It’s the Culture, Stupid

By Tom Tancredo | May 25, 2012 | WND

Exclusive: Tom Tancredo asserts election is about worldview clash, not economics

There is a growing realization in political quarters that there’s more to the resiliency of the Obama regime and his re-election chances than voters’ shifting priorities or occasional upticks in the nation’s economy. But the resiliency of the Obama constituency should not be a mystery: It’s the culture, stupid.

Some very large segments of the population are immune from any evidence or real-world news of Obama’s failures. The challenge for Republican strategists and Romney advisers is that this problem is far deeper than traditional Democratic constituencies such as organized labor and ethnic minorities. The problem for Republican strategists is that they have great difficulty thinking outside the box of conventional economic issues. They fear “social issues” – which are, of course, cultural issues – and have no contingency plan for dealing with them.

The bad news for Romney is that at least 40 percent of the electorate shares much of Obama’s worldview; their support for Obama does not depend on the direction of the monthly unemployment numbers. That’s not a weak base to build on, and the Republican task of finding 51 percent who will resist the free-lunch demagoguery of the left grows more difficult with each election cycle.

A New Declaration of Independence

By Eileen F. Toplansky | April 28, 2012 | American Thinker

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary to ensure that a President, who has led the country to near ruin and who is working to discard the basic principles upon which this Great Country rests, be peaceably removed it is incumbent upon us that we submit the reasons to the people.

Without any in-depth research or vetting about his background, Barack Hussein Obama was elected the 44^th president of the United States.  There were voices of caution who early on exposed Obama’s connections to former terrorist Bill Ayers, anti-American vilifier Reverend Wright, crook Tony Rezko, and anti-Semite Rashid Khalidi, but they were laughed at as the people allowed themselves to be demagogued on hope and change.  Evidence continues to suggest that Barack Obama’s long-form birth certificate is, indeed, a forgery.  This would make his presidential eligibility suspect.

Thus, the American people are at a critical watershed moment in our history.  The facts are in; Obama’s ideology and core principles are now public and exist for all to see.  We can no longer claim ignorance; we can no longer be naïve; we can no longer deny what is patently before us.  The record of this current president is a “history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these United States.  To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.”

Mr. Obama has “given himself the powers to declare martial law[.]  It is a sweeping power grab that should worry every American.”  Thus, “Barack Obama is very dangerous, the apotheosis of an insidious strain of authoritarianism that destroys from within.”  In a statement published on December 31, 2011, Mr. Obama states that “[t]oday I have signed into law H.R. 1540, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2012.”  Though he claims that he has “signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists,” it was Mr. Obama who “demanded the removal of any and all protections for US citizens and legal residents.”

And like King George III, Obama has now established the distinct possibility of placing “[s]tanding armies without the Consent of our legislatures” — although sadly, in this case, the Senate passed this unwholesome disgrace.  King George III would be pleased.

In fact, Mr. Obama sees fit to bypass the “pesky” Constitution whenever it suits him, thus ignoring limited-government tenets which were at the core of the Founding Fathers’ belief system.  Thus, the NDAA detention mandate allows indefinite military detention not just to foreigners; now “U.S. citizens are included in the grant of detention authority.”

In fact, should Mr. Obama be re-elected to a second term, “our rights to speech, religion and property, and to privacy in our persons and homes, will be transformed.”  Mr. Obama has already “hectored Christianity on matters of conscience.”  Through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as ObamaCare, Mr. Obama is forcing Catholic institutions to pay for insurance covering contraceptives.  Why, when “religious liberty was weighed against access to birth control, did freedom lose?” — a clear intrusion into the first of the five protections of the First Amendment.  Bishop Daniel Jenky has likened President Obama’s health care policies to the attacks on the Catholic church by Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin of yesteryear.  Dare we go down that totalitarian road again?

The onslaught against free speech has been heightened because of the “cooperation between [Mr. Obama] and the OIC or Organization of Islamic Cooperation.”  The “Obama administration stands ‘united’ with the OIC on speech issues,” thus silencing Arab reformers and anyone who makes any allegedly negative remarks about Islam.  The “repressive practices” of the OIC member-nations speak volumes about their restrictions on free speech.  Hence, “the encroachment of de facto blasphemy restrictions in the West threatens free speech and the free exchange of ideas.”  That an American president would threaten this most fundamental right is yet another resounding reason why he needs to be removed from office.

