Bludgeoned, Bloodied, and Bowed

By William L. Garvin

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.  The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie.  It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”  Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister

Now that the government shutdown and world threatening crisis has temporarily ended, it’s time to take stock of what we have learned.  First, if a president refuses to negotiate, refuses to make any concession, refuses to enact legislation that would protect the most vulnerable among us, it is principled.  However, if the opposition offers compromise after compromise and concession after concession, they are obstructionists and the moral equivalent of al Qaeda and the Taliban.

When Republicans offer to fully fund the government in exchange for delaying the individual mandate of Obamacare for one year, they are at best anarchists and at worst racists.  Ignore the fact that every poll shows the majority of Americans do not approve of Obamacare.  Ignore the fact that Kathleen Sebelius and Health and Human Services spent three years and over $500 million to build a website that doesn’t work.  Ignore the fact that seventy percent of Americans were happy with their health insurance.  Ignore the fact that the president said we would have an average decrease in premium costs of $2,500 per year but we are facing continued increases in both premiums and deductibles with fewer options.   Ignore the fact that the president said we could keep our doctors but that is not true for millions of Americans.  Ignore the fact that the president unilaterally changes the law by carving out special treatment for his cronies and supporters.  Ignore the fact that Congress does not have to live under the law they are imposing on others.

We’ve also learned that Harry Reid would rather sacrifice children enrolled in National Institute of Health clinical trials than consider funding by Republicans on a matter of political principle.  We’ve learned that the national parks and memorials do not belong to the people but to the president.  He can now close them at will and employ armed guards against the citizenry.  Members of his party have even suggested martial law.  He can take his ball and go home by blocking access to open air memorials and blocking veterans from the site that citizens built specifically to honor them.  Of course, as Nancy Pelosi noted, he can also open them to gatherings of illegal immigrants if it suits his whim and political purpose.  We have also learned that patriotic Americans, like the Fisher House, will step forward to care for families of our warriors who die in battle when the president and the Secretary of Defense default on their obligations in reprehensible and immoral fashion.

We’ve learned that Thomas Jefferson should be ignored when he said “I, however, place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared.”  We’ve learned that Senator Obama was just kidding when he said:  “Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership.”  We’ve learned it’s okay for him to vote against raising the debt limit when it was “only” $9 trillion but demand another increase even after it’s soared to $17 trillion under his leadership!  We’ve learned that after exceeding the first ever trillion dollar deficit level (for four years in a row!), you can claim to be a fiscal conservative by finally not exceeding that trillion dollar level this year.

We’ve learned that when George Bush’s approval rating drops to 37%, it’s a crisis of confidence but when Barack Obama drops to the same level, it’s a non-news event.  It’s apparently not news when only 13% of Americans think we are on the right track and 78% think everyone in congress should be dismissed.  It’s also not news when Harry Reid has the lowest approval rating of the four congressional leaders.  It’s also not news when we have the highest percentage of citizens living in poverty since the War on Poverty began back in 1965!

We’ve also learned that when you believe the government should not spend more than it has, that government policies should support free market capitalism, that the Constitution should be the supreme law of the land, and that the United States is an exceptional country, you are either an anarchist, terrorist, bigot, racist, sexist, misogynist, or quite likely, all of the above.  We’ve learned they have no shame in repeating the big lie over and over and over…. 

Presidential Petulance and Pettiness

By William L. Garvin

 

There have been seventeen previous shutdowns during tenures of five presidents.  It wasn’t until the current eighteenth shutdown that we have a president so enamored with himself, his presumed intellectual superiority, and a complicit media bolstered popularity, that he refuses to negotiate in any way, shape or form.  He even belies his professed constitutional law proficiencies by unilaterally changing “settled law” with executive orders then relying on a “settled law” argument to dispense with opposition proposals.  Even more troubling is his unseemly display of presidential petulance and pettiness that is a national and international embarrassment.

 

It is helpful to review legislative history in order to more fully understand the continued opposition to the “train wreck” known as Obamacare.  First look at the Social Security Act of 1935.  It was passed in the House with the support of 89% of Democrats and 79% of the Republicans.  The Senate followed suit with 87% of Democrats and 64% Republicans.  How about the Medicare Act of 1965?  In the House, there was 81% Democrat and 50% Republican support; the Senate was 84% Democrat and 41% Republican.  While these bills enjoyed strong bipartisan support, such was not the case with Obamacare.  In the middle of the night, without having read the 2,000 plus page bill, House Speaker and presidential sock puppet Nancy Pelosi forced an 87% Democrat and ZERO percent Republican passage.  Likewise, with senatorial chicanery, i.e., reconciliation, Harry Reid strong armed a 100% Democrat and ZERO percent Republican passage.

