Cloward-Piven: The Ultimate Goal of Gunwalker?
PJMedia reader “eon” posted an insightful comment in response to my September 15 article on the Gunwalker scandal:
To the best of my knowledge, no previous U.S. administration has ever destabilized the government of a putatively friendly foreign power purely for domestic political gain.
The closest you can get would be the revolutionary movement in what is now Panama, that the U.S. nurtured to gain that area’s independence (from Nicaragua) — to facilitate building the Panama Canal. But that was a pre-existing revolutionary movement with pre-existing complaints against the Nicaraguan government that did not include stopping them from selling illegal drugs. (Editor’s note: Panama gained its independence from Colombia, not Nicaragua.)
AdvertisementThe gains Obama & Co. seem to be seeking come in three flavors. Ranked in order of time-criticality from their POV, they are most likely:
1. Short-term: Increased illegal immigration from Mexico as people attempt to flee the increasing violence (allowing them to push the DREAM Act through, and “stacking the deck” in the next election via ACORN and SEIU);
2. Medium-term: Propaganda for tighter gun laws (possibly enacted by Executive Order, bypassing the Congress);
3. Long-term: Legalization of “recreational drugs,” helped by a “drug friendly” Mexican government, influenced by if not overtly controlled by the drug cartels.
I strongly suspect that (3) is the ultimate objective, with (1) and (2) being seen (at least by Obama & Co.) as “stepping-stones” to attaining it.
While I personally think (3) is a non-starter even as a long-term issue, investigators and pundits closely tracking Gunwalker have long suspected a larger game was afoot.
A high-risk plot involving major elements of the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, Treasury, and State, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Border Patrol, and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division (IRS-CID), requiring approval from the State Department, isn’t something that comes from a mid-level bureaucrat. It is typically incited and decided by the very highest levels of appointed and elected officials.
As anyone with any experience in government will attest, there is massive institutional inertia against both change and risk. It is insurmountable without significant stakeholder support. In government, this means directors, secretaries, and elected officeholders.
An operation like Fast and Furious would have been jettisoned in the conceptual stages as inherently dangerous and assured of failure, as various veteran law enforcement officers have attested (including here at PJMedia in an article by LAPD veteran “Jack Dunphy”):
I can appreciate the desire to use novel law enforcement approaches in confronting the violence attendant to drug trafficking in Mexico. Someone, displaying a bit of that outside-the-box thinking, came up with the idea of allowing thousands of weapons to be bought on this side of the border with the idea that they could be tracked as they made their way through the network of cartel members and facilitators and into the hands of Mexican outlaws.
This was a pipe dream. To me, it is inconceivable that this operation ever made it out of the first meeting where it was discussed. It goes to show how detached police executives can be from the reality of police work as it is actually practiced. There is simply no effective way to track a gun once it leaves the store where it was purchased.
We’ve long suspected that what “eon” calls a “medium-term” goal — propaganda for tighter gun laws — was the ultimate goal of Gunwalker, but the plot makes significantly more sense if Gunwalker did have multiple goals, of which gun control was just one.
A logical speculation posted by “eon” is that the short-term goal of Gunwalker was to increase violence in Mexico. This would drive more Mexican citizens northward as illegal aliens, seeking respite from the violence in their home country. Their plight would provide the administration a way to pitch the DREAM Act as an act of kindness to political refugees and another step towards amnesty.
This would be a strategy straight from the Cloward-Piven playbook.
The Cloward Piven strategy, this is what we are witnessing today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP-IM7maxbI&fe...
Cloward Piven Strategy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiaLnQvy7_w
The United States helped the future Panama gain independence from Colombia, not Nicaragua. Small thing, but I like accuracy.
Yeah, that’s more than a little error given that Nicaragua and Panama are not even contiguous. Some of PJM’s essays are evidently written “Fast and Furious.”
Actually, I posted it without Googling “Panama Independence” or looking it up in the Encyclopedia Britannica first. My fault.
There’s nothing quite like having an error that would get you marked wrong on an 8th grade World History test preserved forever on the Web to give you a good dose of humility.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to bang my head against the wall a few dozen more times….
cheers
eon
Don’t be so hard on yourself eon, a baker’s dozen of head bangs will suffice.
In your defense, the US spent the second half of the 19th Century trying to build a canal through Nicaragua, but was continually frustrated by political instability, civil wars (theirs and ours) and fears about a volcano. When the French effort in Panama failed, the US shifted focus.
So, Nicaragua is in the equation somewhere.
It’s in the equation somewhere near the equator.
Medium-term: Propaganda for tighter gun laws (possibly enacted by Executive Order, bypassing the Congress)
Given the walked weapons, given the (reportedly) minuscule to nil actual attempts to trace the guns once they’d walked and given Obama’s acknowledged assurances to Brady law gun advocates that “we’re working on it”…
…it is very hard not to see ulterior motive written all over the Gunwalker fiasco.
Creating the chaos idealized by Cloward/Piven (in real time, only mean old Piven survives, and she still speaks lovingly of the necessity for chaos in the streets) and ole Saul Alinsky, Gunwalker does, indeed, feel like some sort of agenda driven orchestration.
Obama’s “executive order” requiring gun shops in the southwest to report certain kinds of sales replicates what those store were already doing voluntarily. But I guess Barack wanted to flex his muscles and make it legally mandatory.
Eric Holder telling Congress in sworn testimony that he only learned about Fast and Furious in March 2011…isn’t that pure perjury ?
“Eric Holder telling Congress in sworn testimony that he only learned about Fast and Furious in March 2011…isn’t that pure perjury ?”
Only if we can prove it. A “smoking gun” email, a memo, a minuted meeting, all of those would prove Holder lied. Presently, all we have is logic, a way of going wrong with confidence, as I learned from David Weber.
Prove it? Smoking gun? Email trail? How about Eric Holder’s Asst. AG giving a speech in 2009 boasting of $10 million appropriated in the Stimulus Bill for “Gunrunner”? It’s inconceivable to think that Holder or Obama were unaware of this speech as its all over utube and was taped by numerous media outlets.
Could a Congressional Aide writing the Stimulus Bill have added $10 million in funding without a paper or electronic trail? Really, the trail is there and just needs to be brought to the light of day.
Ciro Rodriguez “authored” [I suspect Nancy borrowed Hilary's Testicle Lockbox, added a few extras of her own, and insured CR's compliance when she told him that he was going to add that funding amendment to the first stimulus] the $10M amendment. Other funds were likewise added in subsequent platforms.
And the controllers try to claim the “failure” was due to underfunding!
We need to get our facts/terminology straight, folks.
“Project Gunrunner” was begun under Pres. Bush, and was run as a typical sting operation, i.e., legitimate. “Operation Fast and Furious,” on the other hand, was a component PART of Project Gunrunner that was initiated by the Obama Administration, and, as we now know, was NOT a typical sting operation — because there was never any intention to actually “sting” anyone!
“GUNWALKER” (as opposed to “Gunrunner”) is a name that conservative blogger David Codrea (of Examiner.com and War on Guns) gave to this whole scandal as it began coming to light — the scandal involving ALL the illicit gunrunning operations described above: not only Fast and Furious, out of Arizona; but also Operation Castaway, out of Florida; the DEA gunrunning out of Dallas-Fort Worth; “Gangwalker” in Indiana (arming Chicago street gangs); rumors of government-mediated/enabled gunrunning operations in North Carolina and California; and heaven only knows how many others. Every few weeks, it seems, another one comes to light.
Dianna,They swore an oath,and allegience to the same that is in that oath,from the time they took it,24 hours a day,until relieved of it when they leave office.thats for all government officials,who take an oath.What would be the purpose of taking the oath,if not to be held accountable for it!Its the same statutes that our military are held to if caught lying,obstructing justice,harboring,foreign invaders/fugitives from justice,aiding,and abeiting enemies foreign,and domestic,embezzelment(social security)Extortion(forcing others to pay for the indescretions of others)Mis-appropriations of funds,bribery,murder,to treason!none of our leaders will admit this because most all are guilty of abusing it.Either by ignorance of the law,inconvienient to their own elections,and power,or outright intent to destroy1It doesn’t have to be passed into law.It is already constitutional law,to protect the rights,lives,property,and liberties of the american people.If the american people would be outraged enough to enforce this,heads would roll,and a beginning of returning america back to its original intent would occour.but they won’t most are proffitting off the deciet,others are ignorant,and don’t care,as they like the lawlessness of men,and women’s conviences to rule over a nation of laws.a nation of laws,and natures god.endowed by their creator!Even most who do want to return to the intent of our founding fathers.mostly sing to the choir,than instead of uniting the choir to change the system back,they instead go back to their own lives,believing because they got it off their chest,that is good enough i feel better now.but nothing changes!The tea party is the only group that began catching up to how democrats gain power.As the democrat party,is ,and has always been more in your face,and organized then the gop.and the gop is always trying to be like democrats,for convience,campaign donations,and votes.Instead of standing on the principles,they proclaim they stand for.Claiming they need to continue putting god,jesus christ,the constitution,rule of law,and the american people on the back burner.so they can get the che’rivera,fidel castro,mao-se tung,hugo chavez,c.a.i.r.the muslim brotherhood,laraza,black panther,charley manson,timothy leary,dr.kevorkian,dr tiller,and the casey anthony vote.then wonder why america is so screwed up.because most americans,of all stripes have been dumbed down so bad,and for so long.they don’t know which end is up,or are so far gone into political correct compliance.eventhose who claim they want to rid america of political correctness,practice,and enforce it themselves.Its a long way back,i don’t see,us recovering especially when most americans today proclaim they would rather have the evil,ungodly,lawless,self-serving,involuntary servitude,predatorial,and immoral characters of those like bill,and hillary,and the Obama’s as their leaders.Than the character of those who believe,and practice the doctrines,of jesus christ which are free will,moral,sacrificial,honorable,voluntary charitable,godly,and about truth equal justice,live,and liberty for all,who practice,and pursue the same!!!
Jimmy Joe, great comment, I agree on a lot. But the space bar is your friend…
So is the Return key.
Well as legend has it, the cover up ia worse than the crime. Or at least it was when Republicans were in office. Given the strong possibilty of addtional info coming out as time goes on, you still have a president and AG who are not forthcoming. One can always hope, may the plague descend on both of them.
Johnt:
This is one crime that is far more serious than the coverup. This is a coordinated effort involving a significant portion of our government. This is conspiracy, murder, the hijacking of a government. This is not the bugging of one’s political opponent’s office. This is off the scale.
It’s difficult a crime more meriting jail time than this. One assumes there is really no such thing as a law applying to the executive branch any more. Not that this is the first time its come up, just one of the most sordid and dispiriting scandals in a long while.
Conspiracy, murder, and many other crimes as well — including treason. The drug cartels are enemies of our citizenry, enemies of our neighbor the sovereign nation of Mexico, enemies of the United States of America. In my opinion, aiding/abetting/ARMING them is treason.
This is a prelude to a coup. I’d say that was a /little/ more serious than a penny ante burglary.
One thing that definitely makes fast and furious much worse than Watergate, even bofore any coverup is proved. In Watergate nobody died. In fast and furious you have all those dead Mexicans and US border patrol agents.
“Eric Holder telling Congress in sworn testimony that he only learned about Fast and Furious in March 2011…isn’t that pure perjury ?”
It could be technically true if Mr. Holder chose not to be informed of operational details of Project Gunrunner, of which Operation Fast and Furious was a regional implementation.
