Cass Sunstein: Obama's Truth Czar

Cass Sunstien is President Obama's Czar of White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. As a scholar, Sunstien is known for believing that “people” (not him of course) as a rule make bad decisions, so they need government to “nudge” them in the right direction, this includes all areas of their lives, such as“ education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, (and) happiness..”; yes happiness, government knows better than you, what direction you need to be nudged to be happy. Sunstien also believes there are problems with the concept of freedom of speech. Sunstien believes that citizens with mutual interests, should not exchange ideas as “like-minded people speak or listen mostly to one another.” Sunstien basically believes that the government needs to control the information you hear and that he “doubt(s) whether, as interpreted, the constitutional guarantee of free speech is adequately serving democratic goals”.

The following is another example; "conspiracy theories are a subset of the large category of false beliefs, and also of the somewhat smaller category of beliefs that are both false and harmful. Consider, for example, the beliefs that prolonged exposure to sunlight is actually healthy and that climate change is neither occurring nor likely to occur. These beliefs are (in our view) both false and dangerous, but as stated, they do not depend on, or posit, any kind of conspiracy theory. We shall see that the mechanisms that account for conspiracy theories overlap with those that account for false and dangerous beliefs of all sorts, including those that fuel anger and hatred". Here, Sunstein seems to be insisting that one plus one equals three, and if you don't agree, you have dangerous beliefs. Why someone would write that prolonged exposure to the sun is a problem belief (it isn't) or that anyone denies that climate changes (they don't), shows that government defining a belief they determine both false and harmful, is completely arbitrary.

Sunstien further says the Constitution is a hindrance to his ideology and belief that, “There is no liberty without dependency”. Let me say that again, “There is no liberty without dependency”. No one with this belief belongs anywhere near the President of the United States. The only way it could happen, is if the President believes it also. Now, the reason I say this, is because President Obama was a Constitutional scholar and views the Constitution flawed; he stated, “the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf”. Here, Pres Obama is being intellectually dishonest because, the Constitutional is nothing near a “charter of negative liberties”, unless you believe that “there is no Liberty without dependency”. The only true “negative liberties” in the Constitution are the protections it gives us from a tyrannical government.

Sunstein has said, “If government could not intervene effectively, none of the individual rights to which Americans have become accustomed could be reliably protected”. In other words, only the government can protect your freedom and liberty and; “Without taxes, there would be no liberty. Without taxes there would be no property. Without taxes, few of us would have any assets worth defending. [It is] a dim fiction that some people enjoy and exercise their rights without placing any burden whatsoever on the fisc (services supported by taxes) ”. What Sunstein and the President seem to be ignoring is that the American citizenry have tasked government to protect us. We should be as dependent on government as a business owner is dependent on an employee. But, for this to have any meaning, than the American people need to have the ability to protect itself without government, this is specifically why our founding fathers guaranteed citizens the right to bare arms. To allow any politician to say we need to protect our Second Amendments rights by allowing firearms for sport and hunting, completely mis-states the meaning of the Constitution. It's pretty clear, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”. Our founding fathers wanted us to have firearms to protect ourselves and the liberty guaranteed in the Constitution. The meaning of Militia is an army made up of citizenry, not trained soldiers. There is no reason why any sane and law abiding citizen should not have access to a military rifle and be part of a local militia.

Sunstein's war on the First Amendment is particularly extreme against conspiracy theorists. Sunstein believes that conspiracy theorists are dangerous, “and raise significant challenges for policy and law”. He defines "extreme conspiracy theories" to include, " the Central Intelligence Agency was responsible for the assassination of President Kennedy; that doctors deliberately manufactured the AIDS virus, ; that the 1996 crash of TWA was caused by a US military missile; (or) that the theory of Global Warming is a deliberate fraud”. Oops, well I guess 3 out of 4 ain't bad; apparently he wrote this before the hacked emails showed some “deliberate fraud” going on with amongst the Global Warming scientists. There's a problem defining what is appropriate for the American citizen to believe; the government may just wind up being wrong, usually is, and many times the censoring is deliberate; it's called fascism.

