| Deck Log
March 18, 2010
Democrats are the party of tyranny.
Janet Shaw Crouse, American Thinker: What we're seeing in Washington, D.C. is not "politics as usual" with the arm twisting and "horse trading" that is typical in getting a bill passed; instead, it is ideological warfare. What Obama, Reid and Pelosi are doing is not legislating; it is an act of tyranny -- overturning all the rules and principles of government in a representative democracy. Attempting to pass the Senate version of ObamaCare in the House under the ironically named "Slaughter Rule" (to circumvent the objections of the Stupak coalition to taxpayer funding of abortion) is an exercise in raw power akin to the many acts of judicial tyranny the American public has endured over the last 40 years from judges who have little regard for the Constitution.
Apparently Obama, Reid and Pelosi aren't worried about losing control of Congress in 2010 or even the presidency in 2012, because their higher goal is to irrevocably institutionalize their ideology. Once government control of health care is established, their leftist principles will be implemented by an unelected bureaucracy that rules without accountability to the general public, whether or not the Democratic Party is the majority in Congress or holds the presidency.
Obama, Reid and Pelosi have learned nothing from history; they are as blind to their own tyranny as were King George and the British Parliament. They show no comprehension of the moral outrage that will ignite in this country if they ram through ObamaCare, a bill that requires taxpayer funding for abortion, usurps individual rights to choose their own personal health care options, and saddles the nation with a growing flood of debt which will drown our children and grandchildren.
They mistakenly think that the Tea Party protests are temporary flare ups that mere barricades can contain, but their legislative and executive tyranny is unleashing emotions that have the potential to rival the anti-slavery movement of the Civil War era and the Civil Rights protests of the 1960s. Having abandoned those transcendent moral principles upon which this nation was founded for a false ideology of their own imagining, they have no understanding of the righteous fury that will build in this nation when her citizens see their government sanction morally reprehensible acts.
We have, in good faith, expressed our objections and righteous indignation over and over again only to be repeatedly rebuffed and ignored. Poll after poll demonstrates that U.S. citizens are strongly opposed to ObamaCare and its impact on our nation. Yet the Obama/Reid/Pelosi axis is determined to ignore the will of the people that they were elected to represent and to dictatorially impose on the nation their ideas of what's best. They have lived so long in the rarified air of elitism that they think the "masses" will simply accept their "superior wisdom." These unprecedented assaults on basic American principles compel Manhattan Declaration signers to forcefully mount a defense of human life, marriage and religious freedom.
Manhattan Declaration signers have said that civil disobedience is necessary when faced with gravely unjust laws requiring submission to laws that violate our principled moral beliefs about abortion, marriage, and religious freedom. As the Manhattan Declaration states, "We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar's. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God's."
Mark Levin prepares to protect our liberty.
Jeffrey Lord, American Spectator: Democrats poised to use the so-called "deem and pass" strategy to force through a health care bill will have to deal with Mark Levin first.
Levin, known to his fans as one of the most popular talk show hosts in the country, is also both a legal scholar and longtime president of the Landmark Legal Foundation, a nonprofit, public interest law firm A former chief of staff to Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese III, Levin is the author of two New York Times bestselling books on the Constitution and the judiciary, the last, Liberty and Tyranny, at number one for a dozen weeks.
The lawsuit will name President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and "other relevant cabinet members" as defendants. Those cabinet members are Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
Levin's goal? To stop the government from "instituting this unconstitutional contrivance."
Said Levin:
Landmark has already prepared a lawsuit that will be filed in federal court the moment the House acts. Such a brazen violation of the core functions of Congress simply cannot be ignored. Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution is clear respecting the manner in which a bill becomes law. Members are required to vote on this bill, not claim they did when they didn't. The Speaker of the House and her lieutenants are temporary custodians of congressional authority. They are not empowered to do permanent violence to our Constitution.
March 17, 2010 -- St. Patrick's Day
The major roadblock to Mitt Romney's run for President.
Mark Steyn, NRO: The Massachusetts State Treasurer now says Masscare nationwide will bankrupt America. No doubt. But first it will drive out doctors and private insurers, providing the perfect pretext a half-decade down the road for politicians to step in and move to full-blown single-payer governmentalization. Obama wants that. So, from his point of view, Obamacare makes sense. Mitt presumably doesn't want that. So what was he thinking?
"Intellectuals'" immunity from reality.
Eric Hoffer: One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputation.
Pelosi's "new direction" leads to enslavement of the American people.
Investor's Business Daily: Liberals' plan to reform the medical system has always seemed more an attempt to radically transform the nation than a good-faith effort to cut costs and expand coverage. Now they've confirmed it.
Today's Democrats aren't interested in constitutional or traditional limitations on government. They want to remake American life based on their notions of what's ideal, and they are more than willing to force leftward change on an ostensibly free people.
While this has been clear for some time, it still rocks us a bit when they acknowledge such plans out loud.
The loudest came Monday when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told a group of bloggers that turning the Democratic Party leaders' health care overhaul into law would embolden them to drive America away from its roots of liberty and independence.
"Kick open that door, and there will be other legislation to follow," she said. "We'll take the country in a new direction."