“Eric Holder telling Congress in sworn testimony that he only learned about Fast and Furious in March 2011…
Well, this should be enough to put the dogs on the scent. If he get’s away we need new dogs.
Question: how could all those US agencies involved sign off on this, and participate, without a whistle-blower blowing?
Question two: isn’t there another possible hidden motive: support the Zetas, who are originally former Mexican SOF operators?
Question three: how could all those US agencies involved sign off on this, and participate, without a whistle-blower blowing?
If any of the supposed hidden motives for the operation is factual, the US doesn’t have a government.
What happened in 2008 — including media conspiracy to suppress information; violations of campaign finance law; voter-registration and election fraud; and the engineered run on the money markets — was a coup, pure and simple.
From the Frankfurt School in the 1930s, to Alinsky “community organizing,” from Bill Ayers and his Weathermen to Obama and his SEIU and ACORN mobsters, the Left has been working for many decades to put one of their own in power. In January 2009, they achieved that longtime goal.
It was a coup.
tanstaafl
When do we start? WND is calling BO’s actions criminal. I have been advocating action on the Constitutional level for almost 3 years.
TREASON
• Violation of allegiance toward one’s country or sovereign, especially the betrayal of one’s country by waging war against it or by consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies.
• A betrayal of trust or confidence.
Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/treason#ixzz1QsLrbdUd
Malfeasance the performance by a public official of an act that is legally unjustified, harmful, or contrary to law; wrongdoing (used especially of an act in violation of a public trust).
Nonfeasance is to ignore and take no indicated action – neglect. Misfeasance is to take inappropriate action or give intentionally incorrect advice. Malfeasance is hostile, aggressive action taken to injure the client’s interests.
Example: A company hires a catering company to provide drinks and food for a retirement party. If the catering company doesn’t show up, it’s considered nonfeasance. If the catering company shows up but only provides drinks (and not the food, which was also paid for), it’s considered misfeasance. If the catering company accepts a bribe from its client’s competitor to undercook the meat, thereby giving those present food poisoning, it’s considered malfeasance
The RICO Act focuses specifically on racketeering, and it allows for the leaders of a syndicate to be tried for the crimes which they ordered others to do or assisted them, closing a perceived loophole that allowed someone who told a man to, for example, murder, to be exempt from the trial because they did not actually do it.
RICO is codified as Chapter 96 of Title 18 of the United States Code, 18 U.S.C. § 1961–1968. While its original use was to prosecute the Mafia as well as others who were actively engaged in organized crime, its application has been more widespread.
I also advocate bringing back public hanging.
meant to repair the road to normalization ( of the political subversion of US) disrupted by the teaparty. Demonize the teaparty, blame the lot of the envious and slothful on the teaparty ( who somehow are synomous with the wealthy) and we’re on the road again…then throw in a little black panther anarchy and James Carville angst for good measure ie. to help seal the deal. Totalitarianism 101.
Don’t worry, folks. The highly independent and doggedly nationalistic Mexican media is all over this story. I mean, they wouldn’t allow anyone, especially the gringos, to violate the sovereignty of the Mexican Republic…chirp…chirp…chirp…hello…anyone there?…
It’s pretty funny when Mexico gets its panties all in a wad over opposition to illegal immigrants coming into the United States.
Given that Mexico’s own laws against people in Mexico illegally are nothing short of draconian. Given that Mexico has erected a fence along its own southern border to keep out the unwanted and unwelcome coming in from central America.
Felipe Calderon being wined and dined at the White House and spitting out Obama’s mantra was nothing short of disgusting.
I think Mexico has been greatly relieved to get a chance, via Gunwalker, to act all indignant and self-righteous and, for a moment anyway, deflect some of the blame for its own absolutely uncontrollable internal carnage on the United States.
A conspiracy too far. The amount of guns walked to Mexico is minuscule compared to the leakage of American weapons in Mexican government arsenals to the cartels plus weapons smuggled in from Eastern Europe and Asia. F&F was designed to exploit this fact to support a claim that “Bob’s Border Gun Superstore” was the reason for the carnage and Bob and all the bitter clingers had to have their guns taken away for the good of the world. Like every else that Obama pushes F&F was an epic fail.
I doubt that the legalization of drugs is an objective. The cartels have a near monopoly. That monopoly exists primarily because drugs are illegal. It is far better, and far more destructive of our society, if drugs stay illegal but the crime is selectively enforced. During the Bush “War on Drugs” most of the effort was to eliminate the domestic production of marijuana. It did not take long for pot to become hard to find. On the other hand cocaine became readily available and dirt cheap, thus creating a whole new market of coke addicts.
Proof of what I am saying can be implied by the Kalifornia election. The election was a complete fraud. The results of the election were engineered to suit the needs of the Marxist, yet legalization of pot failed. It failed because it was supposed to fail. That way it can be put on the ballot again to bring out the hippies as cover for the fraud of the next election. Notice that the pot issue supposedly brought out enough pot heads to get a moonbat like Brown elected, but failed to pass the measure they cam out to vote for?
I think marijuana is still California’s biggest cash crop.
“Pot is, after all, California’s biggest cash crop, responsible for $14 billion a year in sales, dwarfing the state’s second largest agricultural commodity — milk and cream — which brings in $7.3 billion a year, according to the most recent USDA statistics.” (Time magazine, March 2009)
Rivaling Afghanistan for its own biggest cash crop, poppies.
Whadda planet, eh wot ?
I just moved out of the heart of Wine Country, which is just south of the heart of Pot Country. While the USDA figures are probably politicized, they are not far from the truth. Wine probably beats pot in sales, but infrastructure and regulatory costs eats mightily. On the other hand, bribes and other payoffs eat into the pot growers profits. The War on Drugs eliminated many of the small scale growers, but caused the profits to sky rocked for thous large enough and well connected enough to stay in the game. In addition, the Medical marijuana scam provides a safety valve market that is tightly controlled so as to create monopolization, which drives up profits. Pot is easy to get in Kalifornia, but it is unrealistically expensive.
It seams that the Marxist, who love to regulate everything, have figured out to regulate something that is illegal! The last thing that the pot growers want right now is competition. They are doing just fine with the current environment as shown by the USDA figures.
I agree with you, and Mr. Owens, that it’s not a realistic objective, and if The One or any other “progressive” were to publicly come out in favor of it his political career would be over. But my last paragraph points out why this probably doesn’t enter into the equation with this President;
“Obama seeks to remake the United States in his own weird image. And he has absolutely no grasp of consequences. This is simply one more example of his predilection for high-stakes risk-taking in pursuit of his dogmas, and his near-total disconnection from reality.”
The One was sold to the electorate as not just the “Messiah”, or the “Lightworker”, but also as “No Drama Obama”; a skilled political leader who was task-oriented and “reality-based”. We now know that what we really got was a semi-delusional ideologue who is also (if you know the animated show “Daria”) recognizable as a Helen Barksdale Morgandorfer level control freak crossed with a Jake Morgandorfer level drama queen. (Which make Michelle their daughter Quinn, I guess.)
As with the discussion about Occam’s razor on another thread, any analysis which starts with the “we’re both sane men” assumption regarding President Obama and/or his clique’ is probably going to lead to an invalid conclusion. We are dealing with an insular group of academic wannabee radicals, led by a narcissistic egomaniac. Groupthink reigns, and the groupthink is based on far-left dogmas.
To them, the real world is not merely irrelevant- it is an annoyance. Which is also exactly how they regard most of the American people.
cheers
eon
Let’s wait ’til October … justice is coming.
Mr. Owens, were’nt the founders of the Zeta cartel trained at Ft. Bragg by the US military when Bush was President? Trying to get my head around the implications of that makes my head spin. Cloward-Piven it all may be, but when did it start?
I suppose you can prove something more interesting that than some people who are now leaders in the Zetas were in the Mexican army once and then received training that others then in the Mexican army now got?
Ho hum.
What implications? The ones you are making?
You are inserting a special kind of childishness into what is supposed to be an adult discussion.
But, just to help get you and your head to stop spinning: Mexican soldiers did receive training at Ft. Bragg. There were no cartel members or founders of a cartel in attendance.
The decisions people make in their lives are their decisions. If soldiers trained at Ft. Bragg, but later started a cartel, so what? They were not being trained to start or operate a cartel.
Gee…unless you mean… golly… It could all be Bush’s fault. And you asked in such a nice, innocent way… as if you are really just trying to understand it all. Give us all a break from your nonsense.
I would be happy to reply to Tom, but I cant make sense of his post. I had had a vodka or two when I posted that question, apparently Tom had more than one or two. Cheers Tom.
Henry – I wasnt making an implication. I vaguely remembered hearing (on FOX?) that the zetas were US trained and then went rogue. I was simply asking a question. I asked reflexively, without researching any because I assumed with so many adults here someone would answer it instead of engaging in ad hominem attacks.
The training I was asking about took place in the early and mid 90′s, while Clinton was president. Apparently there were lots of news stories about the Zeta founders being trained here. The news stories I saw were old and based on faulty or questionable sources. Looking around at old blogs on stories about the Zetas there seemed to have been rumors to that effect, but according to the US embassy in Mexico, who matched names of known Zetas against the list of Mexicans trained here, there is only one match, and he is not high ranking. Oh well.
As for the ‘Bush’s fault’ nonsense, it is nonsense and I wont say anything more about that.
Horse Pucky!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you believe this, you believe in UFO’s!!!!
It’s pretty hard for this story to get political legs when the media arm of the Democrat Party (the MSM) will do everything it can to bury and marginalize this scandal.
What we need is this story entersthe GOP race.
The MSM will be forced to cover it.
Spot-on.
YES. Republican candidates need to change the subject if necessary, contort Chris Matthews’s hostile questions to wedge in Op F&F, and use it to exemplify all the vices of this government. Liberals in the audience will be asking “What? What’s that? What’s she talking about? Operation Fast and Furious? Is that a Vin Diesel movie? Is she being stupid again? When is Rachel Maddow going to tell us about this?”
Which one of them is even paying attention to this criminal conspiracy? Which one will bring it up? I’ve got my vote in my tight little fist.
Newt can’t do all the media slapping by himself.
The candidates don’t have to answer the smarmy questions they are asked, either. When Brian Williams asks whether Perry can sleep at night, that would seem like a perfect time to talk about how poorly he sleeps with the Obama administration putting all those guns into the hands of vicious murderers.
Glad you raised the issue of mainstream media indifference to this entire travesty, Henry. As a NRA life member whose stock answer to the question “how many guns do you own” is “more than I need and less than I want”, I should expect that reading about this mess would make my blood boil. But it doesn’t. And that’s because I realize where this story is going and how it will impact the Obama administration. The answer is nowhere and not at all. Any raising of this story by a GOP hopeful will result in that individual being painted as a “conspiracy nut” of the first order. “Operation Fast and Furious” and “Gunwalker” are nothing more than baseless anti-administration stories making the rounds on certain far-right websites. At least that is the MSM pitch and that is how the public will be conditioned to accept it. That’s the reality of the situation so why get worked up over it?
This administration with its cadre of radicals inspires suspicion of conspiracy at every turn, the latest of which concerns the FCC power play to push through the Lightsquared project–a national wireless network upgrade– that would jeopardize GPS military functions, according to the testimony of General Shelton (who was later approached to alter his testimony to reflect that the problems could be mitigated). That kind of power in the hands of the Obama FCC has to scare the bejeezus out of any conspiracy theorist. And correct me if I’m wrong, but the Lightsquared project would be funded in Obama’s new “PASS THE BILL” bill.