Since, as I explained before, Sunstein believes the idea that , “like-minded people speak or listen mostly to one another”, is bad and does not serve “democratic goals”, then this kind of free exchange of ideas needs to be subverted by the government. Sunstein's method for this is called, “Cognitive Infiltration”; defined as not just the “1960s-style of infiltration with a view to surveillance and collecting information” but rather, “breaking up the ideological and epistemological complexes that constitute these networks and groups.” Does this sound like an America you want to live in? Sunstein explains his plan in detail, “Government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real space groups and try to undermine percolating conspiracy theories.” If you haven't figured this out yet, what Sunstein is talking about is using the tactics the FBI used in the 50's and 60's to undermine the communist party, the civil rights movement and anti-war demonstrators. There was evidence that the agents not only infiltrated these groups, but helped to increase their radicalization and incite them to escalate their levels of violence. It was illegal then and it is illegal now; and again it is the definition of fascism.

But Sunstein is an intellectual and a scholar, I'm sure these ideas and concepts were written decades ago, and he was dealing with the purely theoretical; yes this was written all the way back in 2008. The only way we can protect ourselves from those who want to destroy our country is to stay informed, get involved, vote for representatives that believe them same as you, and continue to exercise the freedoms and liberty guaranteed and protected by the Constitution; as the saying goes, use it or lose it.

Reid's Core Racism Comes Out

There has been a recent uproar regarding statements made by Senator Harry Reid, that showed up in a recently published book. The statement was, "He [Reid] was wowed by Obama's oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama -- a 'light-skinned' African American 'with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one'”. The statement is racist on so many levels it boggles the mind. First, the statement says that white America is racist and would not vote for a dark skinned black presidential candidate, especially if he had a “Negro dialect" (whatever that is; Ebonics?), that blacks will only vote for a black candidate with ghetto credentials, and third is condescending to the Black America, implying they are be so easily manipulated. It was the same when Vice President Biden said of Obama, “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.” Both statements present candidate Obama, not as member of the white political elite, of which both Reid and Biden see themselves as members, but a black electable figurehead.

I was raised with an almost politically correct mindset; not the PC that prohibits critical thinking, but the PC that recognizes that one can not be sensitive to race, while they continue to entertain racist thoughts; your core beliefs always find a way of coming out. Both Reid and Biden show that they have a core belief that whites are superior to blacks, as blacks are somehow not clean or are mired in an uneducated world view that is personified by what they view as form of black specific speech. As Janeane Garofalo said, “This is racism, straight up”.

TSA Naked Body Scans

When I was a young teenager there were ads for various items in the back of my comic books. They included pimple syringes (remove blackheads with suction), some apparatus that would give you big muscles and my favourite (at the time anyway) X-ray glasses. To drive home the intended use for the glasses, the ad showed some young man looking at an attractive female through the glasses; his tongue was hanging and eyes popping out. Anyway, I never bought any of these items (except for a stop watch that was really cool), but as a young man I fantasized how cool it would be to have those glasses. Well, the technology has finally caught up, but it is the size of a phone booth. Phone booth? Oh yeah I forgot, cell phones. Anyway, the next time you go flying on a commercial airlines, they are going to walk you through a square fish-bowl that will take a full body scan of you, that result in a 3-d picture of you naked. I'm not talking about some blurry image, I'm talking Playboy quality naked photos of women. You see the scanners produce a negative image that looks a bit like an X-ray, but because it is digital, all you need to do is reverse the image and you get a positive, that any software program can colorize. I'm sure they will tell you that the scanners don't contain that technology, which would be ridiculous, reverse imagining is an option even with most printer software. Included in the posting a very small photo that can be enlarged by clicking on it (I wonder if this poor girl knew her naked photo would go viral on the net).

The first problem with these scanners is the males that are hired as TSA agents. Most are want-a-be cops who washed out from one reason or another, the most common reason being psychological screening. The minimum requirements are a GED and background check. Training is a week and a half in a classroom and then on the job training. No wonder complaints of lack of professionalism have poured in. Further, while the TSA has not released the number of complains by female fliers, there is a mountain of anecdotal evidence the attractive females are chosen much more often for the "random" searches, including Carmon Electra who is searched every time she flies. And here's the main issue; it doesn't work! Officials at the British Department of Transportation and Home Security tested the scanners were not persuaded that they would work comprehensively against terrorist threats to aviation. Further from the Independent UK;

Since the attack was foiled, body-scanners, using "millimetre-wave" technology and revealing a naked image of a passenger, have been touted as a solution to the problem of detecting explosive devices that are not picked up by traditional metal detectors – such as those containing liquids, chemicals or plastic explosive.

But Ben Wallace, the Conservative MP, who was formerly involved in a project by a leading British defence research firm to develop the scanners for airport use, said trials had shown that such low-density materials went undetected.

