this week, a top FBI official admitted that the Bureau and federal prosecutors knew Awlaki was about to return to the United States before he arrived at JFK. Furthermore, it emerged at the House hearing that the passport fraud warrant had not been vacated when Awlaki was briefly detained. The warrant remained valid and pending; it could have been used to arrest him. Instead, the Justice Department intervened to “un-arrest” him. With apologies extended by federal agents to both Awlaki and the Saudi government representative conveniently on hand to assist him, the terrorist was sprung.

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I would also throw this into the hopper: The Justice Department’s rationale for dismissing the warrant is fatally flawed. Awlaki should have been arrested and prosecuted on the passport violation in 2002. That would not just have been a worthy effort in its own right; it would have had the added benefit of giving terrorism investigators more time, and more leverage, to develop a convincing terrorism case against Awlaki and other suspects. Why the case was dropped is a question that deserves much more scrutiny. After all, the release at JFK marked the second time, in a matter of months, that Awlaki wriggled free despite the heavy cloud of 9/11 suspicion that hovered over him.
To be blunt, the government’s Awlaki story does not pass the laugh test.
It was always incredible to suggest, as the Justice Department has, that Awlaki’s release was the result of a series of remarkable coincidences. Until this week, the story went something like this: After obtaining a valid arrest warrant in Denver federal court, the FBI case agent and assistant U.S. attorney assigned to the matter decided, out of the blue, to review the file. It just happened to be the day before Awlaki tried to reenter the country. There was nothing going on in the case that called for a review at that time — Awlaki was out of the country, there was no urgency to file an indictment, and an indictment on the simple charge would have been easy to obtain once the time came. One would think the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office in a major city would have more pressing matters to attend to. Yet, they undertook to scrub their evidence and concluded — to the astonishment of federal terrorism investigators then probing Awlaki in San Diego — that the passport fraud complaint they had only recently filed against Awlaki was too weak to stand.
Abruptly, they decided to dismiss it — not sleep on it, not think about what evidence might shore it up, not consider how the information they’d amassed might warrant new charges against Awlaki. No, they just dismissed the only existing charge against a pivotal 9/11 suspect — even though many other suspects had been held for weeks, without any charges at all, on “material witness” warrants.
The government has disingenuously represented that, with the warrant already purportedly “pulled” due to the latently discovered “weakness” of its passport fraud case, there was no legitimate basis to detain Awlaki when Customs agents unexpectedly encountered him at JFK in October 2002. Thus the agents simply had no choice but to release him into the waiting arms of his Saudi handler.
Enabling a Committed Jihadist
Prior to Awlaki’s killing last year, he was a key al Qaeda operative — a committed jihadist who, as an American citizen and gifted orator, could easily operate in the U.S. and influence young Western Muslims. Ms. Herridge reports that one study ties Awlaki to some 26 terrorism cases. For example, he was in regular contact for years with the Fort Hood jihadist, Nidal Hasan, before the latter killed 13 American soldiers and wounded dozens more in November 2009. Awlaki is also believed to have been complicit in the unsuccessful attempt by Umar Abdulmutallab to blow up a plane over Detroit just a month later, on Christmas Day. Much of this mayhem could have been prevented if the government had acted to stop Awlaki when opportunities to do so presented themselves in aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
In March 2002, seven months before Awlaki was “un-arrested” at JFK airport, he was allowed to flee the country. He was a hot number at the time — and he knew it. Awlaki had been involved with several of the suicide-hijackers who had killed nearly 3,000 Americans on 9/11. FBI agents had grilled him repeatedly in the days after the attack, and, palpably, he had dissembled in describing his contacts with the terrorists. Yet no effort was made to stop him from going to Yemen.
The new Fox News report explains that the Justice Department learned sometime in 2002 that Awlaki was planning to return to the U.S. from Yemen. How the government knew this has not been revealed. We can recall, however, that the 9/11 attacks resulted in a significant stepping up of surveillance efforts, including NSA eavesdropping on terrorist communications that crossed our national boundaries. Given that Awlaki was a suspect in the most resource-intensive investigation ever conducted by the federal government, and in light of his inclusion on terrorist watch-lists, it is unsurprising that the government was alert to his movements.
What is surprising — shocking, actually — is that, as Awlaki was making his way from Riyadh to New York that October, the Justice Department was actually arranging to facilitate his movements, rather than resolving to stop him.
That mindset is hard to fathom when one considers what was known of Awlaki’s background at the time. His suspected terror ties significantly predated 9/11. Though born in New Mexico, he was raised in Yemen, Osama bin Laden’s ancestral home and long a jihadist hotbed. Awlaki later relocated to the U.S., serving for years, in various American mosques, as an imam steeped in Islamic supremacist ideology.
In the late Nineties, he worked for an ostensible Islamic charity that the government later described as a “front organization … used to support al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.” Moreover, as Susan Schmidt has reported for the Washington Post, Awlaki edged onto the FBI’s radar screen in 1999, when the Bureau developed information that he had been visited by both a publicly unidentified associate of Omar Abdel Rahman (the “Blind Sheikh,” sentenced to life-imprisonment in 1996 on terrorism charges), and an al Qaeda “procurement agent” who had obtained a satellite phone for bin Laden’s use in Afghanistan. The investigation was closed as to Awlaki due to what the government describes as a lack of evidence.
San Diego: the Jihad’s Saudi Sanctuary
By 2000, Awlaki was living in San Diego. There, under extraordinarily suspicious circumstances, the first two 9/11 hijackers to reach the U.S., Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, moved into the neighborhood at the urging of a shadowy Saudi named Omar al-Bayoumi.
The Saudi connection is salient. Fifteen of the 19 suicide-hijackers were Saudis; al Qaeda was (and is) the recipient of prodigious Saudi-sourced funding; and Saudi Arabia is the world’s leading propagator of the Islamic supremacist ideology that ignites jihadist terror. Consequently, the 9/11 attacks were a great embarrassment to both the U.S. government and the Saudi regime — which jointly make much ado about their purportedly strong alliance. It is thus worth observing that the full extent of Saudi participation in the 9/11 atrocities has never been adequately probed and publicized. Nor has the nature of Saudi influence, which inspires such curious American government reticence whenever the Kingdom is found fomenting anti-Americanism. Indeed, to the great frustration of several low-ranking investigators, the U.S. government allowed many Saudis to be whisked out of the United States after the 9/11 attacks, even though many were suspected of complicity in al Qaeda’s jihad, and even though federal agents had not had nearly enough time to investigate their possible involvement.