I am growing in my belief that Obama is the very best thing that could ever have happened to our country. If Cloward-Piven was the plan all along, thank God their chosen leader turned out to be a transparent moron. The radical left has been exposed, Cloward-Piven revealed thanks to great Americans like Glenn Beck. If we can survive this four years, with their entire game plan exposed, it will be generations before these communists have a shot at dog catcher. My fear is that they know it, I fear the damage done, and damage pending between now and November 2012. Stay vigilant, America!
Does it bother PJM readers, that Obama doesn’t seem to be a man very worried about his reelection, or is it just me? Is something much more nefarious afoot and scheduled to happen before November 2012?
I agree.
Now. Consider what you said in the context of DOJ’s hiring practices, as detailed elsewhere on PJM. Hardcore leftists — promoters of statism — staffing the DOJ awaits the incoming reformers armed with a mandate to interdict the regulatory State.
I believe the real battles lie in the future as the entrenched statists in the bureaucracy fight to the death to defend their ideology, the ideology whose result is the mess we are in, that same mess which the reformers will have been sent to “fix”. This is essentially what Michele Bachmann has hinted about, when she speaks of the difficulty of ending Obamacare, how it must be pulled up by the root to be gotten rid of. This is a specific instance of the broader problem highlighted by the DOJ’s new hires,
Personally, I’d like to hear each candidate’s position on the issue and their plans to address the problem. I think it would be useful information and a very useful discussion for the education of the electorate. I think it would help defang the media arm of the opposition by exposing the discussion to daylight.
Yes, the articles about DOJ stuffing that agency with hard core leftists has raised a red flag. I believe Obama is going to use the DOJ to challenge the 2012 election results in every way possible, in order to try and steal the election.
I hope you are right, but color me skeptical.
People still believe that the Rosenbergs were innocent. Most people have never even heard of them. How many people know who David Whittaker Chambers was?
Just because some people see the light does not mean that millions of people have. Many people are far too invested, emotionally or otherwise to wise up. Even if they do see this administration and the political left for what it is, all lessons may be lost in less than twenty years.
The universities and the media have been lost. The Internet gives me hope. Sometimes talk radio is a good outlet too. Glen Beck is too erratic and juvenile for my tastes. The Internet, however, provides an alternative media and new avenues for higher education and continuing education. It also allows great communication potential. We have to be wary of Internet regulation.
One would think so after the debacle of the Ozero regime and the accompanying chaos.
But you have to remember most dem votes are bought and paid for(with our money). Until that changes we have to be on guard of losing our country.
Also most dems will ignore the facts,dismiss unsavory theories and shift blame to a mysterious conspiracy theory.
Dems prefer to live in an altered reality of their self-imagined hero status.They will go so far as to present Obama and his tsars as white hat wearing cowboys riding to the border with good ole American guns to save helpless border refugees and U.S. citizens from the evil bad men.
By promoting drug importation and increased addiction rates among the most susceptible target victims (domestic minorities) while fomenting foreign competition for the entry level jobs these minorities might expect as their escape hatch, Obama and his ilk have proven themselves to be the worst and least friendliest racists since Hitler. To be such an unrehabilitated racist against black minorities (exposing Obama to be at least one half a racial traitor though I read he is only 8% black) in a pluralistic society like ours in order to violate and illegally overturn the Second Amendment (after taking an oath to uphold the Constitution and all its Amendments) renders Obama and Holder as two of the worst racial traitors and American traitors and criminals I have ever read about. They certainly render Benedict Arnold (pre-marriage) to be one of the greatest patriots we ever had, which he certainly was until he turned. I can understand the Italian Mafia to want to import drugs to make money. They were criminals and they thought the Blacks were animals in comparison to their “Families.” But Obama, Obama, Obama and the Chicago Mafia? For money and power? Obama, We hardly know ye.
Not sure I’m going to spend much time splitting hairs on whether this was strategic or disorganized criminal behavior, or whether having Obama gone is going to make a bigger difference than getting rid of Holder. 490 days and we get our country back.
“To the best of my knowledge, no previous U.S. administration has ever destabilized the government of a putatively friendly foreign power purely for domestic political gain.”
Hmm, President Diem, South Vietnam, by JFK, otherwise known as the “Camelot” presidency–a term, I believe, that was coined during the LBJ presidency.
The Diem coup d’etat was intended to replace a leader perceived as weak and possibly corrupt with one who, while probably at least as corrupt, was more likely to be amenable to the JFK administration’s policies regarding using South Vietnam as a “firebreak” against the spread of Communism in Asia.
While this might have gotten JFK some brownie points with moderates, conservatives, and traditional liberals, it was not primarily intended to affect his control of domestic affairs. Whatever his other faults (and he had more than a few), John Kennedy made foreign policy decisions based mostly on their effect on… our foreign policy. Unlike LBJ, who tried to run the war that resulted based on what the WaPo and NYT said polled well, while simultaneously trying to convince the Chinese and Russian regimes’ that he was just as willing to emulate Bruchmuller at Verdun in Southeast Asia as they were. (“War of Attrition, Theory of.”)
Also, I would point out that in spite of advisors (starting in the Eisenhower Administration), covert air support (mostly with leftover A-26s from Korea), and naval support (that wasn’t talked about until the Gulf of Tonkin incident), Vietnam was on nobody’s radar domestically while JFK was President. So, it had no effect on U.S. domestic policy, or politics, one way or another.
There really is no previous comparable case in U.S. history. The nearest thing to it, domestically, is the reverse- Wilson and FDR trying to keep us out of both World Wars until two events made it impossible; namely the Zimmermann telegram and Pearl Harbor.
cheers
eon
What an excellent analogy. We have to understand that Cloward Piven strategies are a huge part of the current Regime, I mean Administration.
If the Cloward-Piven theory about the walked guns is true it might also explain why the DOJ took the extraordinary step of suing the state of Arizona over its attempt to enforce the law (that would be Federal law) regarding illegal aliens. It would also explain the spectacle of O standing placidly by as the Mexican president criticized Arizona for it. In the context of this allegation merely saying that Obama is the worst president ever would actually be showing him a great kindness in that he is actually something far worse.
Oh, much, MUCH worse.
The man is a monster. And I get so frustrated that so many of our fellow Americans were too obtuse to see it back in ’08.
Friendship with Jeremiah “God d*mn Amerikkka” Wright was tip-off no. 1.
Friendship and co-directorship with Bill Ayers, the unrepentant wanna-be mass-murderer, was tip-off no. 2.
Avid, repeated, very vocal support in the Illinois Senate for murder of already-born babies was tip-off no. 3.
No.3 especially shows that we are dealing with a practically inhuman, cold-hearted monster who has no normal empathy or fellow-feeling for other human beings. The lives of individuals are not an ontological reality for him. To him, we are no more than ants.
Why is there a need to complicate simple issues…
Follow the money. Follow it into DEA and CIA and ATF employees’s accounts. Follow it into the Banking systems of Wachovia and Wells Fargo that launder cartel drug profits. Follow those same profits to NYSE and COMEX markets.
Follow it into the presidential candidate and presidential accounts and campaigns. Follow it into the bank of England and Swiss accounts belonging to European elites and royalty.
But most importantly, pull the wool off your own eyes, its frighteningly ignorant.
Of the possible reasons for the gunwalking program, the only one that really does not make any sense is the reason given by the administration. Once they let the guns walk, what were they going to do? There was no ability to follow the guns in Mexico.
In 2012 the Tea Party leaders can alter this mess this country is in but you must decide where you stand. If you are under the impression it doesn’t impinge on the workplace, you are utterly mistaken. Every day American workers from the lowest income, with limited education and even higher individuals on the career ladder, are being “Pink Slipped” so business owners can replace them with either illegal workers or semi-skilled workers. These persons enter America with visas, fraudulently gained from dishonest attorneys and the recruited by middle man who go to foreign nations. These recruiters are looking for recipients who they can hire for less wages, no health care or benefits. Lower wage earners of every race are not the first to feel this abuse in America, as it carries a wide spectrum of occupations from janitorial staff, factory workers to management positions.
A good start to stop this unjust antagonism is Lamar Smith’s Rep. Lamar Smith R-TX) “The Legal Workforce Act” (H.R. 2885) would achieve a powerful deterrent against dishonest business owners, who will feel the full prosecution of the law. Just type into Google any of these keywords and then understand the consequences of hiring illegal aliens. If illegal nationals are skewered from stealing jobs from Americans, then there is no magnet to draw them from other countries or from across our borders. Every new tool will assist ICE in clearing out millions of foreign nationals, including the E-Verification for businesses; Secure Communities, determining who a person has been apprehended by local police; 287 G, a Training program on immigration regulations and the complete double border fence construction as planned by the Bush 2006 Secure Fence Act.
So why are the open borders scared of Chairman Smith’s bill, with his main sponsor Peter King (R-NY)? Because they realize it will take away their leverage for the passage of another disastrous amnesty which has plagued us like the one in 1986. CHAIN MIGRATION was the culmination of the Ronald Reagan Amnesty, pouring millions of family members into our country.
This Congresswomen opening statement on Thursday, Linda Sanchez described E-Verify as broken. “The system is riddled with errors and doesn’t work. It doesn’t flag the workers it’s supposed to flag, and it snags too many citizens and legal workers in its net. The job market is tough enough. It makes no sense for Congress to pass a law that makes it more difficult for legal workers to find work.” This er, Lady doesn’t explain that potential hires who are flagged, have the capability to straighten their immigration status out by stopping-off at the local Social Security office.
For the illegal aliens already working, there is an effective answer to this issue as well. If you are suspicious that your competition is using an illegal aliens, Etc, Contractors in Construction, assembling products or any manual work, contact the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division at 1-866-DHS-2ICE (866-347-2423). According to one of our members of NumbersUSA who spoke with an ICE agent, “the mere ‘suspicion’ that a company’s employees are illegal aliens is all that is necessary to make the call to commence an investigation.” He added, “Law enforcement organizations cannot, and do not, expect the public to be experts in determining whether someone is committing a crime, so they provide a safe harbor approach to informing.”
Potential President Herman Cain is a Tea Party member and deserves a chance to prove his worth. Just as with Rep. Michele Bachmann he has a high grade on his immigration stance, recognizing that another amnesty would cripple this country. He is unlike most of the others including Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, who would give taxpayer money to pay for tuition for the children of illegal aliens and who would approve of yet another mass amnesty.
If you’re interested where your taxes are swallowed up, such as paying for the intentional ingress of pregnant women coming here as economic welfare recipients numbering 300.000 annually or the habitual criminals, the growing numbers of drunken aliens slaughtering citizens on our highways and then fleeing, you can find this information at American Patrol. Other websites for study on illegal alien costs are available at NumbersUSA and thousands of grass root pro-sovereignty groups. Knowing the corruption amongst your politicians is to be found at Judicial Watch. Even your politicians can be reached at the Washington switchboard at 202-224-3121.
If you feel strongly about Fast and Furious, go to FOX News – click on presidential debate – click questions – search fast and furious – ask a question or vote for a favorite.
The Left may hope to establish a socialist government where a minority of taxpayers is enslaved via our tax code to support the majority but they are mistaken if they think we will go quietly into bondage. We have organization, communication, and weapons. We will NOT be forced into paying for their vision of the socialist welfare state.
