Day of Days?

Statue of Themis, Goddess of Justice

 Two monumental events might take place today in Washington D.C.  The Supreme Court might hand down their ruling on what is the Democrats' and Obama's signature piece of health care legislation.  The other will occur in the House of Representatives and their vote on whether the Attorney General of the United States Eric Holder is in contempt of that body in regards to Fast and Furious.

Much has already been written on the health care matter.  How anyone can claim 2,000+ pages of legal mumbo-jumbo is in fact a single law is beyond me.  Especially when one of the supporters has to declare you have to pass it to find out what is in it.  If that does not strike one of midnight deals in done in closed rooms full of nefarious plotting, what will?

Now what a piece of work Eric Holder and because of the Executive Order issued by President Obama, this whole administration is?  All Rep. Issa wanted was any documentation relating to the time Justice appeared before the committee under oath and told a falsehood that had to be retracted.  It is true it's the cover-up that makes things worse.  If this administration had been honest and forthright after the murders of Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata we would not be in this situation. 

Because of seemingly boundless perfidy that screams out for redress, today we may witness the sword of Justice.

Update Saturday 30 June 2012. 

Well its been an eventful two days since the Supreme Court has handed down its ruling.  To say people are angry and overjoyed might be an understatement.  What the Roberts court delivered seems akin to Solomon actually splitting the baby in two.  Time will tell if what was rendered was truly wise but in the short term it has energized the Romney campaign and all who oppose the legislation.  It has turned the mandate into a penalty tax that Democrats now have to defend while recognizing the states can resist federal encroachment without suffering penalties.

As for Eric Holder, he was found in contempt by the House.  Seventeen Democrats joined their Republican colleagues in this vote of contempt so it's bi-partisan.  Many other Democrats, lead by Rep. Pelosi, had a conniption and walked out in protest, thus silencing their constituents voice.  And to show how Eric Holder does not think the laws of this land apply to him, he went on a Disney vacation after the vote.

Modest Immigration Idea

Now that President Obama has instructed the federal bureaucracy to ignore laws on the books and let certain illegal aliens in to compete in this anemically soft economy, over 8% unemployment for 40+ months, against legal US citizens, one question remains.

Has the President completed the environmental impact statement this influx of young illegal aliens will cause upon the United States?  Land use, sewage, garbage, crime, power consumption, and possible adverse impact upon endangered species?

More Fast And Furious

The details of this ATF operation keep getting more sordid. As new details emerge, the thin veneer of this being a serious official investigation is getting thinner and thinner. I expect what little patina is left of the official line that this was an operation intended to track and identify supply lines of guns from the United States to Mexican drug cartels will dissolve.

For a decent summary of the Phoenix ATF and its Fast and Furious, Forbes has this lengthy article up. I disagree with Miniter that this is Obama's Watergate as I disagree that this is comparable to Iran-Contra. This operation is far worse in my opinion, since by deliberate acts by officials of the US government, thousands of weapons were allowed to slip into the hands of criminals who then proceeded to use these weapons to destabilize a friendly nation, murder civilians, and murder two agents of the US government itself. Watergate was a botched burglary while Iran-Contra had the strategic aim of rescuing American hostages and bringing down a hostile government in Nicaragua.

Even as Frank Miniter was writing that article for Forbes, events and new information was emerging to further damage the official explanation of Operation Fast and Furious. I consider the following information the most disturbing. Previously the information had indicated ATF had allowed weapons purchased by suspects to simply vanish and later appear at crime scenes on both sides of the border. Also ATF agent Camino has testified before Congress he had read the first part of Fast and Furious' case logbook and three times other ATF agents had left a stash house alone. What could be so disturbing than that? How about the head of the ATF unit responsible for Fast and Furious, Voth, authorizing another ATF agent, Dobson, to purchase weapons with government funds, sell those weapons to a suspect, and then deny Dobson's request to seize those weapons before they slipped across the border and vanish. I am not a lawyer but with these actions it seems the US government has gone from being a mere accessory to murder to an active participant in murder.

While these revelations have come out about what went on inside the ATF, another crack in the deniability armor has widened. Even after President Obama has been shown on video tape talking about operations aimed at curbing the weapons flow into Mexico, the White House and Sec. Holder of the Dept. of Justice have denied they knew anything of these operations. Until an email from ATF agent Newell that he sent to his friend O'Reilly in the White House emerged. Still the White House has denied that they knew any details on the operation. New emails between Newell and O'Reilly have emerged showing Newell supplied O'Reilly with a chart showing the flow of weapons into Mexico.

Naturally Rep. Issa and Sen. Grassley would like to interview Mr. O'Reilly who serves as one of President Obama's national security advisors, but Mr. O'Reilly is not available to the committee. He is out of the country, O'Reilly is presently in Iraq. How convienient this trip is. And how pathetic and desperate this attempt to keep O'Reilly and his testimony under wraps. Just a few years ago President Bush would have regular secure video-teleconferences with Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq. You mean to tell me that O'Reilly could not use the same facilities to answer questions from Iraq posed to him by Rep. Issa and Sen. Grassley?

There is another piece of new information contained inside that CBS report which opens another avenue of investigation for Rep. Issa and Sen. Grassley. It seems the Pheonix ATF office has been running another operation called Wide Receiver. One photo that is linked to that operation is not a .50 caliber rifle as Ms. Attkinson states, instead the picture shows an M-2/M-3 .50 caliber heavy machine gun. Which is a completely different animal than the likes of a Barret M-82 sniper rifle.