Interestingly enough the US had not allowed the Dutch to use the full body scanners at their airports because of what they said were, "privacy issues". Now, however, the Netherlands will immediately begin using full body scanners for flights heading to the United States to prevent future terrorist attacks like the foiled Christmas Day attempt. Remember what Raul Emanuel said, "Never let a good crisis got to waste".

It looks like Homeland Security still has some bumps in the road before these full-body scans are excepted. First there are advocates for children, who have brought up that photographing naked children is unlawful throughout the world and the idea of simply exempting scanners, as was done in England, has not been well received. Further, A national Muslim civil rights group is asking the TSA for clarification on whether Muslim women wearing Islamic head scarves, or hijabs, will be singled out for additional security checks after a traveler said she was targeted for a "humiliating" full-body search.

A background story here is Former Homeland Security Director (Bush 43) Michael Chertoff and his association with Rapiscan. For about a week after the Christmas bombing attempt, he was was running around Washington pushing the Rapiscan full-body scanners without disclosing his connection to the company (he's also one scary looking dude). Further the lobbying for these scanners is littered with other Washington cronies, like Tom Blank, Former TSA director also under Bush 41, and John P White, Former Dep Secretary of Defense under Clinton and Nation Security Adviser to President Obama. White is the director of L-3 Communications, which got the first scanner contract ($165 million) after the Christmas bombing incident. A prior 150 units ($25 million) came from Rapidscan.

Janet Napolitano and the Bush Doctrine

As a follow-up on my article Napolitano, David Broder and Dangerous Underwear, Janet Napolitano continues to show, she simply has no grasp of Intelligence and/or how to protect American citizens from terrorism. Napolitano answered questions with John Brennen, President Obama's to counter terrorism advisor (if you don't remember John Brennan, he was the person who said there was no “smoking gun”, that would have alerted the TSA that the Underwear Bomber should not have been allowed to board an airliner to the US). When Brennen, was asked the following question, he deferred to Homeland Security Head, Janet Napolitano.

Question: What was the most shocking, stunning thing that you found out of the review? And, Secretary, to you, as well.

SECRETARY NAPOLITANO: I think, following up on that, not just the determination of al Qaeda and al Qaeda Arabian Peninsula, but the tactic of using an individual to foment an attack, as opposed to a large conspiracy or a multi-person conspiracy such as we saw in 9/11, that is something that affects intelligence. It really emphasizes now the renewed importance on how different intelligence is integrated and analyzed, and threat streams are followed through. And, again, it will impact how we continue to review the need to improve airport security around the world.

What! Let me get this straight, these are the folks who flew two airplanes into the Twin Towers in New York, and have continued to blow themselves up for their cause; but Secretary Napolitano is “surprised” by their determination. So apparently, the fact that al Queda continues to attack their enemies with suicide bombers, is not enough for the head of Homeland Security to get the idea in her head that al Queda is a very determined group of terrorists and that their primary means of attacking the west, is the use of individuals that blow themselves up. This is beyond incompetence; we have now moved to the arena of negligent retention. Even in public service, where many employees are protected from liability, the administration still has to answer for negligent retention. If this continues, Americans will die; and they will die because of Janet Napolitano. I do not blame Janet Napolitano for the Underwear bomber; this I blame on President Obama for his past reluctance to use his office to truly commit the United States to a war on Islamo-fascist terrorists.

Besides the negligent retention of Janet, Napolitano, President Obama's speech was remarkable. He finally defined al Queda as an enemy of the United States and they are terrorists, not just the creators of “man-made” disasters. Perhaps National Security Advisors James Jones prediction there would be "shock" and awe in the Presidents report, was the President not blaming George Bush, or that he finally admitting that there is a Global war on terrorism. However, the big shock to me was the following;

“First, I'm directing that our intelligence community immediately begin assigning specific responsibility for investigating all leads on high-priority threats so that these leads are pursued and acted upon aggressively -- not just most of the time, but all of the time. We must follow the leads that we get. And we must pursue them until plots are disrupted. And that mean assigning clear lines of responsibility”.

This statement sounds very similar to following statement:

“The security environment confronting the United States today is radically different from what we have faced before. Yet the first duty of the United States Government remains what it always has been: to protect the American people and American interests. It is an enduring American principle that this duty obligates the government to anticipate and counter threats, using all elements of national power, before the threats can do grave damage. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction – and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack.”

