Hell hath no fury like a democrat scorned. Indeed, no one does outrage, real or feigned, like a democrat. And so it is that we have come to see legions of democrat talking-heads, spearheaded by two former democrat presidents and left-wing media apologists, attacking those who challenge the President's agenda as "racists." I guess that must include me, too.

The left is perfectly comfortable, in fact righteous, in its own role of vocal, often virulent dissent:

• Free speech is regarded as one of the foundations of western civilization when it's the Code Pink ladies or Earth First! people attacking Bush; but free speech is racism and the "thinly veiled" violence of reactionaries when it's people like the tea party crowd.
  
• Speech that attacks presumed excesses of power is a virtue when it's Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid calling the CIA and Bush liars; free speech is racism when it's Joe Wilson blurting out the truth that Obama lied about providing illegals health care.
  
• Speech attacking Republicans as from the party of "old, white men" is fair comment, with nary a thought about any racial or other stereotypes; but if one opposes Obama, one is a racist.
  

It's been 2 weeks since the President's speech to the joint session of Congress and almost that long since the Tea Party March in DC. But a quick scan of the cable news channels over this past weekend shows that the chattering class is still at it, trying to make a case that all opposition to Obama is based on a loathing of the color of his skin.

Jimmy Carter came out of mothballs to tell us that he knows the opposition to Obama is simply deep-seated racism that still lingers in the hearts of white people who just hate to see a black man in office. Carter's condemnation of the opposition gave the perfect cover to the faux journalists on most of cable and all the network channels to pound the "racist" theme to the exclusion of real news.

Always willing acolytes, the media trotted out speaker after speaker, (including President Clinton who managed to talk up both sides of the issue), to comment on Carter's ridiculous comment.

This is all a feint, intended to draw attention away from the substance of opponents' concerns and to dismiss all of us as knowing evil-doers and bigoted haters, or people who are just too simple-minded to know the racist motivations behind their own actions, people whose speech, in any event, should be ignored if not suppressed.

If any of the race war protagonists, or any of you, gentle readers, think that this has caused me to review my own thoughts or beliefs for signs of latent racist tendencies, think again. Rather, I chastise those who would make such spurious accusations against fellow Americans, many of whom voted for Obama, and many more of whom loyally supported him in the first months of his term.

(And, a special note to Mr. Carter: Go home and get busy doing something you know how to do, like building houses or wearing sweaters, and leave the rest of us alone.)

In its patent efforts to prop up this president they love, our pathetic news media jumped at the opportunity to attack his attackers, and to ignore embarrassing or potentially damaging news stories it should be investigating, such as:

• The President's flirting with accepting failure in Afghanistan by not providing more troops as requested by the military, even though he said this was the "right" war to fight;
  
• The President's single-minded (and I say simple-minded) solution to nuclear threats through unilateral disarmament;
  
• The President's weakening the country's and our allies' defenses by failing to make good on the long range missile defenses that we promised to deploy in Eastern Europe, a foreign policy give-away to Russia at the expense of new democracies and our own safety;
  
• The President's legitimizing Ahmadinajad as President of Iran despite the still contested election and the Iranian government crackdown on dissenters who reject the government-declared election results;
  
• The President's continuing to bend over backward for the increasingly intransigent bullies and saber rattlers, Iran and North Korea, getting nothing in return for his diplomatic largess;
  
• The President's allowing the criminal investigation into CIA interrogations to go forward, contrary to what he said initially, and further weakening our intelligence community;
  
• The President's throwing Israel "under the bus," calling its settlements an "occupation" while continuing to reach out to its enemies, including Iran whose leader recently has again denied the Holocaust;
  
• The President's support of Manuel Zelaya, the left wing would-be dictator in Honduras who tried to go against his country's constitution by overstaying his term in office, putting Obama on the same side of the issue as dictator-thugs Hugo Chavez and Brazil's Lula De Silva (remember the latter's tirade blaming the banking crisis on "blue-eyed white people");
  
• The President's continued apologies for, but never praise of, the United States, once again decrying our past "sins" in his UN address today;
  
• The President's evasions about his associations with ACORN, the corrupt community organizing group that was instrumental in his election, that has already received tens of millions of tax dollars, and was scheduled to receive up to billions of dollars in stimulus money;
  
• The President's increasing the power of the executive branch by forming a legion of "czars" who have enormous authority and power and our tax money to spend, many of whom have dubious characters and credentials, such as admitted "communist" Van Jones;
  
• The President's failure to explain how the country will pay for any of his proposed agenda without amassing a huge deficit and burdening generations to follow;
  
• The President's changes and evasions on his health-care "plan" which is still not yet formulated as a specific plan;
  
• The President's embarking on a series of trade protectionist measures to please his union constituencies;
  
• The President's actions in orchestrating government takeovers of large sectors of the economy and further shrinking the private sector, the latest successful effort being the federal government takeover of all student loans to the exclusion of private carriers;
  
• The President's designs to eliminate or marginalize talk radio (aka dissenting speech) by means of resurrecting the so-called Fairness Doctrine via a "diversity panel" at the FCC to replace current programming with "local content" and content that represents more "minorities and women" but which will act to stifle conservative speech.
  

This list is by no means exhaustive of the types of policies that many of us oppose. And for voicing these concerns we are branded "racists." One would think that the left, which applauds the freest of speech for itself(Remember how Bush was pilloried as a "Nazi?" The movies about assassinating him? Congress booing Bush at a joint session?) would stand up for all speech, even that of the opposition. Sadly, this is not the case.

Instead, the left is calling up the troops to fight a race war, thinking that the race card is an ace up their sleeve that will win the political game by stifling criticism of Obama and deflecting attention away from the real concerns of the day, such as:

• the groups of terrorists determined to destroy us,
  
• the nation states that support them and are determined to acquire nuclear arms,
  
• and a Commander in Chief who thinks that the best defense is no defense.
  

In leveling charges of "racism," the left and their media lackeys attack what now has become a majority of people in this country who either oppose or question Obama's far-left radical agenda. But they will find the opposition is not suiting up to fight those phony charges.

I for one will not engage in any "racist" battle. I do not deem the attack worthy of defending. I stick a flower in the barrel of that charge, and challenge the left to turn around, and face our real enemies.

·         a government takeover of a huge segment of the economy;

·         rationed care, especially for the elderly and the very ill;

·         skyrocketing costs; and

·          a huge increase in the already gargantuan deficit.

But despite all his (choreographed) townhall appearances before (hand-picked adoring crowds of pro-Obama) American citizens, our President does not assail these supposed myths one by one, teaching us why people’s fears are misplaced.

The President is a lawyer, and should know how to argue his case to the American people. But we hear no substantive discussion of the facts from him, just generalities and promises, and, as always, ridicule of those who dare to disagree.

As trial lawyers know, if the facts are with you, you argue the facts. If they’re not, you argue the credibility of the opposition. The facts are not on Obama’s side, and so he and his allies have set about attacking the character of the opposition.

So far we’ve been called:

·         rude and uncivil;

·         shills for insurance companies or radical groups;

·         Nazis;

·         racists who hate Obama because he’s black (even though undoubtedly a goodly percentage of protesters voted for him and/or supported him after his election);

·         un-American;

·         mindless enough to believe patently untrue “myths”;

·         laughable;

·         brainwashed by evil cable news channels; and, LAST BUT NOT LEAST,

·         “wee-wee’d up.”

Yes, the President of the United States, in his latest blast at those opposed to Obamacare, fired a charge that in August people just get all “wee-wee’d up,” a phrase incomprehensible to all but his spokesman, Robert Gibbs, who suggested that it had something to do with bed-wetting. (Check out videos of both IMPOTUS and Gibbs on “wee-wee” at http://tinyurl.com/nbvfle.)

