On How Obama Will Damage America For Decades To Come

Obama is a disaster in every possible sphere of leadership.

But the question then becomes, “In which particular sphere does Obama’s disastrous failure of leadership represent the greatest danger to America?”

Thomas Sowell answers the question:

September 28, 2010
A Warning from Thomas Sowell
Anthony Kang

Frankly, there aren’t enough words or superlatives in the English dictionary to describe the great Thomas Sowell. With an unparalleled gift to explain even the most complicated subjects in simple and easily understandable terms, few can match the pedigree and contributions of the Hoover Institute senior fellow. Author of the new book, “Dismantling America,” Sowell recently sat down for an interview with Investors Business Daily’s David Hogberg. And along with a few priceless jabs at Michelle Obama, sociology, Newsweek, and the public education system, Dr. Sowell discussed why he (like Niall Ferguson) believes America may be entering a prolonged period of decline.

“The only analogy I can think of from history is when the Norman conquerors of England published their laws in French for an English-speaking nation,” Sowell says about the Obama administration’s governing style, a style he characterizes as unconstitutional.

As someone who, if forced to, would label himself as more libertarian than conservative — though he has irked many with his support of American combat missions in Iraq — most noteworthy (and a bit shocking) about the interview is what Sowell believes the greatest threat is — terrorism, Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the international scene. Questioned as to what some of the current markers of national decline are, it isn’t “huge bills that fundamentally change the way the economy operates,” reckless government spending, social engineering programs and the national debt which worry the economist the most, it is national security and President Obama’s foreign policy.

And Sowell makes a few not-so-subtle Neville Chamberlain analogies that are almost impossible to ignore:

Of course, the one that trumps them all is on the international scene. That’s where Iran is moving toward nuclear weapons. I’m just staggered at how little attention is being paid to that compared to frivolous things. If a nation with a record of sponsoring international terrorism gets nuclear weapons, that changes everything and it changes it forever.

Someday historians may wonder what were we thinking about when you look at the imbalance of power between the U.S. and Iran, and we sat there with folded hands and watched this happen, going through just enough motions at the United Nations to lull the public to sleep. That, I think, is the biggest threat.

Sowell also condemns the president for affronting our allies (in particular, the British and Israelis) in “clever” yet unmistakable ways the general public may not notice, further hastening America’s decline:

His first foreign policy gambit was to fly to Russia and offer to renege on the American commitment to put a missile shield in Eastern Europe…All he really got out of that was a demonstration of his amateurishness and of his willingness to sell out allies in hopes of winning over enemies. That ploy was tried in the 1930s and didn’t work all that well.

These are no ordinary times, with no ordinary president. Leading up to the historic “Hope and Change” election, commentators on the Right could not possibly have attacked Obama and his intentions to fundamentally change the identity and economy of America more than they already had. Even so, not only has President Obama fulfilled every single “fear-mongering” indictment down to a tee, he’s exceeded them — making even some his most extreme opponents look clairvoyant. So with keeping that in mind, and considering all the new challenges we face domestically, that one of the greatest economic minds of our time would still elevate national security and terrorism to such a level truly speaks volumes about the reality and situation of Iran.

Also citing the lack of expertise and national discussion in international issues, former U.S. Ambassador John Bolton confirmed to Greg Gutfeld that he was seriously considering a presidential run on Red Eye last week. Bolton-Sowell 2012? One can only dream. But hey, if a community organizer can get elected, why not someone with ten times the accomplishments and wisdom?

I’ve said many of the same things, myself.  Just not as well, and not as succinctly.  For example, I said:

If Iran gets its nukes, it will be able to do a number of things: 1) attack Israel, assuring Israel that if it uses its nukes against Iran, Iran will use its nukes against Israel; 2) shut down the Strait of Hormuz, which would immediately drive up the price of oil.  The cost of gasoline in the U.S. would soar above $15 a gallon; 3) dramatically increase Iranian-sponsored terrorism worldwide.

If you don’t believe that a nuclear-armed Iran would pick a minimum of one of these options, you’re just nuts.

Just as I also pointed out that Obama was enraging our enemies even as he alienated our allies.

It shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to see that Iran is employing a lot of rocket scientists to create a ballistic nuclear missile capable of striking the United States and Israel.  But when Democrats are in charge, even the most trivial aspects of common sense are akin to the most sophisticated form of theoretical mathematics.

It is a fact – a FACT – that George Bush tried to deal with the threat of Iran when it was possible to avert their nuclear ambitions; but that Democrats did everything they could to prevent him from succeeding against the insane jihadist regime.  I quoted an LA Times article from just three years ago in which every single Democrat presidential candidate stated that Iran was not a meaningful threat, and in which they denounced Bush’s efforts to draw attention to the danger posed by Iran:

“DES MOINES — Democratic presidential candidates teamed up during a National Public Radio debate here Tuesday to blast the Bush administration over its policy toward Iran, arguing that a new intelligence assessment proves that the administration has needlessly ratcheted up military rhetoric.

While the candidates differed somewhat over the level of threat Iran poses in the Mideast, most of them sought to liken the administration’s approach to Iran with its buildup to the war in Iraq.”

But the fact that the failure to deal with Iran rests ENTIRELY in Democrats’ hands won’t stop them from blaming Bush when Iran rears its vicious head against the world.  Any more than it stopped them from blaming Bush for the 2008 economic collapse in spite of the fact that they had had total control of Congress for the previous two years, and even though they had repeatedly prevented Bush from regulating and reforming GSEs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – which were at the epicenter of the disaster.

It’s just what cowards do.  And the Democrat Party is the party of moral cowardice going back to at least the Carter years, if not dating back to the waning days of the LBJ administration.

You can go back and review the record.  Nearly 60% of the Democrats in the U.S. Senate (29 out of 50) voted to authorize the Iraq War Resolution.  Furthermore, virtually every single top Democrat was on the factual record agreeing with George Bush and supporting his reasoning to attack Saddam Hussein –

http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/b/bushlied.htm
http://www.freedomagenda.com/iraq/wmd_quotes.html
http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/wmdquotes.asp

– and yet Democrats en masse cowardly, despicably, and I would argue treasonously, turned on Bush and turned on our troops in time of war.  For no other reason than to treacherously obtain a cheap political advantage aided and abetted by a mainstream media propaganda apparatus that could have come right out of the vile brain of Joseph Goebbels.

In addition to their opposition to the Iraq War (which again 60% of Senate Democrats voted for, only to repudiate and claim Bush deceived them), Democrats opposed the Patriot Act; opposed Domestic Surveillance which allowed the US to track calls from international terrorists into the United States; opposed Gitmo, even though it is the clearly the ONLY reasonable place to hold incredibly dangerous terrorists that no country wants; opposed allowing terrorists to be tried in military tribunals to safeguard intelligence techniques and personnel, and to prevent the court system from being hijacked by enemies of freedom; opposed  even the most reasonable use of profiling to weed out terrorists intent upon murdering Americans; and even declared surrender in the vile “I believe that … this war is lost” statement of Harry Reid, the Democrat Senate Majority Leader.  I could go on.  It boils down to the fact that the left despise anything that help us win the war on terror or protect us from terrorism.

"RUN AWAY!!!"