So there is still much to be discovered about all these various covert operations carried out under the aegis of the Obama administration. Obama and Holder can keep trying to deny any culpability in all these operations, but the evidence and Harry Truman's adage of 'The Buck Stops Here' points to the White House. An outraged Mexican government wants justice for the 200+ citizens murdered by these weapons. The families of Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata, all US citizens, want justice for their murdered family members. To prove the United States is still a nation of laws, justice has to be thorough and fair in this case since so many people whom citizens entrusted with great power are implicated. For those same people to try and deflect, obfuscate, or even deny will surly mean the end of this great experiment called the United States.

Another Victim of Settled Science

It is sad to report that the cult of man-made climate change has claimed another victim. Dr. Ivar Giaever, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973, has tendered his resignation to the American Physical Society because they have adopted the position that the evidence of man caused temperature rise is 'incontrovertible.'

One hundred years ago in the field of astronomy the belief was all the violence evidenced on Earth's own Moon was long in the past. That something like the Music of the Spheres prevailed. Then our probes to other planets showed the violence was not limited to the past. And the final proof that violence still existed in the solar system was when the fragments of the Comet Shoemaker-Levy smashed into Jupiter and we observed it almost in real time with the Hubble Space Telescope.

Percival Lowell captivated many people with his observations of Mars. The fascination was with the canali or canals he saw in his telescope that prompted speculation of life being on Mars. And spawned many a science fiction story. Then our probes like Mariner and Viking showed how dead Mars is. Mars might have had life but it was millions of years in the past.

Forty years ago the concept of a meteor smashing into the Earth and wiping out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was thought a far fetched idea and was scoffed at in scientific circles. Then Dr. Richard Alvarez [ whoops should be Dr. Luis Alvarez] went and found worldwide a rare earth element Iridium at the boundary marking the extinction of dinosaurs. And then the actual impact crater was discovered at the tip of the Yucatan Peninsula. Now the argument is how much of an impact did that meteor have? Was it an outright kill or was just the final push of the dinosaurs to extinction.

We all grew up on the idea that all dinosaurs were cold-blooded reptiles. And all the cheesy movies with dinosaurs reinforced this notion. Due to the work of scientists like Dr. Robert Bakker that view has been tossed out. There is evidence now to suggest at least some dinosaurs were warm-blooded.

These are just four examples of 'incontrovertible settled science' being overturned by new discoveries and data. So for such an august scientific body as the American Physical Society to say man-made climate warming is incontrovertible is to fly in the face of traditional scientific inquiry and the quest for the truth. Those who say the science is settled are in fact anathema to the scientific method. For various reasons they have closed their minds to any other possible answer. They are akin to the Holy See and its treatment of Galileo and Copernicus by these actions. How else to explain their brutal attempts to ostracize anyone who disagrees with them? In fact when they call such skeptics 'deniers' they are venturing into an even more troublesome arena, that of the KGB calling dissenters mentally unstable and using medication to 'adjust' them. What a brave new world we are in.

A Criminal Enterprise

With such a title I might be tempted to talk about a certain solar panel company that folded taking a half billion in tax dollars when it sank. Instead I am talking about the widening scandal centered around the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives [BATFE] and Dept of Justice attorneys.

Operation Fast and Furious keeps generating the murder of civilians and law enforcement people. One of the latest cases to come to light is from 2010. A F&F AK-47 was found in a vehicle that had just rammed a police vehicle and injured two officers. Nationality of the perp in this case - Mexican.

More bad news rained on the U.S. Attorney's Phoenix office when it came to light they sprung from jail a known weapons smuggler for a Mexican drug cartel. The BATFE had managed to put Jean Baptiste Kingery in jail only to see the man released because the DoJ was using him as an informant. Agents managed to lose track of Kingery as he headed to Mexico and he slipped across the border. Only later would he be arrested by Mexican police. Mr. Kingery's crimes? How does smuggling grenade components into Mexico to be made into IEDs grab you. Sen. Grassley and Rep. Issa have expanded their investigation of Fast and Furious to include the handling of the Kingery case.

As if the hemorrhage of weapons from the US to Mexico was not bad enough, there is mounting evidence of a wider operation conducted by agents of the U.S. Government. Operation Castaway was being run out of the Tampa BATFE office and it seems to have let weapons walk to Honduras. Next comes Gangwalker out of all places Indiana. Like in F&F it seems the BATFE told an Indiana gun dealer to sell weapons to people no matter what. Federal law requires gun store owners to deny sales to convicted felons. Gangwalker ATF agents told the store to sell anyway.

Three different operations in three different jurisdictions all with a similar motive, to allegedly trace weapons from sale to the criminals. All three seemingly have failed the most basic standard of success, keeping control of the weapons and preventing them from actually being used by criminals. In the case of Fast&Furious we have multiple murders linked to weapons sold during this operation. No word about Castaway or Gangwalker, but the odds are sadly good weapons from these operations have also murdered people.

So for the Obama administration and Eric Holder to deny they knew about these operations stretches credibility into some amazing shapes. Three different ops that crossed multiple jurisdictional boundaries and the likes of Holder knew nothing. Not to mention ICE and US Customs under DHS Sec. Napolitano since agent Jaime Zapata worked for DHS. Something stinks badly. Especially when one of the three people in the White House who had knowledge of Fast and Furious is Obama's National Security point man for Latin America Dan Restrepo.