What on earth was he thinking, this man who is claimed by many to be our most glorious presidential orator? (And one has to wonder if that kind of speechifying still gives MSNBC’s Chris Matthews a thrill up his leg? Or maybe it would go down his leg…)

While Obama keeps attacking Americans with increasingly demeaning and ridiculous charges, and repeating that opposition is based on “myths,” he does not attack the “myths” themselves:

·         There’s no teachable moment where Obama shows us how his plan will not lead to a government takeover of health care and private insurers being forced out of the market.

o   He doesn’t explain how we can be sure the private market will survive a public “option.”

o   He doesn’t explain how provisions in the Bill banning new private plans will affect your ability to change or add to your policy.

o   He doesn’t explain how you can “keep your private insurance if you like it,” as he keeps repeating, if the insurers are no longer in the market.

o   He doesn’t explain how you can “keep your private insurance if you like it,” if your employer drops your coverage, choosing to pay a fine instead.

o   He doesn’t explain how you can “keep your private insurance if you like it,” if your premiums go sky high as the insurers’ costs rise under the plan.

·         There’s no teachable moment where Obama shows us how his plan will not end up covering illegal aliens.

o   He doesn’t explain how we can be assured of this when his plan contains no enforcement mechanism.

o   He doesn’t explain how Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, a negotiator in ongoing Senate Finance Committee talks, was wrong when he recently said:

"The bill passed by the House committees is so poorly cobbled together that it will have all kinds of unintended consequences, including making taxpayers fund health care subsidies for illegal immigrants."

o   He doesn’t explain how you can only get to his figure of 47 million uninsured if you count those illegal aliens.

·         There’s no teachable moment where Obama shows us how his plan will not lead to publicly funded abortions as part of the standard coverage for women.

o   He doesn’t explain how we can be assured of this when abortion is so much a part of the DNA of the left who are demanding abortions be covered.

o   He doesn’t explain how we can be assured of this when the Bill does not specifically exclude that coverage.

o   He doesn’t explain how we can be assured of this when it’s not clear the so-called Hyde Amendment, which generally bans public funding of abortions, would apply to the public option plan.

·         There’s no teachable moment where Obama shows us how his plan will not end up rationing health care, particularly for the elderly and the very ill.

o   He doesn’t explain how a limited number of doctors, nurses, medical facilities and equipment are going to treat millions more patients without rationing care.

o   He doesn’t explain how we can be assured of this when Obama himself said that someone his grandmother’s age maybe should just take a pain pill instead of getting a hip replacement surgery.

o   He doesn’t explain how we can be assured that rationing won’t result in people dying prematurely if denied coverage of life saving prescriptions or surgeries.

o   He doesn’t explain why the charge of “death panels” is a laughing matter under those circumstances.

o   He doesn’t explain how we can save on medical costs without rationing when 80% of all medical costs come from the last years’ of life, meaning seniors and the very ill account for most of the costs.

o   He doesn’t address how his plan’s reliance on “QALY” standards will not result in rationing for the old and very ill.

Wikipedia defines the QALY as:

“The quality-adjusted life year (QALY) is a measure of disease burden, including both the quality and the quantity of life lived. It is used in assessing the value for money of a medical intervention. The QALY model requires utility independent, risk neutral, and constant proportional tradeoff behaviour.

The QALY is based on the number of years of life that would be added by the intervention. Each year in perfect health is assigned the value of 1.0 down to a value of 0.0 for death. If the extra years would not be lived in full health, for example if the patient would lose a limb, or be blind or be confined to a wheelchair, then the extra life-years are given a value between 0 and 1 to account for this.” (Emphasis added.)

Want your life to be reduced to a formula implemented by some anonymous government board of bureaucrats? That’s just what happened to this woman under Oregon’s government health plan. (See the video at http://tinyurl.com/ngky3k).

The video shows the Oregon woman, who was denied life saving chemotherapy drugs by the government run health plan, which offered her doctor-assisted suicide instead.

One of the “evil” pharmaceutical companies, upon hearing of her plight, provided the drugs free of charge, and the woman has survived her cancer because of the prompt treatment.

The term “death panel” has been greeted with a lot of derision and even chuckles on the part of the president. But I bet that Oregon woman wouldn’t think the phrase exaggerated in the least.

I actually think that the current plan of rationing care, which is:

·         to be based on QALY, cookie-cutter templates and protocols;

·         decided by a board of government employees who have never laid eyes on you;

·         who don’t have to answer to you personally; and

·         whose decisions are not subject to appeal;

is arguably more insidious than “death panels” where at least you’d get the chance to confront your condemners and spit in their faces before being led away to take your pain pills and await death.

These are only some of the questions Obama and his allies are not addressing, choosing instead, once again, to demonize the opposition as a way to blast through their programs. Which leads to the question, why no teachable moments from the President?

Obama and his allies do not delve into the facts with us because:

·         single payer is where they’ve always wanted us to be. (See Obama say this at http://tinyurl.com/m3ze63and Barney Frank say the same thing at http://tinyurl.com/n7qo2y)

·         they’re OK with a government takeover, because they hate the private sector and think their form of government will know best what’s good for us;

·         they’re OK with individuals suffering rationing and losing private insurance if it means the “masses” are served.

“To me ethics is doing what is best for the most,” said Saul Alinsky, the radical whose teachings became the guidebook for then community organizer and now President, Barack Obama. (Rules for Radicals, 1971, by Saul Alinsky, p. 33.)

That statement provides the main truth behind the government plan:

If some individuals (or many individuals) must get sacrificed for the “good of all,” as they in their ultimate wisdom see it, well, that’s just too bad.

This radical President and Congress value the “masses of humanity” over individual human beings. They value their vision of what America should be over Americans themselves.

This is the real teachable lesson from this debate.

We don’t really have a President of the United States anymore, despite the fact that the putative president, Barack Obama, is still living in the White House with all the trappings of the presidency.

IMPOTUS, an acronym I’ve coined for “I am the President of the United States,” as Mr. Obama so often says of himself, (he did it again in a speech last Thursday) has ceased acting as president of the United States for some time now, his presidency done in by his own hand, by his own executive fiat.

He’s no longer acting as a President of the United States, but as a political ideologue representing only the approximate 20% of the populace considered to be the radical left base of the democrat party.

We saw it first in a change in his demeanor. Gone are the honeyed words of post-partisanship, of post-racialism, of outstretched hands to unclenched fists. No, he now resembles a 3^rd world dictator, (maybe that’s why he’s so comfortable with Fidel, Hugo, & Manuel), jutting out his chin (always reminding me of Mussolini), and threatening to ram his policies down your throat if you don’t willingly go along.

Now we see pouting and anger when things don’t go his way, accusing others of wrongdoing, vilifying and demonizing the opposition.

As with all dictators, (remember Animal Farm’s Napoleon and his attack dogs), IMPOTUS has his union thugs, his moveon.org zealots, his (federally funded, convicted for fraud) ACORN activists, to do his bidding, apparently at his beck and call.

For that’s what happened just this week when IMPOTUS was displeased with the level of anger people showed toward his health care plan at town hall meetings across the country.

The people’s anger was not only justified, it was foreseeable, brought on by the fear engendered by IMPOTUS’s policies. As Peggy Noonan, known for her measured tones, said of the protesters in her weekly Saturday Wall Street Journal column:

“And all they ask in return (from their congressman) is that he see to their interests and not terrify them too much. Really, that’s all people ask. Expectations are very low. What the protesters are saying is, ‘You are terrifying us.’” (Wall Street Journal, August 8, 2009. Emphasis added.)