To the extent that Barack Obama has done anything – ANYTHING – right at all in the war on terror, it has only been because he repudiated himself and demonstrated that he was either an incompetent fool or a lying hypocrite.  Obama – after publicly denouncing, undermining and alienating the CIA – has continued the policy of “torture” by continuing the policy of “rendition” in which terror suspects are sent to other countries that use torture.  Obama – after continually denouncing Bush over Gitmo – has STILL not closed the facility down two full years after usurping the office of the presidency with lies.  Obama is using a surge strategy in Afghanistan after denouncing Bush’s successful surge strategy in Iraq and blatantly predicting it would fail.  And Obama is now continuing the Bush policy of using predator drones to attack terrorist positions inside Pakistan that US Special Operations forces cannot reach.

That said, Obama – in denouncing Iraq (the war we could and did win) while demanding we massively build-up in Afghanistan (our second Vietnam) may well prove to be the most disastrous military quagmire since the LAST time Democrats led us into the actual Vietnam.

Iran WILL get the nuclear bomb.  Democrats guaranteed that Iran would be able to do so.

Iran will become a plague upon global peace and security unlike anything the world has ever seen at least since the rise of the Nazis and the abject failure of FDR and Neville Chamberlain to deal with the clear and present danger.

And when that day comes, America will be unable to meaningfully deal with it because Barack Obama and the Democrat Party made us economically incapable of rising to any significant occasion.

Government Report: New Obama EPA Rules To Cost More Than 800,000 Jobs

There’s all the crap about Obama being a Kenyan and a Muslim, etc. ad nauseum.  We’re way beyond that.  I for one don’t think that Barack Obama is conspiring to fly any planes into any skyscrapers.

That said, he is nevertheless a terrorist.  He is an economic terrorist who literally destroys jobs by the hundreds of thousands – something no Muslim jihadist could ever do to us.  And my labeling of Barack Obama has nothing to do with the color of his skin or even with his religion; it has everything to do with his Marxist ideology.

Exclusive: EPW report shows new EPA rules will cost more than 800,000 jobs
posted at 8:45 am on September 28, 2010 by Ed Morrissey

Actually, it’s not just the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s minority contingent that fears the loss of nearly a million jobs from new EPA rules on greenhouse gases and other emissions issues.  It’s also groups like the United Steel Workers, Unions for Jobs and the Environment, and experts like King’s College Professor Ragnar Lofstedt.  Hot Air got an exclusive look at a report that the EPW minority staff will release later this morning detailing the economic damage that an activist EPA will do to the American economy, and which will come at perhaps the worst possible time, both economically and politically.

The executive summary spells out the stakes involved in the effort to rein in the EPA:

New standards for commercial and industrial boilers: up to 798,250 jobs at risk;

The revised National Ambient Air Quality Standard for ozone: severe restrictions on job creation and business expansion in hundreds of counties nationwide.

New standards for Portland Cement plants: up to 18 cement plants at risk of shutting down, threatening nearly 1,800 direct jobs and 9,000 indirect jobs;

The Endangerment Finding/Tailoring Rules for Greenhouse Gas Emissions: higher energy costs; jobs moving overseas; severe economic impacts on the poor, the elderly, minorities, and those on fixed incomes; 6.1 million sources subject to EPA control and regulation; and

In fact, the new regulations threaten to put entire industries out of business.  The new standard for boilers, titled “National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants for Major Sources: Industrial, Commercial, and Institutional Boilers and Process Heaters” and called the Boiler MACT, creates a standard that literally no producer in the US meets at the moment.  The industry group Industrial Energy Consumers of America (IECA) represents end-user firms that employ 750,000 in various industries, and they concur:

IECA members have 6 units that were part of the best performing units and none can comply with the standards based on the best performing units. Based on the analysis of the data EPA used to develop these standards, it appears that none of the coal-fired boilers in the source category can meet the proposed standards.

What happens when the installed boilers don’t meet the new standard?  Factories and other facilities will have to close, putting jobs in danger and firms already hammered by the recession will lose production days — which will destroy jobs.  That’s why the United Steel Workers have sounded the alarm, insisting that the EPA’s proposal will mean disaster:

“Tens of thousands of these jobs will be imperiled.  In addition, many more tens of thousands of jobs in the supply chains and in the communities where these plants are located also will be at risk.”

Nor are steelworkers the only group at risk.  New industrial standards for Portland cement threaten to stop all American production in the name of environmental protection — and send the work overseas to China, where ironically the standards are more lax and more pollution will result:

“So rather than importing 20 million tons of cement per year, the proposed [rule] will lead to cement imports of more than 48 million tons per year. In other words, by tightening the regulations on U.S. cement kilns, there will be a risk transfer of some 28 million tons of cement offshore, mostly to China.” – Professor Ragnar Lofstedt, Kings College (London)

Again, no facility in the US meets the standards proposed by the EPA.  Imposition of these standards would at least temporarily close almost 20 percent of all American cement producers and reduce long-term cement production from 8-15%.  The cement that will be needed for construction demand will have to be imported, primarily from China, which is expanding their cement production using environmental standards significantly below current American standards.  In other words, we can expect more pollution, not less — just outsourced along with the jobs in the industry.

Watch for the full report later today at the EPW Minority Caucus website.

Obama isn’t backing down.  His jihad against fossil fuels and the US jobs those fuels create and sustain must succeed.  No matter how many Americans are harmed.  But in spite of the facts, our Liar-in-Chief keeps spinning and twisting:

“We may end up having to do it in chunks, as opposed to some sort of comprehensive omnibus legislation. But we’re going to stay on this because it is good for our economy, it’s good for our national security, and, ultimately, it’s good for our environment.”

Let’s give a listen to what Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu had to say about yet ANOTHER attempt to destroy the economy and destroy American jobs:

“The president’s policies right now are doing much more harm than the [BP] spill itself to the economy of the South coast. … It’s just gotten to a point where people in Louisiana ask, ‘Do they even understand what is going on down here?’ They have the entire offshore industry virtually shut down.”

Obama imposed a job-crushing drilling ban in the Gulf of Mexico, which has resulted in drilling rigs moving away from American jobs.  Even as Obama and his pal George Soros fund deep drilling operations in Mexico and Brazil.

When even labor unions and Democrat politicians start standing up and screaming that a Democrat president is destroying their jobs and their lives, it is way past time to take notice.

If we don’t vote these Democrats out and take away both the House and the Senate from them, we may not have a country by the next election.

Democrats Are Irresponsible, Whiny And Ignorant – Just Ask Obama, Biden And Kerry

Barack Obama actually left and interview and then came back to deliver this stinger against Democrats:

One closing remark that I want to make: It is inexcusable for any Democrat or progressive right now to stand on the sidelines in this midterm election. There may be complaints about us not having gotten certain things done, not fast enough, making certain legislative compromises. But right now, we’ve got a choice between a Republican Party that has moved to the right of George Bush and is looking to lock in the same policies that got us into these disasters in the first place, versus an administration that, with some admitted warts, has been the most successful administration in a generation in moving progressive agendas forward.

The idea that we’ve got a lack of enthusiasm in the Democratic base, that people are sitting on their hands complaining, is just irresponsible.

Vice President Joe Biden offered this pearl of wisdom for the Democrat base:

Vice President Joe Biden stoked a firestorm of liberal discontent with President Barack Obama on Monday – demanding that the Democratic base “stop whining” and start fighting Republicans instead of the White House.

Biden, speaking at a frozen yogurt plant in New Hampshire, said he wanted to “remind our base constituency to stop whining and get out there and look at the alternatives. This President has done an incredible job. He’s kept his promises.”

The comments echo Obama’s own recent calls to demobilized Democrats to slough off their apathy – and their disappointment in him – and gear up ahead of the midterms, when Democrats are facing devastating losses.