All I know is what I read in the papers, and a sites like this, but the idea that “fast and furious ” is about gun control in this country seems a bit far fetched and somewhat self preoccupied by the second amendment people, who do after all inhabit a much larger world. It ignores, for example, the very good and reliable rule that to understand political crime one should “follow the money”. It ignores also the Obama administration’s known affinity for Latin American leftists.
First: money. The Mexican drug cartels are swimming in it like Scrooge McDuck. Political machines on this side of the border like money. Money equals power in this country. The drug cartels like guns. In Mexico where the cartels are in a hot war with each other AND with the government, guns equal power. So in the short run why shouldn’t it be about money and power? Is there a back channel cummunications corridor with the Sinaloa cartel? Is there a big pile of money somewhere on this side of the border, just waiting to be used in, say, an election? Just asking.
Leftists: President Calderon, who started a war with the cartels, is a rightist, a free trader, a catholoic and a conservative. He narrowly defeated a center left, pro labor candidate, Lopez Obrador, in a disputed vote count in 2006. The Obama administration never saw a leftist it didn’t love. It cuddled up to Hugo Chavez and bent over backward in a losing effort to prop up Zelaya in Honduras. To undermine Calderon by making sure he is outgunned in his war with the cartels, and set Mexico up for a lurch to the left sounds like a worthy long term goal for the crowd in the White house. Just speculating.
Operation Fast and Furious, aka the “Gunwalker” Scandal, should bring down the Obama government, and Obama, Holder and Napolitano with it. I am old-enough to recall Watergate quite well, and as bad as that sorry affair was, it pales next to “Fast and Furious.” For starters, there were no fatalities due to Watergate, at least none of which I am aware. There have been several deaths in Mexico, as well as at least one U.S. death, directly tied to Gunwalker. That should be grounds for charging Obama, Holder and Napolitano with manslaughter or even murder, except for the fact that presidents can’t be charged with a crime, excepy by Congress. One more reason chief executives should not be above the law. Obama et al. are also liable for prosecution under international law, as they have interfered in the affairs of a sovereign nation – Mexico.
Add this crime to an already-lengthening list of those committed by the Obama regime, and it quickly becomes apparent that our govt. – certainly in large part – is a criminal enterprise. This voter has been waiting for Congress to take action, but so far — nothing. Representative Issa had better get moving…
Could we please stop with the PC genuflecting at the stupid liberal altar? Watergate was nothing… nothing! LBJ did worse crap all day long, and so did everyone else. The left has made you all stupid with this crap. It was the first part of the communist takeover strategy. Nixon was a jerk and no conservative, but to make him equal to Torquemada or Mao took the leftwing media. It was not by accident, but was the result of a truly nasty propaganda battle, and you had better learn this lesson well, because it’s going to be a lot worse this time.
The Nixon Silent Majority coalition of middle class, religious conservatives, while not as true to conservatism as the Tea Party, blew McGovern completely away. The Dems even held a fundraising telethon on TV to SAVE the Democratic, two-party system. When that didn’t work, two media commies on the Post (we all know who they were, and are), bribed, distorted, lied, cheated, and did whatever was necessary to dig up the required dirt, which they knew had to be there, because it’s always there! If one cares to look. It’s government, and in those days, finding stuff out wasn’t hard, because off the record meant that. Now, not so much. Thank you, Mr. Bernstein.
Nixon, being a very insecure guy, made a mountain out of a molehill his own self (with the help of the worst assortment of self-serving, paranoid weenies ever assembled, until now), but let’s not underestimate the role of the media, fresh from stopping the Vietnam War, using the drip…drip…drip method, which somehow they no longer have the time to do. It took them years, and they even expanded the news shows to an hour and more, to cover it, and PBS made it their entire cause. How much destruction to our way of life flows directly back to those few years of absolute Democrat control which this enabled? We stopped spying, and elected Carter. You’d think we’d have learned since. And do you think it a coincidence that they try the same things with every Republican target. It works. Nixon proved it.
At the time, the Continental newspapers thought us quite amusingly provincial. How quaint! They actually expect the President to behave as other men? Reagan was right. Liberals know so much which is simply not true. Why do so many of us unquestioningly repeat their lies and filth? When the normally well-reasoned denizens of PJ comments don’t even understand the truth, what the heck chance do we have? Please think before you so willingly parrot leftist talking points, and question ALL of it.
Because, yes, they do just make it up as they go along, and say whatever needs to be said. Yes, we can thank Obama for being far too crude with it. Rule one: they always lie. Rule two: see rule one. Rule three: stop believing them.
Anyway, the likely involvement of the State Department should kill speculation about Hillary primarying Obama. She’ll be in the back seat when this scandal sends the Odministration off a cliff in 2012.
Or 2013 if we wins the election.
i also believe there is a more sinister leg of gunwalker, that being armed insurgents to help destabilize the state governments of obama opponents, such as texas, new mexico and arizona. obama doesn’t care who he employs to gain his agenda, just that his agenda succeeds. when he determines not enough u s citizens agree with efforts, he will appeal to the world citizenry for help. he does not care what nationality you are, as long as you love him and do his bidding. the payoff will come later from redistributed taxpayer slushfunds.
Thank you for saying what I’ve long thought. The commies, from Obama on down, have shown they have no mercy on their political enemies. DOJ sues Arizona, EPA sues Texas, Louisiana gets deliberately hamstrung after the BP Deepwater Horizon accident (just ask Bobby Jindal). There’s no doubt in my mind that the animus against “red states” is a very personal thing with Obama and Holder and others. Yes, I do believe they want to see AZ, TX and other states suffer.
Cloward-Piven is one of the meditations that animates the Obamanoid True Believer, but I think we should beware of giving their deviousness too much credit. They are organized and without shame, but they are not that smart. All these ideas they have draped themselves in; the dogma; the identify; all these things were necessary props.
Amidst the brazen actions they have taken, not one idea is theirs. They have clever and devious goals, ornate tactical orchestrations, and vigorous near-fanatic devotion to the cause — but they have no ideas.
They would know a cardinal idea if it walked up in broad daylight and bit them in the ass. They are opportunists, not thinkers. They are schemers, not thinkers.
What else explains the mess they have made of the last three years?
This crowd is driven by vanity. This crowd is driven by the affect of academic and institutional credentials. This crowd is driven by europhile affirmations.
The US is the only nation of substance that has not signed-on to the UN anti-gun citizen disarmament “treaty” and global initiative. The US is the only nation of substance that does not have a “political party” operating as the official agent and member of The Socialist International. The placeholder institution for the SI is the Democratic Socialists of America. “The New Party” was the first attempt to create a political organ of the SI in the USA. That crashed. So they hijacked the The Democratic Party from the Truman Democrats and now it operates as the offical agent of the SI in the USA — a Jackass in lederhosen and Greek beret.
There is no bigger golden ring in merry-go-round circus world of these globo-lite elitists than to successfully supplicate the citizens of the United States and our 2nd Amendment rights to their foreign peers, as their supplication for rights to peerage to be bestowed upon them for rendering the nation surrendered to the UN citizen disarmament treaty. In their world, this would be bagging the biggest of the big game.
Packing the US southern border with desperate refugees fits the “clever patterns” of these leftist utopian hacks. It creates tactical advantage by making amnesty/citizenship “practical” — just as practical as suspending the 2nd Amendment — now if they could only trigger a border war or civil uprising on one or both sides… with that, they could write the new rules of the game.
Such would not only set the stage for international help by means of UN “police presence” along our southern border; it would trigger a national calamity; the suspension of reason in ways that logically invites the suspension of law.
The are a clever lot. They are opportunists. If they can trigger profound crises and not get caught causing it, they are free to exploit it opportunistically.
That’s what they are good at — smack a hornet’s nest when nobody’s looking, kick over a few baby carriages as parents are initially swatting themselves, then begin yelling “The bees are attacking the baby carriages!!”.
That’s when the pickpocketing begins and the handbags, stolen.This is how this crowd works.
F&F/GW just had to get going; just had to get all F’d up leaving others to be blamed. Just throw lots of sparks and start lots of fires, calamity and chaos.
And then, stage right, enters the credentialed condescenti with their fatal conceit, striking poses of maturity and affects of grace under fire.
What phonies they all are; glorified pickpockets, con artists and gypsies with Gulfstreams and credentials from the finest of our most important institutions — themselves so corrupt they issue the equivalent of forgeries when compared to the quality of scholarship and character such credentials represented 60 years ago.
They are without a center, this bunch. They are more dangerous than we appreciate. It is not that they have terrible agendas, but that they have no sense, no center and a seemingly endless reserve of malignant vanity.
Pray for them. Our fate is in their hands and they are not fit to be our stewards.
My biggest concern is Whether or not Rick Perry,Carl Rove, Fox News et all are part of the deal. If they are just the ying to the Democrats yang we are all screwed.
Leaving aside the question of whether she could ever be elected Pres., I have to say that the one and ONLY person in the public arena whom I trust to not sell us out or be bought off is Gov. Sarah Palin.
What caused the “Gunwalker” agenda to backfire?
Delia, Gunwalker is backfiring on the Administration because most of the street level ATF agents are basically American cops. I’m not going to say that all of us are perfect, there are a whole slew that should have their badges and guns shoved up their behinds. Most of us, though, pinned on the sheild or star because we wanted the bad guys to lose and children to sleep safe in their beds.
The Obama gang do not conceive of honest people, seein’ as how they don’t hang out with us and consider us chumps. It was only a matter of time before enough ATF Agents thought more of their duty than their pensions and squawked.
“What caused the “Gunwalker” agenda to backfire?”
I don’t think it did backfire – it’s working. Mr. Owens explained beautifully what conspiracy is at work, and even some readers here don’t get it. (Ie. that the government wants citizens mad at… the government.)
The general public will NEVER understand that the agents wanted to get caught. No matter how patiently you explain it, the only scenario they can grasp is that some government agents smuggled guns with a profit motive.
Maybe Delia means what caused the supposed agenda to backfire? BATF agent John Dodson squawked to CBS News after Brian Terry died.
Before the 2010 election, there were more reasons for a whistleb;ower to keep quiet. Not that he or she might have been playing the political odds, so much as honest confusion in regards to what sort of transformation was actually in play.
But the 2010 election let everybody know that old-time America had only been sleeping, and was in fact not dead. And this realization must certainly have encouraged many people (already privately anti-Obama and anti his unmasked new world order) within the agencies to begin stepping forward and –if not going full public, threatening to do so –and thus applying this new pressure up the line. Note the many ongoing investigations of the 2008 financial meltdown that could not seem to break ice until the so-called Tea Party Election.
IOW, a Democratic victory in 2010, holding the House, and in many cases (including perhaps the whistleblowers on Fast/Furious) there would have been every reason to just shut up and watch the weathervane turn totalitarian.
IOW, a Democratic victory in 2010, and a good decent American cop could have seemingly rightfully said to himself, ‘hell, it’s what the American people want‘. He would have been wrong in that view of course, but then, that is the fact, the what ‘is’ is, of the fundamentally corrupting nature of the ancient human archetype we have known throughout history and are seeing again in the people of the Obama administration.