            Consider the sources of the protesters’ fears:

·         the 1,018 page health care bill that lawmakers have not read;

·         the report of the Congressional Budget Office that the plan will add billions to the deficit, and

·         undoubtedly result in millions of Americans losing their private coverage, and being dumped into the public plan;

·         the threat that the plan will take away or change our relationship with our doctors;

·         the plan’s imposing health care rationing, especially for seniors and the very ill;

·         the plan’s imposing an unprecedented level of bureaucratic meddling in our health care, one of our most private affairs;

·         automatic withdrawals from your bank accounts to pay for government health care;

·         on top of the other humongous, deficit-creating bailouts, the un-stimulating “stimulus,” and the pork laden budget; and

·         a cornucopia of new taxes proposed to pay for all the spending, from cap & tax energy taxes which will hit everyone, to VAT’s, to middle class income tax increases, to surtaxes on the “rich” (just wait- IMPOTUS will one day decide that you, too, are among the “rich).

A President of the United States would:

·         use his rhetorical skills to answer the people’s reasonable questions;

·         use his intelligence to actually read the bill and become familiar with its provisions;

·         learn what provisions of the bill are troubling people so much and try to address them;

·         try to enact a bill that is the best bill to serve the people as a whole;

·         listen calmly and with deliberation to all the people; and

·         take his time to get it right.

A President of the United States would not:

·         vilify dissenters from his plan as Nazis, fronts for the insurance companies, and right-wing corporate lobbyist thugs storming town hall meetings, saying they are just trying to “hurt” the President”;

·         ridicule over half of the population, (because it is now over 50% who oppose his heath care plan according to polls) including some of the very people who voted for him;

·         have his cronies disparagingly refer to protesters (incorrectly, by the way) as well-dressed Brooks Brothers types, the assertion being that they are just liars and paid operatives, and not genuinely concerned Americans;

·         cast the same aspersions on them as he did on “tea baggers” earlier this year; and

·         he would not allow his cronies, surrogates and others in his party to do and say these false, hateful things.

This is how the President of all the people would act and not act. But what did we get from IMPOTUS this week?

The President’s People Calling Out Union Thugs:

    On Thursday, August 6, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Jim Messina, sent the message out to democrat senators to “punch back twice as hard” at those contentious, but non-violent dissenters at recent town hall meetings. (Check out http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0809/25891.html)

 Gee, how (un)surprising it was then, that the very same night, SEIU union thugs went to a town hall in St. Louis and beat up Kenneth Gladney, a black guy who had the nerve to sell buttons and flags to conservative attendees.

The attack on Gladney resulted in the arrest of SEIU union members for assault and disturbing the peace. (See video of the assault and pictures of Mr. Gladney, who had to be hospitalized for his injuries at http://tinyurl.com/l53nub)

 (By the way,while you’re looking at those pictures, try to identify the “Brooks Brothers” protesters. All I see is regular folks.

And if those veterans and seniors have “manufactured” and “faked” the anger we’ve seen them show at these town hall meetings, as IMPOTUS says they have, then the best actor Academy Awards this year must go to them.)

The President’s Snitch Program

IMPOTUS, a former constitutional law professor who should know all about the First Amendment, is so upset about others expressing their opposition to his programs that he has now set up a snitch email campaign on the White House website.

He wants his many minions to email him information, including the identity of those saying “untrue” (untrue by what standard, please?) or “fishy” things about his health care proposal. (See this unprecedented and outrageous website spy campaign at http://tinyurl.com/kpl3qe)

Query: Since IMPOTUS has not read the bill, how would he know what’s being said is untrue?)

Something’s fishy all right: This program is un-American, and probably illegal. Many complaints about it, including some from people in his own party, have failed to get through the message how offensive and frankly terrifying this spy program is, or to get IMPOTUS to discontinue it.

To borrow and paraphrase from the Great Communicator, Ronald Reagan, let me say this loud and clear:

Mr. Obama: Tear Down This Site!!

The President as Hypocrite in Chief

We have a Community Organizer who is now angry with people for organizing simply because their ideas are opposed to his. What’s a celebrated and worthy activity for him, is an evil sin for others.

It’s OK for SEIU and ACORN (which gets your tax dollars to do its “organizing”) and moveon.org to organize and “get in their faces” as IMPOTUS famously said on the campaign trail last year, but when others organize in contentious but non-violent ways, IMPOTUS says: “we will punch back twice as hard.”

Another example of this hypocrisy came this past Thursday as IMPOTUS gave a speech at a campaign rally in Virginia for a local senator. (See clips of the speech at “The Two Faces of Obama” at http://tinyurl.com/nmjeey).

In that speech, IMPOTUS begins as a “uniter” but ended up as a “divider,” accusing some Americans of making the current economic “mess,” that others, like him, will have to clean up, stating that he didn’t want the mess-making Americans “to do a lot of talking” but to just “get out of the way.”

(I had always thought that there were multiple hands, spreading over multiple Administrations and Congresses–Barney Frank and the Freddie Mac “mess” for one–who contributed to our economic problems, but I guess it’s just IMPOTUS’s opponents who have made all the problems and who’d now better just SHUT UP!)

Mr. Obama, before your presidency becomes irretrievable, it’s time to stop campaigning and start leading America, taken as a whole, and with all her people, not just your far left base.

As you forever keep reminding us, you are the President of the United States, representing all Americans of every stripe. Show honor to the honor bestowed upon you by the millions of trusting, hopeful Americans who have showered you with respect and goodwill. They deserve and expect you to return that in equal measure.

This is the same disrespect and dismissive treatment that The Tea Partiers got earlier this year from the Administration, and shows a real disconnect with the American people!

As another part of the Administration’s trying to silence opposition, on the official White House web site, Big Brother is asking Americans to spy on each other by reporting “fishy” reporting on the internet about the Bill. I guess that means me and this blog, too! Take a look: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Facts-Are-Stubborn-Things/

Obama voters, is this the kind of America you thought the President would bring? If not, I urge you not to sit back and just watch things unfold, but take action along with the rest of us who believe:

·         this Bill is not change we believe in;

·         we are being lied to about keeping private coverage and rationing, especially for seniors;

·         that Americans snitching to the White House on other Americans’ exercise of free speech is un-American; and

·         we are ready to fight back!

Easy Way to Contact Your Representatives:

If you feel as I do that the current Health Care Bill HR 3200 should be stopped and that lawmakers should come up with a better plan to reform, not revolutionize, our health care system, you should check out the Townhall Online site below.

It’s a very easy way to contact your senators and congressmen to voice your views. 

There is an editable message pre-written for you, and the site will send your message either via email or letter to your representatives based on your zip code.

I just did it, and it took only a minute.

I frequently hear people complain about what is happening on health care. This is a quick way to do something and voice those concerns.

Here’s the site: http://www.responsiblehealthreform.com/node/8?origin=thn.

Consider Donating for Ads against the Bill in Key States:

If you would like to contribute more to the effort, consider making even a small donation to the League of American Voters which is sponsoring ads against the Bill in key states. I heard about them through Di ck Morris, author of the best seller “Catastrophe,” political commentator, and former Clinton advisor.

I have made a donation, and hope you will, too.

You can see the proposed ad, check the organization out and make a donationat: http://leagueofamericanvoters.com/

It’s not enough to hope others will stop these outrages. We all must act.

Make no mistake about it: they will not be satisfied until their brand of government has taken over as much of the private sector as possible, a goal they are well on their way to accomplishing.