Pelosi's tyrannical, unconstitutional maneuver.
Investor's Business Daily: Using a parliamentary trick ironically known as the "self-executing rule," Democrats plan on passing their massive health bill without voting. In November, they'll learn just how "self-executing" it was.
Just when you thought Washington couldn't get more corrupt, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi this week seems intent on trampling representative government itself. Unable to get the votes to pass their U.S. health care revolution, she and her fellow Democratic leaders have figured out a way to pass it without a vote.
[Supreme Court Justice] Stevens made note of "three procedural steps" that must be taken before a bill becomes law: The "exact text" must be "approved by a majority of the members of the House of Representatives"; the Senate must approve "precisely the same text"; and the same text must be "signed into law by the president. The Constitution explicitly requires that each of those three steps be taken before a bill may become a law."
Indeed, Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution couldn't be clearer: "The votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and nays, and the names of the persons voting for and against the bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively."
The president, the speaker and the rest of those involved in one-party rule in Washington may think they know what's good for the American people better than the people do.
Do they also think they know better than the framers of the Constitution and their naive ideas of one man, one vote?
March 16, 2010
We're toast!
Technology Review: A new set of star velocity data indicates that Gliese 710 has an 86 percent chance of ploughing into the Solar System within the next 1.5 million years.
Obnoxious "greenies".
Kate Connolly, Guardian (UK): When Al Gore was caught running up huge energy bills at home at the same time as lecturing on the need to save electricity, it turns out that he was only reverting to "green" type.
According to a study, when people feel they have been morally virtuous by saving the planet through their purchases of organic baby food, for example, it leads to the "licensing [of] selfish and morally questionable behaviour", otherwise known as "moral balancing" or "compensatory ethics".
Do Green Products Make Us Better People is published in the latest edition of the journal Psychological Science. Its authors, Canadian psychologists Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong, argue that people who wear what they call the "halo of green consumerism" are less likely to be kind to others, and more likely to cheat and steal. "Virtuous acts can license subsequent asocial and unethical behaviours," they write.
The pair found that those in their study who bought green products appeared less willing to share with others a set amount of money than those who bought conventional products. When the green consumers were given the chance to boost their money by cheating on a computer game and then given the opportunity to lie about it – in other words, steal – they did, while the conventional consumers did not. Later, in an honour system in which participants were asked to take money from an envelope to pay themselves their spoils, the greens were six times more likely to steal than the conventionals.
Just a down payment on continued socialism.
Byron York, Examiner: If you have any doubt that the Democratic leadership of the House views passing the current health care reform bill as the beginning, not the end, of the process of creating a national government health care system, just note what Speaker Nancy Pelosi told a group of bloggers on Monday. "My biggest fight has been between those who wanted to do something incremental and those who wanted to do something comprehensive," Pelosi said, according to an account by Washington Post reform advocate Ezra Klein. "We won that fight, and once we kick through this door, there'll be more legislation to follow."
Dems to America: Drop dead!
Rich Lowry, NY Post: The finale of the health-care debate couldn't be more fitting. House Democrats are considering passing an exotic parliamentary rule relieving them of the burden of voting for the underlying bill, which will be "deemed" passed.
So a bill sold under blatantly false pretenses and passed in the Senate on the strength of indefensible deals would become law in a final flourish of deceptive highhandedness. How appropriate for what would be the worst piece of federal domestic legislation since the recovery-impairing National Recovery Act of 1933 or the Prohibition disaster in 1920.
March 15, 2010
Nanny-state on steroids attacks our liberty.
Ken Blackwell: It's all supposed to be voluntary, those 'home visits' that are tucked into the mammoth Obamacare bill. If you have a strong stomach, and a stronger bottom, you can find home visitation on pages 568-595. That's Section 2951 of H.R. 3590, the Senate [health care] bill....
The bill provides for federal funding and supervision for this vast expansion of government intrusion into family life. This is the Nanny State on steroids. Is your family being 'targeted' for such home visitations? Let's see if you fit into one of these very broad categories: Families where Mom is not yet 21. (No mention here whether she is married or not.) Families where someone is a tobacco user. (Does this include the White House? Watch out, Sasha and Malia! Does Grandpa, whom you love and have taken in, enjoy his after-dinner pipe?) Families where children have low student achievement, developmental delays, or disabilities. As if that list were not wide-ranging enough, here's the net that can encompass tens of millions: Families with individuals who are serving or formerly served in the armed forces, including such families that have members of the armed forces who have had multiple deployments outside the United States. [Emphasis added.] ...
Do you spank your children? You should know that HHS bureaucrats think you are an abuser. Do you support the Second Amendment? How would you like HHS bureaucrats asking your children if you maintain firearms in the home for family protection? Do you home-school your kids? Take care. Members of Congress who have tried to abolish home-schooling are big backers of this health care bill. Do you wonder why? ...
One thing is clear: For life and liberty, we must defeat ObamaCare.
A toxic president.
Jon Martin, KTUL: Moderate House Democrats facing potentially difficult reelections this fall have a message for President Barack Obama: Don’t call us; we’ll call you.