As far as what the administration was (is) up to, i encourage everyone to look into Eric Holder as the consigliare of an operation in Colombia that is well-covered on the internet; you can drop right into it by searching [ eric holder banana massacres ]. Like Fast/furious, the tactical op was to arm both sides of an existing –but ginned-up via weapons smuggling –conflict and in playing off all sides thereby taking control the local geography and area authority and commerce. In the older case, Chiquita Banana took the place now in the current case occupied by none other than the same Eric Holder but this time representing not Chiquita and FARC but the DOJ and the US Government.
The case is still in court, the residues of it, anyway. The latest action is in Miami courts and probably in your ‘news’ aggregator in addition to the web.
Relative to that, note that it was December 2006, after Pelosi/Reid had won congress, that the violence suddenly ramped and made the Border War out of a four decades-old and comparatively far lower-key border problem of ‘wets’ and ‘dope’.
This plot was so idiotic that it could have blown up a dozen different ways. The biggest flaw was that it depended on government employees who would not profit by the illegal activity keeping their mouths shut. Loyalty to a pension or the kids’ college fund only goes so far.
Another flaw was that they required the gun dealers to be willing to go to prison instead of talk. Why on earth would they keep silent? These are some shrewd people with a strong streak of paranoia (due to previous experience with the ATFE) and in an era of digital recorders and cameras, and the internet.
[E]ons first two points make imminent sense, but to think that an administration that nannies you to the point of trying to control your diet (among other things) would ever be interested in legalizing drugs is utterly unlikely. The thing about our ‘aristocracy’ is that they can get whatever they want, legal or not, so why should they bother to make the same “perks” available to the general public? This is the hypocrisy inherent in the liberal agenda, “do as I say not as I do, it’s for your own good”.
True, but by the same token one of the demands of the far left (Obama’s base) going back to when I was in grade school (hint; the big news was the Tet offensive) has been legalization of “harmless recreational drugs” like marijuana, hashish, and even heroin and cocaine. Their motto being “I am more enlightened than you, so what I put in my body to further expand my already superior consciousness is none of your business”. With a side order of “but what you put in your body is my business, because I am more enlightened”.
Some of the more extreme “true believers” have demanded taxpayer funding of such drugs for those they regard as “truly good, sensitive, and caring people”- those they see when they look in a mirror. And all of the above expected Obama and the Democratic-controlled Cngress to deliver at least legalization, if not funding under ObamaCare.
Yes, it is a double standard. In other words, the “progressive” Standard Operating Procedure.
cheers
eon
“eon”, I enjoy your take on this issue. I think that you make a considerable contribution to the story. But are you sure that you aren’t working too hard at this? The whole thing seems rather simple to me. The idea behind “Fast and Furious” and the related activities was simply to get guns out of American gun stores and into the hands of the worst kind of criminals then make a big stink about it via the media lapdogs so as to set the stage for draconian gun laws. The media had already started down that path before the whistleblowers emerged and the whole mess went out of control. I find it hard to believe that this is any more complicated than that. Nothing seems to piss off my liberal friends more than the realization that I can walk into a gun store and purchase a firearm without having to have the government’s permission to do so. They are not the least bit concerned that I am going to do something harmful with the firearm. They simply can’t stand the notion that I, as an individual, can do something without some rigid contolling authority. Nothing would solidify the liberal voting base more than the “obviously necessary” (as exemplified by the horrible news stories of guns being sold by American gun stores to Mexican criminals) action of government to break the back of the NRA and Americans access to firearms. What a hero Obama would be if he could accomplsh that! I think it’s as simple as that.
True, and as you say overthinking the situation can lead to erroneous assumptions and even more erroneous conclusions.
Which is why this article, and thread, surprised the ever-loving H**l out of me. I’m not used to being even the first poster, let alone the subject of the article. (Yipe!, as Wile E. Coyote would say.
)
I simply put it out on the principle of, it sounds ridiculous, but it is one of the few explanations that can account for the existence of an “operation” roughly equivalent in scope (and expense) to Watergate and Iran-Contra combined. And it would be in keeping with the known dogmas of the “actors”.
If all The One wanted to do was have an excuse to reinstitute the AWB, create a “one gun a month” law, etc., he could have done that, with Congress’ support, in his first two years. Or anytime, by Executive Order, which is how Bush 41 single-handedly created thumbhole stocks on semi-automatic rifles. (As Jeff Cooper observed, “Silly laws promote transparent evasions”.
If he wanted “incidents” to justify even more restrictive laws, “walking” guns to gangs in American cities would make a lot more sense from a purely practical standpoint.
In short, why Mexico- at all?
Then again, it may just be a delusional worldview at work. (His, not mine; my delusions are more along the lines of thinking most modern SF movies aren’t worth bothering to see.)
In a lot of ways, Obama seems to resemble his erstwhile buddy, Hugo Chavez’, mostly in that half the time, his actions seem motivated by his “gut”, which is often hard to distinguish from delusions of grandeur or plain craziness if you’re watching from the sidelines. I don’t insist on always knowing what the President of the United States is doing; but I’d prefer to believe that he has at least some vague idea himself.
For that matter, the objective may have been to try to make The One’s claim that “90% of all guns used in violent crimes in Mexico come from the U.S.” a reality.
Think about it. Which is more likely;
1. Obama admitting he is wrong about something, or
2. Obama thinking, “Hey, I’m the President. Anything I say goes. All I have to do is up the number of guns going south, and everybody has to admit I’m right. Who’s running ATF right now?”
The only thing more dangerous than a delusional fantasist, is a delusional fantasist with power- and a large number of government officials on his speed-dial.
cheers
eon
Cloward-Piven is one of the meditations that animates the Obamanoid True Believer, but I think we should beware of giving their deviousness too much credit. They are organized and without shame, but they are not that smart. All these ideas they have draped themselves in; the dogma; the identify; all these things were necessary props.
Amidst the brazen actions they have taken, not one idea is theirs. They have clever and devious goals, ornate tactical orchestrations, and vigorous near-fanatic devotion to the cause — but they have no ideas.
They wouldn’t know a cardinal idea if it walked up in broad daylight and bit them in the ass. They are opportunists, not thinkers. They are schemers, not thinkers.
What else explains the mess they have made of the last three years?
This crowd is driven by vanity. This crowd is driven by the affect of academic and institutional credentials. This crowd is driven by europhile affirmations.
The US is the only nation of substance that has not signed-on to the UN anti-gun citizen disarmament “treaty” and global initiative. The US is the only nation of substance that does not have a “political party” operating as the official agent and member of The Socialist International. The placeholder institution for the SI is the Democratic Socialists of America. “The New Party” was the first attempt to create a political organ of the SI in the USA. That crashed. So they hijacked the The Democratic Party from the Truman Democrats and now it operates as the official agent of the SI in the USA — a Jackass in lederhosen and Greek beret.
There is no bigger golden ring in merry-go-round circus world of these globo-lite elitists than to successfully supplicate the citizens of the United States and our 2nd Amendment rights to their foreign peers, as their supplication for rights to peerage to be bestowed upon them for rendering the nation surrendered to the UN citizen disarmament treaty. In their world, this would be bagging the biggest of the big game.
Packing the US southern border with desperate refugees fits the “clever patterns” of these leftist utopian hacks. It creates tactical advantage by making amnesty/citizenship “practical” — just as practical as suspending the 2nd Amendment — now if they could only trigger a border war or civil uprising on one or both sides… with that, they could write the new rules of the game.
Such would not only set the stage for international help by means of UN “police presence” along our southern border; it would trigger a national calamity; the suspension of reason in ways that logically invites the suspension of law.
The are a clever lot. They are opportunists. If they can trigger profound crises and not get caught causing it, they are free to exploit it opportunistically.
That’s what they are good at — smack a hornet’s nest when nobody’s looking, kick over a few baby carriages as parents are initially swatting themselves, then begin yelling “The bees are attacking the baby carriages!!”. That’s when the pickpocketing begins and the handbags, stolen.This is how this crowd works.
F&F/GW just had to get going; just had to get all F’d up leaving others to be blamed. Just throw lots of sparks and start lots of fires, calamity and chaos.
And then, stage right, enters the credentialed condescenti with their fatal conceit, striking poses of maturity and affects of grace under fire.
What phonies they all are; glorified pickpockets, con artists and gypsies with Gulfstreams and credentials from the finest of our most important institutions — themselves so corrupt they issue the equivalent of forgeries when compared to the quality of scholarship and character such credentials represented 60 years ago.
They are without a center, this bunch. They are more dangerous than we appreciate. It is not that they have terrible agendas, but that they have no sense, no center and a seemingly endless reserve of malignant vanity.
Pray for them. Our fate is in their hands and they are not fit to be our stewards.
Excellent comment, willem.
Yeah, I gotta say, “That’s some mighty nutshell.”
Can I play on your side?
Please?
Would also explain why admin’s legitimate governance has a “phoned in” feel to it.
No. 3 makes no sense whatsoever. Marijuana, which is one of the biggest cash cows for the cartels, is essentially worthless. It is a plant that anyone can grow in his home with rather little expense and effort. Should the day ever come when the criminal insanity called the drug war ends, the price of marijuana would drop like a rock, as would heroin (opium) and cocain prices. The only reason why these substances are so expensive is prohibition.
It always makes me laugh when i see so-called “small government conservatives” go all statist over ‘teh evil drugs’, all the while whining about how government wants to take their guns. Don’t you sheep realize that the drug war has for at least the last 30 years been the no. 1 cause and justification for the infringement of your constitutional rights? The right to keep and bear arms in particular, but the 4th amendment is also nearly dead.
Not to mention that it has turned your local police departments into paramilitary organisations who care more about the money they get from the feds than protecting the people in their community. It has turned the US into a country where badly trained masked police with an itchy trigger finger get to play soldier(without, of course, taking a fraction of the risks real soldiers take), forcibly enter the homes of nonviolent ‘criminals’ in the middle of the night, killing people (even children) and pets with impunity.
And never mind the cost of a huge bureaucracy to ‘fight’ this stupid, stupid war on plants. A bureaucracy that by now lives in a symbiotic relationship with the cartels it ostensibly opposes and a bureaucracy that will fight tooth and nail to keep prohibition firmly in place. It has after all been very profitable for both sides.
Spot on. Show me one instance in the history of the world where prohibition has worked. One. And even if you show me one, there are many others where it failed and only allowed the rise of organized crime.
You are correct in saying that legalization becomes ever more unlikely. There are too many vested interests. The DEA will never willing allow itself to be disbanded. The cartels can funnel too much money into politicians hands to keep drugs illegal. In a society where progressives want to ban fries from Happy Meals, does anyone seriously think that they would allow control of drugs to slip through their hands?
The “War on Drugs” has been a colossal failure. It has cost billions and the cost clearly involves the ongoing erosion of civil liberties. It should have ended years ago and the jack-booted DEA officers sent to become prison guards or some other occupation befitting their Gestapo mentality.
Exactly! Legalizing drugs in this country would utterly destroy criminal empires all around the world. It appears we have learned nothing from our experiment with Prohibition. By the way…the Prohibition of alcohol for 13 years was (and remains) the ONLY constitutional prohibition of a substance in our nation’s history. Prohibition made criminals wealthy and powerful, it corrupted cops, it punished otherwise law abiding citizens and most importantly…it did not affect nationwide use of alcohol one bit. There is a boatload of money in keeping drugs illegal. Both the “good guys” and the “bad guys” recognize this and the politicians love drug prohibition as it allows them to posture from a “moral” high ground.