In the intensely private, life-and-death area of health care, Big Brother has set about not to reform our health care problems but to create an entirely new government-run system.

This mirrors what Big Brother is trying to do with our system as a whole: tear down capitalism so that a socialist form of government can emerge. They are using the recession as an opportunityto revolutionize the very foundation of our government, rather than merely reform it.

Big Brother uses lies and fear tactics and overwhelming complexity coupled with an impetuous rush to act in order to accomplish their ends: redistributing wealth from the “haves” to the “have-nots,” ends which in their view justify any means.

How do they lie to you? Let me count (at least some of) the ways.

Lie No. 1: Our Health Care System Is in Crisis and Must Be Replaced.

The truth is Big Brother wants to take over health care because it occupies about 1/5^th of the economy, and therefore would go a long way toward accomplishing the “ends” discussed above. Once they get hold of health care, we’ll never get it back in private (your) hands.

As one of the President’s political mentors, the 70’s radical Saul Alinksy, wrote:

“A revolutionary organizer must shake up the prevailing patterns of (men’s’) lives-agitate, create disenchantment and discontent with the current values, to produce, if not a passion for change, at least a passive, affirmative, non-challenging climate.”  (Rules for Radicals, 1971, Saul D. Alinsky, Prologue, pp. xxi-xxii. Emphasis added.)

And so we see the President using his rhetorical skills to hammer away at how bad our health care is, which is not true, but necessary to convince people in order for “change” to take place. The truth is that our health care is the best in the world, with people deprived in other single payer (state run) health care systems coming to this country for treatment.

In fact, around 85% of Americans say they are satisfied with their health care coverage and their doctors. I always thought that 85% was a solid B, not the failing grade that the President and his cronies are alleging.

While we do need to do something for the remaining 15%, we don’t need to tear down a system that is working for most, especially if it means replacing it with a gargantuan, incomprehensible, bureaucracy-expanding nightmare that is the proposed House Bill 3200, (the “Bill”).

          Lie No. 2: Their Health Care Plan Will Save Money.

This one is really a whopper. In the last month the independent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in 3 separate reports has projected that the health plan’s trillion dollar price tag will result in increasing costs and therefore the deficit, already swollen by the (failed) stimulus.

(Attention young people: you will be paying for the rest of your lives for Big Brother’s power grabs, and the outsize growth of entitlement spending, and you, as much as anyone, should be fighting back.)

Common sense tells us that if you add millions of people to an already strained health care system, then costs will rise, taxes must rise to meet them, (just today Larry Summers said the Administration couldn’t rule out a middle-class tax increase), and coverage will be reduced (rationing).

            Lie No. 3: You Can Keep Your Health Plan If You Like It.

Last week, I detailed the dishonesty in this frequent mantra heard from the President. (Check out the piece entitled: When You’re That Smart, Who Needs Facts? linked at the sidebar.)

It bears repeating here that Obama is disingenuous at best because any public option will eventually lead to a single payer. They want single payer, folks, because that’s where the most power is. A public option plan leads to single payer by squeezing out the private sector over time.

            Lie No. 4: We Aren’t Advocating a Single Payer System.

Catch Obama describing himself in 2003 as a “proponent of single payer universal health care” and vowing that we’d have it when the Democrats take back the White House and the Congress.  Watch how passionate he is in this video clip and convincing about his desire for single payer, and then compare it to how (unconvincing) he sounds today about protections for Americans in the Bill (the one he admits he hasn’t read and isn’t familiar with.) http://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/june/barack_obama_on_sing.php.

This same single payer sentiment was recently repeated by Representative Barney Frank when confronted by proponents of single payer. He said that he’s all in favor of single payer, but that getting a public option is the first step to getting there. (Check it out at http://atr.org/barney-frank-public-plan-best-route-a3616.)

            Lie No. 5: Seniors Have Nothing to Fear.

As a lawyer, I’m used to reading unreadable pieces of legislation and regulations that state and federal governments produce in such vast quantities. (You would think they are being paid by the word.)

But even with my legal education and experience, a scroll through the 2,541 sections of the Bill (with its multiple sub-sections and sub-sub-sections) is enough to make your head swim.  (The Democrat Rep. from Michigan, John Conyers, summed up why he wasn’t going to read the bill by saying that he’d need 2 days and 2 lawyers just to get through it.)

It’s also enough to make you angry, because a subject so intimate and important in each individual’s life, should not be dealt with in such a convoluted, opaque (whatever happened to transparency?), incomprehensible, truth-obfuscating way. For a bill this important, every American should be able to go online and read it and understand it.

I’ve read in its entirety the section of the Bill on “Advance Care Planning Consultation” for seniors and the terminally ill. I think it is shocking that this iswhat is in store for Americans who make the mistake of growing old and/or sick.

The bottom line is that “orders for life sustaining treatment,” (which will be made by some government board) will be explained to the individual who can state his or her preference, but does not have control over the order made.

Big Brother would like these individuals to quit being a drag on the economy and the health care system and to agree to “limit some or all specified interventions.” (The Bill, Section 1223, subsection (hhh)(1)-(5).

Translation: These mandatory consultations will have as a main purpose encouraging the very ill and seniors to agree when stating their “preference” to “limit” or forego such things as:

·        intense medical intervention;

·        transfer to a hospital;

·        use of antibiotics;

·        use of artificially administered nutrition and hydration. (See subsection (hhh) (5)(A)-(B), sub-subsections (B) (i) through (iv).

So let’s get this straight:

·        In the first place, seniors and others deemed too old and/or ill to benefit from a treatment for a long enough period of time will have their health care rationed;

·        (Why give them a pacemaker or a hip replacement or dialysis or chemo treatments when a more able-bodied, younger person-perhaps even an illegal alien who is covered under the Bill-may get more years’ benefit out of it);

·        We have enough taxpayer money to spend $4,500 for a clunker car, (which supports Big Brother’s UAW voting bloc, and props up the industry Big Brother just bought (conflict of interest here?);

·        We have enough taxpayer money to pay for abortions, also covered in the Bill; (I guess “privacy” protects a woman’s choice to end the life of a viable fetus, but there’s no privacy protection for the elderly or ill to make a choice and prevent the government from prematurely ending their lives.)

·        We have enough taxpayer money to pay for the extremely expensive transgender sex-change operations;

·        But there’s not enough money to pay for antibiotics and a little liquid nutrition for seniors and the terminally ill so they don’t die of thirst or starvation;

·        And we put those seniors and the ill on the spot to agree to this treatment in advance so we can say we’re not responsible for ending their lives.

I say that as Americans we can do better than this. We don’t need to fix the 15% that is the problem by tearing down the 85% that works. We can reform, not revolutionize. And we don’t need to do it on the backs of those least able to protect themselves, the old and the ill.

Our Declaration of Independence proclaimed that all men are entitled to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” not just the young, the able-bodied, or those in key Democrat constituent groups, like union workers and illegals.

Our Founding Fathers had it just right; Big Brother’s got it wrong.

             I’ve only just now begun to appreciate how truly smart IMPOTUS is. (I’ve tired of hearing and writing the word “Obama” and will refer to him here with this acronym for the phrase he so often uses to refer to himself: “I am the President of the United States.”)

For each of the past 10 days IMPOTUS has been on a health (s)care road show with daily speeches, town hall meetings, hospital viewings, and Blue Dog beatings,culminating in that rouser of a press conference Wednesday night.

He and his voice are everywhere thanks to our subservient press providing endless broadcasts of his every move, to the point he is now more over-exposed than Britney Spears in her cobra costume.