Interviews with nearly a dozen congressional Democrats on the ballot this year reveal a decided lack of enthusiasm for having Obama come to their districts to campaign for them — the most basic gauge of a president’s popularity.
The left-wing statists in the White House and Congress do not care what you think.
Brian Darling, Human Events: This week, liberals will start the process of implementing a complicated plan to jam ObamaCare through the House and Senate. The President and his liberal allies in Congress want to pass this bill before Easter, and they’re willing to ignore the regular rules of business. This action to thwart the will of the American people is an affront to the consent of the governed. Furthermore, it’s a testament to the fact that President Barack Obama is a liberal extremist who will take any action necessary to get his way on health care.
This administration ignores the constituents who flooded townhall meetings last summer to complain about the House version of ObamaCare. This administration ignores the crowds that came to Washington to protest a government takeover of health care late last fall. This administration ignores every single poll, all of which indicate that the American people don’t want ObamaCare. It ignores the election of Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), who campaigned in liberal Massachusetts to defeat the president’s health care plan. These liberals just don’t care what the American people think about health care reform and they will stop at nothing to pass it.
Obama's extraordinary ego.
Ralph Reiland, Pittsburgh Tribune: Still, even in this time of forced leveling and redistribution, there remains one type of exceptionalism and superiority that's fine with some and that's the elevation of Obama as an incomparable and exceptional chief organizer.
Michelle Obama explained the specialness of her husband in a February 2008 speech at UCLA. "Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed," she declared. Barack "will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism," that you "come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones."
I thought the government was supposed to protect our lives, liberty and property. Where's it said that politicians are charged with erasing our cynicism, especially when they're the creators of much of it?
And what's wrong with being secluded and contented? Why is our comfort zone Obama's business?
Remember when he said we shouldn't expect to "drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes at 72 degrees at all times" and still be treated seriously by the world's globalists?
And remember Obama's sky-high rhetoric on the evening of June 3, 2008, when he wrapped up his party's nomination. Future generations, he said, would look back on that night and say, "This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." It's like the turtles were coming out of the water and clapping in the moonlight.
March 14, 2010
Obama, the ideologue.
Wesley Pruden, The Washington Times: The conventional rap on the president is that he has been aloof and disengaged, reluctant to impose discipline and leadership, and allowed his radical agenda to drift into the congressional swamp presided over by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.
But wait. Maybe he hasn't been so disengaged as the conventional wisdom supposes. His strategy of imposing no discipline on Congress may be a deliberate act of leadership. Barack Obama came to Washington with an agenda from his community-organizing days. He made his bones with Saul Alinsky, the evangelist of radical politics who put down the blueprint for making America over into a European-style welfare state, with commissars empowered to supervise every detail of how Americans would live lives regimented for their own good. The debate over health care reform has been messy and often chaotic, but here we are a year later and Barack Obama and his radical agenda might yet win. If it does, he will have put in place the structure for taking over everything else.
His remark several months ago that he was willing to be a one-term president if that's what it takes to reorder America was dismissed as an irrelevancy, an aside from a man having a bad hair day. But the remark revealed an insight into the man and his mission. Karl Rove, "the architect" of George W. Bush's two successful campaigns, thinks an Obama victory over Obamacare would be a pyrrhic victory, that it might insure a Republican takeover of both House and Senate. Perhaps. But it might be a price that the president is willing to pay to get his structure in place.
An undemocratic obsession.
The Washington Times: Nationalized health care is the progressives' Golden Fleece. It is their obsession, the ultimate prize that was denied to previous administrations but is closer than it ever has been. As the ability of government to take over the health care system draws tantalizingly near, the president and leaders of the majority party have become infected with a kind of mania. President Obama and Democratic congressional leaders seem determined to ram through a severely flawed piece of legislation by any means necessary, heedless of the desires of the American people or the negative impact on the system they mistakenly say needs to be saved.
The liberal leadership is infused with a sense of mission. They are the midwives to history, shepherding landmark legislation that will revise the American social contract and usher in a new era, or some such foolishness. All they need to do is pass the bill, and the poor, frightened, deluded American people will see the wisdom of their decisions. Hence House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's memorable (and revealing) comment, "We have to pass the [health care] bill so that you can find out what is in it." In her imagination, once the bill is signed, voters won't remember the struggle, just the glow of the accomplishment. Rip off the bandage; you'll feel better after the sting.
March 12, 2010
Delusional.
Patrick H. Caddell and Douglas E. Schoen, Washington Post: In "The March of Folly," Barbara Tuchman asked, "Why do holders of high office so often act contrary to the way reason points and enlightened self-interest suggests?" Her assessment of self-deception -- "acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts" -- captures the conditions that are gripping President Obama and the Democratic Party leadership as they renew their efforts to enact health-care reform.
Obama believes his own propaganda.
Shikha Dalmia, Forbes.com: Even if Democrats extract the votes to put ObamaCare over the top, it will at best be a Pyrrhic victory for them. Regardless of the outcome, this monstrosity might cost the Democrats the Congress this November, ruin the party for a long time and prematurely render Barack Obama a lame duck president for the rest of his term.