All the pot that California produces (or probably could produce) is insufficient to meet the demand already is existence in the rest of the country. Though it is technically illegal, apparently millions of Americans still consume it. Obviously, just like the case with alcohol during Prohibition, making it illegal is not much of a deterrent. You can follow the rest of the logical argument – supply and demand, blah, blah, blah.
My point is, if we legalized pot tomorrow there might be a transient spike in usage (as was the case at the end of Prohibition), but within a year or two there would be almost the same number of pot smokers as there are now. The difference would be that they wouldn’t be criminals, the money spent to procure the pot could be taxed and wouldn’t end up in Mexico and the industry created (hey…jobs!) could be regulated.
The same could be said of booze, yet we had prohibition and the Roaring Twenties.
This is moronic. The last thing the drug cartels want to see is the legalization of recreational drugs. American pharmaceuticals manufacturers and distributors would drive them out of business in months, if not weeks.
Do please remember that the major opponents of the repeal of alcohol Prohibition were the underworld gangs that had grown wealthy selling outlawed liquor to bibulous Americans.
Read the post you are criticizing, sir. It says nothing about the cartels wishing for legalization. Ever heard of Rosanne Rosannadanna? Maybe it was a different Gilda Radner character. Someone will set me straight, too.
Like Solendra and other tormenting scandals, I have zero expectations that this will negatively hit Obama / administration. Quite the opposite, they are expert at convincing an ever-dumber public that this was all the fault of the NRA, the right and is an act of racism; it will vaporize, save the new gun controls.
It’s all water under the bride; it’s too late. Massive immigration (legal and illegal) is what the political elites have wanted for some time. They are literally replacing the American people with a more “pliable”, 3rd world, foreign born and yes, more grateful, population.
It’s the immigration, stoopid.
I think we’re overstating our case here. Let’s face it; criminal gangsters are going to get the guns they need regardless of U.S. policy. Maybe it’s a little more convenient to get them from the U.S. than from El Salvadore or Iran, but it’s not going to make that much difference one way or another to Mexico or to our fight against the drug cartels.
But an increase in the number of cops killed by guns smuggled from America _might_ build support for new gun bans, so I think this was the main motivation.
The cartels can get the same kinds of guns much, much cheaper from China than from U.S. border-state gun stores. They also get ‘em cheap smuggled in from Central America. Plus they just plunder ‘em from the Mexican military, many members of which have joined up with the cartels. Why would they choose to pay ten times the price and go through the relative hassle of buying them from U.S. gun stores?
The whole thing was a set-up. Especially now that it’s come out that some of the druglords the straw purchasers were buying guns for were… paid informants for our DEA and FBI!
Hillary and others kept flogging that ridiculous “90% of the weapons seized in Mexico come from the U.S.” lie from before Obama was even inaugurated. But then information started coming out that refuted their lie. They had to do damage control. Operation F&F was part of the answer.
Nevertheless, given how many other gunrunning operations are turning up besides F&F, I have to conclude that the larger goal of the Cloward-Piven maniacs running this Administration is the creation of maximum chaos — and throwing gasoline on the fire of the Mexican situation is guaranteed to do that, innocent bystanders and civil order be damned.
I think the suppositions made here are sound, and the C-P strategies sound logical to me … which is why I believe that, eventually, the US military and our special forces will have to go up against the drug cartels – it’s the only long-term answer to what’s happening in Mexico. The cartels have way too much influence in Mexico (they have way too much influence here with the Democrats!), so, if America is going to finally deal with the threat on its’ southern border, it’s going to have to be a homeland counterinsurgency operation. Notice I’m not saying that the US and Mexico will go to war; I’m saying that the US military and the drug cartels will go to war. We can break their position in Mexico, while at the same time destroy them as purveyors of drugs into the US. Whatever is left behind, the Mexican government (or what’s left of it) can deal with.
The question then becomes: do we have the will for an undertaking like this? The Democrats will stonewall and interfere, the drug traffickers in the US will fight it, and part or most of the Mexican government itself will stand against us.
But, with this one operation and strategy, we can eliminate the cartels, substantially decrease the flow of drugs into this country, and hopefully help stabilize Mexico so that it isn’t as much of a threat, and can stand on its’ own with an internal law enforcement that isn’t corrupted. At the same time, it may be the only way Mexico itself is saved from being in the grip of the cartels, who are some of the most bloodthirsty murderers on the planet.
And, last but not least, it will strengthen Mexico against being a conduit for Islamist terrorists to use as a jumping-off point into the US.
Bob Owens writes:
While I personally think (3) is a non-starter even as a long-term issue, investigators and pundits closely tracking Gunwalker have long suspected a larger game was afoot.
I wouldn’t write it off all together because George Soros has often advocated legalization of “recreational drugs” and given his involvement with the current Whitehouse cast I wouldn’t be surprised if the intent was to overload the the system to the point that there was no way to control things.
Cloward-Piven has been said to be a major factor in how the Obama admin does business but when the scandals have come they all seem to center around old style Chicago politics. Fast and Furious will make sense when we know who had the actual idea behind it, which political fundraiser was pushing for it, how much that fundraiser raised for Obama and where the money or guns actually went. Green energy may have seemed political but it was an economic opportunity for some and graft was the oil that lubed the wheels.
The most likely motivation for Gunwalker was to fabricate a justification for an anti-gun treaty with Mexico, to naul down Federal jurisdiction over firearms. One of the dirty little secrets of gun-grabbing is how tenuous that jurisdiction actually is. Once a gun has left the hands of a federally licensed dealer and become immersed in intrastate commerce, federal jurisdiction dissipates. See the Lopez case in this regard, holding the Federal Safe Schools Act unconstitutional, and expressly rejecting the government’s fanciful, Wickard v. Filburn-type arguments.. They need that treaty.
Good article, but your long term reason for Gunrunner(#3)has one flaw. Neither the Mexican drug cartels or a Mexican government controlled by the cartels would in any way want to see drugs legalized for recreational use in America. That would destroy their business overnight as a Marlboro or McDonald’s of, say, marijuana undercut their prices, standardized and ensured quality and eliminated risk to consumers. Now, the Obama Administration may be on board for #3 but in now way would the cartels and their supporters play this game. They fight to protect their current franchise wherein they collect a massive price premium which would evaporate in a legalized drug environment in the US.
Correct. But since when do Obama and his crowd care what anybody else thinks about anything?
They exist in a theory-based vacuum where they are always right, and therefore anything they want is good. To them, what the drug cartels want may be;
1. Irrelevant
2. At best a second-level concern
3. Something they believe they can talk them out of by co-opting them once they are running things.
For that matter;
4. Taking recreational drugs “mainstream” might pay big dividends for the cartels, if they want to move from “dealers” to political power brokers. Giving them at least an appearance of semi-legitimacy might give people up here in El Norte access to their money in return for favors, without running the risk of prosecution under RICO. And if the cartel leaders have dreams of running Mexico, instead of just fighting with the government over their present business, a massive influx of firepower on their side couldn’t hurt. (As the old saying goes, “G-d is on the side of the big battalions.”)
Yes it sounds strange or even crazy. But it has a precedent. Look up the history of the Opium Wars in China.
cheers
eon
Another precedent is the Kennedy dynasty. The old man was a rumrunner, and his offspring ended up firmly entrenched in our political class, with three–count ‘em, three–of them running for President.
E Plurabus Unum What does it mean? That we are united in a common cause?
Does it still apply? There is no common cause between the Left and the Right.
the Left is controlled by their lust and the Right by the the discipline of their principles. As the immorality of the Left increases the Principles of the Right decrease.
Mt 24:24 For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.
“Of course, this is entirely speculation at this point. It’s just damn hard to think of a more logical reason for Gunwalker to exist.”
Bob Owens
Sometimes speculation is the only way to find the truth. After all the questions have been answered the truth is still standing.
One thing I believe was made clear is that this Cloward-Piven is violent. The whole system is violent. The launch of
F&F was violent which means that it is not compatible with E Plurabus Unum. It is not compatible with moral self-discipline that kept us on course as we built a great nation. It was our real strength.
The rule of law always falls short. Israel, under Moses, was given the law which they soon forgot.
It was not the law but the faith that kept the order and it still is. A government is always a body and it always requires order but it does not require either justice of liberty.
Joh 8:44 Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.
This spirit of deceit is found throughout the world and it is always pulling toward an existing goal. While the Right has somewhat less cohesion.
The Left always tries to isolate the Right so they don’t organize the way the Left does. This spirit,like electricity, is never seen but we observe its works.
Columns like this are needed and they do generate much good discussion which is bearing good fruit. We are gaining ground.
I think there is another objective… Gun control… Consider that the goal was to shut down gun dealers by accusing them of selling massive amounts of guns to foreigners or illegals which were then used in drug crimes
Just a little side note off topic gristle here to chew-on … In the last week or two I have come to call the Libya “Kinetic Operation” the “Fast and Furious 2″. The Obama Administration-backed NATO arming of the “rebels” to overthrow the Muammar Gaddafi government has now equipped the Al-Qaeda/terrorist factions that infiltrated and lead the rebels, and now have command. I had to laugh when I heard people such as Hillary Clinton make statements that the new makeshift (my word) government taking charge of the country should now collect those foreign-supplied weapons from the rebels now that Gaddafi is gone. But they have yet to do so. The lead-from-behind Obama Admin. does it again in failing, or worse refusing, to understand the nature of the beast they think they are extending an unclenched fist to. Look for those weapons to either be physically taken to Afghanistan (or Iraq) by those terrorist interlopers in Libya and used against U.S. and NATO troops, or sold on the black market (or directly sent) to the enemy we are fighting in Afghanistan (and Iraq) … or in Gaza against Israel, and that would lend itself to aiding Israel’s enemy huh?
Then I guess the joke is on the administration. As we all know, guns don’t cause violence, violent people cause violence. People in the administration are cut from the same unintelligent cloth as the gun banners and sure believe that allowing gun stores to sell guns illegally to drug cartel members would somehow cause the guns themselves to magically create new levels of violence, since, in their mystical world, guns make people do things they wouldn’t otherwise do. We all know that this is nonsense and that guns are just tools. So the end result is that levels of violence will be driven by the people who are inclined to be violent and won’t materially change due to the influx of a few guns sold from border state gun stores. Add to this that the most powerful weapons the drug cartels have access to are coming from Mexican and other central/south american countries governments and once again project gun runners impact on Mexican violence is pretty much zero.
Now the idea that it would be some sort of poorly thought out strategy to change the downward direction of gun control in this country seems at least plausible it’s destined to fail as all these peoples schemes fail. They just aren’t very bright and think that the rest of the country is even less bright than they are. They are almost like kittens that think if they hide their heads we can’t see them when their butts are sticking up in the air. Mostly they deserve our pity since they are about the bottom 10-20% of the country, intellectually.
I still have a difficult time envisioning the insane clown posse infesting the Administration conducting any type of sophisticated and multiple-goaled operations like Gunrunner (and its brother & sister operations).
My initial take on the long list of stomping on your (private part) acts by the Administration has been to view them in the light of Hanlon’s Razor-”Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
However, the breathtaking level of incompetence displayed by these clowns that has spawned an new acronym–SCOAMF–requires a new guiding principle. This principle is Grays Law–”Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.”
True, the acts of many of the political appointees in this Administration can only be explained by a deep and abiding hatred of the USA as presently constituted. But they haven’t the skill or the intelligence to actually destabilize the USA with any sort of grand plan.
