Thursday, November 20, 2014

Dictator



You probably don’t think of Barack Obama as a dictator.  He was democratically elected to be the president of a constitutional republic after all, so he cannot be a totalitarian dictator, right?   But consider this:  there are two ways a country can end up with a dictator:  a leader or faction can seize totalitarian power by force, or the people can grant totalitarian power to an individual or faction.  For all intents and purposes, Barack Obama has been granted totalitarian dictatorial powers by the latter route.  In fact, he is arguably the most powerful dictator the world has ever known. 

Think about it:  Barack Obama is commander-in-chief of the worlds most powerful military, and is uniquely able to wage war without congressional approval or opposition from pacifists; he has carte blanche to selectively enforce laws;  he has carte blanche to create and modify laws;  he dissolves borders unilaterally; he creates treaties unilaterally; he has weaponized every tentacle of the federal government to persecute his enemies; he is politically untouchable and unimpeachable;  he lies to the country with impunity; his deputies have been found in contempt of congress without repercussion; his policies have failed without repercussion.  And…his dictatorship has been granted almost complete support from the news media, academia, and pop culture.

The world has never seen a dictator with this much power and latitude.  

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Must see Grubergate video compilation...

This is really hitting home for me since I just received notice of a 20% premium increase and some mandatory changes to the plan I liked, but can no longer keep.  Period.




(Thanks to AmericanCommitment for compiling this, and hat tip to those spreading it around like HotAir.com,  John Ekdahl of Ace of Spades HQ, etc.)  

Monday, November 17, 2014

Why impeachment should be the first item in the new congress...

I keep hearing GOP leaders and strategist announcing that impeachment is not an option.  The reasoning goes something like this:  "Yes, Obama has certainly committed numerous impeachable offenses, but impeachment is a political maneuver, it never works, and it will certainly backfire on the GOP, especially with this historic president."  Fair enough.  But what about doing your job?  Is it not the job of congress to impeach if warranted?  At what point does impeachment become the right thing to do for the future of constitutional governance in the US regardless of the consequences?  Is there ever a point where doing the right thing trumps doing the politically expedient thing?

(As far as what the articles of impeachment should be, that is beyond the scope of this post.  Suffice it to say there are books on the subject.  Two good examples are Aaron Klein's and Andrew McCarthy's.)  

A similar refrain repeats itself when talking about defunding.  Excuse me if I missed something, but the GOP just won an historical election AFTER the supposed embarrassment of Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and a few others doing the right thing on Obamacare in 2013.  Where is the evidence that they did anything but long-term good for their party?  Who else stood for what was right at the time, and now turns out to be even more right in light of the recently exposed "Grubering" of the American people?

Remember, Bush beat Gore AFTER the Clinton impeachment.  Then he won again.

    

Monday, November 10, 2014

You can't spell Democrat without the letters COMRADE


Behold as Jonathan Gruber, one of the key architects of Obamacare, explains the deceptions at the heart of the Affordable Care Act - deceptions which were necessary to overcome "the stupidity of the American voter".

This is not the first time Democrats have deceived the American people in order to pursue a major redistribution of wealth.  The last time something like this happened was in the 1990s when Democrats under Bill Clinton began something called the Affordable Housing Initiative (there's that word "affordable" again).  Deception was the key to the whole thing as mortgage credit was made available to those who could not afford mortgages, while the default risk was deceptively redistributed to taxpayers via Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FDIC, US Treasury, private banks, and other tentacles of the federal government.  The scheme eventually blew-up in 2008 and nearly took the global banking system down with it.  Oops.

Nevermind, the deceptions worked.  To this day if you ask the average voter what collapsed the financial system in 2008 they will dutifully recite that it was "greedy bankers, deregulation, and George W Bush".

One thing Democrats have learned from their comrades is the power of propaganda.  
     

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

An Election about American Exceptionalism

As I write this, the 2014 midterm election has yet to be decided, and though predictions are as thick as molasses in January, I trust that no outcome is assured.  But there is one thing I do know about this election and the direction of our country, it’s just another twist in a long road leading away from American exceptionalism.

We’ve heard a lot about “American exceptionalism” lately, but most of it misses the point.  Barack Obama was asked if he believed in American exceptionalism early in his presidency.  “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism”, he replied.    Subsequently he amended that view on numerous occasions, only to reveal that he continues to completely misunderstand the meaning of the term. 

Just last week, the president stood in front of a group of healthcare workers who had recently returned from Ebola stricken Africa.  “That’s American exceptionalism!”, the constitutional scholar informed us, which was ironic because many of the care givers present were members of a French organization known as Medecines Sans Frontieres, known here as Doctors Without Borders.  Oops, maybe he meant French exceptionalism.

No doubt, any person who goes to Africa to treat Ebola patients is an exceptional human being, but that has nothing to do with American exceptionalism.  American exceptionalism refers to our founding principles; never before in human history had a nation been formed with the central principle being the supremacy of individual rights along with deliberate limits on the powers of the state.  It made us an EXCEPTION among nations.  And it made us great. 

But those days are gone, and probably forever regardless of who controls the senate after this election.  We’ve been traveling down this road for a century, in fits and starts, progressing away from American exceptionalism and towards reversion to the mean.  This is the essence of progressivism: progressing towards average.  Americans see the rest of the world and want to emulate it because the grass is always greener, right?  Americans want "free" government healthcare like they have in other countries.  They want "free" secondary education like they have in other countries. They want a government that controls every aspect of the economy like they have in other countries.  They want a government that provides them with every want and need in life.  They want an all-powerful government, just like they have in other countries.  In other words, Americans have turned away from the idea of being exceptional; they want to be just like all the other un-exceptional nations.  They want to be average. 

No president has embodied this zeitgeist more than Barack Obama.  He has openly denigrated the concept of limited government as laid out in our constitution, calling it a “charter of negative liberties”.  Ummmm, yes it is from the perspective of the all-powerful state.  But from the perspective of the ultimate minority – the individual - our exceptional form of government, with its emphasis on individual rights, amounts to an emancipation proclamation.  This is the key to this election; will voters make the final turn towards a post-exceptional America, or will they once again turn, albeit temporarily, in the direction of American exceptionalism?

Friday, October 31, 2014

Tuesday, October 14, 2014