Bayoumi, too, is safely back in Saudi Arabia. He actually left the U.S. several weeks before 9/11 — in July 2001. He is a native Saudi who worked for years in the Kingdom’s defense ministry before moving to the U.S. in 1994. The defense ministry continued to pay him a salary while he held a series of no-show jobs in the San Diego area. For over a year prior to 9/11, he also received an extra stipend of approximately $3,000 per month from Princess Haifa bint Faisal, the wife of the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Bandar bin Sultan. It was during those months that he provided essential logistical support to Midhar and Hamzi.
On February 1, 2000, after briefly visiting the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles, Bayoumi met the two eventual hijackers at a restaurant. Patently, it appears to have been a prearranged rendezvous — notwithstanding Bayoumi’s counter story: He just happened to drive up from San Diego that day to address a visa issue — with a government that was paying him — when, completely by chance, he ran into Midhar and Hamzi, struck up a fast friendship with the taciturn duo, and urged them to come live in his neighborhood.
The pair obviously needed a support network: they were strangers to the United States and spoke virtually no English. Within three days of meeting Bayoumi, they made it to the Islamic Center of San Diego. There, Bayoumi received them, quickly found them an apartment, co-signed their lease, helped them open a bank account (with money they’d received from 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed), and facilitated the payment of their deposit to the real estate agent. (See 9/11 Commission Report, p. 219.)
Bayoumi also introduced Midhar and Hamzi to the local Muslim community, which prominently included Awlaki, who was then the imam at Masjid Al-Ribat al-Islami – the “Rabat Mosque.” As Paul Sperry has reported for the New York Post, despite his Yemeni lineage, Awlaki had important Saudi contacts of his own. He worked for the Saudi embassy as a tour guide for Hajj pilgrimages. In San Diego, as they prepared for their role in the suicide-hijackings, Midhar and Hamzi frequented the Rabat mosque. There, they met regularly with Awlaki in a small anteroom on an upper floor.
Dar al-Hijra Days
As I recounted in The Grand Jihad, Awlaki gravitated out of San Diego in mid-2000, finally landing in Virginia in early 2001. Not much is known of his whereabouts in the interim, although a report cited in his Wikipedia biography relates that, by his own account, he “travel[ed] overseas to various countries.” We do know that when he settled in Virginia, he was appointed imam at the Dar al-Hijra mosque in Falls Church — one of the most important Saudi-underwritten Muslim Brotherhood hubs in the United States.
The mosque was established in 1991, on real estate purchased by the North American Islamic Trust — a Brotherhood organization cited as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Justice Department’s Hamas terrorism-financing prosecution, the Holy Land Foundation case. The Islamic Affairs Department of the Saudi embassy in Washington chipped in towards the $6 million construction costs of the mosque complex.
It was from the home of one of the mosque’s founders, Ismail Elbarasse, that the FBI seized the Brotherhood’s infamous 1991 “explanatory memo” from which I drew the title of my book, The Grand Jihad. In that internal communique, Brotherhood leaders proclaimed that their mission in America is a “grand jihad” aimed at “eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house[.]” (See the memo here, scroll halfway down, where an English translation follows the Arabic original.) Awlaki’s predecessor as imam, Mohammed al-Hanooti, described Dar al Hijra as “the greatest example in sacrifice, execution, and in carrying out the jihad that Allah calls for” — adding that this jihad would “give us the victory over our tyrannical enemies … the infidel Americans and British,” as well as “the infidel Jews.”
Remarkably, the State Department would later showcase Dar al Hijra in “Eid in America,” a fawning video said to depict how Islam is typically lived in our country.
Awlaki and Dar al-Hijra were a perfect fit. After he settled in, Hamzi and Hanjour followed along from Mesa, Arizona — where Hanjour had taken a refresher course in piloting aircraft. With Awlaki’s intercession, the mosque helped the soon-to-be suicide-hijackers find housing. Bank records show that Hanjour had his utility deposit transferred from his former residence to Dar al-Hijra. After the 9/11 atrocities, the mosque’s fax number was found in the Hamburg apartment of Ramzi bin al-Shibh. Along with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Mohamed Atta, bin al-Shibh was among the principal 9/11 plotters.
Coincidentally, during these same early months of 2001, while Awlaki was meeting with the 9/11 jihadists, he also struck up a friendship with the eventual Fort Hood jihadist, Nidal Hasan. After Awlaki presided over the funeral of Hasan’s mother, the two began a years-long relationship, mainly conducted by email. It turns out that, prior to the Fort Hood massacre, those communications were known to the FBI and the Defense Department. They were dismissed as insignificant, despite mounds of evidence about Awlaki and Hasan’s unabashed allegiance to Islamic supremacism.
In August 2001, Awlaki made a quick trip back to San Diego to pick up a few things he’d left behind. He stopped to bid farewell to a former neighbor, Lincoln Higgie. As Higgie recalled the encounter for the New York Times, he urged Awlaki, of whom he’d grown fond, to stop by and visit whenever he came to town. Awlaki, however, pregnantly replied, “I don’t think you’ll be seeing me. I won’t be coming back to San Diego again. Later on, you’ll find out why.”
Just a few weeks later, on September 11, 2001, Hanjour, Hamzi and Midhar, along with two others, hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 and flew it into the Pentagon — one of four airplanes turned into jihadist weapons of mass destruction that fateful day.
In the dragnet that followed, Awlaki was interrogated by the FBI four different times. He implausibly told agents he was shocked to realize that some of the suicide-hijackers seemed to have followed him from San Diego to Virginia.  Awlaki denied having had contact with Hamzi and Hanjour at Dar al-Hijra. Though he admitted having seen Hamzi in San Diego, Awlaki risibly claimed that could not remember anything they might have discussed — or even Hamzi’s name. (See Paul Sperry’s report, as well as the 9/11 Commission Report at p. 221.) According to a lengthy New York Times profile of Awlaki, interviewing FBI agents nevertheless concluded that “his contacts with the hijackers and other radicals were random, the inevitable consequence of living in the small world of Islam in America.” Not everyone drank so deeply the government’s see-no-Islam Kool-Aid. A number of investigators fiercely disagreed, as would several staffers on the 9/11 Commission.
Dropping the Fraud Charge
Against this backdrop, Ms. Herridge’s new report is just mind-blowing.
As noted above, the government not only had intelligence indicating that Awlaki was coming back to the United States in October 2002; it also had a pending charge against him. The Justice Department’s oft-repeated claim that the charge had been dismissed by the time Awlaki tried to reenter the country is simply not true. Nor is it true, as the government has maintained, that there was a compelling legal reason to vacate the arrest warrant.