For some of these past 10 days I had been blissfully news-free, enjoying a trip to the Tahitian islands: no papers, no TV, no cell phone, no computer, no missile threats, no IMPOTUS. (Well, almost no IMPOTUS. I did get a few tiring questions about him from a couple of French tourists; and our otherwise-charming Tahitian host on a remote atoll off Rangiroa liked to wear the infamous Hope T-Shirt with guess-who’s face staring out at me.)

So my mind was fresh from this needed break in the news (re)cycle as I caught up with recent IMPOTUS events upon my return last week. And this past Wednesday night, (unaware that “So You Think You Can Dance?” was a viewing option), I tuned in to the IMPOTUS press conference (notably rescheduled from the 9:00 p.m. slot so IMPOTUS would not have to compete with Britain’s Susan Boyle on America’s Got Talent.)

Something happened at the end of that press conference which crystallized my view of the man. I don’t know how I had missed “getting” it for so long. Despite the claims of his genius IQ from the media and other admirers, foolish me, I had resisted the notion.

But folks, his words in response to that last question have made it clear to me beyond cavil: IMPOTUS is so smart he does not need the facts to come up with answers.

It all came together for me with that softball question about the arrest in Cambridge, Mass. of his friend Henry Gates, an African-American Studies Professor from Harvard. Mr. Gates, a black man, was trying to force open the jammed front door of his home after returning from a trip with the help of his limo driver. An alert neighbor, knowing that there had been burglaries in the area, called the police.

According to the arriving police officer, Mr. Gates became irate, uncooperative and belligerent, screaming accusations of racism at the officer when asked to produce identification. Police claim Gates continued his tirade against officers outside the house, threatening them that they didn’t “know who they were dealing with.”

The result was Mr. Gates’s arrest for disturbing the peace (a crowd of onlookers had gathered and witnessed Gates’ bizarre behavior, according to officers.)

Gates undoubtedly has a different story, and I don’t presume to suggest what actually happened that night, because I don’t have all the facts. But a lack of facts didn’t stop IMPOTUS from stating what happened!

In answering the question, IMPOTUS said that “he didn’t know the facts” and “wasn’t there” and that he was “a friend” of Mr. Gates so he “might be prejudiced.”  But he then proceeded to take Mr. Gates’ s side in the matter, (which no doubt will help Gates in the civil suit he is threatening), pronouncing:

·         that the officers were guilty of “acting stupidly,”

·         that police officers were still using “racial profiling” in America, and

·         implying that the officer in question had acted from racial motives.

I had to ask myself: How could he so clearly pronounce judgment on a subject about which he admitted in his first breath he did not know the facts?

I had just been asking myself the same question earlier in the press conference when he repeated the now familiar mantra that “if you like your health care, then you can keep your health care” when he had admitted he hadn’t read the bill and wasn’t fully familiar with the provision on retaining private insurance.

This admission came up in IMPOTUS’s taped conference call with left-wing bloggers (the health (s)care road show left no stone unturned) when a blogger said he ran into an Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) article that claimed Section 102 of the House Bill would outlaw private insurance. The blogger asked: “Is this true? Will people be able to keep their insurance and will insurers be able to write new policies even though H.R. 3200 is passed?”

IMPOTUS replied: “You know, I have to say that I am not familiar with the provision you are talking about.” (Truth is he is not familiar with most of the 1,018 page Bill-said to project costs of $1 Billion per page- which he has not read.) But that didn’t keep IMPOTUS from again promising later in the call: “…if you have health insurance, and you like it, and you have a doctor that you like, then you can keep it. Period.”

But, Houston, we have a problem here:  as IBD editorials point out, on page 16 of the Bill is a provision prohibiting changes to existing coverage, and making new coverage illegal. It states:

“Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day” (of the year the legislation becomes law.) (Investor’s Business Daily, Wednesday, July 15, 2009.)

Translation:

·         No new policies for private individual coverage can be written after the public option becomes law,

·         which would not only prevent the previously uninsured from buying private insurance,

·         but also would prevent those who leave a company to work for themselves from buying individual plansfrom private carriers, and

·         would prevent changes or additions to existing policies, such as adding new family members or areas of coverage.

Worse yet, if government gets into the business of offering subsidized health insurance, the private market will die: IMPOTUS can’t force employers to keep providing private plans, and many employers will prefer the option of paying a fine, dumping their employees into the public plan.

The Lewin Group, in a July 17 report for a study commissioned by the Heritage Foundation, states that if the House bill becomes law 83.4 million people (nearly half of those currently covered by medical insurance) will lose private insurance because their employers will drop coverage. (Wall Street Journal Opinion “ObamaCare in Trouble” by Karl Rove.)

I got confused at first when comparing the words of IMPOTUS about keeping your coverage to the words of the Bill itself and to commentary by people who had actually studied it.

·         I know that IMPOTUS can’t be outright lying. To believe that would be to believe his ego is so big, he thinks that there’s no whopper too big for us to swallow.

·         And we know he’s not stupid, so this isn’t just a mistake.

·         Some say that IMPOTUS will do anything to push through his radical left-wing Marxist ideology:

o   large government is the savior of the masses;

o   amassing power in that government is the first priority, and

o   is an end justifying any means.

The notion that any of these possibilities could be true would mean that those who placed their trust in The One to be a moderate, post-partisan, and post-racial leader were duped.

This is much too painful to contemplate. Therefore, I am forced to conclude that IMPOTUS must simply be so much smarter than the rest of us plebs that he and he alone can see the truth.

·         He’s so smart that he can see into the soul of a man he’s never met and divine racism.

·         He’s so smart he doesn’t need to read the health care Bill to know what it says.

·         He’s so smart he doesn’t have to bother reconciling his promises to the actual provisions of the Bill.

·         He’s so smart that he knows what’s good for us better than we know ourselves.

·         He’s so smart that he can take on the banks, the insurance companies, car companies, the economy, health care, energy, nuclear threats, two wars, and still have time for destroying our existing system of government to replace it with a “better” socialist state, all with only the experience of a community organizer, a short-term state senator and 150 working days in the US Senate.

These things must be true, because if they’re not, IMPOTUS is not that smart after all, and is just a dishonest, power-grabbing, ideologically-driven leftist politico who cares more about himself and his radical agenda than the welfare of the American people.

            The past few months, with the US and the world watching like helpless onlookers at the scene of a disaster, North Korea (NK) continued its aggressive acts:

·         sentencing 2 US journalists to 12 years hard labor on unspecified charges;

·         test firing 5 short range missiles;

·         conducting a nuclear test; and

·         in April, launching a Taepodong-2 (T-2) rocket over Japan.

To this tyrannical saber-rattling, our President (and the feckless UN) chose the same-old worse-than-useless “please be nice” approach. As stated in an excellent piece by Heritage Foundation senior research fellow, Bruce Klingner:

“The administration chose consensus over confrontation at the U.N. And as a result, in deference to veto-wielding China and Russia, the U.N. Security Council was able to agree only on a nonbinding presidential statement reiterating demands for compliance with 3-year-old Resolutions…(See Heritage.org, “How should the U.S. handle North Korea?” by Bruce Klingner, May 4, 2009.)

In response, Kim Jong Il was so chastened that he:

·         Kicked out international inspectors;

·         Threatened to build more nuclear weapons;

·         Vowed never to return to the 6 Party Talks;

·         Rejected repeated Obama invitations to bilateral talks;

·         Conducted a second nuclear test on May 25; and

·         Today rattles his sabers by planning to launch another T-2 missile toward the great state of Hawaii over the 4^th of July;

·         Launched the voyage of the vessel the Kang Nam last Wednesday, which officials suspect contains illicit weapons (NK has approximately 2,500 to 5,000 tons of chemical and biological weapons) that could violate UN resolutions;

·         Said that he will defy any UN member states that request to inspect the ship.)