Senator John Kerry – the previous Democrat presidential candidate – offered his assessment of the Democrat’s level of awareness and intelligence:

A testy U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry yesterday blamed clueless voters with short attention spans for the uphill battle beleaguered Democrats are facing against Republicans across the nation.

“We have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what’s happening,” Kerry told reporters after touring the Boston Medical Center yesterday.

Conservative political blogger William Jacobson, who writes Legal Insurrection, immediately pounced on Kerry’s comments, saying that attitude is why voters are looking to shake up Capitol Hill by electing upstart candidates such as U.S. Sen. Scott Brown.

“It just continues the Democrats’ theme that the reason people are upset is because they don’t understand. They’re not smart enough. That sort of rhetoric just gets people even more upset,” said Jacobson.

So, let us wrap up Democrats, in the words of those who know them best: they are irresponsible, whiny, and ignorant people.

Leave it to Brit Hume to put it all together for us:

At one time or another, President Obama has attacked Wall Street for its greed, doctors for their greed and insurance companies for theirs.

He has never stopped attacking the Bush administration. He has attacked the Tea Party movement and the Republican leadership. None of this seems to have worked very well, with the president’s poll ratings at new lows and even such liberals as Wisconsin’s Russ Feingold hesitant to appear with him.

So now the president and his allies are trying something new — they are attacking their own voters.

At the end of that Rolling Stone interview, mentioned earlier, the president came back into the room and spoke, the magazine said, with intensity and passion. He said: “It is inexcusable for any Democrat or progressive right now to stand on the sidelines in this midterm election.” The apathy among Democrats, he said, is “irresponsible.”

Meanwhile, of course, Vice President Biden was telling Democrats to “stop whining.” And Senator Kerry lamented that “we have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on.”

Mr. Obama and his allies are certainly not the first politicians to think the voters insufficiently appreciative of their wondrous achievements. But they may be the first to attack their supporters publicly for being irresponsible, whiny and ignorant.

Just remember, Democrats.  It’s YOUR fault you suck.  Don’t you DARE blame Obama; he’s like a god to you, and you’re like little tiny wingless insects to him.

The fact is that Barack Obama is at his quintessential core a demagogue.  Yes, as Brit Hume pointed out, he has as a matter of routine viciously attacked his political opponents.  But whenever he has been criticized, the most thin-skinned demagogue ever to occupy the White House has lashed out – even at his closest allies.  Remember his administration’s angry unloading upon the “professional left”?

Obama is awesome.  You must not only say he is awesome; you must believe in your subconscious.  Or “he will bury you.”

Obama is better than Jeezus.  And if you think he’s done anything wrong, it just goes to prove that you’re stupid.  And it just further proves that you need a giant government nanny state to oversee every detail of your miserable, useless, pathetic life.

How dare you criticize your messiah when you should be on your face worshiping his stimulus, his health care plan, and his cap-and-trade system.

Obama can do no wrong, and so criticizing him is as close to blasphemy as you can get.

Now please look back at the image of Emmanuel Goldstein I mean George Bush and return to your two minutes’ I mean two years’ hate.

Oil Spill Panel: Obama Incompetence Destroyed Public Trust

Only one thing truly mattered to Barack Obama as millions of gallons of oil spewed out of the ocean floor to contaminate the Gulf Coast: that Barack Obama not be blamed:

President Obama may have decried finger-pointing today, but he also did a fair amount of it himself. Not only at the three companies, but at previous administrations.

Here’s what he said today when he turned the finger at the federal government:

“For too long, for a decade or more, there has been a cozy relationship between the oil companies and the federal agency that permits them to drill. It seems as if permits were too often issued based on little more than assurances of safety from the oil companies. That cannot and will not happen anymore.””A decade or more” clearly encompasses the Bush Administration, and may include the Clinton years too. But Mr. Obama’s been president for nearly 16 months. Does he get at least a little piece of the blame?

Not a bit, he made clear. He portrayed his administration as valiantly fighting the good fight against the oil companies from day one […]

None of the following things that Barack Obama did were Barack Obama’s fault:

Barack Obama took more money from British Petroleum than any politician over a twenty year period.  In spite of the fact that he had only been in national politics for less than three years.  Barack Obama’s administration approved the project and granted the permit for the doomed BP drilling site.  Barack Obama’s administration helped quash environmental problems and issued an environmental waiver to BP at said doomed site only days before the disaster.  Barack Obama failed to take the disaster seriously and delayed serious action for weeks, fiddling with fundraisers, golf outings, and vacations while the Gulf went to hell.  The Obama administration has continued to delay and waste time pursuing the dotting of the i’s and the crossing of the t’s regarding mindless bureaucratic inanities.

It was also not Barack Obama’s fault that Barack Obama turned down virtually every international offer to help help him clean up his mess while he was clearly not up to the job.

It was not Barack Obama’s fault that Barack Obama seemed to have absolutely no clue whatsoever what to do – as testified by even his own fellow liberals.

Nor was it Barack Obama’s fault that Barack Obama’s deceit-based moratorium on drilling has cost the Gulf thousands of jobs in what can only be seen as a double-whammy-smackdown on a region that had already experienced disaster.

And so, clearly, it is not Barack Obama’s fault that the public lost trust in Barack Obama’s government due to Barack Obama’s incompetence:

Spill panel: Federal confusion lost public trust
By SETH BORENSTEIN and DINA CAPPIELLO, Associated Press Writers Seth Borenstein And Dina Cappiello, Associated Press Writers  – September 27, 2010

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration’s repeated low estimates of the huge BP oil spill undermined public confidence in the government’s entire cleanup effort, leaders of a White House-appointed commission declared at an investigatory hearing Monday.  One likened the mistakes to Custer’s disastrous decisions at Little Big Horn.

Federal officials botched the government’s response, a local official and government and university scientists contended as the commission focused on the questions of who was in charge and how much oil spewed out of the well into the Gulf of Mexico.

Eventually, U.S. officials said the spill was about 60 times bigger than originally estimated. Instead of 42,000 gallons a day, the volume of leaking oil was closer to 2.4 million gallons a day.

“It’s a lot like Custer,” said panel co-chairman Bob Graham, a former Florida senator and governor, referring to the battle that killed George Armstrong Custer and wiped out most of the Army’s 7th Calvary in 1876. “He underestimated the number of Indians on the other side of the hill and paid the ultimate price.”

And who was in charge? Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish, one of the coastal areas most affected by the spill, referred to another famous leader, this one fictional.

“It became a joke,” he told the commission. “The Houma command was the Wizard of Oz, some guy behind the curtain.”

Mistakes in the information that was being given out sapped confidence in the government on the issue, Graham and co-chairman William Reilly said at a news conference. Reilly described “repeated wrong numbers” on the amount of oil that was spilling.

I know who was supposed to be in charge: Barack Obama.  But he’s a total incompetent failure, who is skilled only in reading aloud whatever a teleprompter screen prompts him to say, and demagoguing.  And that’s why a crisis became such a pathetic and costly joke on every American citizen.

Whining White House Tells Whining Democrats To Stop Whining

It’s a case of the whine leading the whine.

Joe Biden to Democrats: ‘Stop whining’
By GLENN THRUSH | 9/27/10 7:01 PM EDT

Vice President Joe Biden stoked a firestorm of liberal discontent with President Barack Obama on Monday – demanding that the Democratic base “stop whining” and start fighting Republicans instead of the White House.

