Of the sons of Issachar, men who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do, their chiefs were two hundred; and all their kinsmen were at their command — 1 Chronicles 12:32
Obama gave a very good speech last night. But when he said:
“But what we can’t do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another. As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together…”
I would have believed it to be far more sincere had Obama mentioned his own spiteful and polarizing rhetoric -
Didn’t Obama spend more than 20 years with a church that by any reasonable standard would be readily identified as a racist hate organization? You remember: that whole sordid “God Damn America” thing?
Didn’t Obama tell his followers to “punish our enemies”? With said “enemies” being Republicans?
And there are so many others. Even ones that most people would find minor, such as the campaign slogan, “Fired up, ready to go!”, should sound sinister given the attack that Sarah Palin’s “Don’t retreat, reload” has received.
- and disavowed many of his own words as contributing to the hostile climate that we have seen spring up in his presidency.
We’re not supposed to make a great tragedy political???
Tell it to Obama:
“Together We Thrive” was the slogan (and just when in the hell did Memorial services start getting “slogans”?) of the Tucson memorial service. You know, the one where the crowd cheered as though they were at a political rally, rather than at an event to mourn and honor people who were just ruthlessly gunned down by a psychopath.
Here are the T-shirts printed with the political slogan (yes, we can factually say that this is was very much a political slogan, having been the slogan of Obama and his “Organizing for America” organization):
And just when the hell was the last time you attended a memorial service for people who were gunned down and murdered or maimed, and received a T-shirt with bearing a political slogan???
President Barack Obama’s consoling, sermon-like speech at a service for the victims of the Arizona shooting rampage steered clear of politics, yet it may have given him one of the biggest political boosts since he took office two years ago.
“Steered clear of politics”??? The partisan crowd cheering at the “memorial service” were literally wearing their politics like T-shirts!!!
I mean, my God. I’m just disappointed now that I didn’t get my Bush 9/11 victims memorial speech commemorative T-shirt, featuring a George W. Bush for president election slogan.
Meanwhile liberals are congratulating themselves at their marvelous “tolerance” expressed in Obama’s speech, even as they continue to pile on in their hate for conservatives like Sarah Palin.
Death threats to former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin have increased to unprecedented levels in the wake of Saturday’s shooting in Tucson, an aide tells ABC News.
Following the attack that seriously wounded Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed 6 others, Palin has found herself embroiled in a firestorm of controversy. Numerous left-wing commentators have accused Palin’s hard-hitting partisan rhetoric of influencing accused shooter Jared Lee Loughner.
The Daily Caller reported that dozens of Twitter users called for Sarah Palin’s death in the hours following the shooting, with some going so far as to wish for her assassination.
Major mainstream media figures continued to demonize Sarah Palin even after Obama’s speech. Keith Olbermann attacked her for speaking out in her video one day after attacking her for not speaking out. Bill Press said that Sarah Palin’s self-defense against the vicious leftwing attacks against her reminded him of a terrorist hostage video.
Sarah Palin’s worst “crime” was coming out with a map that “targeted” vulnerable districts for Republican election victories, including Gabrielle Giffords’ seat. It is conveniently overlooked that the DEMOCRAT PARTY has used similar maps. It is conveniently forgotten that powerful leftwing site Daily Kos targeted the moderate Gabrielle Giffords. It is conveniently forgotten that Daily Kos featured an article literally saying of Gabrielle Giffords, “she’s dead to me.”
Funny. I don’t recall Sarah Palin saying that Gabrielle Giffords was dead to her. All she did was use a map the same way Democrats have been doing basically since Lewis and Clark rowed around America in their canoes.
All I can say is I watched the Tucson memorial service. I thought the Native American blessing thing was bizarre (were any of the shooting victims Native American?). I thought the University of Arizona president thought the event was to celebrate his university. And I thought the cheering at what was supposed to be a memorial service was just flat-out wrong.
But even the cheering dims in sheer brazenness to the “Together We Thrive – Organizing for America” political sloganeering.
It very much seems to be ALL about politics to the left. Because they don’t seem to believe in anything else but raw political power. And that goes from the lowest leftwing blogger furiously writing in his parents’ basement all the way up to the president of the United States.
Pilate therefore said to Him, “So You are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.” Pilate said to Him, “What is truth?” – John 18:37-38
Well, one thing’s for sure: the truth sure isn’t what the Democrat rhetoric is spouting in the aftermath of the Tucson, AZ shooting that resulted in the wounding of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords among 19 shooting victims, with six killed.
I was amazed to see the thousands of hits an old article I wrote had recently generated. The reason? Democrats who had demonized Sarah Palin for her “targeting strategy” – which Democrats themselves routinely do – are now demonizing her again because one of the vulnerable districts Palin identified well over a year ago was Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ District 8.
“What is truth?” Don’t ask Democrat Sheriff Clarence Dupnik.