Joe Biden, early in this administration (along with many others), warned that President Obama would be tested in the area of foreign affairs. Unfortunately, many of those tests have already been given, and our leader’s grades are abysmal.

On the international apology tours, we saw Obama bow at the waist to the Saudi king, and cozy up to Latin American dictators. We endured Obama’s America-bashing, which produced nothing except embarrassment at home and scorn abroad.

This week, we witnessed Obama’s weak response to the Iranian people’s revolt with his tentative, timid-looking statements (and silences), afraid to appear to be “meddling.” Apparently, protecting his ability to “talk without preconditions” to Iranian leaders takes precedence over all other concerns, even if it means he’d be sitting down with those who steal elections and use deadly violence against their own people.

And Obama’s statement that that there wasn’t much difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi anyway, makes no sense and further showed that Obama discounted the significance of what’s been happening in the streets of Iran.)

On top of that:

·         Obama gave what amountsto a verbal bow at the waist to Iran’s “Supreme Leader,” as he directly and deferentially referred to the Iranian ayatollah, marking the first time a US President has formally called the Iranian ruler by that title; and

·         Obama further pandered to the Iranian leader, (continuing his relentless, US-effacing obsequiousness), when he stated that he believed the Supreme Leader “…understands the Iranian people have deep concerns." Funny how the ayatollah’s “concern and understanding” so quickly changed into militia attacks with tear gas and bullets.

And then, on the current NK threat, we hear:

·         that the US military is positioning more missile defenses around Hawaii as a precaution

o   (though Obama has proposed billions of dollars of cuts to these defenses);

·         that defense shields (thanks to Ronald Reagan) in Alaska and California are thought to be adequate to protect Hawaii

o   (though according to US General James Cartwright, testifying this week before the Senate Armed Services Committee, he was only about “90%” confident we could shoot down a NK missile; and

o   Obama wants to reduce the number of these defense shields from 44 to 30 to pay for his domestic agenda (See last week’s blog on “Time to Build a Fallout Shelter…for more on Obama’s weakening missile defense.)

·         that Defense Sec’y Gates has deployed the powerful SBX Radar system in Hawaii

o   (though the Administration did not deploy the SBX during the April missile shoot, which many observers attribute to the Administration’s fear it might “inflame the situation by indicating it may shoot down the missile.”   (I’m sorry, but isn’t that the point??)

·         And we hear not a word directly from the President or his spokesmen on Hawaii’s safety and that of its tourists during NK’s expected shoot date of July 4.

I find Obama’s silence on this subject to be inexcusable, when Hawaiians are on edge from NK’s threat and will be taking a hit to their tourist economy over this incident. I’m sure that Hawaiians(and all Americans) are not terribly reassured by the notion that “most” but not all experts think we can shoot down a NK missile, and will find no comfort at all in that niggling “90% confidence” of our generals.

It is incredibly galling that this tyrannical NK regime grabs our citizens and imprisons them, defies international rules and sanctions, and threatens to come anywhere near our territory with one of its missiles.

It is also outrageous that we have a leader who is showing such a weak profile to the rest of the world and thereby endangering us, all in the name of some foolish notion that it was only the “evil Bush” in office that kept other countries from being our friends, and that Obama-talk alone can change the hearts of dictators and thugs.

Can someone please explain to President Obama that his main tenet of international diplomacy is in error? He really seems to believe that if we’re just nice enough and we talk nice enough, then even tyrants will be nice back to us. (Any parent who’s seen what school yard bullies do to the “nice” kids who try to “just be nice” to them, knows how ridiculous this is.)

And if this approach would not work in the school yard, why would it work with autocrats who will kill, maim, stone, threaten and punish their own people, and have done worse to their “enemies”?

The “3:00 a.m. phone calls” are coming in, and it appears Obama does not know the right thing to say when he picks up the phone. It is now obvious that Obama’s foreign policy approach, at least as far as Iran and North Korea are concerned, does not get high marks:

o   Despite Obama’s careful avoidance of “meddling” in Iran’s problems, the “Supreme Leader” accused the US of “meddling” anyway; and

o   Obama’s extended hand to North Korea has met a clenched fist and aggression directed toward our homeland.

The press recently made a fuss (again, yawn…) over Obama’s quick reflexes and fearless attack on a buzzing fly during an interview. Obama studied the fly’s movements carefully, sized it up, and with athletic skill snatched that sucker out of the air, and killed it in his bare hand, dropping it to the ground and kicking it aside.

That’s the kind of reflexes, fearlessness and cold-minded intent I’d like to see our President show about some of our real enemies. Mr. President: Think of them not as “Supreme” anythings or bullies to be feared, but like flies at a picnic.

That’s a strong statement, but I don’t think it overstates the case. Freedom is defined as the ability to act and live as one chooses without undue restraints or restrictions. And just look at what the government has already taken from us and what restrictions they have in store, all in the name of “helping” America.

“Undue Restraints & Restrictions”

The first “help” we got was the unprecedented levels of spending-$10 trillion worth of deficit spending over the next decade. But everyone knows that this money will have to be paid back through higher taxes on everyone, (they’re already busy dreaming up taxes that will hit all levels of earners), and what we can’t pay back will be a burden on our kids.

More “help” arrived in government takeovers of private enterprise, with the Administration now controlling banks, car companies, hiring and firing CEO’s, closing car dealerships, appointing more “czars” than old Russia ever had, and violating contract rights whenever they see fit (like the Indiana pension funds sacrificed to the Chrysler deal).

Team Obama designs the kind of cars we will drive (and they won’t be happy until we’re all in cars the size of a toilet stall with as much crash protection as a roll of saran wrap).

Even the colors of cars are at risk, with proposals to ban black cars because they trap too much heat and are eco-unfriendly.  (Black cars bad, white cars good!)  (Though that wouldn’t necessarily be true for cold climate states –won’t they have to carve out a black car exception for winter months?)

Other freedoms on the chopping block include:

·         what you eat

·          what you drink

·         the guns you can own and the availability of ammunition

·          the freedom to listen to your favorite radio talk show

·         your choice of doctor, and

·         whether you get health care at all (Don’t get too old or too sick or you might end up like some Brits who are rationed out of treatment entirely as not destined to live long enough to be worth the expense.)

More Taxes & Power Grabs

Even when certain freedoms are not banned entirely, they will be taxed, including taxes on:

·         sodas and sugary drinks (Will they anoint a “Junk Food Czar” next?)

·         alcohol (An “Adult Beverage Czar” perhaps?)

·         salty foods (Attention Pam: Your “Kettle Chips” are not safe.) (I wonder if it would be considered tax evasion to buy unsalted snacks and just add your own salt-or maybe they’ll be taxing salt anyway…)

·         company-provided cell phones (25% of the value of your usage charges taxed to you as a “fringe benefit”)

·         a national sales tax or VAT (value-added tax) on consumer goods

·         more taxes on cigarettes, which are now to be regulated by the FDA (Big Brother will decide how much-or if-nicotine can be put in cigarettes).  (Though that may be the only way Obama can lose his cigarette habit…)

·         company provided health care benefits (Though “some animals are more equal than others”: current union contracts for high level health care coverage would be excluded from the tax, another special favor for Obama’s key election block)

·         energy taxes, or “cap and trade” taxes

·         limits on tax deductions for the “wealthy” (Just wait. Even if you’re not “wealthy” now, you will be soon…)

·         Internet poker winnings! (Internet blog postings will be next.)