In December of 2009, Nat Hentoff, a nationally renowned authority on the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights, asserted that “[i]f congressional Democrats succeed in passing their health-care ‘reform’ measure to send to the White House for President Obama’s signature, then they and he are determining your health decisions[.]” Thus, “these functionaries making decisions about your treatment and, in some cases, about the extent of your life span, have never met you[.]  Is this America?”  Hentoff concludes his piece with the revelation “I’m scared and I do mean to scare you.  We do not elect the president and Congress to decide how short our lives will be.”

Thus, we still hold “these truths to be self-evident, that all [people] 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.”  And “whenever any Form of Government becomes  destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles … as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”  We do not declare violent revolution but do demand the secure right to change the government through the ballot box.

But even this fundamental right is being seriously eroded as the Department of Justice openly and arrogantly dismisses genuine cases of voter intimidation with nary a word of concern by Barack Obama.  Although there is visual proof and  evidence of threats to the voting public as well as exhortations of death threats to a man on trial, Attorney General Eric Holder turns a blind eye.

By his selective indifference, Mr. Obama has created a racially divisive atmosphere in America.  He continues to promote this hateful attitude wherein the civil rights progress made in this country for all its citizens is ignored.  Surely, Mr. Obama has “excited domestic insurrections amongst us” as he engages in racial division, class warfare, and phony gender wars.  If Mr. Obama is, indeed, so interested in the rights of women, then why does he support Islamic sharia law, which demands second-class status for women?  These diversions serve to stir up resentments; unfortunately, they are successful in obfuscating the shameless actions of this 44^th president.

Mr. Obama is not content with taking the country down the path to “European socialism.”  His centralized control of the health care industry, his increases in entitlement programs, his redistribution of capital — in fact, his sweeping regulations that give the government new authority to control the entire financial sector — are reminiscent of Karl Marx’s 10-Point Agenda, and although communism was unknown in 1775, the signatories of the Declaration knew of the absolute power of the monarchy and would see through the oligarchic nature of this “ism.”

Amazingly, Mr. Obama has assured Russian leaders (who have gained their power through rigged elections) that American concessions are coming their way, but they [the Russian leaders] must wait because he is seeking re-election and he dare not tell his own people of his true intentions.  What credible reason would a loyal American president have for weakening American and allies’ defense systems?  During the open microphone conversation between Obama and Medvedev, a puppet of KGB Putin, the world learned whose interests Obama was truly serving.  Surely, this is “enough to chill friends and allies, democrats and dissidents, all over the world.”

Furthermore, Obama has “obstructed the Administration of Justice[,]” instead pitting one group against the other through “waivers.”  If ObamaCare is so laudable, why extend waivers in the first place?  In fact, it is yet another example of how manipulative Mr. Obama is when he tries to make the people “dependent on his will alone.”

Mr. Obama has ignored the laws of our country to impose an arbitrary and capricious rule of law by outside forces.  He finds it more expedient to pit the federal government against an American state which is trying only to enforce federal immigration law.  To this end, Mr. Obama has seen fit to “subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution[,]” which was so clearly enumerated in the Declaration of Independence as reason to reject King George III.   By issuing a Universal Period Review (UPR), the first of its kind, Mr. Obama has given the United Nations the right to dictate to Arizona.  Thus, the “stakes for our national sovereignty have just been raised.”  Despotic countries of the United Nations have now been empowered to dictate how Americans should conduct themselves.  Is this not reminiscent of King George III “waging war against us”?

Moreover, the Obama State Department ordered the “suspension of routine border inspection procedures in order to whisk (Muslim Brotherhood) Islamists into our country.  Thus, Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party did not have to go through the normal procedures of inspection.  Recall that the Muslim Brotherhood’s mission statement is “Allah is our objective, the Prophet is our leader, the Koran is our law, Jihad is our way, and dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope. Allahu akbar!”  Negotiating with the Muslim Brotherhood is akin to negotiating with the dictator Hitler.  It is appeasement all the way.  Why does the Obama administration cavort with such people?  Does this not make him unfit to defend the interests of America?

Read the full article here.

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It Was the Power, Stupid!