And then there are the “Jared Loughner Facebook accounts” which “have all right wing books, websites, and people that he points to.” Just more false flag operations by Democrats to falsely associate conservatives with the psycho assassin.
This document is circulating, purportedly showing Jared Loughner is a registered Republican.
There are two reasons why the document is faked, and one official proclamation that undermines it:
TUCSON is spelled TUSCON. People who live in a city do not mispell it’s name.
If you go to the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission website and put in the address listed on this “registration” it comes up in Senator District 26. This fraud voter reg says District 27. (Hat tip, Brytani)
A blatantly partisan ideologue Newsweek “journalist” isn’t one bit disappointed in the sea of lies that characterize the Democrat response to this tragedy. Far from it:
“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” Rahm Emanuel famously said in 2008. The same goes for a shooting spree that gravely wounds a beloved congresswoman. Congress won’t enact gun control, as it did in the wake of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, but perhaps something positive can come from this.
This little Joseph Goebbels minion basically wants Barack Obama to deliver a “State of the Reich” Address and demagogue this tragic shooting into a demand to round up all the conservatives and put them in camps.
The strategy that the little Newsweek rodent recommends has been successfully tried in the past – by one Adolf Hitler. Let us hope that the “new bipartisan Obama” (although there is this caveat) is now getting his advice from more humans and fewer rodents.
Democrats and their media lackeys are decrying the “angry” or “hateful” rhetoric which caused this shooting en masse. And, of course, they mean “conservative” and “Republican” “angry” or “hateful” rhetoric.
But why would anyone think that? Apart from the fact that they are ideologues and propagandists, I mean? There’s no evidence whatsoever that Jared Loughner EVER listened to “right wing talk radio,” or supported Sarah Palin, or was a member of the tea party, or even cared about charged political issues such as health care. The evidence is, rather, that he was severely mentally sick and living in his own twisted world.
They make the prima facia claim (with little or no supporting argument) that the angry partisan political climate can set off the mentally unbalanced. Which is itself a mentally unbalanced claim to make.
A few things, there. First, if this is so, and they really believe that, then how do they justify the eight incredibly angry years of “Bush derangement syndrome”? Why was it not true when Republicans were in power, but not true now that Democrats are in power? The mainstream media is far too pathologically biased and dishonest to show you that the WORST “climate of hate” comes from the left.
Second, why do Democrats, if they really believe their own crap, continue to make such bitter and polarizing comments if such comments can push the already unhinged over the edge? Take our liberal propagandist “sheriff, for instance:
“When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government — the anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country, is getting to be outrageous,” Dupnik said Sunday.
It’s clear who the sheriff has in mind. As he told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly: “We see one party trying to block the attempts of another party to make this a better country. … We as a country need to look into our souls and into our hearts and say is what we’re doing really in the best interest of this country, or is there something better we can do.”
Got that? The shooting was motivated by the rhetoric of “one party” — the Republicans — trying to stop the Democrats from making this “a better country.” Talk about “hate speech.”
Let me ask you, just for the sake of argument. Suppose that there is some crazed liberal out there in the wings. And said crazed liberal hears his law enforcement say, “We see [the Republican] Party trying to block the attempts of [the Democrat] Party to make this a better country.” And, of course, he’s aghast. What can be done to stop this evil Republican Party from keeping the Democrats from finally making this “a better country”???
Something must be done. Someone must act. By any means necessary. Including – maybe even embracing – violence.
“Yes! YES! Get in their face. With a gun! And then pull the trigger!”
Didn’t Obama tell his followers to “punish our enemies”? With said “enemies” being Republicans?
“My client says he had to punish those Republican congressmen. He says the president commanded him to kill those congressmen.”
Now, to set the record straight, having pointed out just a few of Obama’s comments, I don’t think Obama was calling for violence. Because, apparently unlike Democrats, I possess the moral intelligence to understand that he was using the same sort of common metaphors as Sarah Palin has when she has said, “Don’t retreat, reload.” And, on the flip side, I realize that if Sarah Palin is a disgrace, then the president of the United States is far more so, given the very office from which he has said these things.
A reasonable person can’t help but be confused at the constant double-standard that comes from Democrats. If this kind of rhetoric is wrong, if it leads to violence, then why do they keep doing it themselves??? And why do they denounce Republicans even while they themselves are doing the very thing they say is evil to do??? And how do their skulls not explode from containing all the contradictions???
Let me offer something that happened to me a couple of years ago to show how political rhetoric – whether “angry” or “hateful” or not – has little if anything to do with setting off an unhinged mind.
A very sweet lady in my church asked several of her friends to help her with a big garage sale she wanted to have. Being a sweet lady, she asked the police if it was okay to put out signs around town notifying drivers of her yard sale. Which most people just do. And, being a sweet lady, when the police told her people weren’t supposed to put out such signage, she didn’t do it. Which meant that her yard sale – with all the effort that went into it – was twisting in the wind.