So why didn't the Democrats pull back when they still had the chance? The reason is that both the Democratic Party and President Obama have mutually reinforcing blind spots that have rendered them incapable of seeing what's crystal clear to every other sentient being in the country: This was the wrong bill at the wrong time.
There are not enough taxpayers in the country or creditors in China capable of financing all these promises. Expanding this massive, multifarious entitlement state even more strikes most normal people as sheer lunacy--especially now that it is visibly coming apart at the seams.
There is no tactic too low to deploy--and no cause too sacred to abandon. If Americans are unenthused about universal coverage, screw 'em. If it is necessary to use reconciliation--meant strictly for budgetary matters--to ram the bill through Congress on a strictly partisan vote, then so be it. If filibuster rules that Democrats themselves restored in 1975 are now coming in the way, get rid of them.
A sensible president would of course step in and provide some adult supervision to a wayward party hell-bent on jumping off this cliff. But the problem is that President Obama believes in his own messianism too deeply for that. His goal is not to remake his party as it could be but "remake this world as it should be." In his book Dreams From My Father Obama gives the distinct impression that his gifts are too great for the smallness of our political stage. He regrets not having been born during the civil rights era when the grandness of the cause would have measured up to the grandness of his ambition. He is in search of something big that will allow him to make his mark on the world as Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King did. Hence, the defeat of ObamaCare would not just be par for the course in the rough-and-tumble world of politics for him. It would be sign of his ordinariness, his mortality, and that, to him, is unendurable.
The President and his TelePrompter create the "fog of controversy".
Mona Charen, Townhall.com: Pity the Democrats. They just can't get their message out. Not with a charismatic president (who has delivered 52 speeches on the subject), control of both houses of Congress, the gooey enthusiasm of 90 percent of the press, and more than a year of ceaseless agitation. Their efforts have been thwarted, so they imagine, by "misinformation," "distortion" and the "special interests." So influential are these dark forces that the leadership cannot shout over them. Speaker Pelosi must pass the grossly unpopular bill in order to get the peace and quiet she needs to explain its virtues.
What passes for "leadership" in Congress.
James Taranto, Best of the Web: Speaker Nancy Pelosi turned up yesterday at the Washington conference of the National Association of Counties, and she engaged in a little cheerleading for ObamaCare:
You've heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other. But I don't know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket. Prevention, prevention, prevention--it's about diet, not diabetes. It's going to be very, very exciting.
But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.
Yes, reader, she really said, "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it." If you don't believe us, ask YouTube.
These people are trying to sell us a pig in a poke. Actually, that's not quite right: They've failed to sell us a pig in a poke. At nearly every opportunity, voters have responded to the ObamaCare sales pitch by shouting "No!"--even going so far as to elect a Republican to the Senate from Massachusetts.
But if Pelosi and President Obama have their way, we will get their pig, and will we ever pay for it. Is it any wonder that, as the Associated Press reports, "Americans have come to detest Congress ever more deeply as it nears the end of a nasty fight over health care"?
March 11, 2010
More nanny-state nonsense.
Steve Barnes, Times-Union: In a deeply misguided gesture that is also an abuse of the legislative process, a New York City Assemblyman is pushing a nanny-state bill that would ban the use of all forms of salt in the preparation and cooking of all restaurant food.
If passed, the measure, introduced Friday by Felix Ortiz, D-Brooklyn, would result in fines of up to $1,000 for each individual addition of salt by restaurant staff, whether before, during or after cooking. Customers would have the option of adding salt when the food is served.
Obama administration to America: Do without.
Barbara Hollingsworth, Examiner: The Obama administration’s six-month delay in approving new offshore drilling leases in federal waters will become a new three-year ban, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar quietly told reporters last Friday. Which means that no new oil and gas leases will be approved during President Obama’s term even though two –thirds of the American public supports such activity, according to a December 2009 Rasmussen poll.
Drilling was supposed to begin this July. But Salazar said he intends to discard the 2010-2015 lease plan developed by the Bush administration in favor of a new plan that won’t even go into effect until 2012.
So for the next three years and probably more, trillions of dollars in domestic energy assets will remain untouched while billions of dollars more are spent on foreign oil.
Freedom isn't free.
Cal Thomas: The more we come to rely on government, the fewer freedoms we will enjoy. Government will start dictating what we can own, eat and drive, how much of our money they will let us keep, how we run our businesses, how many -- if any -- guns we can own, and what we may and may not say. Oh, wait! They are already doing that. To preserve freedom we must fight for it.
The Dems plot a power grab, and we're the losers.
Matt Towery: [T]his is nothing more than a power grab. It's an effort to take one of the most essential elements of every person's life -- their health -- and put it under the control of government.
Well, Mr. Gore, people have caught on to your fraud.
Al Gore: I have thus far failed, and our world has thus fair failed to respond adequately to this crisis.
The visuals need work.
Mark Steyn: So there was President Obama giving his bazillionth speech on health care, droning yet again that 'now is the hour when we must seize the moment,' the same moment he's been seizing every day of the week for the past year, only this time his genius photo-op guys thought it would look good to have him surrounded by men in white coats.
Hold politicians accountable.