By Victor Davis Hanson | April 22, 2012 | PJ Media

I. Power—Always Was and Always Will Be

In my dumber days, between 2001-2008, I used to wonder why the Left relentlessly hammered the war on terror (e.g., renditions, tribunals, predators, preventative detention, Patriot Act, intercepts, wiretaps, Guantanamo Bay) when these measures had not only proven quite useful in preventing another 9/11-like attack, but had been sanctioned by both the Congress and the courts. In those ancient times, I was not as cynical as I am now. So I assumed that Harold Koh and MoveOn.org, though mistaken, were worried about civil liberties, or measures that they felt were both illegal and without utility.

But, of course, the Obama (who attacked each and every element of the war on terror as a legislator and senator) Left never had any principled objection at all. Instead, whatever Bush was for, they were in Pavlovian fashion against. I can say that without a charge of cynicism, because after January 2009, Obama embraced or expanded every Bush-Cheney protocol that he inherited. In response, the anti-war Left simply kept silent, or indeed vanished, or went to work extending the anti-terrorism agenda. Guantanamo Bay, in other words, was a national sin until the mid-morning of January 20, 2009.

II. The Year 4

We are in the year four of our lord, when darkness was made light, the seas gently receded, and the planet cooled. In the space of 24 hours in January 2009 the world was turned upside down: massive deficits were no longer “unpatriotic”; 5% (heck, even 9%) unemployment was no longer to be seen as a “jobless recovery”; $4 plus gasoline no longer would become “intolerable.” Filibusters suddenly became ossified obstructionism. Recess appointments were now quite legitimate; lecturing the media about the myth of objective fairness was salutary. Pay-for-play time with the president was consulting; attacking the “unelected” courts was progressive. Voter fraud was not thugs eyeing polling monitors with clubs, but officials asking voters to present a picture ID—and mentioning any of these inconsistencies or writing about the Trostkyzation of American life was either racism or Palinism.

Around March 2008, the Ministry of Truth had issued new edicts about campaign financing, big Wall Street money, and the supposedly pernicious role of contributions: all bad if Bush trumped Kerry, all now good if Obama trumped McCain. So when Obama became the first candidate in the history of the law to renounce public campaign financing in order to shake down $1 billion, there was silence. The Left never really worried about Big Money, but only if more Big Money went to conservatives than to themselves. (Consider the current shameless money grubbing of Jon Corzine to raise cash for Obama after Corzine’s looting of thousands of individuals’ lifetime investments, or the shrillness over Mitt Romney’s supposed mansion in La Jolla juxtaposed to the prior silence about the Kerry mansions, the multiple Gore residences, or “John’s room,” as in the huge and crass Edwards estate.) What was interesting about Hilary Rosen was not her stupid thoughts on Ann Romney, but her cursus honorum that led to hired-gun riches by parlaying political contacts into commerce.

III. Tongue-tied Presidents

We can play this Orwellian game with almost everything these days. Take presidential cosmopolitanism and the Bush-as-oaf trope. The disdain was not for an inept president, but rather a simple means to destroy an ideological opponent. Why again the cynicism? Because the Left cares little that Barack Obama has no clue where particular islands in the news are and cannot even do political correctness right when he wishes to ingratiate himself to his South American hosts by wanting to trill the “Maldives.” We have a president who can say Talêban, drop the g’s in a black patois, and trill his Spanish words in front of Latin American hosts, but is off 8,000 miles in his geography.

Ditto “corpse-man,” the Austrian language, 57 states, and all the other parochialism and gaffes that remind us not only that it is hard being a president without making gaffes, but that it is especially hard as a conservative president when each gaffe is cited as proof of ignorance.

IV. So What?

What is going on? Two things, really. One, the media believes that the noble ends justify the tawdry means. So if it is a choice between emphasizing the latest Obama embarrassment by digging into the scary Fast and Furious, the “millions of green jobs” Solyndra insider giveaways, the Secret Service decadence, the GSA buffoonery, and the work while getting food stamps con in Washington OR endangering Obamacare and by extension “the children,” or the war to eliminate autism, or the right to breath clean air–well, why would one ever wish to derail all that by weakening a landmark progressive and his enlightened agenda?