So I made a nice, big sign that said “Yard Sale” along with the address, drove to the main drag in town, and waved that darned thing around to first the northbound traffic, then the southbound traffic, and so on and so forth. And when I came back a couple hours later, I was assured that my incredibly soul-numbing boredom had not been in vain: a lot of people suddenly started showing up.
I love sweet little old ladies. And don’t you dare mess with one while I’m anywhere nearby, if you like your teeth.
Well, all that was to bring up something that happened while I was holding that sign that merely said “YARD SALE” with a house address. A woman walking on the sidewalk came up to me, took a look at the sign, and screamed, “Yard Sale! YARD SALE!” And just went off on me in an uncontrollable rant for two or three minutes.
I never said a single word to her. There was no point. She was clearly not in her right mind, and there’s no point trying to argue with or reason with deranged people.
And the point is, anything can set these people off. Absolutely anything. Even the words “Yard Sale” on a cardboard sign, accompanied by the probably wide-eyes of a helpless man staring into the bulging eyeballs of the insane.
It’s not a matter of “avoid the anger.” Avoid everything. Shut down the economy. Close the stores. Stay in your homes. Shut off all the television and radio stations. Make tinfoil hats. Because even your very thoughtwaves can set these people off.
So this notion that Republicans and conservatives must “tone down the hate” – while of course Democrats may continue to feel free to unleash hell – is so paranoid and so unhinged that I can’t help but watch these Democrats and these reporters and see the face of that whacked-out woman going off on me about my yard sale sign.
Sheriff Dupnik saying that what people hear on the radio and on television makes them do the things they do could well come right out of the brain of Jared Loughner, who merely replaces “radio and television” with “government.” It’s equally insane.
I can easily picture the “sheriff,” and liberals like Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow cringing in lead-lined bunkers hoping that their tinfoil hats are thick enough to prevent Sarah Palin – who already lives rent-free in their heads – from taking over that final molecule and forcing them to do her evil bidding.
That’s basically the message of the left right now: “Put on your tinfoil hats, people! Because your all in danger of having your minds commandeered by rightwing hate!”
And, at risk of boring you, that was precisely what Jared Loughner’s disturbed and paranoid brain feared: mind control.
To make the Democrats’ despicable argument all the more so, based on their view, you could reasonably blame Gabrielle Giffords for the shooting. Jared Loughner was listening to her, and she clearly didn’t say the right thing – which incited him to violence.
Every single journalist and every single politician who demands that people – and particularly conservative people – tone down their political views should be immediately discredited as nothing more than despicable ideological hacks.
What we are seeing is the murder of seven victims. Not just six. The seventh is truth, which is now being contorted and ripped beyond the breaking point for the sake of partisan political ideology.
And I’ll end by saying this: the record of history could not be more clear: the worse monsters in political history have without fail been those who have demanded that their opponents be silent. The last thing we should ever want to follow is the political rationale that says, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”
And the fact that Reid still has his job is proof that this is an acceptable Democrat position. The official Democrat position is now revealed: Hispanics – and surely blacks as well – are basically merely group-thinking herd animals who dumbly recognize that Democrats promise them free hay for life. A cow is a cow, and not smart enough to be much more. A cow must also now be a Democrat, and for the same reason.
Omar Thornton set aside the fact that he was literally on video stealing from his company. He said it was all about racism. And an avalanche of Democrats agree with everything Thornton said about white business owners being racist by the simple fact that they are white business owners. Oh, with the possible exception of going out and killing everybody who make the giant chips on their shoulders itch. Take for example the opinions of Obama’s latest replacement for racist spiritual adviser Jeremiah Wright, Jim Wallis:
The United States of America was established as a white society, founded upon the genocide of another race and then the enslavement of yet another. [...]
What has not changed is the systematic and pervasive character of racism in the United States and the condition of life for the majority of African Americans. In fact, those conditions have gotten worse.
“Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one’s opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness.”
The biggest Democrat charge is that conservatives are inciting violence with their violent rhetoric. Here’s one example among many candidates:
WASHINGTON (CNN) – The Democratic National Committee will amplify its charge that Republicans are responsible for “inciting angry mobs of a small number of rabid right wing extremists … to disrupt” town hall meetings in a new 65 second Web video that will release Wednesday morning.
In case you missed it, on Tuesday Keith Halloran, a Democrat candidate for the New Hampshire House, posted in a Facebook thread about the plane crash that killed former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, “Just wish Sarah and Levy [sic] were on board.”
New Hampshire State Representative Timothy Horrigan replied Wednesday, “Well a dead Palin wd [sic] be even more dangerous than a live one… she is all about her myth & if she was dead she cldn’ t [sic] commit any more gaffes.”