Dr. Milton R. Wolf, The Washington Times: "Primum nil nocere."First, do no harm. This guiding principle is a bedrock of medical care. Sadly, those politicians who would rewrite our health care laws do not live in the same universe as do the doctors and health care professionals who must practice it.
Imagine if, like physicians, politicians were personally held to the incredibly high level of scrutiny that includes civil and financial liability for any unintended consequence of their decisions. Imagine if they were forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars each year on malpractice insurance and still faced the threat of multimillion-dollar lawsuits with every single decision they made. If so, a government takeover of health care would be the furthest thing from their minds.
March 10, 2010
Charity vs coercion.
Walter Williams, Townhall.com: True rights, such as those in our Constitution, or those considered to be natural or human rights, exist simultaneously among people. That means exercise of a right by one person does not diminish those held by another. In other words, my rights to speech or travel impose no obligations on another except those of non-interference. If we apply ideas behind rights to health care to my rights to speech or travel, my free speech rights would require government-imposed obligations on others to provide me with an auditorium, television studio or radio station. My right to travel freely would require government-imposed obligations on others to provide me with airfare and hotel accommodations.
For Congress to guarantee a right to health care, or any other good or service, whether a person can afford it or not, it must diminish someone else's rights, namely their rights to their earnings. The reason is that Congress has no resources of its very own. Moreover, there is no Santa Claus, Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy giving them those resources. The fact that government has no resources of its very own forces one to recognize that in order for government to give one American citizen a dollar, it must first, through intimidation, threats and coercion, confiscate that dollar from some other American. If one person has a right to something he did not earn, of necessity it requires that another person not have a right to something that he did earn.
To argue that people have a right that imposes obligations on another is an absurd concept. A better term for new-fangled rights to health care, decent housing and food is wishes. If we called them wishes, I would be in agreement with most other Americans for I, too, wish that everyone had adequate health care, decent housing and nutritious meals. However, if we called them human wishes, instead of human rights, there would be confusion and cognitive dissonance. The average American would cringe at the thought of government punishing one person because he refused to be pressed into making someone else's wish come true.
None of my argument is to argue against charity. Reaching into one's own pockets to assist his fellow man in need is praiseworthy and laudable. Reaching into someone else's pockets to do so is despicable and deserves condemnation.
Obama and the leftists want to destroy America.
Dennis Prager, NRO: As reported by the Washington Post: “President Obama’s proposed budget would add more than $9.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.”
CNN adds, “Of that amount, an estimated $5.6 trillion will be in interest alone.”
I suspect that most Americans, if asked whether these numbers trouble the Democratic leadership and President Obama, would answer in the affirmative.
They would be wrong.
They would be wrong not because the Democratic party and the president are economic illiterates or bad individuals, but because the Democratic party and the president are leftists, and most Americans, including most Democrats, do not understand the Left. They may understand liberalism, but President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and most Democratic representatives and senators are not liberals; they are leftists. Few Americans understand the difference.
They do not realize, for example, that there is no major difference between the American Democratic party and the leftist social democratic parties of Western Europe. They do not know that, from Karl Marx to Barack Obama, the Left (as opposed to liberals) has never created wealth because it has never been interested in creating wealth; it is interested in redistributing wealth.
Therefore, unprecedented and unsustainable debt that will negatively affect most Americans’ quality of life, render the dollar increasingly undesirable, and undermine America’s prestige and power in the world — these developments do not particularly disturb the Left. They may trouble the president, the Democratic party, and their allies on some political level, but that pales in comparison to the Left’s zeal for what it really wants: a huge government overseeing a giant welfare state and a country with far fewer rich Americans.
And as for America wielding less power in the world, the American Left considers that to be a positive development. They think it is the world community as embodied in the United Nations that should wield power throughout the world, not an “overstretched,” “imperialist,” and “militarist” United States.
I used to believe that the Left and the Right had similar goals for America, that they just differed in the means they wanted to use to get there. I was mistaken. The Left has a very different vision of America than those who hold to America’s founding values, most especially individualism and small government. Their vision is one in which a once-in-a-lifetime chance to establish a giant welfare state dominated by the Left is worth any price — even America’s steep financial decline.
Obama has awakened a sleeping giant.
Tony Blankley, Townhall.com: The Obama administration and the Democrats crossed a line and touched a nerve in America's body politic. We sense our fundamental freedom endangered. And the response will be as remorseless as was our revolution against the British. Against all odds, the intrusion on those things around which our "liberty inheres" will be driven from our political midst. (It is not Waterloo, but Yorktown, that is likely to be the terminal point.)
The first hard step in that defense will be the election in November. The second, even harder step will be the rollback of already enacted debt and damage to our freedom. Defining the extent and detail of the rollback must be the agenda for the government's loyal opposition in this year's election. And the things to which we are loyal are our Constitution, our founding principles and the good institutions and social contrivances brought into being by those principles over our providential history.
March 9, 2010
I'd vote for her.
Telegraph (UK): The daughter of the former US Vice President, Dick Cheney, is considering running for office after emerging as a leading critic of Barack Obama.
