Apparently, members of the TTAG Armed Intelligentsia are not alone in their suspicions that the ATFs blunderific crapfest known as Fast n’ Furious was part of a plan to regulate guns. Congressman Blake Farenthold (R-TX) spells out what he thinks are Obama’s motivations that drove him to issue executive orders that circumvent Congress, the U.S. Constitution, and Federal law, to create a long gun registry on our Southern border. Appearing on Cam & Company, Representative Farenthold spells it out.
So it looks like we have two competing theories – A) Fast and Furious was executed to give Obama the excuse he needed for his illegal executive orders, or B) The executive orders were issued to distract and deflect attention away from Fast and Furious. To that, I’d like to add C) All of the Above. When you think about it, there’s no reason why you can’t have it both ways. F&F could have been designed from the get-go to create the River of Guns that the ATF needed to push for more gun regulations, then when F&F went nipples-up, use the exec orders as a misdirection ploy to cover-up F&F.
Wow. I’m beginning to get whiplash from all the machinations.
So what did they know, and when did they know it? I don’t know. But it looks like it’s gonna be a long, hot, interesting Summer.
This isn’t snark and this isn’t rhetorical; I’d genuinely like to know what people like Magoo and MikeB think about this.
Back in the early 90’s I was in favor of the Drug War. Growing up in New York City in a cop family I had plenty of exposure to what drugs could to to a city and thought any effort to stop it was worthwhile. In the couple of decades since I’ve come to change my mind. I look at the Constitutional abuses and assorted acts of governmental corruption that the drug war has resulted in and I realize now that the cure is worse than the disease.
Along those lines, what do our resident gun control activists think about Gunwalker? I mean now that it’s shaping up to look like the kind of conspiracy I would have thought laughably farfetched just a few months ago. I’m sure you agree with the ends of more gun control laws, but are you comfortable with the means of arming violent narco-terrorists? Are you comfortable with creating a lethal problem where one didn’t exist before, just to stop guys like me from going to the range on Saturdays? Are you ok with the abuse of executive orders, with a President blatantly end-running Congress and deciding that like some dark ages monarch he has the authority to tamper with a constitutionally enumerated right?
In short, is your agenda really just well-intentioned but misguided? Or is it actually every bit as underhanded and totalitarian as the looniest of “gun loons” has always said it is?
+1. Nicely put, James.
Additional +1, but it helps to understand how the big heads think.
Socrates favored truth as the highest value, proposing that it could be discovered through reason and logic in discussion: ergo, dialectic. Socrates valued rationality (appealing to logic, not emotion) as the proper means for persuasion, the discovery of truth, and the determinant for one’s actions. To Socrates, truth, not arête, was the greater good, and each person should, above all else, seek truth to guide one’s life. Therefore, Socrates opposed the Sophists and their teaching of rhetoric as art and as emotional oratory requiring neither logic nor proof. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic
Not the end all definition but what must always be kept in mind:
http://nord.twu.net/acl/dialectic.html
Additionally; you have to recognize that both the big heads and politicians rely upon their minions, lackeys, apologists and tools. Magoo and MikeB fall in this category. None of the above would I ever choose as a climbing partner or to watch my back in a crisis. I commend the double Ms (Magoo and Mike) for their desire to make a better world. But you just don’t get it by defying nature or logic. They are both in for a rude awakening.
Narcissists and socio/psychopaths concentrate in high places if they don’t self destruct along the way. What the double Ms don’t realize is they are tools of people with entirely different agendas. Their supposed route to a better world enables exploitation, slavery and despotism. Their efforts would be better spent controlling or ridding the world of bad people rather than objects that can never be classified as good or bad. Governments and elites still deliberately kill more people than all the accidents and suicides combined. My question for the double Ms is; do you really think you serve the greater good by depriving people the individual right to defend against criminals, be they individual criminals or collective criminals such as governments?
Great post, Brad.
I vote “C,” all of the above. “B,” the illegal attempt to deflect attention from F&F, will have the opposite effect for this administration. The sure-to-follow lawsuits (by the NRA, etc.) will only give F&F even more unwanted publicity.