There’s plenty of vile and violent Democrat rhetoric amping up and inciting the liberal base. And lo and behold we’ve got black people that Democrats claim as theirs (that doesn’t sound racist, does it?) now taking it to the next level and killing white people for the crime of being white people.
And here we are: Omar Thornton did just what Obama told him to do and brought a gun. And the damn thing (by which I mean Omar Thornton) went off and killed a bunch of people.
When it comes to charges of racism, or charges of inciting violence, Democrats need to do a lot less talking, and a whole lot more shutting the hell up.
I have said it again and again: the quintessential defining essence of liberalism is hypocrisy.
And it’s not just in the big picture, in which ‘to be a liberal’ means ‘to be generous with other peoples’ money.’ It’s in everything they say and do, like that little bit of yeast which works its way through the whole batch of dough (Galatians 5:9).
Today we have AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka showing us what a particularly vile species of hypocrite liberal looks like:
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will tell Alaskans on Thursday that there’s something “just not right” with their former governor, Sarah Palin, who he says is “getting close to calling for violence” in her rhetoric.
He’ll also predict that Palin will “go down in history like McCarthy,” referring to Wisconsin Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy, whose unsubstantiated labeling of Americans as communists and communist sympathizers during the 1950s gave the world the word “McCarthyism.”
“Palinism will become an ugly word,” Trumka will say at a convention in Anchorage, according to prepared remarks. “Who is this woman, anyway? What happened to her?”
[snip]
“In this charged political environment, her kind of talk gets dangerous. ‘Don’t retreat … reload’ may seem clever, the kind of bull you hear all the time, but put it in context. She’s using crosshairs to illustrate targeted legislators. She’s on the wrong side of the line there. She’s getting close to calling for violence. And some of her fans take that stuff seriously. We’ve got legislators in America who have been living with death threats since the health care votes,” he will say.
For the record, “Trumkaism” has been an ugly word at least since 1993. You’ll soon know why, if you don’t already.
At least she didn’t call upon her followers to bring guns and gun down their opponents, like Barack Obama did, right?
“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Obama said at a Philadelphia fundraiser Friday night. “Because from what I understand folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.”
But enough about talking about Obama and his own hypocritical demagoguery. Let’s keep our focus on AFL-CIO President Trumka and his massive demagogic hypocrisy.
The following astonishing video posted on WorldNews.com tells the story of the union’s Bizarro-world nonviolence answer to Gandhi:
Do you mind if I call you “Dick,” Richard? Because you surely are one in every derogatory sense of the word.
On the orders of the United Mine Workers (UMW), 16,000 miners went on strike in 1993. One subcontractor, Eddie York (who was not a UMW member), decided it was important to support his wife and three children and crossed picket lines to get to his job. He was shot in the head as he left the job site to go home. UMW President Richard Trumka (now Secretary-Treasurer at the AFL-CIO) told The Washington Times that “if you strike a match and put your finger in, common sense tells you you’re going to burn your finger.” UMW strike captain Jerry Dale Lowe was found guilty of weapons charges and conspiracy in York’s death, and York’s widow Wanda sued the union for her husband’s wrongful death. The UMW fought the lawsuit for four years, but settled with Wanda York only two days after federal prosecutors announced that they would share evidence from the criminal trial with York’s attorneys.
As head of the United Mine Workers, Trumka ordered a nationwide strike against Peabody Coal in 1993. On July 22, a non-union worker, Eddie York, was shot in the back of the head and killed as he attempted to pass striking coal workers. Picketers continued to throw rocks after York was shot, preventing his would be rescuers from assisting him.[14]. Trumka and other United Mine Workers officials settled a wrongful death lawsuit with Mr. York’s widow out of court in 1997.
And it was following that vicious display of supreme ugly violence that Richard Trumka delivered his “he got just what he deserved” remark.
Which is to say, the man whose union thugs murdered a man, and then threw rocks at the rescue workers trying to save his life – the man who subsequently so callously said, “If you strike a match and put your finger in, common sense tells you you’re going to burn your finger” – THAT MAN IS DARING TO RAISE THE ISSUE OF SARAH PALIN INCITING VIOLENCE????
And this ugly, fat, loathsome pig of a man has the naked hypocrisy to claim that Sarah Palin is inciting violence? For using the word “reload” and for using what is now proven to have been surveyor symbols to pinpoint vulnerable Democrat districts? Really?
In promoting Richard Trumka, the AFL-CIO demonstrated that they are perfectly at home with violence. Not only “calling for it,” but actively causing it. And until they fire this fat rat bastard, they can kindly keep their obnoxious hypocrite mouths shut when it comes to taking the moral high ground on anything, let alone accusations of inciting violence.
Rep. Michele Bachmann, a Republican from Minnesota, railed against the “gangster government” before thousands of Tea Party protesters on Thursday, but that kind of rhetoric can have serious consequences, former President Bill Clinton said Thursday.