Biden, speaking at a frozen yogurt plant in New Hampshire, said he wanted to “remind our base constituency to stop whining and get out there and look at the alternatives. This President has done an incredible job. He’s kept his promises.”

The comments echo Obama’s own recent calls to demobilized Democrats to slough off their apathy – and their disappointment in him – and gear up ahead of the midterms, when Democrats are facing devastating losses.

Biden’s comments weren’t premeditated and reflect Biden’s shoot-from-the-lip style, officials said. But that matters little to a Democratic base grown somnambulant and frustrated with the president’s willingness to accept ugly, if productive, compromises on the stimulus, Wall Street reform and health care.

Judging from the initial reaction to Biden’s remarks in Manchester, the base is plenty fired up – and ready to go.

At Biden’s throat.

One Democratic operative gasped when told of Biden’s remarks and wondered “why they would pick a fight with the base” five weeks before a midterm election that will hinge on turnout.

“It’s idiotic is what it is,” says Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas, one of Obama’s most pointed critics on the left. “If Democrats, with the White House and Congressional super-majorities, had delivered on what they had promised, and if people had jobs, no one would be whining. They have reaped what they sowed. They haven’t delivered on what they’ve promised — and instead of making the case as to why they would do if they are reelected, they are insulting people.

For the record, every single case of Obama’s tactless and pathetic lamenting about how he “inherited” all his problems, and how everything that’s happened two years into his presidency was really all Bush’s fault, was whining.

The insipid whining of a man who is pathologically incapable of accepting any personal responsibility whatsoever for mishandling a job he spent more of other people’s money to win than any politician in human history.

And his administration – in the form of his idiot vice president – is telling other Democrats to stop whining?

You fools!  Take the whine out of your own cries.

Democrats don’t just deserve to lose power; they deserve to be hunted down with dogs and burned alive.

The bottom line is that it is easy to understand why the Democrats in Congress are turning their whines toward the White House rather than the Republicans.  Because Barry Hussein has done far, FAR more to destroy the party than the Republicans ever could have.

The question is whether the whining Democrat base is going to stop whining long enough to vote for the despicable lowlife slimeballs who destroyed their party in only two years of shockingly miserable misrule.

Snowball Fights Taking Place All Over Hell: Chris Matthews Confronts Obama On Taxes

Hitler Wasn’t ‘Right Wing’, Wasn’t ‘Christian’; And Nazism Was Applied Darwinism

Glenn Beck’s program on Friday, September 24, 2010, was devoted to the subject of Adolf Hitler, Christianity, and the nightmare that ensues when big government seizes religion in order to legitimize, even divinize, its socialist and totalitarian policies.

I have written about this myself, mostly in responses to atheists who want to foist Adolf Hitler onto Christians and Christianity.  I have grown up reading that Nazism represented the threat of a conservative, right wing government.  It’s a giant load of bunk.

To put it briefly, the communist Soviet intellectuals – and all leftist Western intellectuals influenced by them – created a false dichotomy between fascism and communism.  Zeev Sternhall observed how study of fascist ideology had been obscured by “the official Marxist interpretation of fascism” [Sternhall, “Fascist Ideology,” in Fascism: A Reader’s Guide: Analyses, Interpretations, Bibliography, p. 316].  Marxism simply redefined fascism as its polar opposite in order to create a bogeyman: If Marxism was progressive, fascism became conservative.  If Marxism was left wing, fascism had to be right wing.  If Marxism championed the proletariat, then fascism had to champion the bourgeoisie.  If Marxism was socialist, fascism needed to be capitalist.  And the fact that none of the above was even remotely true was entirely beside the point.

“Nazi” stood for “National Socialist German Workers Party.”

As Gene Edward Veith points out:

“The influence of Marxist scholarship has severely distorted our understanding of fascism.  Communism and fascism were rival brands of socialism.  Whereas Marxist socialism is predicated on an international class struggle, fascist national socialism promoted a socialism centered in national unity.  [And in fact, Both movements were “revolutionary socialist ideologies.”  Going on,] Both communists and fascists opposed the bourgeoisie.  Both attacked the conservatives.  Both were mass movements, which had special appeal for the intelligentsia, students, and artists, as well as workers.  Both favored strong centralized governments and rejected the free economy and the ideals of individual liberty.  [And finally,] Fascists saw themselves as being neither of the right nor the left.  They believed that they constituted a third force synthesizing the best of both extremes” [Gene Edward Veith, Jr., Modern Fascism: Liquidating the Judeo-Christian Worldview, p. 26].

And if the Nazis didn’t represent the far left, they were at best the right wing of the extreme left wing.

Jaroslav Krejci demonstrated the inadequacy of the “unilinear imagery” of left wing versus right wing.  He pointed out that the metaphor derived from the seating arrangements of the French Parliament  following the Revolution.  Politically, those seated on the right side favored an absolute monarchy.  Economically, they favored government monopolies and a controlled economy.  Culturally, they favored authoritarian control of the people.  Those seated on the left favored democracy, a free market economy, and personal liberty [see Krejci, “Introduction: Concepts of Right and Left,” in Neo-Fascism in Europe, 1991, pp. 1-2, 7].

Gene Edward Veith points out that these models simply break down in 20th century politics [see Veith, Modern Fascism, p. 27].  In terms of the model above, American conservatives who want less government and trust the free market would be on the left.  Liberals who want more of a government-directed economy would be on the right.  And so, while the Nazis would be “right wing” on this model, so also would the American liberal.  Furthermore, the terms “liberal” and “conservative” are relative, depending upon what one has to conserve.  The classical liberals of the 19th century, with their pursuit of free-market economics and resistance to government control, became the conservatives of the 20th century as they sought to conserve these principles.

And, to quote myself:

And just what on earth do liberals who call Nazism a form of conservatism even think Hitler was trying to “conserve”?

Adolf Hitler was a violent revolutionary out to overthrow the current system and impose his own radically different system in its place.  He was hardly a “right wing conservative” in any way, shape, or form.  Rather, Adolf Hitler was, as Jonah Goldberg accurately described him in Liberal Fascism, a “man of the left.”

Further, many American leftists embrace communism as though that somehow precludes them from guilt – even though many of their ideas and actions have been objectively fascist in spite of their rhetoric.  But even aside from this fact, don’t forget that communism itself was the single most evil ideology in the history of human civilization.

Were Hitler and Nazism among the greatest evils in the history of the world?  Of course they were.  But actually, Hitler and his Nazism were only the third worse mass murderer in all human history, behind Joseph Stalin and Chairman Mao, who were both communist leaders of officially state atheist governments.

With that said, let us discuss Hitler and Nazism in terms of Christianity.

Did Adolf Hitler package some of his public remarks as “Christian”?  There is no doubt that he did precisely that at different times his rise to power, and even during his regime.  But that hardly means that Adolf Hitler was a Christian believer.  Politicians often have had clear and obvious reasons to say things that they didn’t really believe for political expedience.  And it is obvious on its face that Adolf Hitler was a liar and the worst demagogic political opportunist in human history, and that Nazism was utterly evil and based almost entirely on lies. Thus, to cite the propaganda of such a regime as evidence that Hitler or Nazism were somehow “Christian” is itself both sick and evil.