Keep up the great writing, and thanks for keeping this issue front and center.
San Antonio, TX
C) All of the Above.
Hmm, same first name, but my last name is way cooler than the honorable Representative from Texas.
Good for the Representative from TX. Glad to know there’s someone out there with an awesome first name that’s willing to get involved in this ATF mess.
Brad, upon further reflection, I think that you’re giving this administration far too much credit. I don’t think that they’re very good tacticians or chess players, or terribly bright at all, really. Here’s how I think that the deal went down.
The Iron River meme has been floating around for awhile, since ’06 or ’07 anyway. This would be about the time when the violence really started to pick up in Mexico. BCPGV & VPC have been working that angle for years without much effect, until… , after the 2008 election. So, now comes the post election and pre-inauguration briefings to the bright and shiny new administration, as we’re peacefully passing the keys to the White House to a new set of occupants and their sycophants. Rahm (never let a crisis go to waste) Emanuel, et al, have just been given an enormous, precious gift, and a Golden Opportunity; Project Gunrunner. Here’s where they take the bull by the horns and really start to get to work. All those years of forlorn drifting in the pro gun control wilderness are about to happily come to an end after being so long marginalized following the 1994 mid-term elections; post Brady/AWB. Oh joy, oh rapture, oh bliss!
So, how do you build an iron-clad case for stronger and more draconian gun control? Well, in any legal case that would be through the gathering and discovery of evidence, real or manufactured, whatever the case may be, and whatever it takes because the ends always justify the means. Here we have a team of the best and the brightest administration ever assembled, led by none other than the JD and Professor of Constitutional Law, the Lightworker, Barack Hussein Obama. They then set about to work, patiently, methodically; gathering allies, building the story, making the evidence, covering their assets. Being the best and the brightest and the most clever of rascals around, how could they possibly screw up? That’s probably what they’re asking themselves now. How could such an obvious and simple plan go so horribly non-linear in such a short period of time? It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this, they had it all figured out.
In early ’09 the idea of the River of Iron to the cartels, from American gun stores and gun shows, really started to get traction in the MSM. Imagine that! BHO & Co. certainly did, craftily building their case. Picture this if you will; all those evil Dons of the Narco-trafficantes, lolling about their fortified haciendas along the banks of Los Rio de Hierro, scooping up all of that good ol’ Made in the USA ordnance as it peacefully drifts by. Bad, bad American gun stores, bad, bad American gun owners. No fooling around anymore you bitter clingers, your precious Second Amendment is just too dangerous and we’re going to put a stop to all of this foolishness tout de suite!! Enter Fast and Furious.
Sure, Gunrunner was started under GWB and it was probably fairly legit as far as those things go during his time in office. Things really started to spin up when Barry took the reins. Now is Barry pulling the strings on this? Probably not so much, beyond a little guidance here and there, now and then. He’s a Big Picture kind of guy, leave the details and the day to day to the worker bees is his MO. But I’d sure as hell bet the farm that the executive worker bees and their lieutenants are in it up to their eyeballs. It was simply too obvious, too tempting and too easy to pass up. And they’ve made a murderous hash of the whole sordid affair. Bravo!!
I hope every last one of those bastards gets nailed to the wall.
The rep from TX says that Fast & Furious was a conspiracy to regulate guns? Holy crap! Why didn’t we think of that? Oh, wait . . . .
I’m not one for conspiracy theories, personally, that is, “the man” coming up with a pre-meditated scheme to fake a disaster to bend the country to his will. It’s ridiculous when applied to 9/11 and I have trouble applying it to this situation.
I believe the previous administration was just inept and tried to cover their asses after the fact. I also believe the same is true at this point.
Assuming Obama knew about this (which I still think is a stretch but possible) I bet he heard it spun by some official to sound like “we’re gonna fix the gun problem in the south” without a lot of details. I can see him okaying that more out of righteous naivete than anything else.
But now that things are coming together everyone’s doing what they can to either use the situation to further their own political gains or cover their asses until after it’s too late when they resign and apologize for getting caught.
I’ve long since lost any trust in the government’s ability to come up with such a grand scheme.