“They are not gangsters,” Mr. Clinton said in an interview with the New York Times. “They were elected. They are not doing anything they were not elected to do.”
The former president, who was in his first term in office when Timothy McVeigh bombed an Oklahoma City federal building, drew parallels between the anti-government rhetoric being used now and what was being said then. He will speak about the Oklahoma City terrorist attack and its current relevance at a symposium today.
You’ll have to forgive me for being somewhat confused: Is Michelle Bachmann’s “gangster government” remark worse than Bill Clinton’s remark about Barack Obama that “he’s got the political instincts of a Chicago thug“???
You see, given the fact that Bill Clinton himself said that the country is being run by a Chicago thug, why would it be so surprising that we’ve got a gangster government? I mean, Chicago thug + president = gangster government. It’s like a math equation.
In any event, I’m just 100% certain that Slick Willy decried the hateful and violence-inducing rhetoric of Barack Obama:
Mobster wisdom tells us never to bring a knife to a gun fight. But what does political wisdom say about bringing a gun to a knife fight?
Sen. Barack Obama talks at a town hall meeting at Radnor Middle School in Wayne, Pa., Saturday, June 14. (AP)
That’s exactly what Barack Obama said he would do to counter Republican attacks “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Obama said at a Philadelphia fundraiser Friday night.
What’s that? Bill Clinton DIDN’T decry Obama’s invocation of clearly violent metaphors? He didn’t even say, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘bring’ is”? But that would mean he’s just a cheap political opportunist, not to mention a demagogue.
Barack Obama implored his supporters to arm themselves with guns and shoot people who would only have knives. He was inciting people to violence in a city that has a documented record of murderous violence.
Michelle Bachmann merely used a term to describe our government as thieves. She didn’t advocate mowing them down with guns, as Obama did.
At least according to the “logic” of the left, he did. Too bad they’re too dishonest to look at their own rhetoric before demonizing everybody else’s.
I’ll tell you what: let’s demand that Barack Obama and Michelle Bachmann both resign in disgrace for their hateful rhetoric. Just don’t be a bunch of screaming hypocrite turds for decrying Michelle Bachmann unless you first yell yourself hoarse decrying Barack Obama.
Before this nonsense the Democrats and their media tools were out decrying Sarah Palin’s “targeting” Democrat seats. It didn’t matter one iota that Sarah Palin didn’t used a “target” symbol, but rather a surveyor’s symbol; nor did it matter than Democrats used actual “target” symbols to “target” Republican seats. Neither the Democrats nor the media are either honest or fair enough to concern themselves with such facts.
Why was “dissent the highest form of patriotism” when dissent was directed against George Bush, but the most loathsome form of evil when it is directed at Barack Obama?
There was a time when ‘D’ stood for Democrat; today it stands for Demagogue, Dishonest, Deceitful, Despicable, and Depraved.
So I drag a woman walking down the sidewalk into a dark ally and tell her I would very much like to have sex with her – and it has to be done now, without debate. She refuses; no negotiation, no compromise. And of course I rape her. The question is, who is to blame for the rape?
According to the Democrats’ view, it is clearly the woman.
The Republicans are like the woman; they oppose a government takeover of health care the way the woman opposes having sex with a stranger. But because they stand up for their principles and refuse to compromise their values, they get raped.
The Republicans can’t stop anything the Democrats do. Democrats have an overwhelming majority in the House, and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Demagoguing Republicans for the Democrats’ failure to come together is both absurd and immoral. It is transparently false. The only real battle going on is between liberal and conservative Democrats.
So why blame Republicans? Because Democrats are demagogues.
“I think early on, a decision was made by the Republican leadership that said, ‘Look, let’s not give him a victory, maybe we can have a replay of 1993, ’94, when Clinton came in, he failed on health care and then we won in the mid-term elections and we got the majority. And I think there are some folks who are taking a page out that playbook,”
It doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that Democrats haven’t offered Republicans ANYTHING they want, but only EVERYTHING they hate. It’s not about the fact that not only were Republicans shut out of crafting health care legislation, but even Blue Dog DEMOCRATS were shut out of the process.
This is so like Obama: he depicts himself as standing loftily above everyone around him as the sole determiner of truth and justice – and then anyone who disagrees with him has the lowest politically partisan motives. It’s really a remarkable trick for a man who was THE most liberal US Senator the year before he began his run for the presidency.
When Democrats talk about “going solo,” they aren’t just talking about using their overwhelming majority to impose ObamaCare – because they don’t have the Democrat votes for it. Rather, they are talking about using a rare parliamentary procedure called “reconciliation”:
The debate over health care reform could be heading in a new direction. Democrats are considering going at it alone. That would mean trying to pass it without Republican support.
Caution: Relations between Dems and the GOP could get toxic.