Liz Cheney, a mother of five children, has become one of the sharpest and most outspoken critics of the new White House and has needled the Obama administration for failing to protect the nation against terrorism, and mollycoddling terror suspects while pursuing government lawyers who approved water-boarding, a method of inquisition she approves of. She called the president's Nobel Peace prize a "farce".
Pushed by friends and family, Ms Cheney is now reportedly contemplating a run for office herself either in Virginia, where she was raised, or in Wyoming, her parents' home state.
Calling Obama a "centrist" doesn't make it so. He and his fellow Dems are leftist ideologues.
Ed Carson, Investor's Business Daily: Supporters like to portray President Obama and his agenda as centrist. But those actually in the political center beg to differ. In fact, 66% of independents say their ideology is to the right of Obama, according to the latest IBD/TIPP poll. Just 14% say they’re more liberal.
Independents:
- Oppose Obama's handling of the economy by 2-to-1. Among those with strong opinions, disapproval soars to 6-to-1 — 30% vs. 5%.
- On health care, 53% disapprove vs. 23% who approve. 35% say Obama’s doing an unacceptable job vs. just 9% who give him an A.
- 55% have a dim view of Obama on the budget. Just 17% who like his work. They strongly disapprove 34%-6%.
(Among all respondents, results were generally slightly less negative due to strong Democratic support for the president.)
These issues feed off each other. Obama and the Democratic Congress have spent vast sums on bailouts and a mammoth stimulus that are driving deficits to truly unsustainable levels. Ordinary Americans haven’t seen much benefit because job losses continue and unemployment remains near 10%.
But Democrats still haven’t made the economy their top issue. Instead, they spend their time and political capital on health care, even though voters have signaled they don’t like Democrats’ health plans.
That hopey-changey stuff doesn't seem to be working out so well.
Joseph Curl, The Washington Times: A majority of Americans say the United States is less respected in the world than two years ago and believe President Obama and other Democrats fall short of Republicans on the issue of national security, according to a poll by two left-leaning groups.
The Democracy Corps-Third Way survey released Monday finds that by a 10-point margin — 51 percent to 41 percent — Americans think the standing of the United States has dropped during the first 13 months of Mr. Obama's presidency.
"This is surprising, given the global acclaim — and Nobel peace prize — that flowed to the new president after he took office," the pollsters said.
The Democratic Party also plummeted on national security. A May survey by the pollsters found that the public saw the Democratic and Republican parties as equally able to handle national security (41 percent trusted Democrats more and 43 percent trusted Republicans more). On conducting the war on terrorism, the two parties were tied at 41 percent.
But the latest poll shows a massive gap, with Democrats trailing by 17 points, 33 percent to 50 percent, on which party likely voters think would do a better job on national security.
"The erosion since May is especially strong among women, and among independents, who now favor Republicans on this question by a 56 to 20 percent margin," the pollsters said in their findings.
More surprising was the huge gap on "right-track, wrong-track." Just 31 percent of those polled feel the country is on the right track; a whopping 62 percent say the United States is on the wrong track.
March 8, 2010
Green fraud, perpetuated by government.
James Delingpole, Telegraph (UK): Green jobs are a waste of space, a waste of money, a lie, a chimera. You know that. I know that. We’re familiar with the report by Dr Gabriel Calzada Alvarez of the Rey Juan Carlos University in Spain which shows that for every “green job” that is created another 2.2 jobs are LOST in the real economy.
We also know that alternative energy is a fraud – only viable through enormous government (ie taxpayer subsidy) and utterly incapable of answering anything more than a fraction of our energy needs. As Shannon Love puts it here:
Here’s a fact you won’t see mentioned in the public policy debate over “alternative” energy:
There exists no alternative energy source, no combination of alternative energy sources, and no system of combinations of alternative energy sources that can fully replace a single, coal fired electric plant built with 1930s era technology.
Nada.
Zero.
Zilch.
Starbucks will get more of my business.
Mike Stollenwerk, Examiner: Under attack by anti-gun rights lobby groups for several weeks now, Starbucks has stuck to its guns in maintaining its policy to serve customers who are legally carrying firearms. See previous report here.
Explains the Starbucks' press release:
"Starbucks long-standing approach to this issue remains unchanged. We comply with local laws and statutes in all the communities we serve. . . . Were we to adopt a policy different from local laws allowing open carry, we would be forced to require our partners to ask law abiding customers to leave our stores."
Starbucks, like all companies serving the American public, realizes that it's legal in every state except Illinois for citizens to carry handguns in public for self-defense. 48 states allow "conceal carry," which usually requires a permit, and 43 states allow unconcealed or "open carry" of handguns which usually does not require a permit.
Not such a good day if you are on of those 36,000.
Sen. Harry Reid: Today is a big day in America. Only 36,000 people lost their jobs today, which is really good.
The "Law of Unintended Consequences" leads to even more destruction of morale and readiness.
Rowan Scarborough, The Washington Times: A leading gay rights group says married gay service members should have the same rights as straight couples once President Obama ends the military's ban on open homosexuality in the ranks.
Equal treatment of legally married gays has emerged as an issue in the debate in Congress, as some Republicans are asking whether the military will deny housing and medical benefits to gay spouses and potentially create morale and readiness problems.