Germany had at one time been the seat of the Protestant Reformation.  But by the late 19th century Christianity in Germany had devolved into a near meaningless official state religion.  And Germany was the LEAST Christian nation in all of Europe.  The most prominent German theologians embraced a form of theological liberalism that disconnected the foundational elements of Christianity from historical fact, in what amounted to a sustained attack on the Holy Bible.  The school of “higher criticism” attempted to undercut traditional views about the authorship, composition and legitimacy of the Bible.  This project weakened biblical authority by assuming that the Biblical text and the events described were to be explained entirely in naturalistic terms, and rejected completely the possibility of supernatural revelation.  And it was almost entirely an undertaking of German scholarship (just look at the names: Eichhorn, De Wette, Wellhausen).

The Germany that voted for Adolf Hitler was influenced by an academic elite that had a total hatred for orthodox Christianity.

Given the state of our own university intelligentsia, one of Hitler’s more terrifying comments is this:

“Nothing makes me more certain of the victory of our ideas than our success in the universities” – Adolf Hitler, 1930

And so, yes, Hitler tried to package his Nazism in a way that superficially “Christian” Germany would accept, just as the Marxist Sandinistas deceitfully packaged their godless communism into “liberation theology” in order to deceive the overwhelmingly Catholic population of Nicaragua to support them.  As to the latter, the Catholic church said from the start that it wasn’t legitimate Christianity; but that it was a heresy. And the Cardinal Ratzinger who went on to become Pope Benedict even called the movement “demonic”.

Quote:

“…it would be illusory and dangerous to ignore the intimate bond which radically unites them (liberation theologies), and to accept elements of the Marxist analysis without recognizing its connections with the (Marxist) ideology, or to enter into the practice of the class-struggle and of its Marxist interpretation while failing to see the kind of totalitarian society to which this process slowly leads.”
— (Author: Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect, now Pope Benedict XVI; written in 1984)

Quote:

“Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes not divine, but demonic.” — Pope Benedict XVI

And Hitler also packaged his hard-core of Nazism with a candy-coating of lies in order to fool the people. And the people were fooled indeed:

….Any opposition to Hitler is ruthlessly eradicated.  Tens of thousands are imprisoned.  Journalist Stephan Laurent dared to criticize The Fuehrer…..

“I am writing this from cell 24. Outside a new Germany is being created. Many millions are rejoicing.  Hitler is promising everyone precisely what they want. I think when they wake to their sobering senses, they will find they have been led by the nose and duped by lies.”

Soon, the next wave of profoundly anti-Christian German scholarship took the next logical step in their attack against Judeo-Christian ideals which had stood for two millennium.  Friedrich Delitzsch, a biblical scholar from the University of Berlin, published a work arguing that the Old Testament published a book arguing that the entire Old Testament was dependent upon Babylonian culture and mythology.  Delitzsch concluded that:

“the Old Testament was full of deceptions of all kinds – a veritable hodge-podge of erroneous, incredible, undependable figures, including those of Biblical chronology…. in short, a book full of intentional and unintentional deceptions (in part, self-deceptions), a very dangerous book in the use of which the greatest care is necessary.”

But it soon becomes clear that the reason that Delitzsch believed the Old Testament was “a very dangerous book” was because it was Jewish, and Delitzsch was an anti-Semite first, and a scholar second.  Delitzsch went so far as to argue the plain historical fraud that Jesus was not Jewish, arguing that there was some difference between “Jews” and “Galileans.”  He also maintained an equally bogus distinction between Jesus as a warm humanitarian versus Jewish moral intolerance.  Thus Delitzsch “de-Judaized” Christianity, and “contended that Christianity was an absolutely new religion, totally distinct from that of the Old Testament” [See Gene Edward Veith, Modern Fascism: Liquidating the Judeo-Christian Worldview, p. 53-54].

And so it became an easy next-step for Nazi propagandists such as Ezra Pound (who is also known as the godfather of modernism) to state that the Jewish religion began when Moses, “having to keep a troublesome rabble in order, scared them by inventing a disagreeable bogie, which he called a god.”  And Pound concluded “the greatest tyrannies have arisen from the dogma that the theos is one, or that there is a unity above the various strata of theos which imposes its will upon the substrata, and thence upon human individuals.”

And Adolf Hitler could then state in his Mein Kampf that:

“The objection may very well be raised that such phenomena in world history [the necessity of intolerance] arise for the most part from specifically Jewish modes of thought, in fact, that this type of intolerance and fanaticism positively embodies the Jewish nature” [Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 454].

The chain began by German scholars was complete: Hitler argued that it was okay to be intolerant of intolerant people, and that the Jews literally epitomized intolerance.

And none of this was “Christian”; it was a project straight from hell.

Friedrich Nietzsche – a patron saint of Nazism – correctly pointed out the fact that:

“Christianity, sprung from Jewish roots and comprehensible only as a growth on this soil, represents the counter-movement to any morality of breeding, of race, of privilege: it is the anti-Aryan religion part excellence” [Nietzsche, “The Twilight of the Idols”].

And so, a good Nazi was a Gottglaubiger.  Rather than putting “Christian” on personnel forms they wrote down “Gottlaubig” – representing a “vague pseudo-philosophical religiosity” – to indicate that, while they were not “godless communists,” they were most certainly not “Christian.”

So Hitler publicly said what he needed to say in speeches to deceive a mass population who had been bombarded with anti-Christian heresy and anti-Christian anti-Semitism, to bend them to his will.  But to his inner circle he said very different things than what he said publicly.  Hitler described to them that “after difficult inner struggles I had freed myself of my remaining childhood religious conceptions. I feel as refreshed now as a foal on a meadow” (Ernst Helmreich, “The German Churches Under Hitler,” p. 285).

What else did those closest in Hitler’s inner circle say about his “Christianity”?

From Joseph Goebbels’ diary, dated 8 April 1941 (Tue):

“The Fuhrer is a man totally attuned to antiquity. He hates Christianity, because it has crippled all that is noble in humanity. According to Schopenhauer, Christianity and syphilis have made humanity unhappy and unfree. What a difference between the benevolent, smiling Zeus and the pain-wracked, crucified Christ. The ancient peoples’ view of God was also much nobler and more humane than the Christians’. What a difference between a gloomy cathedral and a light, airy ancient temple. He describes life in ancient Rome: clarity, greatness, monumentality. The most wonderful republic in history. We would feel no disappointment, he believes, if we were now suddenly to be transported to this old, eternal city.”

Goebbels also notes in a diary entry in 1939 a conversation in which Hitler had “expressed his revulsion against Christianity. He wished that the time were ripe for him to be able to openly express that. Christianity had corrupted and infected the entire world of antiquity.” [Elke Frölich. 1997-2008. Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels. Munich: K. G. Sauer. Teil I, v. 6, p. 272].

Hitler also said, “Our epoch will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity.” [Hitler’s Table Talk, Enigma Books; 3rd edition October 1, 2000, p. 343].

Author Konrad Heiden quoted Hitler as stating, “We do not want any other god than Germany itself. It is essential to have fanatical faith and hope and love in and for Germany.” [Heiden, Konrad A History of National Socialism, A.A. Knopf, 1935, p. 100].

Albert Speer – another Nazi who worked extremely closely with Hitler – reports in his memoirs of a similar statement made by Hitler:

“You see, it’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn’t we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?” [Albert Speer. 1971. Inside the Third Reich Translated by Richard Winston, Clara Winston, Eugene Davidson. New York: Macmillan. p 143; Reprinted in 1997. Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs. New York: Simon and Schuster. p. 96. ISBN 0-684-82949-5].