To grasp this requires some background about the charge.  Awlaki had defrauded the United States in 1990. He returned to the U.S. from Yemen that year to study engineering at Colorado State University. He thus found himself in need of a Social Security number. In applying for one, the New Mexico native falsely stated that his place of birth was Yemen. Why? Because he was seeking — successfully — a  taxpayer-funded scholarship available only to foreign students.
By mid-2002, when the government realized Awlaki had made this false statement in 1990, it was too late to charge Social Security fraud, which has a 10-year statute of limitations. But it turned out that, in 1993, Awlaki had decided it would be useful to have a U.S. passport. In applying for the passport, he used the fraudulently obtained Social Security number. Such deception constitutes passport fraud, a felony offense as to which the statute-of-limitations had not yet run.
Consequently, in June 2002, three months after Awlaki fled to Yemen, the U.S. attorney’s office in Denver swore out a criminal complaint and the federal court issued an arrest warrant. It is a standard law-enforcement strategy to file such a charge in court when dealing with a fugitive: a court-authorized arrest warrant, which is lodged in various governmental and international databases, can trigger a suspect’s detention if he is stopped for some reason during his travels. It also provides a legal basis for the United States to seek the suspect’s extradition if he is detained in another country.
It was based on that warrant, lodged in a U.S. Customs Service database, that Awlaki was detained at JFK International Airport in New York City when he returned to the country, on a flight from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in the early morning hours of October 10, 2002. Customs agents, however, released Awlaki based on the representation of an FBI agent, Wade Ammerman, that “the warrant … had been pulled back.”
This assertion, as well as the Justice Department’s offered rationale for dismissing the passport fraud warrant, are fraught with duplicity.
To begin with, the warrant had not been “pulled back” at the time of Awlaki’s detention at JFK. The prosecutor and the FBI may have made an application for dismissal from the court, but no such application had been granted. The warrant was still in effect. It was not dismissed by a judge until later that day, at the earliest. Of course, had the warrant actually been vacated at the time of Awlaki’s arrival, as the government has been claiming, it would almost certainly have been withdrawn from the Customs database. And if, as the government claims, the FBI told Customs that the warrant had been “pulled,” the protocol would have been for Customs to ask for, and the FBI to supply, easily accessible paperwork showing dismissal of the warrant by the court. There was no such paperwork because the warrant had not been dismissed. Customs appears to have released Awlaki based not on a court dismissal but on the FBI’s say-so.
Secondly, that say-so was based on an untenable analysis of the passport fraud case. According to David Gaouette, the prosecutor then in charge of terrorism cases in Denver (who was later promoted to U.S. attorney), the case was weak because (a) Awlaki is a U.S. citizen who was entitled to a social security number and a passport; and (b) even if he lied on his original Social Security application, he ultimately “corrected the record.” Neither of these contentions withstands scrutiny.
First, entitlement to a government benefit is not a defense to the commission of fraud in obtaining that benefit. Awlaki did not misrepresent himself as a Yemeni national out of accident or mistake; he intentionally lied on his Social Security application in order to defraud the government out of scholarship money. Had the government made a timely discovery of Awlaki’s deception, he would not only have been prosecuted for Social Security fraud but for defrauding the scholarship program, as well. The fact that he was actually entitled to a social security card would in no way have excused his willful deception in the application process. Similarly, it is no defense to presenting a fraudulent passport application that one would be entitled to the passport if the application were truthful.
Second, the claim that Awlaki “corrected the record” is specious. In 1995, after he had completed his engineering studies and gotten the full benefit of fraudulently derived scholarship money, Awlaki, having apparently lost his Social Security card, applied for a replacement card. This time, he accurately indicated that he’d been born in New Mexico. He did not “correct the record” — which would have been tantamount to reporting his earlier fraud at a time when it was still prosecutable. In fact, as Ms. Herridge reports, the record has not been corrected: Fox obtained the relevant Social Security records under the Freedom of Information Act, and no correction is indicated. Obviously, Awlaki was not alerting the Social Security Administration in 1995 that he had provided false information in 1990. He was simply applying for another card, as those who misplace their cards often do. No doubt he hoped no one would notice the discrepancy in his representations about his place of birth — with a sprawling government bureaucracy, that is a pretty safe bet.
In any event, even if we pretend that Awlaki was trying to correct the record in good faith, he did not do so until two years after he had deceptively applied for the passport by using the fraudulently obtained Social Security number. By then, the passport fraud was already a completed crime. The later “correction of the record” is irrelevant — to analogize, you’re still guilty of bank robbery even if you try to pay the money back two years later.
When Awlaki was detained at JFK airport on October 10, 2002, there was a live warrant for his arrest and every valid reason to press ahead with the case against him. If, down the road, a defense lawyer thought he could make the “correct the record” gambit fly, the prosecutor could have opposed that in court — that’s what prosecutors do. There was no reason to dismiss the case at that point.
Furthermore, in the 9/11 investigation, dozens of less consequential suspects than Awlaki had been detained by the government on material witness warrants, even though there were no pending charges against them. Some of those suspects were held for weeks. Yet with Awlaki, as to whom there was a plausible felony charge, the government erred on the side of releasing him rather than getting him off the street. Indeed, even if one were to buy the government’s flawed rationale for dismissing the passport fraud charge, there appears to have been no consideration of detaining Awlaki as a material witness to compel his testimony before the grand jury, or of trying to make a case against him over the preposterous statements he had made to the FBI agents who interrogated him in the days after 9/11.
In letting Awlaki go, was the government acting on the misguided hope of using him as an informant? Was Awlaki given special consideration because the Saudis intervened on his behalf? Was his release just a monumental screw-up? Congress must continue to press for the answers to these questions. The evidence convincingly suggests that Anwar al-Awlaki was complicit in the killing of nearly 3,000 Americans on 9/11. Then, in the nine years after the government sprung him from detention at JFK Airport, to go off with his Saudi government helper, he did immense damage in his jihad against our country. The American people deserve to know why he was “un-arrested.”