Standing in the way is the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Five states and the District of Columbia now allow same-sex marriage. The act says other states do not have to recognize those unions, and it defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The 1993 law that bans open gays prohibits service members of the same sex from marrying, with the threat of discharge.
Regarding "unalienable rights, endowed by our Creator".
Supreme Court of the State of Washington: "Supreme Court application of the United States Constitution establishes a floor below which state courts cannot go to protect individual rights. But states of course can raise the ceiling to afford greater protections under their own constitutions." (pg 18. No. 82154-2, State of Washington v. Christopher William Sieyes.)
Jefferson warned us, we ignored him.
Thomas Jefferson, 1791: It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please. Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It [the Constitution] was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect.
March 4, 2010
Healthcare? No. Ego trip.
Rep. Parker Griffith , (R-AL): You have personalities who have bet the farm, bet their reputations, on shoving a health care bill through the Congress. It's no longer about health care reform. It's all about ego now. The president's ego. Nancy Pelosi's ego. This is about personalities, saving face, and it has very little to do with what's good for the American people.
Obama's Chicago roots -- Politics by bribery.
John McCormack, The Weekly Standard: Tonight [Wednesday], Barack Obama will host ten House Democrats who voted against the health care bill in November at the White House; he's obviously trying to persuade them to switch their votes to yes. One of the ten is Jim Matheson of Utah. The White House just sent out a press release announcing that today President Obama nominated Matheson's brother Scott M. Matheson, Jr. to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
Prosecutor aids and abets criminals.
Ann Coulter, Townhall.com: It looks like Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes is on track to win another endorsement from ACORN!
This week, Hynes announced that "no criminality has been found" after his investigation of the videotapes made by investigative journalists James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, which show ACORN employees counseling the pair on getting a mortgage for a house of prostitution.
I'm not a lawyer -- oh, wait, yes, I am -- but I count approximately a half-dozen state law crimes being discussed on those tapes, from money laundering to advancing prostitution.
Also known as tyranny.
James Madison, 1792: If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.
March 3, 2010
So much for that campaign position. Obama's opposition to reconcilitiation has expired.
Naked Emperor News: "My understanding of the Senate is, is that you need 60 votes to get something significant to happen, which means that Democrats and Republicans have to ask the question: Do we have the will to move an American agenda forward, not a Democratic or Republican agenda forward?"--CBS-TV election night interview, Nov. 2, 2004
"The bottom line is that our health-care plans are similar. The question, once again, is: Who can get it done? Who can build a movement for change? This is an area where we're going to have to have a 60% majority in the Senate and the House in order to actually get a bill to my desk. We're going to have to have a majority, to get the bill to my desk, that is not just a 50-plus-1 majority."--Change to Win convention, Sept. 25, 2007
"You've got to break out of what I call the sort of 50-plus-1 pattern of presidential politics. Maybe you eke out a victory of 50 plus 1, but you can't govern. You know, you get Air Force One--I mean, there are a lot of nice perks, but you can't deliver on health care. We're not going to pass universal health care with a 50-plus-1 strategy."--interview with the Concord (N.H.) Monitor, Oct. 9, 2007
"You know, one of the arguments that sometimes I get with my fellow progressives--and some of these have flashed up in the blog communities on occasion--is this notion that we should function sort of like Karl Rove, where we identify our core base, we throw them red meat, we get a 50-plus-1 victory. But see, Karl Rove doesn't need a broad consensus, because he doesn't believe in government. If we want to transform the country, though, that requires a sizable majority."--Center for American Progress, July 12, 2006
More Pelosi/Dem culture of corruption.
James Taranto, Best of the Web: The Hill reports that Rep. Charles Rangel, a 20-term New York Democrat, has asked for "a leave of absence" from the chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee. Rangel made the odd request in a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, six days after the House Ethics Committee "admonished" him over a corporate-funded junket to the Caribbean. Rangel is still under investigation for "an array of errors . . . in reporting his personal finances," and he said his requested "leave" will last "until . . . the Ethics Committee completes its work."
The Rangel situation makes a mockery of Pelosi's promise, upon election to the speakership, to run the "most ethical Congress in history." In 2004, when then-Majority Leader Tom DeLay was admonished by the Ethics Committee, then-Minority Leader Pelosi demanded his ouster from the Republican leadership. With respect to Rangel, by contrast, she has been laughably weak.
Healthcare lemmings.
Thomas Sowell, Townhall.com: We are repeatedly being told that we need to have a government-controlled medical care system, because other countries have it -- as if our policies on something as serious as medical care should be based on the principle of monkey see, monkey do.
Know-it-all tyrants.
Walter Williams, Townhall.com: [Those] who run Washington, and their intellectual supporters, believe they have superior wisdom and greater intelligence than the masses. They believe they have been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Like any other tyrant, they have what they consider good reasons for restricting the freedom of others.
More guns, less crime.
The Washington Times: The year after the Supreme Court struck down the District of Columbia's handgun ban and gun-lock requirements, the capital city's murder rate plummeted 25 percent. The high court should keep that in mind ... as it hears oral arguments about a Chicago handgun ban.