Adolf Hitler sounds like an atheist to me. Certainly, Hitler was absolutely not a Christian. He cynically used Christianity like he cynically used everything else that was good; he took ruthless advantage of it as simply another means by which to package his lies to the German people.

The fact of the matter is that Fascism and Nazism were quintessentially hostile to Christianity, and even to monotheism.

Hannah Arendt describes Nazi spirituality in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem:

When convicted Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann went to the gallows, “He was in complete command of himself, nay, he was more; he was completely himself. Nothing could have demonstrated this more convincingly than the grotesque silliness of his last words. He began by stating emphatically that he was a Gottglaubiger, to express in common Nazi fashion that he was no Christian and did not believe in life after death” [p. 252].

One of the leading experts on fascism, Ernst Nolte, defined fascism as “the practical and violent resistance to transcendence” [Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism: Action Francaise, Italian Fascism, Nazi Fascism, 1965, p. 429].  Fascism was anti-God, anti-supernatural and anti-transcendence.

Gene Edward Veith says:

“It is particularly important to know, precisely, why the Nazis hated the Jews. Racism alone cannot explain the virulence of Nazi anti-Semitism. What did they see in the Jews that they thought was so inferior? What was the Jewish legacy that, in their mind, so poisoned Western culture? What were the Aryan ideals that the Nazis sought to restore, once the Jews and their influence were purged from Western culture?

The fascists aligned themselves not only against the Jews but against what the Jews contributed to Western civilization. A transcendent God, who reveals a transcendent moral law, was anathema to the fascists” [Gene Edward Veith, Jr., Modern Fascism: Liquidating the Judeo-Christian Worldview, p. 13].

By killing the Jews, Hitler intended to kill the God of the Bible.

Of Protestant Christianity, Hitler wrote:

“Protestantism… combats with the greatest hostility any attempt to rescue the nation from the embrace of its most mortal enemy, since its attitude toward the Jews just happens to be more or less dogmatically established. Yet here we are facing the question without whose solution all other attempts at a German reawakening or resurrection are and remain absolutely senseless and impossible” (Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 113).

Hitler talked about solving the “church problem” after he’d solved the “Jewish problem.” He said:

“The war is going to be over. The last great task of our age will be to solve the church problem. It is only then that the nation will be wholly secure” (Hitler’s Tabletalk, December 1941).

Hitler boasted that “I have six divisions of SS composed of men absolutely indifferent in matters of religion. It doesn’t prevent them from going to their deaths with serenity in their souls.”

Martin Bormann, head of the Party Chancellery and private secretary of the Fuhrer, said pointedly:

“National socialist and Christian concepts cannot be reconciled. The Christian churches build on the ignorance of people and are anxious so far as possible to preserve this ignorance in as large a part of the populace as possible; only in this way can the Christian churches retain their power. In contrast, national socialism rests on scientific foundations” (cited in Ernst Helmreich, The German Churches Under Hitler, p. 303).

At a Nazi rally a speaker proclaimed: “Who was greater, Christ or Hitler? Christ had at the time of his death twelve apostles, who, however, did not even remain true to him. Hitler, however, today has a folk of 70 million behind him. We cannot tolerate that another organization [i.e., the church] is established alongside of us that has a different spirit than ours. We must crush it. National socialism in all earnestness says: I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

Nazism was pagan to its very core. Carl Jung (a onetime fascist sympathizer himself) described Nazism as the revival of Wotan, who had been suppressed by Christianity but now was released. Germany was being possessed by its archetypal god. (Odajnyk, Jung and Politics, p. 87-89). The Farmer’s Almanac of 1935, published by the Ministry of Agriculture, replaced the Christian holidays with commemoration days for Wotan and Thor. And Good Friday was replaced with a memorial for those killed by Charlemagne in his efforts to convert the Saxons.

In addition, at the very heart of the Nazi’s race programs and at the center of the Holocaust was the belief in atheistic Darwinian evolution. The principle rationale for the Holocaust was that the Jews were biologically inferior, and interfered with the Nazi scientists’ efforts to aid evolution by creating a master race.

Listen to these words and tell me who wrote them:

“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.”

It was none other than Charles Darwin himself (Darwin, C.R., “The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex,” [1871], John Murray: London, 1874, Second Edition, 1922, reprint, pp.241-242).  Charles Darwin literally predicted that someone would come along and extend his Darwinism to its logical conclusion – and thus literally predicted both the Holocaust AND the motivations FOR the Holocaust.

Charles Darwin spake as a prophet, and Adolf Hitler was the messiah who fulfilled the demonic prophecy.

But it wasn’t just the Jew that Hitler was willing to exterminate as being “biologically inferior.”  Adolf Hitler – who had made the Holocaust of the “biologically unfit” and “sub human” Jew the centerpiece of his campaign to create a “Master” Aryan race – ultimately made his “master race” the victim of his hateful Darwinian views:

“If the German Volk is not strong enough and is not sufficiently prepared to offer its own blood for its existence, it should cease to exist and be destroyed by a stronger power.”

How is that not the World War II that Adolf Hitler started not being explained into a test of Darwinism that the German people had to pass to justify their existence?  The simple FACT of the matter is this: that Adolf Hitler thought in entirely Darwinian terms.  He decreed the Jew had failed the test of Darwinism, and believed that if the German people could not prevail in his war that THEY TOO should be exterminated.

Why is this so?

Gene Edward Veith points out that Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection had implications far beyond biology.  What must be true for nature must likewise be true for the individual and society.  If nature progresses by competition, struggle, and the victory of the strong over the weak, then clearly all progress must come the same way (unless we are not part of the natural system, which would mean that we were the product of divine Creation).  According to Zeev Sternhall, social Darwinism in Nazi Germany “stripped the human personality of its sacramental dignity.  It made no distinction between the physical life and the social life, and conceived of the human condition in terms of an unceasing struggle, whose natural outcome was the survival of the fittest” [Sternhall, “Fascist Ideology,” in Fascism: A Reader’s Guide: Analyses, Interpretations, Bibliography, p. 322].

Similarly, Sternhall pointed out how scientific positivism “felt the impact of social Darwinism, and underwent a profound change.  In the latter half of the [19th]century its emphasis on deliberate and rational choice as the determining factor in human behavior gave way to new notions of heredity, race, and environment” [Sternhall, 322].

“Nazism was ‘applied biology,’ stated Hitler deputy Rudolf Hess.”

Nazism was also a direct attack against Christianity and Christian humanity.

Friedrich Nietzsche blamed Christianity, which he described as a creation of the Jews, for the denial of life that was represented in Christian morality.  Gene Edward Veith points out that, in his attack on Judeo-Christian morality, Nietzsche:

“attacked the Christian value of love.  Notions of compassion and mercy, he argued, favor the weak and the unfit, thereby breeding more weakness.  Nature is less sentimental, but ultimately kinder, in allowing the weak to die off.  The ideals of Christian benevolence cause the unfit to flourish, while those who are fit are burdened by guilt and are coerced by the moral system to serve those who are beneath them” [Veith, Modern Fascism, p. 82].

Nietzsche, epitomizing the spirit of Darwinism as applied to ethics, wrote:

We are deprived of strength when we feel pity … Pity makes suffering contagious….  Pity crosses the law of development, which is nature’s law of selection.  It preserves what is right for destruction; it defends those who have been disinherited and condemned by life; and by the abundance of the failures of all kinds which it keeps alive, it gives life itself a gloomy and questionable aspect” [Nietzsche, “The Antichrist”].