Scooby-Doo Caper

JINKIES!

The following reads like a real life Scooby-Doo mystery, save there are no meddling kids. The thief captured himself in this story. He was ably assisted by others who should have been suspicious but apparently did nothing.

First he manages to truck in a few boxes into the vault. Turns out the lights and loads up his cart with cash. Then he takes the boxes out to his vehicle. I know it was a Friday, but really no one thought it was strange what he did? Then collects girlfriend and they fly to Seattle. Asks the taxi driver where he could buy a weapon and the taxi driver hooked him up with a dealer that sold him an AK-47 and ammo. Wow. Did not think Fast&Furious reached as far north as Seattle. And who else has this taxi driver helped get weapons? Hey Janet, here is a real lead to run down. After this he buys an economy car with cash from the duffel bags of loot and drives to Mexico. Once in TJ, his uncle tells the robber he needs to ditch the car and get on the bus since he says the car would not survive the trip. So two bus tickets are bought and off they go. The crime spree ends when the Mexican authorities stop the bus at a checkpoint and find the millions in cash. Just think if he had bought an SUV in Seattle. He might not have been caught. It seems no one else was alert, so ... darn if it wasn't for that bumbling thief he might have gotten away with it.

Who Benefits?

One of the big questions police ask when trying to solve a crime is who does the crime benefit? Does it benefit the victims of the lawyer who just scammed his clients? Or the scorned wife the one who killed the mistress? Very important question to ask.

I ask this question because Operation Fast&Furious has been touted by administration officials to have the objective of tracing guns sold in the US to higher ups in various Mexican criminal gangs. That is the alleged benefit Fast&Furious bestowed upon US law enforcement. What has been document proves how untrue this statement is.

Rep. Issa and Sen. Grassley's investigation has shown agents of the US federal government have allowed known felons to purchase multiple weapons. This is federal law that all FFL[Federal Firearms Licensees] are bound by if they want to sell guns, they will perform background checks on all who try to purchase weapons and if the person has a felony record then the sale is denied. To violate this law results in the FFL owner being prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law with a good chance to serve time. And it seems Fast and Furious short circuited this safety feature.

In violation of standard ATF procedures, many guns - including AK-47 clones, AR-15 clones, .50cal sniper rifles, pistols, and other firearms - that were part of this operation were allowed to cross the border into Mexico and arm drug cartels. Acting ATF station chief Mexico City Camino testified to reading part of the management log for Fast&Furious, on three separate occasions agents walked away from houses that stashed the suspect guns.

The ATF personnel in Mexico were deliberately kept in the dark about the full scope of Operation Fast&Furious. ATF Attache Darren Gil and his assistant Carlos Camino noticed a spike in seized arms that traced back to the Phoenix ATF office op called Fast&Furious. It has emerged that when ATF Mexico would run recovered gun serial numbers through e-Trace, if it was a Fast&Furious gun they would get zero information back. When the Mexican authorities ran serial numbers through e-Trace, they also got zero information if the weapon was connected to Fast&Furious. It turns out the agents managing Fast&Furious were telling the e-Trace people to not divulge information. Meanwhile Gil and Camino were voicing their concerns to Washington DC repeatedly and getting no substantive answer. In fact they were under the impression Fast&Furious was an op aimed at arresting FFL holders selling weapons illegally. When Gil asked for permission to pass information relating to these guns to Mexican officials, he was not allowed even though he had only an incomplete understanding. After the murder of Mario Gonzales Rodriguez at the hands of a drug cartel, Camino briefed Mario's sister and former Attorney General of Chihuahua of the Fast&Furious connection. What is telling is Camino told her out of a sense of duty, he wanted her to know the truth before the media told the world and he did it in spite of official silence from Washington DC.

Not only was ATF Mexico kept out of the information loop, parts of the ATF in Washington DC was also. Specifically the Office of Strategic Information and Intelligence[OSII]. Steve Martin of OSII has testified he conducted briefings where Fast&Furious was brought up. The large number of guns being found in Mexico that traced back to this operation was briefed. And he has also testified that OSII recommendations were ignored. Eventually OSII stopped bringing Fast&Furious up at briefings because they felt it had been covered and nothing was being done.

So in Mexico we had Darren Gil and Carlos Camino asking about when Fast&Furious was going to be shut down since they thought it was an FFL case. Steve Martin and others in OSII were asking about Fast&Furious. Southwest border czar Ray Crowley was asking what would be done. International Affairs Chief Daniel Kumor was also asking when Fast&Furious would be shut down. All were told Fast&Furious would be shut down soon, this was mid-2010. In fact Fast&Furious would not be shut down and any arrests made until the end of January 2011 and after the murder of agent Brian Terry in December 2010 at the hands of cartel members armed with Fast&Furious weapons.

If Fast&Furious had truly been aimed at tracing weapons further up the food chain than mere straw buyers, wouldn't it be advisable to tell Gil and Camino about it so they could brief the US Ambassador and their Mexican counterparts? Instead Mexico ATF was kept in the dark. So when Mexican forces, during the course of normal raids, turned up Fast&Furious weapons they had no idea what was going on. And when Fast&Furious case officers told e-Trace not to report weapon information to the Mexican government or to Mexico ATF, it further served to hide what the true scope of Fast&Furious was.