If the later quote sounds familiar, it is because it is a preamble to the Bush Doctrine. If we are truly going to be hunting down terrorists then we first need strong leadership to protect us here at home. If President Obama is serious, then he will remove Napolitano and replace her with a Homeland Security Secretary that is not in need of on the job training. We as Americans deserve better than this.

Let the CIA Make Mistakes

Bravo to David Ignatius and his article, “Bogged In Bureaucracy”. The key point in my mind was his point that the recent break downs in intelligence is a result of, “ intelligent managers (who) are eager for results but worried about risks.” With the Obama Administration, there was also a change in management philosophy; that mistakes will not be tolerated. As Ignatius pointed out, this leads to the reticence of CIA officers “to take responsibility for problem solving, rather than kicking them down to the next guy in line”. As a leader, you can either foster an atmosphere of blame laying and punishment, or “initiative and accountability”; the two are mutually exclusive. The reason is simple, people make mistakes; even very dedicated and experienced people make mistakes. Management can decided to either determine the cause of the mistake and attempt to fix it, or track down the person who made the mistake and punish them. If a CIA officer works in an atmosphere of blame laying and punishment, then they will not take responsibility for anything. In a blame laying culture, mistakes are not dealt with, they are covered up. To foster a culture of initiative and accountability, the CIA leadership must be prepared to protect their officers and create an atmosphere of trust. Only then, will officers put themselves on the line and take the chances that are necessary for exceptionalism; without risk taking, the result will always be mediocrity. The Yeman bomber was identified as a terrorist threat and put on a list, but not the “No Fly” list. This is because some bureaucrat decided that if the No Fly list exceeds 4000 names, it would be a violation of someones civil rights. Since the list is a zero-sum, a name must be removed from the list, before a name can be added and the only way a name can be removed from the list, is for the agency that placed the name on the list to take it off. The names for the No Fly list are chosen from a larger database called TIDE, that has 500,000 names and counting; the system is simply collapsing under it's own weight. What is needed is simple; any CIA agent should have the ability to recommend a name be immediately added to the No-Fly list. It should also be assumed by the intelligence agencies, that most of these expedited names will be subsequently removed, but the intelligence agencies need to be able to trust it's agents and not be afraid of pointing out the wrong person or generating a complaint. How do I know this will work? Well, it's what has been working in Israel for decades. It requires strong leadership and a high degree of trust in police officers and intelligence agents. It's a fix now, train later mentality instead of the finger-pointing, “it wasn't me”, culture we live to today; much to our detriment.

Critical Thinking vs Political Correctness

With the recent re-emergence of interests in airport security, a concept that is the anathema of Political Correctness has reared it head again; the concept is “critical thinking”. Any one who has paid any attention to the news since 911, knows that we have more to fear from Middle Eastern men as Islamic terrorists, than any one else. But Political Correctness does not allow the government to concentrate on any particular ethnic group, even in the name of protecting US citizens from annihilation; instead we are searching grandfathers and very attractive women. When political correctness first reared it’s head in the late 1960s, it was almost cute; Policemen are Policepersons and Garbagemen are Sanitary Engineers. What soon became apparent however, was, built into Political Correctness, is the Orwellian concept of stifling critical thinking.

So-called profiling (or better described as critical per-judging) is a survival instinct that has kept mankind alive up until this point in time. Further, we have confused the concept of prejudice with discerning a threat; to prejudge based on past experience, or known to Law Enforcement as the “duck factor”. Political Correctness tells us that if you are walking down a street at night and there is a group of young men dressed in gang attire, it would be prejudice, demonstrating your bigotry or racism, to be concerned about your safety and cross the other side of the street. Political Correctness says, anyone has the right to dress anyway they like, so to pre-judge a person as a gang member, regardless of the circumstances, is based on race only, and not Critical Thinking that takes into account not only a persons dress, but their age, their mannerisms, the time of day, the location, recent incidents in the area of gang activity, and their non-verbal communications; in other words the duck factor; If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I’m going to assume it’s a duck.

Political Correctness does not allow for critical thinking, because critical thinking empowers the individual and the purpose of Political Correctness has always been to redefine reality in the name of collectivism; in other words the individual can not be trusted to do his own thinking, so society is going to create a set a zero-tolerance rules; since critical thinking can not exist anywhere zero tolerance exists. The result of zero tolerance has run the gambit from tour de farce to preventable tragedy. You have a litany of grammar school students that have been expelled for bringing plastic forks to school, to the Fort Hood shooter who murdered 13 soldiers and wounded 31. Fort Hood was an exercise in Political Correctness. The Army psychologist, turned Islamic terrorist, was well know to anti-terrorist agencies, but was never scrutinized because of his Muslim beliefs. Not only that, in 1993 President Clinton made Army bases gun free zones, leaving the soldiers unarmed and unprotected on their own base.