Democrats want to use a process called reconciliation. It would only require 51 votes in the Senate to get a health care bill passed. Normally, a bill would require 60 votes to be passed. Also, with the reconciliation process, only 20 hours of debate would be allowed, no filibuster would be allowed, stamping out opposition debate.
Even Robert Byrd is adamant that reconciliation not be used to reform healthcare, as it leads down a slippery slope. Byrd is important here, because he developed the now-called Byrd Rule, that sets six conditions by which a provision can be excluded from reconciliation. This was intended to prevent abuse of the reconciliation tactic; otherwise, what stops anyone at anytime using this trick to avoid filibuster? The six conditions simply demand that if any provision of the bill is not about the budget, deficits, surpluses, or funding, then the whole package is thrown out.
This illegitimate abuse of the reconciliation as a “nuclear option” would poison any chance of bipartisanship for years – even decades – to come.
But it is well within the mindset of a president who falsely promised to be a “‘new politician’ who had risen above the partisan divide and didn’t have to lower himself into the gutter of the political past.”
Using reconciliation as a nuclear option wouldn’t be lowering oneself in a gutter; it would be growing gills and living in a sewer system filled with the very worst kind of toxic waste.
Republicans are finally starting to learn – about a decade late – that it’s time they started bringing guns to the fight with Democrats, too.
Don’t think the use of reconciliation won’t have massive consequences.
[T]he Republicans can shut down the Senate for the next year. Those unfamiliar with the parliamentary procedure may not realize that a great many steps get skipped by unanimous consent. Bill-reading is just one example. One Senator can force each and every bill to be read aloud at every appearance it makes on the Senate floor, including when they are sent to committee. For ObamaCare and cap-and-trade, one bill reading could take a week, keeping the Senate floor locked off from any other business.
All Republicans can do is stand up for their conservative values, and try to rally the American people to their cause. They can’t stop the Democrats from passing a massive government takeover of health care along party lines. They can’t even mount a filibuster without Democrats crossing over to join them.
All Democrat lies aside; this isn’t about a bill that Republicans won’t support. It’s about a bill that can’t even sustain Democrat support.
If Democrats invoke the illegitimate process of a nuclear option to pass health care, they will start the nastiest war this country has seen since our Civil War in 1861. It will lead to a political climate that will be uglier than any American has ever seen in his or her lifetime.
While the White House has been floating the idea of using reconciliation to pass health care legislation with a simple majority of 51 votes, it should be seen as an empty threat. Let’s even set aside the fact that it would be a declaration of war that would shut down the Senate, that it would remove any pretense that Obama is a post-partisan president, and that ramming an unpopular bill down the throats of the public is not a politically astute move. Even if Democrats wanted to risk all of that for the greater goal of passing health care legislation, they couldn’t do it.
I hope they are right. But I will not be the least bit surprised if it isn’t an empty threat at all. Rather, what I regard as “empty” was the “post-partisan” promises (dare I say it again) of THE most liberal U.S. Senator the year before he ran for the presidency.
Be vigilant. And be ready to go absolutely ballistic if this massive violation into our constitutional democracy is rammed down our throats.
Nancy Pelosi upped the ante in the health care debate when she responded to a media question in the following manner:
Interviewer: Do you think there’s legitimate grassroot opposition going on here?
Pelosi: “I think they’re Astroturf… You be the judge. “They’re carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on healthcare.”
That being in addition to her reference to town hall protesters as “simply un-American.”
Well, first of all, Nancy Pelosi calls health care opponents “Astroturf,” and the propagandist mainstream media have duly found evidence of one or two emails from conservative groups instructing opponents of health care how to have maximum effect. Overlooked by both Pelosi and her media lackeys is the fact that liberal organizations are literally PAYING people to “defend Obama’s health care.”
The image she tries to project is a bunch of goose-stepping Nazis bringing their beloved swastikas with them like lucky charms.
Conservatives immediately complained: thousands of conservatives have attended town hall meetings around the country, and most of them hadn’t even SEEN a swastika at a town hall, much less carried one themselves.
But even the uber uber uber leftist Media Matters, trying to document that at least SOMEBODY really was carrying a swastika, end up inadvertently demonstrating a very different picture.
So there are your “swastika-toting conservatives.” A frightening mob of Nazis, they aren’t.
The thing is, what they are clearly saying is that they DON’T want Nazism or Swastikas. And they’re afraid that we’re seeing something in this health care agenda that smacks of the things they’re afraid of.
So a very, VERY few conservatives have brought signs that express their connection of ObamaCare to incipient Nazism. Is that so awful? First let us compare it to how Barack Obama, Dick Durbin, and Democrat protesters have used the word “Nazi.”
“If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime—Pol Pot or others—that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.”
“…just to take a, sort of a realist perspective…there’s a lot of change going on outside of the Court, um, that, that judges essentially have to take judicial notice of. I mean you’ve got World War II, you’ve got uh, uh, uh, the doctrines of Nazism, that, that we are fighting against, that start looking uncomfortably similar to what we have going on, back here at home.”