You Didn't Build that - Ironhawk

You Didn't Build That

Readings from the Book of Barack
¹ In the beginning Govt created the heavens and the earth. ² Now the economy was formless and void, darkness was over the surface of the ATMs, and the Spirit of Govt was hovering over the land.

³ And Govt said, “Let there be spending,” and there was spending. ⁴ Govt saw that the spending was good, and that it separated the light from the darkness. ⁵ Govt called the spending Investments, and this he did in the first day.
⁶ Then Govt said, “Let there be roads and bridges across the waters, and let dams divide the waters from the waters.” ⁷ Thus Govt made the infrastructure and the patronage jobs for eternity under the firmament from the Potomac which was above the firmament; and it was so. ⁸ And Govt called the firmament Washington. This Govt did on the second day.
⁹ Then Govt said, “Let the regulations and the guidlines under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the Bureaus appear”; and it was so. ¹⁰ And Govt called the Bureaus demigovts, and the gathering together of them He called AFSCME. And Govt saw that it was good.
¹¹ Then Govt said, “Let there be police, and firefighters, and teachers according to their kind, for they will create more jobs”; and it was so. ¹² And then Govt bade the void bring forth crime, and arson, and stupidity, that each would yield seed to bring forth more police, and firefighters, and teachers, and jobs. And Govt saw that it was good. ¹³ So the evening and the morning were the third day.
¹⁴ On the fourth day Govt said, “Let Us make the economy in Our image, according to Our likeness; let it have dominion over the cars of the road, over the appliances of the supercenters, and over the pet groomers of the strip malls, over all the clickthroughs of Amazon and over every creepy thing of the Dollar Stores.” ¹⁵ So Govt created the economy in His own image; services and wholesale and retail He created them. ¹⁶ Then Govt blessed them, and Govt said to them, “Be fruitful and use the multiplier effect; fill the land with jobs; thou have dominion over thy realm, within limits, as long and thou remember to get thy permits and tithe thy taxes, for they are good. Hope to see you at the fundraiser.”
¹⁷ And on the fifth day Govt made an official Govt holiday, and headed off for a 3-day golf weekend at Camp David. But first Govt said to the economy, "you are free to eat from any tree in the garden, except the tree of Knowledge. There is a serpent in that thing, and thy health care does not cover it."
¹⁸ So when Govt was on vay-cay the economy set about the garden, plowing its fields and generating revenue for the glory of Govt. They obeyed the regulations and were not ashamed.
¹⁹ Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the balanced, publicly-funded birds the Lord Govt had made to sing news to the economy. The serpent was on the AM band. He said to the retail sector, “Did Govt really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’? ”
²⁰ "Only yours, serpent," said the retail sector.
²¹ “Don't be a wuss,” the serpent said to the retail sector. ²² “For Govt knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will wise to Govt's scam.”
²³ When she saw that the fruit was pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, and also free to download, she took some and ate it. She emailed a copy to her wholesaler, and he ate it; and then the wholesaler to the manufacturer, and he to the servicer. ²⁴ Then the eyes of all of them were opened, and they realized they were being taxed naked; so they outsourced fig leaves to make coverings for themselves.
²⁵ Then the economy heard the sound of the Lord Govt returning from vay-cay with the demigovts Osha and Tarp and Irs. It was the cool of the day, and they were hiding their profits from the Lord Govt among the trees of the garden. ²⁶ But the Lord Govt called to the manufacturer, “Where are you?”
²⁶ He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid, so I sought a tax shelter.”
²⁷ And Govt said, “Who told you that your profits were yours? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? ”
²⁸ The man said, “The retailer made me —she has a thing for serpents.”
²⁹ Then the Lord Govt said to the retailer, “What is this you have done?”
³⁰ And she said to the Lord Govt, “Don't take that tone with me, fat boy. And why should I give you my profits?”
³¹ The Lord Govt was in wrath, and said, “For I am the Lord Govt, creator of Eden! ³² I gave unto you the roads and bridges, and schools and cops, brought unto you of gentle showers of Tarp and Stimulus and rivers of Subsidy, I am the purifier of the waters, cleanser of the air, without which you and your profits would not exist. Thus all that thou have created is created by Us. Thus ye shall render unto Govt what is Govt's, and this is the Word of your Lord.”
³³ At these words, Solydra and Gm and Seiu and all the Cronyans and Laborites dropped to their knees in trembling fear and supplicated themselves before the Lord, presenting Him golden gifts of contributions.
³⁴ Then the retailer said to Govt, “And who created you?”
³⁵ In righteous anger did the Lord Govt again rise up and said, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Tri-Delts and the Dekes, I am and have always been! I am the great cosmic turtle on which you and the entire economy rest.”
³⁶ "And on whom do you rest, turtle?" said the retailer in blasheme.
³⁷ "Do not mock me with your knowledge trickery, harlot!" said the Lord Govt. "I am turtles all the way down."
³⁸ So the Lord Govt said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,

“Cursed are you above all livestock
    and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
    and you will eat dust 
    all the days of your life.
39 And I will keep you from tenure
    and grants and the airwaves,
    and condemn you to the bowels of internet."

⁴⁰ Then the Lord Govt turned the retailer and the manufacturer and the wholesaler and all the servicers, and said,

“I will make your taxes and regulations very severe;
    with painful labor you will give birth to profit. 
You shall be afflicted with plagues of audits,
    the coming of Osha, and the trials of Irs.
By the sweat of thy brow you will earn thy living
    until you return it to Me.
You will suffer the droughts of subsidy and stimulus,
    and will thirst forever. You're welcome." 

⁴¹ And so the Lord Govt banished the economy from paradise, and bade them go outsource to the Far East of Eden. And as the chastened economy slouched out of of Babylon He said unto them,
⁴⁰ "How do you like them apples?"

Road Warrior - Today's Califorrnia

California: The Road Warrior Is Here

Posted By Victor Davis Hanson On July 29, 2012 @ 10:56 pm In Uncategorized | 388 Comments