This darkness that cloaked this operation is very troubling. If this was truly such a straight forward operation to arrest illegal gun buyers then why was all the behind the scene manipulations allowed that stymied what should have been key players the knowledge they needed to assist the operation? What is emerging is a poorly thought out mission where no thought was given to unforeseen consequences.

Besides Mario and Brian, how many other people will die at the hands of weapons Fast&Furious let slip? The true total will not be known for years since over a thousand Fast&Furious weapons are still unaccounted for. And for every death these weapons cause, ATF Agents Terry English and Hope McAllister, who managed Fast&Furious, should be charged as accessories to murder. Same charge should be brought against anyone who knowingly assisted them or allowed Fast&Furious to continue even as the death toll in Mexico mounted. This corruption, this malfeasance, this violating of laws needs to be rooted out thoroughly - to prove our justice system still works and to assure our ally in the drug war Mexico that the United States is still trustworthy.

Death of Heroes

December 10, 1941 was a momentous day for Colin P. Kelly. On that day he piloted a B-17C Flying Fortress in an attack off the Philippines to repel the invading Japanese. He stayed at the controls of his damaged plane as the rest of his crew parachuted to safety. The bomber exploded before Kelly could escape. In early reporting, Colin Kelly was credited with sinking the Japanese battleship Haruna. Colin Kelly became a hero. Later investigation revleaed IJN Haruna had not been sunk at Kelly's hands, but Kelly's heroism of staying with his mortally stricken plane so his men could live can not be diminished.

In 2004 in the dusty dry foreign land called Afghanistan, another American hero was killed. Pat Tillman, like great players in WWII, turned in his Cardinal's jersey and helmet for a different uniform in 2002. He became a US Army Ranger which took him to a distant country. And it was there that Tillman had his appointment with death. At first, like in WWII, the reports stated Tillman had been killed in action against the Taliban. Then it emerged he suffered a fate like Butch O'Hare, killed in combat due to friendly fire. Even this truth does not detract from the courage and selflessness of Pat Tillman, he turned his back on what many think of as being important to answer his country's call. And he paid the ultimate price for holding those beliefs.

Now we have the story of another American hero who has died in a foreign land. Jamie Zapata was working with fellow ICE agent Victor Avila in war ravaged Mexico. Then one night they were hit in an ambush. Zapata was killed while Avila lived. The tragedy of this hero's death is the lack of information on how he died. The Departmeent of Justice is refusing to tell Zapata's family all the details for fear of compromising some unnamed investigation. Come now, Zapata's family deserves to know the truth.

Deadly Diplomacy

I recently wrote about the Obama Administration and its shabby treatment of the United Kingdom. Now it is time to shift focus to our neighbor south of the border - Mexico.

I am talking about Operation Fast and Furious and its diplomatic fallout. On July 4th, acting BATFE Director Melson with his own attorney sat down with Sen. Grassley and Rep. Issa to discuss this operation. What emerged from this discussion plus released emails is a multi-agency operation that involved the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security at the minimum. Also evident was efforts by higher ups in the Dept. of Justice to control how information flowed between agencies and what was reported to Congress. Most troubling of all is the possibility some of the straw buyers that ATF allowed to buy weapons might have been on the payroll of other US agencies - taxpayer money might have been used to purchase weapons that slipped into Mexico and killed 150+ Mexican citizens.

If I believed honorable men and women were in the Department of Justice, I would expect them to do the right thing. However the evidence is clear these people are not honorable. So investigations have to be carried out to find out how much FBI Director Mueller really knew, along with various attorneys, agents, supervisors, and other agencies like DEA knew. Then proceed to impeachment and/or prosecution of the accused. This matter has to be fully explored and investigators must follow the evidence no matter where it leads, even if that leads to Obama and his czars.

Attempts to downplay and pretend this crisis, that makes Watergate a tempest in a teapot, is failing. Citizens in the United States are learning these facts even as most media outlets continue to ignore the controversy. This stonewalling can not last because Mexico has learned of Operation Fast and Furious because places like CBS and Fox News did break the story. That Mexico had to learn from media outlets of this has greatly upset the government of Calderone because the US State Department should have talked with their Mexican counterparts about an operation that would cross international borders. The Obama Administration did not inform Mexico. So the Mexicans are naturally having flashbacks of 1848, 1916, and other incidents where the United States arbitrarily forced itself into Mexican affairs. In fact Mexico is now demanding those who are responsible for Fast and Furious be extradited to Mexico to stand trial.

So this mess is not going away anytime soon. It no longer matters if Fast and Furious was an Obama attempt to get more restrictive gun laws passed. Because of 150+ murders in Mexico it has become an international incident. And until the Obama Administration negotiates in good faith with Mexico to resolve this matter, US-Mexican relations will be strained. Be interesting to see how Mexico pursues making its displeasure known. They could declare war on the United States for supporting criminals trying to topple Mexico, that would play well with Mexicans on both sides of the border and would be a good reason for war that would play on the international scene. Cuba and Venezuela would support Mexico in resisting Yanqui imperial aggression. And just think of Mexico bringing its complaint to the United Nations.