^^^ This ^^^
You just beat me to the draw. See my post following yours. lol
What’s the old saying? Don’t be so sure that malice is the cause of something, when plain old stupidity explains things just as well. It goes something like that. This whole cock-up may be nothing more LEO zealotry gone insane.
Certainly, whatever the true causes and motives behind all this turn out to be, I want the actors who made this happen punished accordingly. The nature of the punishment will be determined when we know the truth of the motives here.
With that said, I think it’s safe to say that none of this would have happened but for America’s illiberal, unjust and immoral drug laws. So if you want to avoid cock-ups like this in the future, you might want to consider reforming the policies that made this possible in the first place. Whether this whole episode is due to mere governmental malfeasance, political skullduggery, or financial corruption, we can thank the WOD that it happened at all.
Just sayin’.
“Never ascribe to malice that which may be explained by stupidity.” That is a very important concept, and one which often serves to separate the judgement of College educated people from those who are not. It keeps people from being paranoid and believing in conspiracies that don’t exist.
However there are a couple of Caveats to that statement which are not taught at any level. The first Caveat is that the college educated are mainly taught by Liberals – who are not well known for having anyone’s best interest at heart in the things that they teach people. Secondly there is a corollary to the statement: “One must ascribe to malice those things which cannot be explained by stupidity.” To ignore that corollary opens one up to the actions of anyone clever enough feign stupidity in their malicious actions. Anyone who doesn’t understand the corollary will go through life never seeing the real malice surrounding them.
There are a series of tests one can apply to a situation to see if stupidity or negligence was at work.
1. Who did the act? Were the actors mentally deficient? Did the actors have some sort of physical brain damage which caused them to misinterpret reality?
Answer: The people involved in supervising Fast And Furious were all lawyers. A law degree is considered the equivalent of a PhD. Mental deficiency and brain damage are simply not applicable. The actions of lawyers acting in their field of expertise may not be excused by stupidity. That is part of the price they pay for the privilege of being lawyers.
2. Was the action deliberate or accidental. Did the actors mean to do what they did – or did they mean to do something else? If they meant to do something else stupidity is possible.
Answer: The actions of Fast and Furious were not accidental. The ATF agents did exactly what they were ordered to do. When they questioned their superiors – they were told to continue their actions despite their protests. The guns did not sneak across the border because their superiors had the ATF agents hitting Pinatas at birthday parties instead to tracking the straw purchasers – which would have been an example of an act of negligence on the part of the supervisors. It was not negligence or stupidity; Fast and Furious was comprised of a series of deliberate and intentional acts.
3. Could the results have been different from what they were? In other words can a case be made that things could have turned out differently than they did?
Answer: Not even the village idiot can come up with a different outcome to the Fast And Furious actions. Guns were allowed to cross the border into the hands of known murderous drug cartels; what could possibly go right about that? Were the ATF and Justice Department lawyers hoping the cartel members would all shoot each other by accident? Any possible alternative outcome to Fast and Furious simply fails the laugh test.
4. Did any of the actors state a malicious motive? If yes – stupidity and negligence are automatically ruled out.
Answer: The SCOAMF in chief said: “We’re working on gun control behind the scenes.” If Fast and Furious is not part of that work what is? Point to any other government program which could even be aimed at stealth gun control – to which the President could have been referring. Solyndra? GM bailout? Obamacare? Cash for Clunkers? Seriously anything more applicable to stealth gun control than Gunwalker and Fast and Furious. Remember, for something to be aimed at gun control the program first has to involve guns in some way.
Fast and Furious fails all the stupidity and negligence tests. This is deliberate malice – it can’t be anything else – nor is it unreasonable to declare it so.
Bob,
You give these knuckleheads too much credit. Fast and Furious was simply a poorly executed fumble to cover butts over the “90% of guns in Mexico come from America” nonsense when the truth came to light.
There certianly are Marxist idiots in the mix though.
This my rant.
I’ve paid for it with my sweat and hard work.
I’ve earned it by my honor and respect for The Rule of Law
It belongs to me as an unalienable God given Liberty created as the Sovereign power invested in me as one of We The People.
There simply is no “think” about the logic in why this treason called Gunwalker exists.
The other simple truth that exists is that my government is comprised of the worst criminals imaginable, Traitors!
Traitors who flaunt their power and corruption in my face, who have used the veil of trust and representation to do their dirty work, who look down on me as something you scrape of your shoe, on my dime!
The scope of these lawless SOB’s disregard for The Rule of Law is Treason.
It is Tyranny manifest in a political class that wipes its arse with the Constitution every day.
While us who believe in and cherish Liberty are called terrorists!
Words can not convey the outrage and effrontery of this.
It is nothing short of war on my person by the ruling elites.
If it is war they want, I got some very good advice, careful what you wish for you quisling bastards.
You hear me?
You’ll never get away with your crimes. Because I’ll never forget, and I’ll never stop telling my fellow Americans how corrupt and dastardly your abuses of power are.
You see, your assumed extra constitutional powers only exist when we the people believe they do.
So rub our faces in your feces, call us criminals, brand us Hobbits, treat us as sub humans, you ain’t got nothing on me. The jig is up, I know what you are and what you are attempting to do. You have no power, except what you can foist via the forked tongue of the legacy media, and enforce by the barrel of a gun. Thing is you gun barrel is not backed by The Rule of Law.
But my gun barrel is.
And I know this with all my Patriotic American heart.
And there is nothing you can do to keep me from it.
“Law Enforcement” is a joke, a travesty, it doesn’t exist any longer.
I now look upon cops and others in “Law Enforcement” as a useless extension of the flood of tyranny coming down on my country. These are the handmaidens of the ruling class drive to dissolve this here Constitutional Republic and create a police state where only the chosen and privileged, and the mobs make the rules.
Every damn officer of the law is complicit by association. The telling proof of how corrupted and immoral, how above the law “Law Enforcement” is, of the glaring resounding truth, is quite simply there is nothing but silence from this community of cowards and little power corrupted tyrants.
Laws are for little people.
Well you know what?
Up your arses!
I don’t know what was really behind this scandal, whether a dark conspiracy theory to deliberately undermine foreign governments and cause the deaths of innocent civilians for political gain or simple mind-boggling incompetence but either way it is long past time Eric Holder was fired and a major investigation launched into what Obama knew and when he knew it.
I have a better idea. Cut welfare payments of all kinds to the bone and watch the drug market suffer. We are paying billions in entitlements to the users of these drugs and then fighting the billions the cartels receive in selling them the drugs. Wake up and take our country back before it is too late. We are our own worse enemy and the Communists/Democrats have conned us into subsidizing our own destruction.
Of those #3 is at least moral.
A free society probably should not tell its putatively adult citizens what they can and cannot put in their own bodies at gunpoint.
As to nickel’s point on welfare, it won’t help. It might utterly shock some here to know how pervasive illegal drug use is among people in the middle and upper economic tiers. Those tiers also gobble up ludicrous amounts of prescribed mind altering substances which serve exactly the same purpose (escape) as the harder drugs.
To reduce drug use we need to restore the extended family and kin structures that people need and I have trouble seeing that as a viable policy since it reduces the power of the state and the Brave New World consumption ethos we seem to crave over thrift and care.
Ownes is correct to pass on the reader comment theory that:
“3. Long-term: Legalization of “recreational drugs,” helped by a
“drug friendly” Mexican government, influenced by if not overtly
controlled by the drug cartels.
I strongly suspect that (3) is the ultimate objective,”
However Owns does not explain why this theory is absurd.
Obviously illegal drug cartels would not exist if there
were no prohibition. The types of people involved today
in the production and distribution of alcohol, are not
at all like the mafias that emerged during 1920′s-era
prohibition. Now there are virtually no gun battles over
alcohol or tobacco, while there are over illegal drugs
(whose price is about 1000 times the market price,
due to prohibition).
We cannot always know the motives of politicians who do crazy,
counter-productive things. However if we do go down that road,
we have to consider the possibility that drug law enforcers
realize their efforts subsidize Jihadists in Afghanistan and
Pakistan, and buy into that objective.
Fact: Taliban gets at least $100m/year from their involvement
in the poppy trade.
Fact: Taliban would not get that subvsidy, were there no prohibition.
To get out of responsibility for what amounts to treason,
prohibitionists have to either deny that terrorists are now
subsidized by prohibition, or that more prohibition will result
in the elimination of trade in the prohibited drug.
No drug warrior denies the first, in fact they often trumpet
the terrorist–prohibitred drug connection. So they deny history
and common sense, by claiming that prohibition can succeed where
it has never before succeeded (absent a totalitarian government
like that in communist China decades ago).
Everything you say is true, sort of; Diem was removed precisely so South Vietnam wouldn’t have an adverse effect on domestic US politics–as all the future coups and burning Buddhist monks came to have under LBJ after JFK’s killing. As I recall, the failed prior Cuban intervention didn’t work out to well either, especially in regards to domestic politics and the future behavior of Lee Harvey Oswald ( of course, Castro’s Cuba wasn’t a friendly foreign government). I suppose with official rehabilitation of Gadaffi during the Bush administration, and by the Europeans too, Libya would qualify as friendly foreign government, until the humanitarian intervention to prevent a possible civil war genocide (that bad old Bush preemptive war doctrine thing again, but on a non-partisan higher ethical humanitarian plane) except, apparently, NATO did the heavy lifting under UN auspices taking Obama off the moral hook by leading from behind. It’s easy to be amoral, pragmatic, and the new messiah when you don’t have to take responsibility for your actions by not being present.
“To the best of my knowledge, no previous U.S. administration has ever destabilized the government of a putatively friendly foreign power purely for domestic political gain.
…
1. Short-term: Increased illegal immigration from Mexico as people attempt to flee the increasing violence.”
Riiiight. Because giving guns to drug cartels supporting & supported by the Reconquistas does nothing to destabilize THIS country. It’s all about Mexico. And the Mexicans will all flee to America — where there is NO Mexican Drug Cartel violence, right?
Plus, … an unconstitutional EO that actually makes exercising Constitutional rights illegal doesn’t destabilize America, AND it’s less troublesome than the insidious master plan of the Obama regime to legalize drugs. Eliminating the 2nd Amendment by illegal, despotic diktat is a fart in the wind compared to legal pot (I do NOT support legalization).
Oh, and just for S’s & G’s, ARMING THE ENEMY WHILE DISARMING THE AMERICAN CITIZENRY wouldn’t be any significant part of a communist plan to destroy America … that would be silly.
Brilliant analysis!
“1. Short-term: Increased illegal immigration from Mexico as people attempt to flee the increasing violence.”
“Riiiight. Because giving guns to drug cartels supporting & supported by the Reconquistas does nothing to destabilize THIS country. It’s all about Mexico. And the Mexicans will all flee to America — where there is NO Mexican Drug Cartel violence, right?”
According to those who planned and carried out F&F, that’s exactly correct. They assume their plans are perfect, and that there will never be any blowback. (Ref; the ATF official who said in the memo, ‘If you don’t think this will be fun…’.)
You may have noticed, the operation was significantly lacking in anything like a “Plan B”, let alone a “Go To H**l” plan. We’re not talking the Impossible Missions Force, here- more like Nixon’s “plumbers”.
“Plus, … an unconstitutional EO that actually makes exercising Constitutional rights illegal doesn’t destabilize America, AND it’s less troublesome than the insidious master plan of the Obama regime to legalize drugs. Eliminating the 2nd Amendment by illegal, despotic diktat is a fart in the wind compared to legal pot (I do NOT support legalization).”