Where’s Mel Gibson When You Need Him?
George Miller’s 1981 post-apocalyptic film The Road Warrior ^[1] envisioned an impoverished world of the future. Tribal groups fought over what remained of a destroyed Western world of law, technology, and mass production. Survival went to the fittest — or at least those who could best scrounge together the artifacts of a long gone society somewhat resembling the present West.
In the case of the Australian film, the culprit for the detribalization of the Outback was some sort of global war or perhaps nuclear holocaust that had destroyed the social fabric. Survivors were left with a memory of modern appetites but without the ability to reproduce the means to satisfy them:  in short, a sort of Procopius’s description of Gothic Italy circa AD 540.
Our Version
Sometimes, and in some places, in California I think we have nearly descended into Miller’s dark vision — especially the juxtaposition of occasional high technology with premodern notions of law and security. The state deficit is at $16 billion. Stockton went bankrupt; Fresno is rumored to be next ^[2]. Unemployment stays over 10% and in the Central Valley is more like 15%. Seven out of the last eleven new Californians went on Medicaid, which is about broke. A third of the nation’s welfare recipients are in California. In many areas, 40% of Central Valley high school students do not graduate — and do not work, if the latest crisis in finding $10 an hour agricultural workers is any indication. And so on.
Our culprit out here was not the Bomb (and remember, Hiroshima looks a lot better today ^[3] than does Detroit, despite the inverse in 1945). The condition is instead brought on by a perfect storm of events that have shred the veneer of sophisticated civilization. Add up the causes. One was the destruction of the California rural middle class. Manufacturing jobs, small family farms, and new businesses disappeared due to globalization, high taxes, and new regulations. A pyramidal society followed of a few absentee land barons and corporate grandees, and a mass of those on entitlements or working for government or employed at low-skilled service jobs. The guy with a viable 60 acres of almonds ceased to exist.
Illegal immigration did its share. No society can successfully absorb some 6-7 million illegal aliens, in less than two decades, the vast majority without English, legality, or education from the poorer provinces of Mexico, the arrivals subsidized by state entitlements while sending billions in remittances back to Mexico — all in a politicized climate where dissent is demonized as racism. This state of affairs is especially true when the host has given up on assimilation, integration, the melting pot, ^[4] and basic requirements of lawful citizenship.
Terrible governance was also a culprit, in the sense that the state worked like a lottery: those lucky enough by hook or by crook to get a state job ^[5] thereby landed a bonanza of high wages, good benefits, no accountability, and rich pensions that eventually almost broke the larger and less well-compensated general society. When I see hordes of Highway Patrolmen writing tickets in a way they did not before 2008, I assume that these are revenue-based, not safety-based, protocols — a little added fiscal insurance that pensions and benefits ^[6] will not be cut.
A coarsening of popular culture ^[7] — a nationwide phenomenon — was intensified, as it always is, in California. The internet, video games, and modern pop culture translated into a generation of youth that did not know the value of hard work or a weekend hike in the Sierra. They didn’t learn  how to open a good history book or poem, much less acquire even basic skills such as mowing the lawn or hammering a nail. But California’s Generation X did know that they were “somebody” whom teachers and officials dared not reprimand, punish, prosecute, or otherwise pass judgment on for their anti-social behavior. Add all that up with a whiny, pampered, influential elite on the coast that was more worried about wind power, gay marriage, ending plastic bags in the grocery stores — and, well, you get the present-day Road Warrior culture of California.
Pre- and Post-Modern
I am writing tonight in Palo Alto after walking among nondescript 1,500 square-foot cottages of seventy-year vintage that sell for about $1.5-2 million and would go in a similar tree-shaded district in Fresno or Merced for about $100,000. Apparently, these coastal Californians want to be near Stanford and big money in Silicon Valley. They also must like the fact that they are safe to jog or ride bikes in skimpy attire and the general notion that there is “culture” here amid mild weather.  I suppose when a car pulls out in front of you and hits your bumper on University Avenue, the driver has a license, registration, and insurance — and this is worth the extra million to live here. My young fellow apartment residents like to jog in swimming suits; they would last one nanosecond doing that on De Wolf Avenue outside Selma.
Survival?
Meanwhile, 200 miles and a world away, here are some of the concerns recently in the Valley. There is now an epidemic of theft from tarped homes undergoing fumigation. Apparently as professionals tent over homes infested with termites, gangs move into the temporarily abandoned houses to burrow under the tarps and loot the premises ^[8] — convinced that the dangers of lingering poisonous gas are outweighed by the chance of easy loot.  Who sues whom when the gangbanger prying into the closet is found gassed ? When I get termites, I spot treat myself with drill and canisters; even the professional services warn that they can kill off natural pests, but not keep out human ones.
No one in the Central Valley believes that they can stop the epidemic of looting copper wire. I know the local Masonic Hall is not the Parthenon, but you get the picture of our modern Turks prying off the lead seals of the building clamps of classical temples.
Protection is found only in self-help. To stop the Road Warriors from stripping the copper cable from your pump or the community’s street lights, civilization is encouraged to put in a video camera, more lighting, more encasement, a wire protective mesh — all based on the premise that the authorities cannot stop the thieves and your livelihood is predicated on the ingenuity of your own counter-terrorism protocols. But the thief is always the wiser: he calculates the cost of anti-theft measures, as well as the state’s bill in arresting, trying, and rehabilitating him, and so wagers that it is cheaper for all of us to let him be and just clean up his mess.
Reactionary Dreaming
In around 1960, rural California embraced modern civilization. By that I mean both in the trivial and fundamental sense. Rural dogs were usually vaccinated and licensed — and so monitored. Homes were subject to building codes and zoning laws; gone were the privies and lean-tos. Streets were not just paved, but well-paved. My own avenue was in far better shape in 1965 than it is now. Mosquito abatement districts regularly sprayed stagnant water ponds to ensure infectious disease remained a thing of our early-20^th-century past. Now they merely warn us with West Nile Virus alerts. Ubiquitous “dumps” dotted the landscape, some of them private, ensuring, along with the general code of shame, that city-dwellers did not cast out their old mattresses or baby carriages along the side of the road. It seems the more environmental regulations, the scarcer the dumps and the more trash that litters roads and private property.
I walk each night around the farm. What is the weirdest find? A nearby alleyway has become a dumping place for the rotting corpses of fighting dogs. Each evening or so, a dead dog (pit bulls, Queensland terriers) with a rope and plenty of wounds is thrown up on the high bank. The coyotes make short work of the remains. Scattered about are several skeletons with ropes still around their necks. I suppose that at about 2 a.m. the organizers of dog fights drive in and cast out the evenings’ losers. I have never seen such a thing in 58 years (although finding plastic bags with dead kittens in the trash outside my vineyard was a close second). Where is PETA when you need them? Is not the epidemic of dog- and cock-fighting in central California a concern of theirs? (Is berating in Berkeley a corporation over meat-packing a bit more glamorous than running an education awareness program about animal fights in Parlier?)
Education, Education, Education…
The public schools were once the key to California’s ascendance ^[9]. Universal education turned out well-prepared citizens who were responsible for California’s rosy future — one based on an excellent tripartite higher education system of junior colleges, state colleges, and universities; sophisticated dams and irrigation systems; and a network of modern freeways and roads. In the private sphere, the culture of shame still prevailed, at least in the sense that no one wanted his 16-year-old son identified in the papers (with his home address no less) as arrested for breaking and entering. And such crime was rare. Rural California was a checkerboard of 40- and 80-acre farms, with families that were viable economic units and with children who worked until dark after school. It is hard to steal when you must disc ten acres after baseball practice.