Update: Thanks to Birkenstock Cowboy for this link.
This is very bad if it proves out. That the Tampa BATFE office allowed guns to slip out the country to Honduras and then slip over into Mexico. Running two seperate arms pipelines into Mexcio to equip the drug cartels with guns? Reagan caught holy hell for the overt arms pipeline to Afghanistan and was almost toppled because of Iran-Contra. The Obama Administration would deserve to be savaged in the international community for the sheer affrontery of these actions. Mexico and Honduras would be within their rights to call a meeting of the OAS to discuss these grave matters. And the OAS would be justified in condeming the US for these unprovoked aggressive acts. And just think, after OAS sanction, Honduras and Mexico take their case to the UN. How many of those countries would love to take the US down a few notches? This has the hallmarks of being a massive disaster for the United States if all this turns out true. Even if only part of its true, this is still a disaster for the United States. To broaden the area of destruction, some of the Fast and Furious guns have now been seized in the United States.

Borders? What Borders

I am sorry I am not buying the official Mexican explanation to this story. That three trucks loaded with armed soldiers of the Mexican Army rolled across Bridge Two in Laredo because they got lost. Lets ignore such things as the bi-lingual signs saying you are entering the United States. Or all the cars and trucks queued up at the toll-booths for entry.

If the Mexican soldiers can not read signs in Spanish, they why are they allowed to drive vehicles. Please no jokes on Mexican drivers, we are talking military drivers.

As for the Customs and Border Patrol folk, glad no one was hurt. But it does raises questions on security. This is one of the official entry points into both countries, why isn't there an armed rapid response team standing by? 1916 was not 100 years ago to use Ezra Klein's yardstick. The grim truth is, the border between a blood-drenched and violence racked Mexico and the United States is wide open.

Secure the Border

This news story is simply incredible. Incredible stupidity on the coyotes part for not even trying to match the paint on the stolen US government vehicle license when trying to change a 0 to look like an 8. Incredible guts to dress up 13 illegal immigrants in US Marine Corps marpat digicam. And incredible luck they were caught by US Customs agents before any real Marines found these posers. Greater luck for the United States that these spies were caught.

The KdF Wagen

With $50billion in bailouts, a brutal take over of a publicly traded car company[GM], and a further $14billion for retooling; it has been with some major trepidation people have awaited the arrival of the Volt hybrid car. There will only be 10,000 first generation Volts at a price of $41,000; not counting federal subsidies of $7,500 and possible state subsidies. This has naturally engendered comparisons with the Volkswagen Beetle. So I guess its time to compare the two. My sources are Small Wonder and The Star and The Laurel.

Hitler it must be noted had always been an enthusiast of the auto. One of the things the Third Reich did was sponsor such as Mercedes and Auto-Union to race, even during the Depression. What resulted was wins for the gleaming bare metal masterpieces of German engineering. One of the men who gave Germany those wins was named Dr. Ferdinand Porsche. The doctor had a dream, of building a car the average person could own, drive, and even fix; this dream predates the rise of Hitler with such ideas as a hybrid car with a small gasoline motor to recharge batteries and an electric motor for each wheel. Which resulted in Dr. Porsche losing employment with companies like Daimler-Benz because automobiles could only be afforded by the rich.

So there was Hitler looking for a chicken in every pot scheme to keep the people on his side and justify the autobahns in non-military terms. Then there is Dr. Porsche pitching a very inexpensive auto while designing amazing racing cars. So it was natural the two would meet and from this meet-up Hitler found his chicken on the pot, the Peoples’ Car. It would cost a piddling 1200 Reich Marks that workers could buy coupons until they filled the coupon book. Daimler-Benz and other companies did offer up designs to meet Hitler’s challenge. But the Nazi regime awards the contract to Dr. Ferdinand Porsche and it’s the Nazis and their labor fronts that build the new auto plant that after WWII would be called Wolfsburg. The big day arrives for Hitler to dedicate the factory. With him is Dr. Porsche and other Nazi leaders. The banners of the Nazi regime snap in the breeze as the swastika inside a wheel cog logo on the podium is caught by many photographers. And this is when Hitler names the new Peoples’ Car, it shall be called the Kraft durch Freude-wagen after a German labor organization and built in KdF-stadt. One has to imagine Dr. Porsche sliding off his chair when that name is announced, for Kraft durch Freude means Strength through Joy and wags would comment young German maidens lost their strength through joy if they were part of this labor group.

During World War II, there would be no actual KdF Wagens built for the people. A few would be built, but they would be for Nazi party big-wigs and practically hand-built. Instead the KdF factory would build military vehicles like the Kubelwagen, Schwimmwagen, and the Kommandeurwagen along with stoves for the Russian front. Then World War II ended with a shattered Germany divided between four countries: US, UK, France, and the USSR. The shattered auto factory barely fell into the British sector and it was the British who started to resurrect the plant to provide vehicles to British occupation forces. Britain offered the factory to anyone including Ford, everyone including Ford turned up their nose. Then they found American trained Heinz Nordoff, formerly of Opel but now unemployed by American decree because he held a management post at Opel during the war and thus was considered a Nazi. It was Nordoff who lead the struggling company from bartering complete cars for material and food to actually selling them for the new Deutsch Marks. And from those austere beginnings, Nordoff would build what became Volkswagen into a world class auto company that would in the 1960s proceed to conquer the United States with an inexpensive car that was easy to own, to drive, repair, and even modify. The Beetle would continue to be built in Mexico until demand for the water-cooled New Beetle forced the last air-cooled production line to be shut down. Total Beetle production over its long life was 21,529,464 vehicles.