Or for you more cynical readers, why would you wish to enervate the present comfortable culture in Washington in which the press and politics are at last one? Or why undermine the first African-American president, who is a constant reminder of our progressive advancement? Or why weaken our only chance some day to have open borders or gay marriage?

Two, the Left has always operated on the theory of medieval penance. We surely must assume that Warren Buffett has never had problems with the ethics of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. or had a company he controls sued by the IRS for back taxes. Why? Because he has confessed his sins, and accepted the faith and paid his tithe to the Church. Ditto a Bill Gates or a rich celebrity like Sean Penn or Oprah. In the relativism of the left, if the one-percenters will simply confess that their class is greedy and needs to pay their fair share—even if they are entirely cynical in the manner of GE’s Jeffrey Immelt and penance is written off as the cost of doing business—then they become exempt from the wages of them/us warfare and the “you want to kill the children” rhetoric.

V. Good and Bad Fat Cats

There is no difference in the way the Koch brothers or Exxon run their empires and the way that  GM, GE, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, and Google do. But the former are enemies of the people, while the latter are protectors who have have confessed to their bishops and agreed to mouth doctrine and thereby obtained penance to make as much money as they want and to spend it as they damn well please. Suddenly in America after 2009 there are good and bad cable networks, good and bad celebrities, good and bad CEOs, good and bad sports teams (ask Lovie Smith), good and bad states, good and bad everything—not adjudicated on the actual basis of behavior, but rather on whether some are willing to go to reeducation camp, admit their errors, and join the effort to clean the air and feed the kids.

Or do any of you believe there are not Google “corporate jet setters,” or Facebook “fat cats,” or GE executives who didn’t know when it was time not to profit, or Microsoft grandees who ignored the point at which they had made enough money? (For that matter, why could not Barack Obama have made $550,000 last year; had he not reached the point where he didn’t need any more cash?)

Read the full article here.

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Law Professor: Zimmerman Prosecutor Unethical and Politically Motivated [Video]

Legal Expert Dershowitz Tells Beck: Zimmerman Charges ‘Unethical’ and ‘About Politics’

By Tiffany Gabbay | April 24, 2012 | The Blaze

During Tuesday morning’s radio broadcast, renown legal professor Alan Dershowitz joined Glenn Beck and his co-hosts to discuss the legal intricacies of second degree murder charges, particularly as they relate to George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin case. The veteran law expert asserted unequivocally that the evidence in the case does not support the charge of second degree murder and that it is “unethical” behavior, “not incompetence,” on the part of the prosecution to have pursed such a charge. 

Dershowitz explained that in order to substantiate second degree murder, pure malice and “extreme disregard” for human life must be evident and that nothing present in the affidavit submitted met those elements. He added that the prosecution would have had to show Zimmerman made a conscious decision “to kill the young man because he hated him.. or didn’t value his life.”

The legal professor also explained that, given the pictures of Zimmerman’s bloodied head and the facts of the case known thus far, a second degree murder charge is nearly impossible to prosecute. With this in mind, Dershowitz concluded that the prosecution must have purposely withheld evidence for political purposes in order to pursue a second degree murder charge.

“The blood is a smoking gun,” he stated emphatically.

According to Dershowitz, in Florida, a second degree murder charge is the same as first degree murder except for the fact that it does not carry the death penalty. This is not the kind of case where second degree murder “is charged by ethical and rational prosecutors based on the evidence.“ He added that withholding evidence is unlawful and reminded that ”this is not a poker game.”

Read the full article here.

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The Ryan Test: Demagoguery Versus Ideas

August 12, 2012 By John Malcolm Leave a Comment

By Jonathan S. Tobin | August 11, 2012 | Commentary Magazine As John wrote earlier today, liberals are convinced that Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan to be his running mate offers them a golden opportunity to savage the Republicans about the Wisconsin congressman’s budget plans. Predictably, the New York Times delivered one of the first such salvos in its editorial posted […]

Smoking Obama’s Crack and Yearning for the Mud

August 12, 2012 By John Malcolm Leave a Comment

By Vanderleun | August 10, 2012 | American Digest [From 2008. Only the names have been changed because the target has changed.] This downward flight of intellectuals has been going on ever since the Romantic movement began its counter-revolution a couple hundred years ago. No matter how much they flap their lips it’s a fall, not […]