“Saved or Created”

All this “helping” was supposed to create new jobs, but instead they created the gimmick of “jobs saved or created.”  You’ve got to hand it to Obama for keeping a straight face while he says he’s “saved or created 150,000 jobs” when:

·         1.5 million jobs have been lost during the 3 months since Obama’s “stimulus” package was rammed through Congress, and

·         the unemployment rate has now surged past 9% despite Obama’s promise it would not go above 8%.

Even some Democrats point out the inherent fraud such as Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), who blasted Treasury Sec’y Geithner on the “saved or created” trick during Senate hearings:

“You’ve created a situation where you can’t be wrong… because you can take any scenario and make yourself look correct.” (The Heritage Foundation, Morning Bell, “The Obama Jobs Gap,” June 9, 2009.)

Our Freedom to Live Free from Attack

But the greatest dangers to our basic freedom to live in peace and security free from enemy attack, come from Obama’s downgrading our missile defenses.

Iran and North Korea have been “working together” for a number of years to develop ballistic missiles and “have made significant progress,” according to the head of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency, Army Lieutenant General Patrick O’Reilly, speaking this past Thursday at a Capitol Hill forum. (“North Korea, Iran joined on missile work: U.S. General” by Jim Wolf, Reuters, June 11, 2009).

While General O’Reilly said it was a “horse race” as to which nation was ahead in missile development, other forum panelists claimed that Iran had demonstrated greater expertise with test-firing a solid-fuel rocket with a range of about 1,200 miles, enough to reach Israel, US bases in the Mideast, and southeastern Europe.

In a new report from intelligence experts in the U.S. Air Force National Air and Space Intelligence Center, it is stated that Iran is in a position to, with sufficient foreign assistance, develop and test an ICBM capable of reaching the United States by 2015, a mere 6 years from now.  (Reuters, supra, June 11, 2009).

And, we’ve all heard the recent news reports that North Korea has conducted a nuclear test and test fired at least 5 short-range missiles. Despite new UN sanctions proposed, North Korea’s defiance grows and it now promises to weaponize all of its plutonium and to take military action if there is a blockade.

These threats are growing and endanger the lives of millions of Americans. According to a recent documentary put out by the Heritage Foundation, it is estimated that an ICBM with a WMD nuclear warhead would take only about 33 minutes to get from North Korea to the US or from Iran to the US. (For more information on the documentary, “33 Minutes: Protecting America in the New Missile Age,” go to http://www.heritage.org/33-minutes/).

And yetin the face of these very real threats President Obama has:

·         talked about unilateral disarmament;

·         proposed cutting billions from US missile defense programs;

·         disparaged the missile defense shields (despite their proven success);

·         proposed reducing the number of missile defense shields in Alaska and California from 44 to 30; and

·         considered scrapping Bush Administration agreements with Poland the Czech Republic to build defense shields in those countries.

Obama appears to believe that his words alone can go far to change entrenched hatreds and totalitarian regimes. There is a disturbing narcissism about that, and about a man who seems to think everything is “all about him,” (Joe Biden’s recent joke about Obama), as, for example, when Obama tied the large election turnout in Iran to his Cairo speech!

In favoring words over real defenses Obama tinkers with our safety and that of our allies. And, sometimes his words may make things less safe, as many fear he did in criticizing Israel’s settlements in his Cairo speech while remaining silent on Palestinians’ denial of Israel’s legitimacy, and continued incitement of hate.

Obama famously said during the campaign “I get it.” But in the area of missile defense, Obama does not appear to “get it” at all. In this failure, he makes himself, and us, look weak, and endangers our freedom.

We’ve often been told that Obama is incredibly intelligent, “he’s so smart,” a real thinker. I don’t know about Obama’s IQ, but I do know that:

·         over-spending, over-taxing, and over-regulating take away our freedoms and do not appear to be “helping” at all.; and

·         relying on rhetorical defenses against the axis of evil is foolish and dangerous.

If this is “smart,” give me stupid.

            Last year at the Penn & Teller show in Vegas, I was chosen to be in the magicians’ “grand finale” trick. Penn asked the audience to pass around a joke book, urging each person to look at it carefully, but never letting any one person hang on to the book for very long.

            I had just been handed the book when Penn ordered me to bring it on stage. There I was asked to sit down, and pick out a joke which I was to read aloud to the audience. The trick was the magicians’ promise to tell the audience the punch line of my randomly selected joke just before I read it.

I wanted to “beat” the trick, and so I tried to study the book. At first Penn said I could take my time, but he would interrupt me every couple of seconds to answer some silly question or to repeat some instruction, or to ask if I’d picked my joke yet, while Teller kept up a flurry of distracting activities behind my chair.

            As they intended, I never got a good look at the insides of that book, and finally gave up and did what was expected of me. The trick ended without a hitch as the magicians displayed a banner behind me with my joke’s punch line just before I said it.

• The dizzying feeling that you can’t get a grasp on what’s going on because there’s just too much coming at you from all sides;

• Feeling overwhelmed watching Obama spend billions and trillions of dollars, more dazzling than even those bright stage lights;

• The frustration of not being allowed to actually “read the book,” (Remember the 1100 page stimulus bill that Obama gave no one time to read?)

• The pressure put on you to hurry up, and let them move along with their program;

• And the sinking realization that the power is all theirs, so that you really have no choice but to give in to the stage direction and go along for the ride.

A Master of Sleight of Hand

After 4 months of “Shock and Awe” policy making and power grabs, I’ve come to see Obama as a sleight of hand master, one skilled in the art of doing something while not letting on how it is done and in fact pretending to do something else. 

I’ve learned to discount what he offers in his right hand, and look for the cards he’s holding in his left. Here are just a few examples:

In his right hand: “I am not a socialist and don’t want to run businesses.”  In his left hand: He runs the banks, owns car companies, hires and fires CEO’s, strong-arms creditors to give up their contractual rights, sets executive compensation, and closes car dealerships.

In his right hand: The promise to look forward and not dwell on the past.  In his left hand:  His recent speech on terror criticizing Bush 27 times.

In his right hand: The promise to cut spending and cut the deficit “by half.”  In his left hand:  His spending spree, which will triple the national debt in 10 years.

In his right hand: His decrying a “government-run health care” system as “extreme.”  In his left hand:  His advocating a plan that will leave us with just that.

In his right hand: A debate about “empathy” as a criterion for a Supreme Court jurist.  In his left hand: The real criteria are judicial activism and policy-making.

Who is this guy and what does he have up his sleeves?

Obama came to the presidency with little experience and as pretty much an unknown quantity.  Even his many admirers in the media remarked to each other post-election that “We don’t really know who Barack Obama is.”

So we have a president whom we didn’t know well to begin with, and who now is always saying one thing but doing another, who appears hell-bent on taking us tomorrow to some uncharted territory that is known to his mind alone.

Yogi Berra’s famous advice comes to mind: “If you don’t know where you’re going, you just might end up someplace else.” So I think a responsible citizen must ask the question: Who then is this guy, and what is he trying to do with our country?

With all his flip-flops, it’s hard to detect any true core beliefs in this man. Everything seems to be negotiable and/or expendable, including many items on the far-left’s agenda, which has made them understandably disappointed and angry over issues like gay rights, abortion and the wars.

In fact I can find only two principles of action (as opposed to core beliefs) on Obama’s part:

1.      Ensure reelection in 2012:

(To this end, he has been very busy rewarding those who elected him, especially the unions, and demonizing his opponents); and,

2.      Seize as much power as possible to redistribute wealth before everyone catches on to what is being done to America.(Which is why he’s moving with such great speed.)