The GM Volt is the Beetle story in reverse it seems. It started as a car built by a publicly traded company to sell to whomever could afford it and made in factories located within the United States. In the end what has happened is GM is now run by the government, there will be a new plant built in Mexico, there will be only 10,000 first generation Volts made, it depends upon subsidies to be marketable, and its so complex it is the antithesis of the original Volkswagen Beetle.

Banditos Que Pasa?

To keep a hot weekend simmering at a boiling point, this article from The Examiner certainly kept the fires burning. It was reported a faction of the Los Zetas drug gang had seized two ranches outside of Laredo, TX. And that the ranch owners had managed to escape. This naturally kicked up a firestorm amidst the blogging realm even as Bing and Google came up with nothing.

Though I did find this story via Bing from The Hill. About the 51 murders south of the border, talk about a job lot massacre. And this story was the first real reason why I started to doubt the story from The Examiner.
1. Los Zetas is now a criminal gang, but it started out as a special Mexican military unit trained by the United States to deal with the drug cartels.
2. So they have an internal knowledge of tactics even as they practise strategies that would make Vlad the Impaler smile.
3. It is now being reported the Yanquis are moving to the border, late but they are moving.

So what do about it?
1. Stay south and try to get through the thicker cordon with a higher chance of failure?
2. Or you shift yourself north of the picket line along with enough product to outlast at least of month of this show of force.

By shifting to the north, the alert level goes down. And from the north Los Zetas can proceed to act like normal US citizens while scouting the cordon for weaknesses from behind to get future shipments through.

So it would make sense for Los Zetas to take over a couple ranches in Texas. But Los Zetas would not do is just let the ranchers go, that violates OpSec and alerts people something happened. Los Zetas would more likely kill the ranchers to preserve security and pretend the families sold the ranches because of the threats from south of the border. But The Examiner story reports the ranch families escaped. So that is when I started to doubt this was a real story.

Now courtesy of Flopping Aces I find references to an FBI report that preceded this wild story. Notice mention is given to a mythical Texas ranch where Los Zetas supposedly conducts training. Also mentioned Texan and Mexican cartel ops are sometimes attributed to Los Zetas. So I think someone took the FBI warning and decided to embellish it. If this is true then there are some 'news' organizations that need to face up to this hoax and out those who peddled this lie. Failure to properly respond to this hoax diminishes future reporting and instills in the public a feeling that the next one will be made up. Now do we really want to become a pale copy of the Journolist crackpots?

FARC-Hugo

The South American tin-pot dictator is at it again it seems. As his economy contracts another 3% and his neighbor Colombia's expands by 2.7%, Chavismo would seem to be edging closer and closer to collapse. Further highlighting differences between the two countries, Colombia just had a successful election and transition of power from Uribe to Santos. Only rose-coloured progressives could believe the last election in Venezuela was as free as what Colombia just experienced. And there is still the matter before the Organization of American States where Colombia is accusing Venezuela of harboring the terrorists of FARC. Naturally Chavez is denying this and has broken off diplomatic relations with Colombia over these charges. But we can't forget the raid into Ecuador against the FARC that netted three laptops that Interpol says has untampered evidence of FARC/Venezuelan cooperation, death of a FARC leader, and the removal of Mexican fellow-travellers from the FARC order of battle. Or the death of a Colombian drug lord who seemed to have sanctuary in Venezuela. So there is evidence that Chavez has tampered with the internal affairs of a neighboring country.

Will this lead to war? In the past the answer has been no. Even though Chavez has blustered, called George Bush a devil, and generally frothed at the mouth over alleged Yanqui Imperialism; he has never crossed the line and moved against Colombia. Another thing entering the equation is Colombia's military is more combat experienced, better equipped, and better trained than Chavez's, even though Venezuela has traded billions of dollars in oil to Cuba to get weapons. Hopefully the United States continues to stand firm with its long-standing ally of Colombia against the covetous gaze and lustful longings of Chavez for a Greater Venezuela with him in charge.

Actually to think of Chavez as brave and a bold leader is to laugh. We must remember when Chavez first tried to seize power in Venezuela, the harbinger of Chavismo cowered under a table in the library and wet himself. Too bad the then democratic country of Venezuela and its institutions of justice spared Chavez's life. All he did was plot again and succeed this time, much to the detriment of his own country and everyone around him. Lets hope the intrinsic coward's heart that beats in that large chest of bluster again blinks and the tensions lessen.

The People vs Barrack Obama

Lets talk about Obama and his designated knee-capping don at the DoJ Holder bringing suit against the state of Arizona. One word: Insane.

British forces went to Lexington and Concord to seize the militia arms. The British general's intent was to prevent the colonials from getting into mischief because tensions were very high with a populace chaffing under a Crown governor after George III stripped the colony of its original charter and government. Now tactically for the British it made sense, but to the colonials it was proof the British government, ne George III, cared not for them and would leave these people depending upon British regular forces in Boston to save them from Indian raids.