Gun controllers screamed to high heaven that impending disaster would follow the court's decision to junk some of the district's gun controls. One of those screaming the loudest was Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, who incorrectly predicted more gun freedom would lead to more death and Wild West shootouts. Instead, in Washington, murder rates rose when the handgun ban was in effect and fell once the regulations were removed. Chicago's 1982 ban faired no better.
The forthcoming third edition of 'More Guns, Less Crime' shows that in the 17 years after a ban on new handguns went into effect, there were only two years when Chicago's murder rate was as low as it was in 1982. The Windy City's murder rate fell relative to America's other 50 largest cities before the ban and rose relative to them afterward. ...
That increase in murder rates isn't surprising. Every time gun bans have been tried anywhere, murder rates have risen. Whether one looks at Ireland, Jamaica or England and Wales, the experience has been the same. Not only did murder rates fail to decline as promised, but the rates actually increased following gun bans. In general, gun-control laws disarm law-abiding citizens -- not criminals who don't care about the law. The lesson is that freedom and safety go hand in hand.
President Wonderful.
Jonah Goldberg, NRO: The president is surrounded by acolytes of the Cult of Obama. They consider him to be a “transformational figure” who need not sully himself with the usual rules of politics. The president agrees, rejecting suggestions that he recalibrate his Olympian ambitions.
March 2, 2010
Gun rights in the Supreme Court.
Wall Street Journal: The Supreme Court today is the scene of a Constitutional duel in a case that will decide if the Second Amendment's guarantee of an individual right to bear arms applies to the states. The answer will determine whether the Court's landmark 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller is a hollow legal anomaly, or if it extends nationwide.
In McDonald v. Chicago, the Justices will consider whether the Windy City's ban on handguns is Constitutional. Brought by plaintiffs including 76-year-old Otis McDonald, who wants to keep a handgun in his South Side home to protect himself from gangs, the question is similar to that in Heller, which challenged a handgun ban in the District of Columbia.
However, unlike Washington, D.C., which is governed directly by federal law, the challenge to Chicago's gun ban comes to the Court under the Constitution's 14th Amendment, which protects fundamental rights against infringement by the states.
In a basic sense, it's hard to believe the Court won't apply the Second Amendment to states. Over the past century, the Court has said that part or all of the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments apply to the states. It would be bizarre for the same majority in Heller to now say that the Second Amendment is the Bill of Rights exception.
If the First Amendment's right to free speech applies to the states, then so does the Second Amendment.
But it's quick-set concrete.
Wesley Pruden, The Washington Times: Barack Obama is trying to be the new FDR before the concrete settles around his image as the new Jimmy Carter. History will ultimately decide, but last week's celebrated health care summit made him look more like Mr. Jimmy than FDR.
The president was full of self-righteous talk, mostly about himself, and he twice felt it necessary to remind everyone that he's the president, recalling Richard Nixon's bizarre reassurance that he was not a crook. Some things are self-evident, and if they're not, such things are usually not true. We can stipulate that, like it or not, he's the president.
The health care summit was not the demolition derby the Democrats expected, instead it's a pothole the president and his party will have difficulty climbing out of. The first public-opinion polls this week will measure who won and who lost. But the prospect of a lot of changed minds in the wake of the talkfest is a small prospect.
The president was in his favorite role, the long-winded professor trying hard to be patient with half-bright students who hadn't done their homework. Like most liberals, he suffers from a severe occupational hazard. Anyone who disagrees with him must be dumb, unlettered and redneck crazy. If Lamar Alexander, John McCain and Eric Cantor had only gone to the right Ivy League university they could understand the prescription for what's good for them. It's a fatal mindset that afflicts the cult.
March 1, 2010
Dems perpetuate their Culture of Corruption.
Fox News: Rep. Charlie Rangel's admonishment by the House ethics panel does not disqualify him from leading the chamber's influential tax-writing committee, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday, even as she acknowledged the conflict doesn't pass the smell test.
"No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't," Pelosi said. "The fact is, is that what Mr. Rangel has been admonished for is not good. It was a violation of the rules of the House. It was not something that jeopardized our country in any way."
The House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, better known as the ethics committee, admonished Rangel last week for taking corporate-sponsored trips to the Caribbean, which are a violation of House rules.
Ben Franklin responds to Nancy Pelosi.
Nancy Pelosi: We're here to do the job for the American people -- to get them results that gives them not only health security, but economic security, because the health issue is an economic issue for America's families.
Ben Franklin: They that can give up essential liberty to obtain temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
She lives in an alternate universe where down is up, left is right, and Botox passes for brains.
Nancy Pelosi: The bill can be bipartisan, even though the votes might not be bipartisan.
How's that "hope and change" thingie workin' out?
Kevin McCullough, Townhall.com: Since it is unlikely that the jobs numbers will change anytime soon, the President chose to double down and go for the jugular on health care. In a sense, he's sort of backed into a corner. He hasn't improved the economy, the unemployment situation has not stabilized--much less improved, Gitmo is still open, four terror attacks against the U.S. have happened on his watch, and people are tired of all of his speeches--while seeing no results.
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