In short, the Christian ethic of compassion is a kind of sentimentality that violates the laws of nature, in which the strong thrive and the weak die out.

Speaking of this new, Nazi, anti-Christian, Darwinian view of morality and ethics, Reichmaster Alfred Rosenberg said:

“Justice is what the Aryan man deems just.  Unjust is what he so deems” [Alfred Rosenberg, as quoted in Victor Farias, Heidegger and Nazism, 1989, pp. 205-206].

“Justice” for the Jew according to the Aryan mind possessed by Darwinism meant extermination as racially inferior and biological unfit to exist.

Thus, whatever you might want to say about whether Hitler was an atheist or not, his Nazism was inherently opposed to Judeo-Christianity, opposed to Judeo-Christian monotheism, and opposed to Judeo-Christian transcendent morality. The spirituality that resulted was intrinsically pagan, and inherently anti-Christ and anti-Christian.

And in stark contrast to Adolf Hitler’s big government totalitarian Nazi atheism, here’s what our religious founding father’s believed:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

A 1954 Air Force Training Manuel had this commentary on these great words which founded the greatest nation in the history of the world:

“The idea uppermost in the minds of men who founded the United States was that each and every human being was important. They were convinced that the importance of the individual did not come from any grant of the state, that the importance of the individual did not come from any position that he had achieved nor from any power he had acquired nor from any wealth he had amassed.

“They knew that the importance of man came from the very source of his life. Because man was made in the image and likeness of God, he had a destiny to achieve. And because he had a destiny to achieve, he had the inalienable right and the inherent freedom to achieve it” (FTAF Manual 50-1).

Thus the question, “If God doesn’t exist, who issues rights to man?” becomes profoundly important.  Because the answer is, “Whoever has the power to issue those rights.”

It becomes the State which issues rights to man. And, welcome to come and crush the human spirit, next dictator.

Postscript: you can go here to see how this question about who issues rights to man is becoming increasingly important right here in the USA.

Obama Hosts Therapy Session For Disillusioned Supporters

Even Democrats are now looking deep into Obama’s empty suit – and finding him wanting:

Disappointed Supporters Question Obama
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: September 20, 2010

WASHINGTON — It was billed as “Investing In America,” a live televised conversation between President Obama and American workers, students, business people and retirees on the state of the economy, a kind of Wall Street to Main Street reality check.

But it sounded like a therapy session for disillusioned Obama supporters.

In question after question in Monday’s one-hour session, which took place at the Newseum here and was televised on CNBC, Mr. Obama was confronted by people who said, in short, that they had expected more from him. People from Main Street wanted to know if the American dream still lived for them. People from Wall Street complained that he was treating them like a piñata, “whacking us with the stick,” in the words of a former law school classmate of Mr. Obama’s who now runs a hedge fund.

“I’m exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle of change that I voted for,” said the first questioner, an African-American woman who identified herself as a chief financial officer, a mother and a military veteran. “I’ve been told that I voted for a man who was going to change things in a meaningful way for the middle class, and I’m waiting, sir, I’m waiting. I still don’t feel it yet.”

A 30-year-old law school graduate, Ted Brassfield, told Mr. Obama he had hoped to pursue a career in public service — like the president — but could barely pay the interest on his student loans, let alone think of getting married or starting a family.

“I was really inspired by you and your campaign and the message you brought, and that inspiration is dying away,” Mr. Brassfield said, adding, “What I really want to know is: Is the American dream dead for me?”

This is why liberals need about a gazillion shock treatments at maximum voltage to go along with their therapy: because they voted for a Marxist, and want to know if the American dream is dead for them.

The left is going to pitch Obama’s latest showing as an unmitigated success.  But that is only because their skulls are filled with a vile-smelling yellow-greenish pus rather than brains.

Tax Hikes On Rich Proven Moron-Stupid; Just Ask Maryland

When I was a kid we had two dogs – a cagey wire-hair dachshund, and a typically elitist poodle.

Every single feeding was exactly the same. The dachshund would gobble down her food while the poodle stared at her bowl in haughty disdain.

Then, at some point right about the time when the dachshund had finished eating all the food in her bowl, the poodle would decide that surely the dachshund’s food must be better, and that she’d rather eat it.

So she would go over to the dachshund’s bowl, only alas, there was nothing in it.

Meanwhile, the dachshund would circle over to the poodle’s bowl, and glomb down that food, too.

We had to feed the dogs separately, or that poodle would have literally starved to death. Because as smart as that dog could be in some ways, she was dumb as a box of rocks when it came to common sense. And she just never learned.

Read the following and tell me if you don’t see a similarity between that poodle and the Democrat Party:

MARCH 12, 2010
Maryland’s Mobile Millionaires
Income tax rates go up, rich taxpayers vanish.

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn is the latest Democrat to demand a tax increase, this week proposing to raise the state’s top marginal individual income tax rate to 4% from 3%. He’d better hope this works out better than it has for Maryland.

We reported in May that after passing a millionaire surtax nearly one-third of Maryland’s millionaires had gone missing, thus contributing to a decline in state revenues. The politicians in Annapolis had said they’d collect $106 million by raising its income tax rate on millionaire households to 6.25% from 4.75%. In cities like Baltimore and Bethesda, which apply add-on income taxes, the top tax rate with the surcharge now reaches as high as 9.3%—fifth highest in the nation. Liberals said this was based on incomplete data and that rich Marylanders hadn’t fled the state.

Well, the state comptroller’s office now has the final tax return data for 2008, the first year that the higher tax rates applied. The number of millionaire tax returns fell sharply to 5,529 from 7,898 in 2007, a 30% tumble. The taxes paid by rich filers fell by 22%, and instead of their payments increasing by $106 million, they fell by some $257 million. […]

A Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysis of federal tax return data on people who migrated from one state to another found that Maryland lost $1 billion of its net tax base in 2008 by residents moving to other states. That’s income that’s now being taxed and is financing services in Virginia, South Carolina and elsewhere. […]

Thanks in part to its soak-the-rich theology, Maryland still has a $2 billion deficit and Montgomery County is $760 million in the red. Governor Martin O’Malley’s office tells us he wants the higher rates to expire “as scheduled at the end of 2010.” But there are bills in both chambers of the legislature to extend the surcharge. The state’s best hope is that politicians in other states are as self-destructive as those in Annapolis.

I swear, you’d be better off putting my poodle in charge of food collection than you would be putting Democrats in charge of anything.

We’ve seen this fundamental, profound ignorance of the plan simple fact that rich people are not stupid, and that they change their behavior when they are hit with taxes in a manner that enormously refutes the most basic Democrat presuppositions:

Starting in 1991, Washington levied a 10% luxury tax on cars valued above $30,000, boats above $100,000, jewelry and furs above $10,000 and private planes above $250,000. Democrats like Ted Kennedy and then-Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell crowed publicly about how the rich would finally be paying their fair share and privately about convincing President George H.W. Bush to renounce his “no new taxes” pledge.

But it wasn’t long before even these die-hard class warriors noticed they’d badly missed their mark. The taxes took in $97 million less in their first year than had been projected — for the simple reason that people were buying a lot fewer of these goods. Boat building, a key industry in Messrs. Mitchell and Kennedy’s home states of Maine and Massachusetts, was particularly hard hit. Yacht retailers reported a 77% drop in sales that year, while boat builders estimated layoffs at 25,000. With bipartisan support, all but the car tax was repealed in 1993, and in 1996 Congress voted to phase that out too. January 1 was disappearance day.