After all the French and Indian Wars was barely a generation in the past. Naturally the colonials were not going to be left swinging in the wind and thus the American Revolution started.
In the present age we once again have a leader appointing upon himself rights and powers normally vested in the peoples legislature, be it termed Congress or Parliament. He has elected czars who are not accountable to anyone save him. He has bypassed court rulings to push his agenda. He has impeded local and private citizens actions answering to a disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. And now he moves against a state that is trying to protect its citizens after suffering wanton and depraved murder of those citizens, blantant destruction of property, and flagerant flouting of all laws with legal bullying while ignoring such basic concepts as states are soverign entities who have voluntarily entered into a compact to create the Federal government.

So there are very strong indications of this boiling downto a states rights issue, how far will the Federal government stretch its tentacles via the Commerce clause? That is one thing this lawsuit will determine. Assuming the judge does not laugh himself to death reading the lawsuit where it admits the Federal government of Barrack Obama chooses not to enforce legal laws passed by the Congress and vetted by various other courts. This is the kind of government one gets when an amateur is elected to a position far above his head.

I wonder if I have enough popcorn for this schlock theatre?

Obama's 'Let them eat cake' moment

All I can say is I am boggled if this is true.



The White House will have to produce the actual recordings of this meeting to disprove what Sen. Kyl is reporting. If Gibbs tries to blow off the reporter who asks for the recording while saying nothing happened, lets all remember Romanov and Seestak plus other internal White House findings of 'nothing happened.' Dear President Obama you are way overdrawn on the trust account. Show the people the proof that Sen. Kyl is mis-stating what you said in a private meeting. Come on, this a chance to destroy the credibility of one of the leading Republican opponents to all you champion. To remain silent is to admit you will not defend the sovereign territory of these United States. The ball Mr. President is in your court, will you toss a wimpy pitch by stonewalling? Or will you finally zing us with a scorching fast-ball by proving Sen. Kyl is a liar?

Thanks Myrtus for pointing this video out to me.

Do We Have a Southern Border?

Not according to these two news articles from San Antonio, TX.

Customs officers spotted the aircraft about 5 p.m. Tuesday about a mile into U.S. airspace over Falcon Heights, a residential development on the shores of the binational Falcon Lake reservoir. The incursion was “brief,” lasting possibly “15 to 20 minutes,” Pauza said.
...
“It's critically important for Texas, U.S. and Mexican law enforcement to appropriately coordinate our efforts,” Perry said, adding that Sheriff Gonzalez, the Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Border Patrol were “working together to gather more information” about the incident.
Gonzalez on Friday called the U.S. response a brush-off, “typical ... of our government, in reality an echo of the Mexican government.”

Then we have this about corruption permeating all levels of the US government, on top of all the corruption that has happened in Mexico. I remember the offer Pablo Escobar's cartel in Colombia would give police, judges, and public officials -"Silver or lead?"

As violence continued Thursday with a highway shootout in Tamaulipas, a Senate subcommittee in Washington heard testimony that drug cartels are trying to infiltrate U.S. agencies along the border, with corruption cases among Homeland Security personnel on the rise.
In the past two years, there have been 400 public corruption cases involving federal, state and local law enforcement agents originating from the Southwest border region, Kevin Perkins, FBI assistant director for criminal investigations, told the Senate Homeland Security subcommittee on preparedness.
James Tomsheck, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection assistant commissioner, told the panel the drug cartels operating in Mexico are making a concerted effort to infiltrate CBP, and the agency is responding with more screening of job applicants with polygraph tests and background investigations. Corruption cases were opened last year on 576 CBP officers and Border Patrol agents.

This is not looking good. Not at all. And how much longer will it spiral out of control? The role of government, especially the fedearl government, is to protect the citizens from such foreign depredations.

News Round-Up

Some high points or low points that are in the news.

Looks like Brilliant Pebbles are still viable for BMD. Go MKV!

Its Photoshop I tell you! I was framed! So claims a Boston councilman caught on videotape by the FBI accepting $1000 in his office. No one ever said politicians were bright. Just crafty on occasion. Meanwhile Wilkerson was caught on film stuffing the bribe in her bra, no word if she will claim the cleavage is Photoshopped.

Has Hollywood decided to make a remake of that classic drug comedy film of Cheech&Chong called UP in Smoke? Agents in Arizona have confiscated a phony UPS truck that had a ton of pot in it. Driver managed to escape and no word if any drug-dogs got stoned.

And finally it seems the DoD panic over the USB thumb-drives has a point of origin. And it does not look good for the US military. It seems to have originated in Afghanistan at a local ISP, was carried by thumb-drive to the military network, and somehow got to the secure network. Fox News with Brit Humes reported today the actual ISP was a front company run by former FSB/KGB agents. Vladimir Putin is also a former KGB agent. Hhhmmm.

That is a wrap for the news today.

A Long Bloody War

For a good understanding of the woes facing the FARC, please read Dr. Radu's post over on VCrisis. The 66 pounds of depleted uranium is just further proof that FARC's power is on the wane and why they should not be removed from the list of terrorist organisations. If you rob, murder, and kidnap to keep your revolution going; then you just a bunch of hoodlums and not belligerents. Be akin to granting the US Mafia the same belligerent status. Not going to happen.

After reading this, one finds similar patterns between Colombia and Iraq. As the country itself stabilises and the economy improves, the terrorist organisations must find recruits where they can and at what price. So one sees an influx of fellow travellers from foreign lands, which further erodes the claims of a native insurgency and instead becomes something of an attempted foreign occupation. This in turn further alienates the locals from supporting the insurgency, why should they cover for a bunch of foreigners? There is no bond between Marxist-Leninist fanatics and the people who actually live there, all that clap-trap about the common struggle is just that clap-trap.