And of course images linking George W. Bush to Hitler or the devil are a dime a dozen. Here’s a picture at a liberal protest that manages to do both at once, giving Bush both devil horns and a Hitler mustache:
There’s a rather substantial compilation of Bush-as-Hitler comparisons here. But given the vast quantity of Bush derangement syndrome, it isn’t – and frankly can’t possibly be – anywhere near complete.
So on one hand you have to simply laugh (as in the kind of intense and sustained laughter that could literally cause you to die) at the sheer galling in-your-face hypocrisy and demagoguery of Nancy Pelosi and the left. The self-righteous, “How dare you? How DARE you?” tone doesn’t suit them at all.
But while the above deflates any liberal claim to outrage, it doesn’t justify throwing around Nazi Swastikas or using the word “fascist” at the Democrat’s health care plan. Do these protesters have any better justification than that?
I believe they do. And here’s why.
Reason One: Rush Limbaugh added a little gasoline to the fire that Nancy Pelosi started when he pointed out the visual similarity between the ObamaCare symbol and the Swastika. His point was that if pointing out Swastika symbols was good for the goose, it ought to be good for the gander as well.
Of course, the mainstream media came completely unglued. Rush Limbaugh played a rather lengthy montage of talking-point media outrage on his August 7 broadcast.
But apart from the obvious surface artistic similarities that people either recognize or refuse to recognize, there is a somewhat deeper and much more profound issue: Obama is essentially taking the symbol for medicine, and combining it with his own political campaign symbol. The result is the ostentatious politicizing of health care as ideology.It truly IS ObamaCare as Obama’s own symbol for it reveals!!! We haven’t seen anything like that in this country since the LAST time we embraced significant elements of fascism in our politics over 70 years ago. And it is dangerous.
And a growing number of people are realizing it.
Reason two: Politically, there are some rather frightening political developments from within the Obama administration. Former “journalist”-turned Obama hack Linda Douglas reveals both how corrupt journalism has become and how fascistic Obama can truly be in this pitch:
There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.
When was the last time you were asked to turn in people practicing their free speech rights to the White House? The White House is asking people to turn in emails, web sites, and even people in “casual conversation.” Can you imagine if the Bush White House had taken this course to collect information on protesters against the Iraq War? The New York Times would have run a 300-part series detailing it as rabid fascism. In this case, the blatant paranoia – and yes, the fascism – is being carried out by Barack Obama.
Reason three: But that’s not the only connection Democrat-activists now have with fascism. Now there’s also the “new Fascisti” in the form of union thugs who are coming in to intimidate and even beat conservatives at town halls. In fascist Italy, the Fascisti were the Blackshirted men who broke up opposition rallies with fists and whatever else was needed. In Hitler’s rise to power, it was the SA Brownshirts. Now it’s the SEIU Blueshirts. This certainly isn’t the first time Democrats have relied on union thuggery to accomplish their goals.
After decrying town hall health care protesters as an “angry mob,” Democrats are now bringing in goons to physically intimidate health care protesters.
“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”
And this former community organizer who is so outraged that communities have been organizing has brought a gun in the form of union thugs to the “knives” of mostly elderly ObamaCare protesters.
Over 1,000 St. Louis Tea Party Taxpayers showed up to attend the Russ Carnahan town hall meeting in South St. Louis. They were Locked Out! But… The Carnahah staff was sneaking in SIEU members in the side door marked “handicapped.”
Is shutting out American citizens and barring them from access to their elected leaders not the REAL “sabotage of the democratic process”? How is stacking the political deck with your own people while deliberately shutting out your political opponents not fascist? And as we’ll also see, how is bringing in burly union thugs to physically manhandle people for trying to express their political opinions not fascist?
In Tampa, Fla: Kathy Castor’s burly union thugs manhandled a small elderly man (in the green shirt) with stage 4 cancer and shut the doors on protesters’ faces to prevent opposing opinions from being heard.
The above footage is a little confusing. One of the protesters who was physically manhandled by the four burly thugs shoving them around at the same event tells his story.
Kenneth Gladney, a black conservative, was beaten by four thugs at another event as he offered “Don’t Tread on Me” flags while trying to get into a town hall meeting in Missouri.
Is that the only thing that prompts people to compare ObamaCare to Nazism via their homemade posters of Swastikas with the red line through of “NO!” through them?
Not even close.
Let us explore the real reason that so many people – both Republican and Democrat – are so virulently opposing this health care plan.
Reason four: There’s more than ample evidence that – contrary to Obama’s and the Democrats’ denials – that they very much DO want a government takeover of health care. And more and more people are realizing that this massive influx of pure socialism is not the American way.