By their standards, it’s the Constitutional right in question that “destabilizes America”. Along with a prohibition on something else (drugs) they regard as perfectly harmless. They do believe that “prohibitions” can work- they just want to be the only ones who decide what gets “prohibited”.
You’re reasoning logically. They are not. They are wedded to a dogma, and (as in anything else they do) will pursue it no matter what, in spite of all evidence in the real world that they are making fools of themselves and hurting others in the process. Keep in mind that, in their worldview, anyone outside of their “class” is only an abstraction- they may not even acknowledge that such people have an actual objective existence.
Once someone has gone that existentialist, their only reaction to a real world that isn’t like their fantasized Utopia is deep resentment of reality. And of anyone who tells them “I don’t know how to break this to you, but you’re wrong”.
cheers
eon
Excellent article and commentaries. Graft, corruption, abrogation of foreign treaties, complicit law enforcment agencies, willing non-governmental hand maidens, nefarious criminal actitivies in and out of government and on and on. Great!
Merely highlights the “We The People vs. We The Elite People” conversation.
Absolute Power=corrupts absolutely
Just look at Colombia today. Government ties with both Medellin and Cali cartels. Both dominate all cocaine traffic north and southward, America and South America (cocaine, crack, meth, oxi etc.)
Michele Malkin’s book “Culture of Corruption” detailed every aspect of US Government involvement in numerous forms of illicit, illegal political and economic activties.
Gunwalker, Fast and Furious, etc. are merely manifestations of a “Culture of Corruption.” Not one single individual, in or out of government, will address this matter. Example: Current Speaker of the House vowed to confront these and other related matters only to cave in to Washington DC’s We The Elite People mentality.
This cancer of corruption (nobody wants to address, nor speak to) is undermining our: 1)Education, 2)Government, 3)Financial and 4)Economic American way of life.
If We The People allow this “Culture of Corruption” to continue,as is – don’t Vote this 2012.
Now, if We The People decide to drive this cancer into remission, Vote Massively in 2012. This because massive Voter fraud as never before seen in Our USofA, is going to be visited in every corner of the US.
Enact Voter ID at every State Legislature. Repeal National Popular Vote’s Movement changes to State-by-State Electoral College voting with direct election of the President of the US by guaranteeing an Electoral College majority to the popular vote winner, thusly usurping our US Constitution (this has already been enacted in our most populous States). And lastly, be especially alert fo Mr. Holder’s DOJ attempts to stymie State and local voter precincts results (a la Wisconsin’s Recall Election in 2011) with meaningless and frivolous lawsuits.
Power-Greed-Corruption = Washington DC’s “We The Elite People’s” mantra. Out goes our US Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and Bill of Rights. VOTE 2012. God Bless America.
You’re overlooking Option #4.
It actually was a gunrunning exercise for profit.
With “Chicago rules” in force, I wouldn’t totally discount that.
That leads to the question, “who ended up with the money”? From all indications, it was the straw buyers, and by extension the other go-betweens who passed the “walked” guns along to the cartels. Since no attempt was made to track the arms, we have no way to track who paid who how much, either.
This level of perceived “incompetence” is what makes me tend to believe the objectives of the whole plan were political in nature. Anybody who was dumb enough to call this a “plan” would probably be too dumb to pass a Civil Service examination. (Mind you, I wouldn’t be surprised- this is BATFE we’re talking about.)
BUT, if you’re out to cause a major change in society, how much it costs in dollars and cents is only an issue in terms of how you are paying for the nuts and bolts of the plan. In this case, the money went through third parties, unconnected to the government.
It’s almost as if somebody up the line said, “All we have to do to get what we want (changing American laws and American society) is let these narco-thugs ‘do their thing’, and just pretend we didn’t see it. And oh yeah, put pressure where it’s needed to make sure nobody balks at giving them what they want.”
It’s a sort of very twisted version of “eyes on the prize”, when you look at it like that.
cheers
eon
I agree that the three motives scenario is a very interesting and only logical thought.
I agree that we may never know the true body count as consequence of these crimes.
This is true horror.
So it was the administration’s purpose to cause such catastrophe that it would give them more
leverage to usurp the constitution and our laws all in order to get one step closer to more
tighter gun control laws, and I think, to eventual total gun ban.
What scares me is that if the administration was willing to go through all the bodies, ignore all the laws, and ignore the wishes of the American public is, how far were/are they willing to go with this?
How far are they willing to go to disarm the Americans (at least the conservatives)?
What more atrocities and crimes are they willing to commit?
Just how far are they yet willing to go?
Fast and Furious may have been foiled by its exposure to the public, but what makes me wonder
what other crimes are they dreaming up now?
I think it’s number 4. He’s arming them to kill Americans. Has anyone heard if the weapon used in Nevada by the Mexican here on a passport was one of the Fast and Furious weapons? Maybe he’s arming them and then issuing them passports to do the job. People wouldn’t believe Hitler was murdering Jews at first either. Obama works for Ayers.
http://youtu.be/HWMIwziGrAQ
The recent “Gangwalker” revelations would seem to support that.
ATF ordered reluctant Indiana gundealers to go through with sales of guns to known/suspected brokers for Chicago street gangs.
This is one of those situations where the best defense for a conspiracy theory is that conspiracies actually do occur.
I don’t have a better explanation, but I’m just not ready to see this as an attempt to apply Cloward-Piven.
Remember that James Carville made a literal million dollars campaigning for the PRI against the PAN’s Vicente Fox?
If you know, PRI was the ruling party in Mexico since 1910. The competiton was PAN a business friendly party and the PRD more overtly socialist.
There is also reporting that the Obama administration delayed implementation of Bush era plans supporting insertion of Mexican Marines to capture (or kill, sounds familiar doesn’t it?) cartel members.
Maybe some over the border gun play to disrupt the 2012 election?
kind of like a hanging chad with a bang.
Now gunwalker is starting to make more sense ,in a convoluted liberal way.
But i still get the feeling something is missing,a proverbial elephant in the room.
This was a large scale operation with alot of risk.The payoff feels like it should be bigger.The demented,god complex idealism of liberals fits the plot.But where is the huge financial gain needed to feed all the not so self-righteous greed of the alphabet soup groups?
Illegal drugs bring in far more money than legal.But legalization maybe be a large future gain if it is regulated and taxed like crazy.
Idk,i can’t figure out the missing puzzle piece.
To those who think that an operation like Fast and Furious would blow apart if it were a nefarious conspiracy.
The government has mechanisms in place to allow it to keep operations secret. The government built the stealth fighter in secret. The government built the Atomic Bomb in secret. The whole hierarchical – compartmentalized structure of government agencies is designed to keep operations secret. Security clearances are not enough to know government secrets – you also have to have a “need to know”.
That secrecy apparatus is backed up by Federal Laws to prevent leaks. It is just as effective at concealing that which is done for nefarious purpose as it is for concealing that which is done for proper purposes; since almost no one at any level has the “need to know” what the purposes are.
As Kathy from Kansas pointed out over at Ace of Spades:
“Had John Dodson not been so personally nauseated by the murder of a fellow agent, we would not know about Gunwalker.
Dodson has described how all the ground-level guys at ATF were beaten down by their superiors. The field agents vehemently objected to the new modus operandi; all of them were told to shut up or else lose their jobs. Dodson zipped it and went along reluctantly, just like everybody else he knew in the agency… until Brian Terry was killed.
That one key event — Brian Terry’s death — and that one key person — John Dodson — are all that stood between a scandal that could land a President in prison, and nobody ever hearing a word about any of it. ”
That is all inherent in the secure structure of government operations. Government conspirators at a high enough level would have more than a reasonable expectation of getting away with their activities.
Not only can this be a nefarious conspiracy involving the White House and the leadership of Department of Justice – it can’t be anything else. It didn’t come from some mid level operative; it involved policy decisions, and those come only from the highest level.
Lydia/64, Idk,i can’t figure out the missing puzzle piece
–neither can i. The people with the plan are forever ahead. We can but hope they screw up somewhere, and let us catch up.
Lessee, missing puzzle piece. Could it be the old ‘oil-for-food’ crowd, this time engaged in locking up commodities ahead of the crashing fiat currencies?
Pajamas’ own Claudia Rosett could –has –told us of that Global Crime Syndicate, Inc operation. That MSM swept it under a rug so quickly (Kofi Annan’s industrial-scale file-shredding causing no more consternation than the SEC’s similar destruction of the same era’s SEC records) and that GWB aquiesced in the rehab of the UN (remember, a Soros agent being installed as Annan’s new chief of staff) likely imho via a deal where GWB would in return be ‘allowed’ to prosecute OIF without Vietnam-era levels of Dem Party subversion, means it is practically forgotten already, tho the implications far-dwarfed Watergate’s events if not its press.
IOW, those guys think big, and the Bolivarian Revolution is just the sort of continental system challenge that can let whomever has control of the commodity production & distribution systems finally at long last create that elusive new world order (AKA, the royalist restoration).
Here’s a few URLs to open a little light on what you already know about two ‘oil-for-food’ gangster allies, Eric Holder and Marc Rich (Rich too is now more powerful than ever –search [Glencore aquisitions]):
http://www.medeshivalley.com/2011/05/counter-piracy-updates-29-may-2011.html
(scroll down to this notice of a current ‘face-save’ wrist-slap by USG)
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said on Tuesday traders James Dyer of Oklahoma’s Parnon Energy, and Nick Wildgoose of Europe-based Arcadia Energy, amassed large physical positions at a key U.S. trading hub to create the impression of tight supplies that would boost oil prices.
Later they dumped those barrels back onto the market, causing prices to crash and racking up profits from short positions they had accrued in futures markets, the suit said.
Both companies are controlled by Fredriksen’s Farahead Holdings, based in Cyprus. Sought for comment on Tuesday, officials at Arcadia and Parnon did not return phone calls. Wildgoose, Dyer and Fredriksen were not immediately reachable.
“Like anyone who runs VLCCs (super tankers), oil is their lifeblood and he fancied himself as a bit of an oil trader which is why he bought Arcadia. It’s still a small enterprise,” said the ship industry source.
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http://www.bing.com/search?q=arcadia+%22marc+rich%22+milio&src=IE-SearchBox&oma=toggle_off
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http://www.bing.com/search?q=arcadia+mitsui+macondo&form=IE8SRC&src=IE-SearchBox
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http://www.bing.com/search?q=mitsui++sumitomo+yakuza&form=IE8SRC&src=IE-SearchBox
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http://www.bing.com/search?q=peter+sutherland+rbs+bp+goldman+sachs&form=IE8SRC&src=IE-SearchBox
Secret recordings raise new questions in ATF ‘Gunwalker’ operation
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20108240-10391695.html
from Reuters:
http://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFTRE78J0KL20110920
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Monday turned up pressure on the United States to curb demand for illicit drugs, hinting that legalization of narcotics may be needed to weaken the drug cartels.
Mexico, which has been racked by a bloody conflict between the government and drug cartels, is paying the price for its proximity to the United States, Calderon said in a speech to the Americas Society and Council of the Americas in New York.
“We are living in the same building. And our neighbour is the largest consumer of drugs in the world. And everybody wants to sell him drugs through our doors and our windows,” he said.
If any of this has evidence to back it up, Obama and co. are domestic enemies
of the US. As such terminating them is a lawful act by any citizen or gov’t agent.
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