In examining Obama and his actions, I always consider the writings of Obama’s old mentor, Saul Alinsky, whose 1971 book, “Rules for Radicals” was Obama’s guidebook through his years as a community organizer. (Alinsky referred to “radicals” interchangeably with “community organizers.”  See more on Obama and Alinsky in my previous posts of April 19 and May 3.)

Alinsky called his book “a revolutionary handbook” with the stated goal of advising radicals (organizers) who want to take wealth away from those he called the “Haves” and give it to the “Have-Nots” for a “more equitable distribution of the means of life.” (“R4R,” pp. 3- 10.)

His book advised a “pragmatic” approach to changing the world, one in which radicals would infiltrate “the system” and, from places of power within government, set about not to reform it, but to attack it:

“…we are concerned with how to create mass organizations to seize power and give it to the people…a mass power organization which will change the world…This means revolution.” (“R4R,” pp. 3-5, Emphasis added.)

Alinsky’s “revolution” was no violent overthrow, nor was it specifically communist. Rather it was to be a new form of government, the exact shape of which radicals (organizers) would have to figure out along their way.

For Alinsky, the only ideology was change itself, directed to the general welfare, and he urged disciples to avoid “dogma,” (core beliefs), in favor of political relativism:

What Alinsky advises is what Obama appears to be doing: free from the shackles of core beliefs, he is focused on seizing power. Confident in his arrogance, and buoyed by his popularity, Obama doesn’t have a plan so much as a belief that he will know the right way toward the general welfare when he sees it.

If I’m right, and Obama is still taking Alinsky’s direction, then he is “winging it” to a far greater degree than most have feared.

Are we to believe that this inexperienced, arrogant, core-belief-free man has a better idea for our form of government than the one established more than 230 years ago on the combined wisdom of our founding fathers?

The stage is set for a grand finale trick to be played on America. We must not be fooled. In his right hand he holds out “hope” and “change,” but in his left is “revolution.”

And if we don’t go along with that program, we can expect to be viciously attacked with Hate Speech by the 2009 version of the Thought Police. That is the lesson I learned from witnessing two recent media events.

The first event is the plight of Miss California, Carrie Prejean, who is being savagely attacked for the crime of not believing what gay activist Perez Hilton believes about gay marriage. (Please take a look at the video clip of another gay activist, Michael Musto, and MSNBC host Keith Olbermann trashing Ms. Prejean at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZK_0vmoIPI.)

The fact that the President of the United States, Hillary and Bill Clinton, a majority of voters in Prejean’s home state of California, and a majority of people across the country believe as Ms. Prejean does, will not save her from those who would pillory her with vile invective for having the “wrong” view.

Hilton, a pageant judge, asked Ms. Prejean during the Miss USA contest if she believed that every state should legalize gay marriage. Prejean answered in the politically correct way, to the effect that she intended no offense, and thought it was a good thing that there was diversity in this country, but that she personally did not believe in gay marriage because of how she was raised and because of her faith.

Hilton later posted a nasty piece on his celebrity blog, calling Prejean every name that every woman never wants to be called, and then some. The media then lived up to its low reputation, and sacrificed Prejean’s privacy and dignity by further mucking about in the (faux) dispute in order to pander to certain groups and bolster sagging ratings.

It seems highly probable that Prejean was singled out for the gay marriage question by Hilton because she is a student at San Diego Christian College. Many, if not most, Christian churches oppose gay marriage, so what better foil for Hilton’s gay marriage view and what better way to create a media maelstrom than through this Christian beauty pageant contestant.

Christianity has become religion’s endangered species, taking regular hits from the secular media and pop culture, where Christians are seen as retrogrades “clinging to their bibles.” While other religions, such as Islam, seem to be off limits from attack, Christianity is fair game. Even on issues where Christians agree with Muslims, as for example on gay marriage, the Christian will be called out, but not the Muslim, for the Muslim view must be respected even if wrong, according to this double standard.

And so we have Hilton’s and others’ vicious attacks on Prejean’s intelligence, her body parts, even her female gender, suggesting that she started out as a “Harry” and not a “Carrie.” And as if that’s not enough, some in the media have been researching her parents’ divorce records for embarrassing tidbits to use against her. So the message is that while tolerance will be championed for some, there is zero tolerance for others.

Another media event demonstrating the zero tolerance for opposing views by the New Thought Police is the treatment given to the Tea Partiers by the media. As I pointed out in last week’s piece, the Tea Partiers were dissed and dismissed by prominent news anchors and even by the President himself.

But in some cases, notably that of actress and self-styled “activist” Janeane Garofalo, and MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, we see people who have traveled so far down the left-turn-only lane that they have now become what they profess to hate: haters, intolerants, bigots.

As you can see from the MSNBC video clip at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms45EzMR0f8, Garofalo rants to an agreeing Keith Olbermann about how the April 15 Tea Partiers are nothing more than “white power group racists.”  “Let’s be very clear,” she says, that “this is racism straight up” on the part of Tea Partiers who “hate that a black guy is in the White House.”

This would be laughable if it were not so dangerous. For any major cable network, even a dying one like MSNBC, to put this kind of hate on the air is an outrageous attack not only on the peaceful citizens who participated in the April 15 protest, but on the First Amendment right to free speech itself.

To characterize all the protesters with the broad brush of “racism,” and to say that the racism is directed against the President, is truly an outrage.

In addition to the charges of “racism,” Garofalo further:

·         attacked the protesters’ intelligence as being barely evolved;

·         expounded on some theory of hers about the protesters’ organic brain deficiencies, something she calls a “limbic brain”);

·         said that the African-American Tea Partiers must all be suffering from “Stockholm Syndrome” meaning they are simply brainwashed; and

·         went off on Fox News and anyone who would watch it as being of the lowest sort, and certainly not “cerebral” enough to watch the apparently enlightened coverage on MSNBC.

Unfortunately, this intolerant, all-knowing superiority is not limited to the Hiltons, Garofalo’s and Olbermann’s of the world, but to varying degrees seems to affect a good number of people on the left. This is troublesome, not just because it’s irritating and stupid, but primarily because it appears to be making of them the same type of intolerant, prejudiced people they profess to hate.

I’ve run into too many people on the left (sorry, but I just don’t run into anyone like this on the right), who are so absolutely convinced of the righteousness of their beliefs that they think anyone who opposes their beliefs must be incredibly stupid, misguided by religion, a reactionary, a redneck racist, a homophobe, a bigot, or all of the above. Because they see their opponents this way, they view just about anything as being justified in marginalizing these opponents.

In other words, they’re not troubled by some Hate Speech, as long as it’s targeted at the “right” people, and even if those people are just private citizens.

The dictionary defines a bigot as an” intolerant person,” one with “strong opinions, especially on politics, religion, or ethnicity, who refuses to accept different views.” A “racist” is defined as someone “prejudiced against other races.”

Haven’t Mr. Hilton and Ms. Garofalo defined themselves by their own words and actions as bigots under this definition, and, in Garofalo’s case, as a racist with her sweeping stereotyping of Tea Partiers as a “white power group.” And haven’t Olbermann and others, by looking on with approval of this intolerant behavior, cast themselves under the same light?

The goals fought for, and largely won, in the area of Civil Rights can be summed up, I believe, in one word: tolerance, which means not only accepting differences and differing views of other people, but also fairness toward the people who hold these different views.

It’s not enough to say, “Well, my side’s speech seems protected now, so the hell with others’ speech.” For when others’ right to free speech has been silenced, who will be there to speak up to for yours? Tolerance that only travels down a one-way street is not tolerance at all: It is tyranny.