And it seems Mexico suffers the same problem the United States and other Western countries do. The only place where Marxist-Leninism can survive is in the rarefied atmosphere of academia. So these institutions become the cadre breeding grounds the likes of Reyes noted FARC needs to keep operating. Luckily the Colombian military/police forces and the Iraqi military/police forces are getting better at defeating their respective terror groups, be it FARC or the Mahdi Army.

Now is not the time to get weak in the knees and declare things lost. The upswing in violence in Iraq is an attempt by the Mahdi Army and others to reshape a far more important battlefield than the physical one. Even as al-Sadr sends more fools to die for his lust for power, they are mere bloody window dressing for a bolder operation aimed at the United States. General Petraeus is due to report back to the Congress soon on how things are progressing in Iraq. So the killers in Basra and elsewhere are trying to make the Surge a failure just before this report, to negate the validity of the strategy. This is the Mahdi Army's Battle of the Bulge, their all or nothing last gasp attempt to defeat the elected government of Iraq and the United States not on the battlefield, but on the field of perceptions. And if history is any guideline about battlefield results then the Mahdi Army will get its ass handed to it again, this time by Iraqi forces with US support which will mean al-Sadr will again flee to Iran to let things cool down while his fighters also reach room temerature.

Victory is often not won within a span of a few minutes of daring, luck, and Divine Providence as witnessed by the US Pacific Fleet at the Battle of Midway. Often victory is wrested one centimeter at a time at horrendous cost as witnessed by the battle for Iwo Jima or on the beaches of Normandy. Victory is attained sometimes by one combatant hanging on just a little while longer. FARC and the Mahdi Army are betting that the US and its allies wont hang on for the one extra second needed to win. Lets prove them dead wrong.

Wordsmith in his post on Basra will be just another comma, made me think of something else to add to the above post. How different effective leadership can be on impacting results. The FARC have been rattling around trying to overthrow the government of Colombia for 44 years, to apply the American Democrats' yardstick for victory against that record, the FARC are stuck in a quagmire and should just plain surrender. President Uribe has been in office less than eight years and yet has managed to make the economy boom, marginalize the FARC, winnow its ranks, and kill two of its top commanders. Al-Maliki is trying to do the same thing in Iraq. Just think if someone other than President Bush had been in office these past eight years, would Uribe and Maliki even be close to defeating their opponents? Probably not because someone like Al Gore would have tried to ignore it since it would be a distraction to his true goal about fighting Global Warming or some other Quixotian cause.

Politically Correct Suicide

Mike at Mike's America has blogged about the problems UCLA has in accommodating the various diverse groups who wish to have their own graduation ceremony. Mainly identity politics has run amok and instead of 'out of many one' we are seeing 'many but separate.'

A friend earlier today showed me the newest issue of GX, Guard Experience, which talks about what is happening with the Army National Guard, its citizen-soldiers, and their families. Strangely I have not found an online link to this magazine, just indirect ones like this recruiting link. One article, title eludes me now, made my jaw drop. It deals the the California Army National Guard and hence the tie in with UCLA's problems.

It seems there is a move afoot to make the California Army Guard units reflect more closely the demographics of their communities. Since only 25% of the force is Hispanic while the overall community is more than 32% Hispanic. Officials want this to change since the number of Hispanics in California since the last census has risen by over 57%.

There are a few problems with this rise in the Hispanic population and this plan to address it.

• How many are legal immigrants to the United States, naturalized, or born here in that 57% rise? Bet the percentage of Californians of Hispanic ancestry drops a few percentage points once we toss out all the illegals and felons.
• Unit cohesion above the platoon/company level. To meet these demographically mandated goals, will we see pure Hispanic and pure Anglo units in the same battalion, regiment, or even division? If so, will English be enforced as the lingua franca? If not, then we can kiss cohesion above the platoon level goodbye unless there are enough bilingual personnel. This in an Army that is trying to generate enough speakers of Arabic, Dari, and Farsi to name three critical languages.
• Competence. That is going to be another question. If this is forced down the throat of the Army Guard, will they be picky in the quality of recruits if they have to meet these arbitrary quotas. Sub-par recruits do make it out of Basic Training and AIT, though rarely. The question arises, once they reach their units and are shown to be under-achievers will their units discharge them or keep them on the rolls just to keep their percentage up?
• Loyalty is another hot button item. Recruiters desperate to get recruits may just sign up some with questionable backgrounds. Who is to say, like the Del Monte plant where illegals were using the Social Security cards of deceased Americans or even false ones, the same could not happen with recruits. So we get illegals in a military unit. Will they hold true allegiance to the state of California and the United States? Or covertly serve another country?
• And most troubling of all, will recruiters and unit commanders have to turn away qualified applicants because they are not Hispanic and hence would drive that unit's ethnic ratio below that of the community it is in? Bet some have forgotten Bakke vs the State of California.

If the Army Guard continues to fail to meet these ratios there would be one last gasp for the multiculturals in their quest to make the Guard reflect the general population. Institute a state mandated service period of say two years and by fiat assign a percentage to the Army Guard to keep them at the pre-assigned quota levels.

This is plain and simple a bad idea that needs to be stopped now before the California Army National Guard is destroyed.