I think it is a fair assessment to say that all of the above is long past. Since about 1992, on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) testing, California ranks between 41 and 48 in math and science, depending on the year and the particular grade that is assessed. About half of the incoming freshmen at the California State University system — the largest public university in the world — are not qualified to take college courses, and must first complete “remediation” to attain a level of competence that was assumed forty years ago in the senior year of high school. The students I taught at CSU Fresno were far better prepared in 1984 than those in 2004 are; the more money, administrators, “learning centers,” and counselors, the worse became the class work.
I finally threw out my old syllabi last month: the 1985 Greek Literature in Translation course at CSU Fresno seemed to read like a Harvard class in comparison to my 2003 version with half the reading, half the writing, and all sorts of directions on how to make up missed work and flunked exams. It wasn’t just that I lost my standards, but that I lost my students who could read.
Life in the Whatever Lane
Does any of that matter? Well, yes. Those who are not educated soon inherit the reins of public responsibility. In practical terms, the symptoms are everywhere. I now expect that my county property tax returns will have common errors, from the spelling of my name or address to the particular acreage assessed.
When entering the bank, I expect people not just to not speak English, but occasionally not to write any language, and thus put a mark down, in Old West fashion, to cash their checks.
When I deal with a public agency, I assume the person on the opposite end of the counter or phone will not to be able to transact the requested service, or at least not be able to transact any other service other than the narrow one trained for. Calling any public agency is to receive a recording and then an incoherent order to press numerous buttons that lead to more recordings. Woe to the poor fool who walks into a Department of Motor Vehicles office on an average day, seeking to obtain a copy of his pink slip or find a registration form. The response is “get a number,” “make an appointment,” “get in line,” “wait,” or “see a supervisor.”
Cocooning
I quit not just riding a bike on the rural avenues where I grew up, but walking upon them as well. Why? There is a good chance (twice now) of being bitten not just by a loose dog without vaccination, but by one whose owner is either unable to communicate or vanishes when hunted down. And then there are the official agencies whose de facto policy is that our ancestors did such a good job eradicating rabies that we can more or less coast on their fumes.
Forty years ago I assumed rightly that cars parked along the side of the road were out of gas or needed repair. Now? I expect that the cars are much more reliable, but the owner of any car parked outside my house is either stealing fruit, casing the joint, using drugs, or inebriated. Last week I explained to a passer-by why he could not steal the peaches from my trees; he honestly thought not only that he could, but that he almost was obligated to.
What makes The Road Warrior so chilling a metaphor is the combination of the premodern and postmodern. While utter chaos reigns in rural California, utter absurdity reigns inside the barricades, so to speak, on the coast. So, for example, San Franciscans will vote on whether to blow up ^[10] the brilliantly engineered Hetch Hetchy water project (I bet they won’t vote yes), more or less the sole source of water for the San Francisco Bay Area. The National Park Service debates blowing up historic stone bridges over the Merced River in Yosemite Valley — as hyper-environmentalists assume that they have so much readily available power and water from prior generations at their fingertips that they have the luxury of dreaming of returning to a preindustrial California ^[11]. Of course, they have no clue that their romance is already reified outside Madera, Fresno, or Bakersfield.
High-Speed Madness
Take the new high-speed rail project, whose first link is designated to zoom not far from my house. An empiricist would note there is already an Amtrak (money-losing) line from Fresno to Corcoran (home of Charles Manson). There is now no demand to use another lateral (getting nowhere more quickly?). There is no proof that California public agencies — from universities to the DMV — can fulfill their present responsibilities in such a way that we would have confidence that new unionized state workers could run such a dangerous thing as high-speed rail (e.g., if we can’t keep sofas and washing machines out of the local irrigation ponds, why do we think we could keep them off high-speed rail tracks? Do we think we are French?).
If one were to drive on the 99, the main interior north-south “highway” from the Grapevine to Sacramento, one would find places, like south of Kingsburg, where two poorly paved, potholed, and crowded lanes ensure lots of weekly accidents. Can a state that has not improved its ancestors’ highway in 50 years be entrusted to build high-speed mass transit? Can a state presently $16 billion in arrears be expected to finance a $100 billion new project? Can a state that ranks 48^th in math field the necessary personnel to build and operate such a postmodern link?
We Are Scary
One of the strangest things about Road Warrior was the ubiquity of tattooed, skin-pierced tribal people with shaved heads and strange clothes. At least the cast and sets seemed shocking some thirty years ago. If I now sound like a reactionary then so be it: but when I go to the store, I expect to see not just the clientele, but often some of the workers, with “sleeves” — a sort of throwback to red-figure Athenian vase painting where the ink provides the background and the few patches of natural skin denote the silhouetted image. And stranger still is the aging Road Warrior ^[12]: these are folks in their forties who years ago got pierced and tattooed and aged with their sagging tribal insignia, some of them now denoting defunct gangs and obsolete popular icons.
I am not naïve enough (as Horace’s laudator temporis acti ) to wish to return to the world of my grandfather (my aunt was crippled for life with polio, my grandmother hobbled with the scars and adhesions from an unoperated-on, ruptured appendix, my grandfather battled glaucoma each morning with vials of eye drops), when around 1960, in tie and straw hat, he escorted me to the barber. The latter trimmed my hair in his white smock and bowtie, calling me at eight years old Mr. Hanson.
Like Road Warrior, again, what frightens is this mish-mash of violence with foppish culture ^[13], of official platitudes and real-life chaos: the illiterate and supposedly impoverished nonetheless fishing through the discounted video game barrel at Wal-Mart; the much-heralded free public transit bus zooming around on electrical or natural gas power absolutely empty of riders, as the impoverished prefer their Camrys and Civics; ads encouraging new food stamp users as local fast-food franchises have lines of cars blocking traffic on the days when government cards are electronically recharged; the politician assuring us that California is preeminent as he hurries home to his Bay Area cocoon.
On the Frontier
I find myself insidiously adopting the Road Warrior survival code. Without any systematic design, I notice that in the last two years I have put a hand pump on my grandfather’s abandoned well in the yard and can pump fresh water without electricity. I put in an outdoor kitchen, tied into a 300-gallon propane tank, that can fuel a year of cooking. I am getting more dogs (all vaccinated and caged); for the first time in my life I inventoried all my ancestors’ guns in all the closets and found shotguns, deer rifles, .22s etc.
I have an extra used pickup I chose not to sell always gassed in the garage. For all sorts of scrapes and minor injuries, sprains, simple finger fractures, etc., I self-treat — anything to avoid going into the local emergency room (reader, you will too, when Obamacare kicks in ^[14]). And the more I talk to neighbors, the more I notice that those who stayed around are sort of ready for our Road Warrior world. At night if I happen to hear Barack Obama on the news or read the latest communiqué from Jerry Brown, the world they pontificate about in no way resembles the world I see: not the freeways, not the medical system, not the educational establishment, not law enforcement, not the “diversity,” not anything.
Hope and Change
Yet I am confident of better days to come. Sometimes I dream of the booming agricultural export market. Sometimes hopes arise with reports of gargantuan new finds of gas and oil in California. At other times, it is news of closing borders, and some progress in the assimilation of our various tribes. Sometimes a lone brave teacher makes the news for insisting that her students read Shakespeare. On occasion, I think the people silently seethe and resent their kingdom of lies, and so may prove their anger at the polls, perhaps this November.
One looks for hope where one can find it.