Another area in which Political Correctness has invaded the American society are hate crimes. Certainly the fact that persons who are victims of crimes because of their race, sex, religion, sexual orientation or any other state of being, is a sad commentary on today's society. But to punish a criminal, not for his crime, but for his thoughts, goes beyond the rule of law spelled out in the equal protection clause of the Constitution. It also has started us down the slippery slope of creating thought police, that prosecute those, not for their actions, but their beliefs. Simply put, a person should be judged by his actions, not on the bases of the nature of his victim. Political Correctness want's to legislate morality by defining victims by class and have created hate crimes to forward this agenda.

If critical thinking is the anathema of Political Correctness, then the manifesto of critical thinking is the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The Preamble states, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America”. If you need a litmus test for a political leader, listen for the word “Liberty”. There are other words and phrases in our founding documents, but “secure the Blessings of Liberty” define us as a people and a country. The Constitution does not guarantee the fairness of Political Correctness, but it “establish(es) Justice”, in order to “secure Liberty”. Beware of promises of a “fair and just” society. The phrase is often use to describe aspects of the Constitution but was rarely, if ever, used by our founding fathers. In 1787 a “fair and just” government was one that left it’s citizens alone; as Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, to pursue their god given rights of “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness (Thomas Jefferson first used John Locke’s writings, using the phrase “Pursuit of Property”, however the word Property had become synonymous in some states as slave ownership, so he changed the word to Happiness. The use of Life, Liberty and Property, would later show up in the 5th Amendment to the Constitution).

In the final analysis Political Correctness is all about being fair. It is not fair that a person can not dress up like a gang member without being harassed by the police, it is not fair that a young woman can’t dress up like a prostitute without being propositioned by men and it is not fair that a Middle Eastern man be treated with extra scrutiny at airports, just because there are factions of his religion that believe in world domination through terrorism. It is also not fair there are individuals and/or groups of people that are truly bigots, sexist and racists that truly pre-judge without critical thinking. All this means that individuals just can’t be trusted to their own critical thinking, but don’t worry, because the Liberal mindset will do your thinking for you; and that thinking has zero tolerance for any deviation from Political Correctness. Only a tyrannical government can espouse a doctrine of fairness, so look to political leadership that espouses Liberty and Justice; the two concepts are mutually exclusive, so “choose well”.

Napolitano, David Broder and Dangerous Underwear

David Broders puff piece on Janet Napolitano seems to be another attempt by the liberal media to present the opposite as truth. Never mind that anyone who is paying attention knows, that Ms Napolitano is so far out of here element, that through no fault of her own, she is simply too incompetent to hold her postion as the Secretary of Homeland Security. Practically everything that comes out of her mouth of any substance, has had to be retracted and apologized for. Broders contention that it was proper for Napolitano to say, “the system worked”, flies in face that her boss, President Obama said the “Underwear Bomber” near success was a result of “systematic failure"; to which Napolitano retracted her original statement and admitted, "Our system did not work in this instance." This is the same person who said we should improve security at the Canadian Border to stop more 911 terrorist from sneaking across (they didn't) and that the FBI and local law enforcement needed to keep an eye on returning vets because they were “prone to radicalization”. Interestingly enough, we still don't know if it was Homeland Security or the State Department under Hillary Clinton, that caused the problem. Homeland Security is supposed to be an intermediary between the FBI and the CIA, and to distribute Homeland Security information to prevent a re-occurrence of 911; where the CIA was forbidden to share the information with the FBI about the Saudi Terrorist and friends of Osama Bin Laden, that were taking flying lessons. Later Homeland Security was given oversite of the Transprotation Security Administration. Like many of his choices, Pres Obama appointed Ms Napolitano, not because she has any intelligence experience or even understands the threat of terrorism (a word she refuses to even use, preferring “man-caused disaster”), but for political payback. There is no more important job than the head of Homeland Security, but you have to be able to say there is terrorism, before you can defend the country from terrorist. Homeland Security is not the job for a budding politician on the rise and her continued presence as the Head Secretary is putting your and my homeland in real danger.