Over and over again, Democrats keep making the same mistake. They are continually amazed that they keep getting the same results. And then they fiercely insist that those results won’t apply the next time.

The Maryland “tax the rich” example has been demonstrated again and again.

Take New York. Please, as the comic says:

Oct. 5 (Bloomberg) — New York State’s income tax revenue has dropped 36 percent from the same period in 2008, Governor David Paterson said, “frustrating” his attempt to close a projected $2.1 billion budget deficit.

“We added personal income tax, which we thought would make the falloff 10 percent to 15 percent,” Paterson, a Democrat, said on CNBC today, referring to $5.2 billion in new or increased taxes. “This is what is so frustrating. It’s still 36 percent, meaning our revenues fell more in 2009 than they did in 2008.”

Surprise. You’re a dumbass, in a state filled with dumbasses.

Did you confuse New York state with New York City? Fine, let’s talk about New York City:

Charging that it’s “easy to rile against the rich,” Mayor Bloomberg warned yesterday that the income-tax increases being considered for the wealthiest New Yorkers would drive them from the city.

“One percent of the households that file in this city pay something like 50 percent of the taxes. In the city, that’s something like 40,000 people. If a handful left, any raise would make it revenue neutral,” the billionaire mayor said on his weekly radio show.

“The question is what’s fair. If 1 percent are paying 50 percent of the taxes, you want to make it even more? Anybody below that 1 percent, no taxes?”

Legislators in Albany are considering state income-tax hikes for households earning from $250,000 to $1 million to close a budget gap next year of at least $13 billion.

Rush Limbaugh moved from New York to Florida because of the tax burden. That move alone will cost New York $50 million. And you probably can add the loss of LeBron James to that fiasco. And how many average Joes is it going to take to make up for the loss of just those two men’s tax revenues? For no other reason than that New York was so greedy and so stupid that they demanded everything and therefore got nothing.

Take California versus Texas, with California’s punitive liberal-devised tax rates losing big time compared with Texas pro-conservative taxes:

Don’t look now, but there’s a new War Between the States under way, and the south is winning. The most dramatic winner is Texas. The cover story of a recent (July 9) issue of The Economist compared California with Texas and implied that the Golden State is falling apart, while the Lone Star State is leading the nation out of the recession. Then, in a mid-July issue of National Review, Kevin D. Williamson said the nation is “Going Alamo,” with new jobs and businesses tipping southward, draining California, the Midwest, and Northeast of their former economic glory.

One indicator of the trend, according to Williamson, is the cost of renting a U-Haul truck for a one-way move. From Austin, Texas to San Francisco, California, the cost is $900, while a one-way rental from San Francisco to Austin is $3,000, due to the exodus of trucks from California.

All this makes sense. We are a mobile nation. People can move easily enough (especially if they rent), and capital can move even faster. Capital, jobs, and businesses will go where they are most welcome, while capital leaves places where it is punished by higher taxes and over-regulation.

And lo and behold, Texas, with its low taxes, has created 70% of all US jobs since 2008. But liberals don’t want job creation, for all their bogus rhetoric; they want Marxism. They want class warfare. They want redistributionism. They want to “spread the wealth around.” No matter how ruinous it is. And no matter how badly it hurts the little people, who keep falling for class warfare demagoguery the way Charlie Brown keeps falling for Lucy’s promise to hold the football for him.

I wrote the following nearly a year ago:

Americans in high tax states are voting with their feet and leaving. And the states with the highest income taxes such as New York, California, and Hawaii, are facing the biggest revenue shortfalls.

In spite of being warned that liberal class-warfare tax-the-rich-to-extinction policies would lead to Dodo-bird results, New York attacked the rich with a 31% income tax hike. And all they have to show for their eat-the-rich tax policies is record revenue shortfalls.

And how do Democrats react? Do they acknowledge proven, factual, repeatedly-documented reality? They don’t have it in them, anymore than my idiot poodle had it in her. Rather, they insist on performing the same failed experiment again in Illinois. And all that’s going to happen is that the rich will move or shelter their money, such that an even bigger tax burden ends up falling on the working class whom Democrats fallaciously claim to be helping.

And as foolish, as idiotic, as suicidal as putting Democrats in charge of a state is, the only thing worse is to put them in charge of the federal government.

Democrats have been baying to increase the taxes of the rich across the nation even though the plain, simple fact is that tax CUTS raise revenues; they have ALWAYS raised revenues every single time they’ve been tried.

Democrats were so determined to impose tax hikes on the rich that they are willing to ensure that NOBODY gets any tax cuts. The bi-partisan compromise vote was all on the Republicans’ side. And Democrats were afraid to allow a straight up-or-down vote on allowing tax cuts for all Americans. They preferred huge tax hikes for Americans, instead.

You can paint string yellow and sell it to these people as gold. And then you can do it again, and again, and again.

Scarecrow Alert: Failure-in-Chief Can’t Fill Medium Venue Even With Fire-Sale Discount Seats

It’s shocking, how far Obama has fallen.

I remember the world’s most arrogant narcissist puffing himself up on a “Temple of Barack” stage during his acceptance speech.

I knew from the get-go that the man was a failure and a fraud waiting to ruin America.  And even I never dreamed Obama would fall this far, this fast.

Obama’s Fire Sale
by Gail Sheehy Info

Six weeks before the election, President Obama couldn’t fill the ballroom at the Roosevelt Hotel, despite cheap tickets on offer. And then he was met by hecklers.

Who would have thought that six weeks before a cliffhanger election, President Obama would have to reach down to the D list to fill a room to listen to him? Most of us low rollers arrived early to see President Obama up close and personal. Our tickets for the general reception at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York were only $100. Some thought the email invitation was a joke. Some bought tickets for $50 from their desperate Democratic committeeman. Some bought the same day.

“It’s Filene’s,” enthused Sharon Douglas, reliving her heady days as a volunteer in Obama’s 2008 campaign. The doorman beckoned conspiratorially and ushered us out one door and in through another to stand at the back of the $500 line. Their crowd came from Wall Street in car services and killer heels. Our crowd came on subways in flats and scuffed teacher’s shoes.

Only after I received four email invitations and two personal calls imploring me to come did I call Speaker Pelosi’s office to check the admission price. “You mean, to be in the room with the President of the United States is now on fire sale for $100?”

”Yup.”

“How long do we get?”

“Half hour.”

“How many $100 givers have rsvp’d?”

“Mmmm 250.”

“Do we need to line up early to get in?”

“That’s not necessary. Everybody  will get in.”

And everybody did—450 people in a room that holds 650.  Even Obama’s fire sale didn’t sell out.

Obama can’t fill a medium-sized venue with Democrats now.  That’s what an embarrassment he has become.  To his own party.  After only 18 months in office.

Obama was a skyrocketing celebrity just a matter of months ago.  Now he’s a lot more like Pee Wee Herman.  You know, Pee Wee Herman after getting arrested for playing with himself in an adult theater.

By way of analogy, the “adult theater” has been the economic meltdown that has dramatically worsened under Obama’s watch, with the masturbation being the effect his asinine policies have had on the crisis.

Obama is down to the ‘D’ list.  And that ‘D’ aint for ‘Democrat’ in this case.  It’s for ‘near persona non grata.’

But don’t feel too sorry for Barry Hussein.  Pretty soon he’ll have a whole lot of Republicans willing to stand in line to thank him (without shaking his hand, of course) for being the Agent Orange to the tree of the Democrat Party.