---

Article printed from Works and Days: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson
URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/california-the-road-warrior-is-here/
URLs in this post:

[1] The Road Warrior: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000OCZD5G/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=pjmedia-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B000OCZD5G

[2] is rumored to be next: http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2012/07/28/is-fresno-californias-next-bankrupt-city/

[3] looks a lot better today: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/beck-tv-hiroshima-vs-detroit-which-city-really-embraced-the-american-dream/

[4] has given up on assimilation, integration, the melting pot,: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004DUMW6I/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=pjmedia-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004DUMW6I

[5] to get a state job: http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/6677.html

[6] that pensions and benefits: http://brothersjuddblog.com/archives/2012/07/because_thats_where_the_money_.html

[7] coarsening of popular culture: http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2012/07/27/are-movies-to-blame-for-aurora/

[8] and loot the premises: http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local/los_angeles&id=8671213

[9] California’s ascendance: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/california-there-it-went/

[10] will vote on whether to blow up: http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2012/07/09/the-return-of-the-dam-busters/

[11] a preindustrial California: http://tinyurl.com/26sl63k

[12] the aging Road Warrior: http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2005/10/08/quote-of-the-day-21/

[13] mish-mash of violence with foppish culture: http://www.city-journal.org/html/16_1_oh_to_be.html

[14] Obamacare kicks in: http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/020886.html

Klavin on the Culture: Gay Marriage

Foll-A

August 1st, 2012 - 8:27 am

I like gay people and — let me be frank — hate fast food. But this nonsense about Chick-Fil-A underscores the reason I’ve been hesitant to indulge my natural libertarianism and plunk outright for gay marriage.

In general, I have no problem with marriage for gays, if it comes about legislatively rather than through judicial fiat. I’ve listened carefully to the arguments of several social conservatives of good will who feel that changing the age-old definition of marriage will weaken a principle pillar of liberty. I’m not convinced — not even convinced that the possibility of such a moral hazard is a compelling reason to keep people from doing whatever they bloody well want with their private lives. As for the ideas that being gay is unnatural or a sin per se — that is, a sin whether it does any earthly harm or not — I reject them outright. Homosexuality seems as much a part of nature as left-handedness and is probably much less annoying when using scissors. And if it is somehow offensive to God, that’s His business: I am specifically instructed to judge not in such matters and tend to my own manifold offenses.

But when activists and government officials feel justified in attempting obnoxious boycotts and illegal vendettas against a business like Chick-Fil-A merely because it puts forward traditional beliefs, I am reminded of the deep, vicious and steadfast intolerance of those who claim the mantle of tolerance. I begin to suspect — I do suspect — that the movement for gay marriage is nothing more than an assault on freedom of religion and freedom of expression by other means — yet another ploy of those who believe in an all-powerful state shepherding powerless individuals into leftist nirvana. Truly, I wish to deny my gay friends and colleagues nothing. But the right to express, exercise and live by your faith and conscience is far more essential to human liberty and dignity than the government’s official approval of your relationships. If what gay activists really want is the power to silence those who disapprove of them, then to hell with them.

I have never been able to see the problem with being gay and don’t know why some people find it repellent. What I find repellent are the hateful and intolerant radicals who wage war on people for their opinions. Wise gay people will throw these idiots overboard and make their case for acceptance with patience and reason to their fellow Americans. They are going to win this fight eventually, I think, but the method by which they win will matter to their future and the future of the country.

Arch Bishop's Reply to Raum Emmanuel -Chicago Values ??

Sunday, July 29, 2012

Reflections on “Chicago values”

By Francis Cardinal George, OMI

Recent comments by those who administer our city seem to assume that the city government can decide for everyone what are the “values” that must be held by citizens of Chicago. I was born and raised here, and my understanding of being a Chicagoan never included submitting my value system to the government for approval. Must those whose personal values do not conform to those of the government of the day move from the city? Is the City Council going to set up a “Council Committee on Un-Chicagoan Activities” and call those of us who are suspect to appear before it? I would have argued a few days ago that I believe such a move is, if I can borrow a phrase, “un-Chicagoan.”

The value in question is espousal of “gender-free marriage.” Approval of state-sponsored homosexual unions has very quickly become a litmus test for bigotry; and espousing the understanding of marriage that has prevailed among all peoples throughout human history is now, supposedly, outside the American consensus. Are Americans so exceptional that we are free to define “marriage” (or other institutions we did not invent) at will? What are we re-defining?

 It might be good to put aside any religious teaching and any state laws and start from scratch, from nature itself, when talking about marriage. Marriage existed before Christ called together his first disciples two thousand years ago and well before the United States of America was formed two hundred and thirty six years ago. Neither Church nor state invented marriage, and neither can change its nature.
Marriage exists because human nature comes in two complementary sexes: male and female. The sexual union of a man and woman is called the marital act because the two become physically one in a way that is impossible between two men or two women. Whatever a homosexual union might be or represent, it is not physically marital. Gender is inextricably bound up with physical sexual identity; and “gender-free marriage” is a contradiction in terms, like a square circle.

Both Church and state do, however, have an interest in regulating marriage. It is not that religious marriage is private and civil marriage public; rather, marriage is a public institution in both Church and state. The state regulates marriage to assure stability in society and for the proper protection and raising of the next generation of citizens. The state has a vested interest in knowing who is married and who is not and in fostering good marriages and strong families for the sake of society.

The Church, because Jesus raised the marital union to the level of symbolizing his own union with his Body the Church, has an interest in determining which marital unions are sacramental and which are not. The Church sees married life as a path to sanctity and as the means for raising children in the faith, as citizens of the universal kingdom of God. These are all legitimate interests of both Church and state, but they assume and do not create the nature of marriage.