The current number being thrown around for Obama’s health care is $1.6 trillion over ten years. But government routinely massively underestimates its costs, as I’ve documented in the past. The CBO was off by 633% in its estimate of the cost of Medicare; and off by 10,900% in estimating the cost of Medicaid special hospitals. A reasonable figure – based on an average of past CBO underestimation of government cost to fund government programs – is that ObamaCare will cost about $13 trillion over ten years.
Mr. Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget blueprint, by his own admission, redefines the role of government in our economy and society. The budget more than doubles the national debt held by the public, adding more to the debt than all previous presidents — from George Washington to George W. Bush — combined.
If we put our health care system under government control, it is absolutely unavoidable that we will have to massively ration our health care resources down the road. And there’s the rub.
Somebody is going to suffer from neglect down the road, as scarce medical resources are allocated to some rather than others. And the elderly – who 1) are no longer represented in the work force while 2) consuming the lion’s share of medical resource – are going to start getting the short end of the stick.
The Obama administration may not want to admit it, but they have already embraced the idea of denying medical care to senior citizens, given their president’s choice of czars and top advisers.
In January of THIS YEAR, Dr. Emanuel – who is a principal architect of the Democrat’s health care plan – wrote:
“When implemented, the Complete Lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated… The Complete Lives system justifies preference to younger people because of priority to the worst-off rather than instrumental value.”
For those of you who don’t know what “attenuated” means, let me save you from heading for your dictionary. It means, “to make thin; to weaken or reduce in force, intensity, effect, quantity, or value.” Basically, in Dr. Emanuel’s usage, it means, “Time to make room for the next generation and shove off, Grandma and Grandpa.”
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel included a chart with his work (available here), which shows how he wants to allocate medical resources:
When you’re very young, or when you start reaching your 50s, you start becoming toast.
Take Cass Sunstein, Obama’s Regulatory Czar, who wrote in the Columbia Law Review in January 2004:
“I urge that the government should indeed focus on life-years rather than lives. A program that saves young people produces more welfare than one that saves old people.”
Barack Obama’s Regulatory Czar explains:
“If a program would prevent fifty deaths of people who are twenty, should it be treated the same way as a program that would prevent fifty deaths of people who are seventy? Other things being equal, a program that protects young people seems far better than one that protects old people, because it delivers greater benefits.”
“At least we can let doctors know — and your mom know — that you know what, maybe this isn’t going to help. Maybe you’re better off, uhh, not having the surgery, but, uhh, taking the painkiller.”
Don’t let the coffin lid hit your face on the way out, Grandma and Grandpa.
Right now the decision as to how to allocate medical resources is divided up between innumerable people and organizations, both government and private. But if the “public option” wins the day, it will be centralized by men like Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel and Cass Sunstein. And as the government takes over health care, and as debt eats up government funding, men and women like Emanuel and Sunstein are going to be choosing death by denial of medical resources to increasingly more and more people.
THAT’S your big Reason. Rationed care. Denial of resources to the elderly. Death by neglect. THAT’S why health care protesters are screaming and shouting. THAT’S why people are carrying signs saying NO to the Swastika symbol of Nazi fascism. And with all due respect, it is a damn good reason to be frightened and pissed off to no end.
Keep your damned fascist paws off my parents’ health care, Obama.
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, liberal judicial activist of liberal judicial activists, had this to say about valueless life on the younger side (as opposed to Emanuel’s and Sunstein’s valueless life on the older side):
Ginsburg: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae – in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”
“Conversely, services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed.”
And lest you forget, the infamous 1930s-era Tuskegee experiment – the racist and eugenics-based study that studied the effects of syphilis on deliberately untreated black men – ran straight through FDR’s New Deal, and through the course of his entire presidency.
Democrats are working to build a state in which it is the state which decides whether or not classes of people have the right to life, or the right to health care resources. They want to centralize decision-making, and make health care decisions for everyone so they can further control the economy (health care is 1/6th of the economy) and further control individual behavior.
The late (and very, very great) Dr. D. James Kennedy once prophetically said:
“Watch out, Grandpa; because the generation that survived abortion will one day come after you!”
One need only look at Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel’s chart depicting the odds of receiving medical care versus age to see that the day Dr. Kennedy warned us about is now coming with a vengeance.
So who’s right in throwing out comparisons of Nazism? If the choice is between Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and the health care plan they’re pushing versus the angry crowds showing up at town hall meetings to oppose the plan, it’s not even close. First of all, let no one forget that “NAZI” stoof for the “National Socialist German Workers Party.” It was national socialism, as in the sort of socialism health care protesters are afraid of. Ronald Brownstein, senior writer at the National Journal, said recently that “The defining gamble of Barack Obama’s presidency is that the public today is willing to accept more government activism…“. Don’t think for a second that the Nazis did not build a vast government health care system, which they then used to advance their political agenda. And the German national government medical system under Nazism looked far more like the system that Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi want to impose than anything that the people shouting at town halls want to see.