People who are not Christian or religious at all take for granted that marriage is the union of a man and a woman for the sake of family and, of its nature, for life. The laws of civilizations much older than ours assume this understanding of marriage. This is also what religious leaders of almost all faiths have taught throughout the ages. Jesus affirmed this understanding of marriage when he spoke of “two becoming one flesh” (Mt. 19: 4-6). Was Jesus a bigot? Could Jesus be accepted as a Chicagoan? Would Jesus be more “enlightened” if he had the privilege of living in our society? One is welcome to believe that, of course; but it should not become the official state religion, at least not in a land that still fancies itself free. Surely there must be a way to properly respect people who are gay or lesbian without using civil law to undermine the nature of marriage.

Surely we can find a way not to play off newly invented individual rights to “marriage” against constitutionally protected freedom of religious belief and religious practice. The State’s attempting to redefine marriage has become a defining moment not for marriage, which is what it is, but for our increasingly fragile “civil union” as citizens.

Francis Cardinal George, OMI
Archbishop of Chcago




Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel insists that he won’t back down from his suggestion that Chick-fil-A doesn’t meet his standard of “Chicago values,” although his staff has tried to backpedal a little since.  In a press conference yesterday, Emanuel sounded defiant as he defended “Chicago values”:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Monday he has no regrets about saying that “Chick-fil-A’s values are not Chicago’s values” because the company president opposes gay marriage.
“No. I don’t” regret it, the mayor said under questioning at an unrelated jobs announcement.
“And the simple reason is, when it comes to values, there’s a policy as it relates to gay marriage. The values of our city are ones that welcome and recognize that, and I will continue to fight for that.”

“Values that welcome”?  To have any meaning at all, “welcome” means open to those who disagree with you.  Tolerance means engaging with those whose religion or political beliefs differ.  Engaging with only those who march in lockstep with your own agenda is actually the antithesis of “tolerance” and “welcoming.”
We’ll get back to that in a moment.  First, a native Chicagoan who also happens to lead the Archdiocese of Chicago wrote an open letter to Emanuel asking for clarification on the meaning — and enforcement — of “Chicago values.”  Francis Cardinal George called this “a defining moment” for civil unions, and not the kind related to marriage:

Recent comments by those who administer our city seem to assume that the city government can decide for everyone what are the “values” that must be held by citizens of Chicago. I was born and raised here, and my understanding of being a Chicagoan never included submitting my value system to the government for approval. Must those whose personal values do not conform to those of the government of the day move from the city? Is the City Council going to set up a “Council Committee on Un-Chicagoan Activities” and call those of us who are suspect to appear before it? I would have argued a few days ago that I believe such a move is, if I can borrow a phrase, “un-Chicagoan.” …
People who are not Christian or religious at all take for granted that marriage is the union of a man and a woman for the sake of family and, of its nature, for life. The laws of civilizations much older than ours assume this understanding of marriage. This is also what religious leaders of almost all faiths have taught throughout the ages. Jesus affirmed this understanding of marriage when he spoke of “two becoming one flesh” (Mt. 19: 4-6). Was Jesus a bigot? Could Jesus be accepted as a Chicagoan? Would Jesus be more “enlightened” if he had the privilege of living in our society? One is welcome to believe that, of course; but it should not become the official state religion, at least not in a land that still fancies itself free. Surely there must be a way to properly respect people who are gay or lesbian without using civil law to undermine the nature of marriage.
Surely we can find a way not to play off newly invented individual rights to “marriage” against constitutionally protected freedom of religious belief and religious practice. The State’s attempting to redefine marriage has become a defining moment not for marriage, which is what it is, but for our increasingly fragile “civil union” as citizens.

In my column for The Week today, I argue that Emanuel’s intolerance — selective intolerance, actually — bears a lot more resemblance to the intolerance of noted 20th-century authoritarian systems than to traditional American ideas of freedom:

The past two weeks have brought to light a truly disturbing political demonstration — and it has nothing to do with presidential elections or generic congressional ballots. At least three mayors in some of America’s largest cities, as well as plenty of other city officials, have publicly demanded political orthodoxy as a condition of doing business in their metropolises. Political correctness has transformed into a strange American version of fascism — over a chicken filet sandwich and an opinion about marriage that even our Democratic president officially held as recently as two months ago. …
In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel declared that Chick-fil-A did not represent “Chicago values,” and suggested that Chick-fil-A invest its money elsewhere. Chicago, by the way, has the third-highest unemployment rate in the nation among major cities, so it seems odd that its mayor would tell Chick-fil-A to take a hike for having the exact same position on marriage that Emanuel’s former boss — President Barack Obama — held the entire time Emanuel worked at the White House. Even more odd, at the same time Emanuel declared Chick-fil-A fast-fooda non grata, he rolled out the red carpet for Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan to have his acolytes patrol Chicago neighborhoods. Not only is Farrakhan a well-known anti-Semite, he also opposes same-sex marriage. In fact, Farrakhan publicly blasted Obama for flip-flopping on the issue in May.
Emanuel later backed down, but not one of the local alderman, who still demanded a pledge from Cathy to quit associating with groups that oppose gay marriage as a prerequisite for a business permit. A councilman in New York made a similar threat. San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee kept his attack on freedom of thought to Twitter, noting that the closest Chick-fil-A outlet was 40 miles away — and that the company shouldn’t try to get any closer.

People can certainly choose not to eat at Chick-fil-A if they don’t like Cathy’s views on same-sex marriage.  That’s a free-market response to political activism, and comes from the liberty of individuals being able to choose for themselves the free associations that best fits their needs.  When government demands loyalty to a political agenda rather than compliance with the law as a prerequisite for businesses to operate in their jurisdiction, that’s not freedom or a free market: it’s fascism, plain and simple, as well as extortion, which always goes hand in hand with fascism.
Update: Aaron Walker concurs, and adds this:

[The] syllogism is simple, but it bears repeating:

1.         The right to vote implies the right to choose freely on every subject relevant to that vote.

2.         The right to choose implies the right to receive information and hear arguments about that choice.

3.         We cannot receive information and arguments about the choices we make in our democracy unless people are free to express themselves.

4.         Therefore freedom of expression is essentially to democracy.

And so when an official seeks not only to regulate behavior but even opinion and expression, then that person is seeking to create a very real tyranny, to strike at democracy itself.  And we should have absolutely no tolerance of that.

So yes, even if you support gay marriage—hell even if you are gay—get a sandwich at Chick-Fil-A.  Because this isn’t about gay marriage anymore.  This is about freedom of speech.

Exactly.