 

The typical, knee jerk reaction of liberals is to trot out the canard of racism when they complain about the one-sided Obamacare vote.  Look at the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  In the House, 80% of Republicans voted for the act as did 61% of Democrats.  In the Senate, 82% of Republicans were in support along with 69% of Democrats.  Yet, in an astounding display of revisionist history, the OCD Democrat Party calls the GOP racist!  Progressive selective amnesia kicks in by forgetting that the governors blocking the integration of schools were Democrats and the Ku Klux Klan was affiliated with the Democrat Party, not the GOP.

 

So much for the past, let’s look at the sordid present.  Republicans think that Obamacare is bad for the country on moral, religious, and constitutional grounds.  While elements of the act have merit, it is increasingly obvious that giving the government control and involvement in one-sixth of the economy is turning out to be the disaster that the Democrat Obamacare author predicted.  While Republicans prefer to repeal Obamacare, they have compromised with many alternative proposals.  They have offered to fully fund the government and scaled back Obamacare challenges from repealing to defunding to delaying to treating everyone equally by eliminating unconstitutional exemptions to eliminating the medical device tax (which everyone seems to concede is a very bad idea).  Harry “the Undertaker” Reid has not only buried every single House Republican bill but has also refused to attend or appoint anyone to attend a conference committee.  Reid preferred to shut down the entire government rather than modify any aspect of Obamacare…and he did.  Keep in mind that the law was already modified by executive order to grant exclusions to congress, their staff and big corporations.   The Secretary of HHS has issued so many waivers that they won’t even list them anymore!

 

Continuing the campaign of presidential pettiness, Reid the Undertaker also buried a House bill to fund national parks and memorials.  Acting with unusual speed (as if they had received direct orders from the President!), the park service erected barriers in front of the open air, 24/7 World War II Memorial and threatened to arrest the WW II vets who were arriving on Honor Flights!  Open air memorials have never been closed during previous shutdowns.  The Obama administration spent more time, money, and resources erecting the “Barry-cades” than it takes to maintain the memorial!  Furthermore, the Commander In Chief spent more time, money, and resources keeping American veterans out of their memorial than he did in rescuing Americans from terrorists in Benghazi. 

 

Mustering up faux outrage, Reid also complained about children with cancer not being able to get into the National Institute of Health clinical trials.  The Republican House immediately passed a bill fully funding NIH.  As usual, the Undertaker buried it.  When asked if he would pass it if it would save even one child, he coldly queried “why would I do that?”  If there is ever government accountability (oxymoron?), that should be the epitaph on the tombstone of a political career.  It can be buried next to the hopes of a presidential aspirant whose headstone reads “what difference does it make?”  These are shameful moments in American history and a frightening glimpse into the Obama/Reid/Pelosi soul and character.

Lionize or Demonize?

 

By William L. Garvin

 

Political pundits lionize or demonize along party lines.  The mainstream media lionizes or demonizes according to progressive ideological protocols.  It appears as if they no longer even want to pretend to be objective in their analysis of happenings in the world.

 

Take the comparative coverage of Wendy Davis and Ted Cruz as an object lesson.  To the leftist press, Wonderful Wendy and her legion of supporters were “courageous,” “brave,” “remarkable,” “heroic” and channeling the “anger of millions.”  Little coverage was given to the chants of “hail Satan” and “F---the church.”  Even the Church of Satan repudiated their “irreverent” chants!  Sparse coverage was devoted to Wendy followers who carried jars of urine, feces, paint and sported tampons as jewelry.  Did you even hear of the death threats being made to Texas officials or the voodoo dolls being made of the Texas governor?  As for her “tilting at windmill” cause, Ms. Davis wanted no restrictions on abortions after 20 weeks even though the pro-life bill was overwhelmingly supported by the Texas legislature, the governor, and Texans in general.  As an aside, did you notice that throughout the American fascination with William and Kate’s pregnancy there was only a “Royal Baby”; there was never a “Royal Fetus”?

 

Maybe if Ted Cruz would have worn pink tennis shoes, he would have been shown a little more liberal love in the media.  He spoke for 21 hours compared to Wendy’s eleven but his efforts were a “big waste of time” according to Harry Reid.  Of course, Harry was the one who released the Senate for a 5-week vacation on August 1 even though the federal budget was due October 1.  Talk about wasting time!  In any event, Cruz was characterized as “an arrogant jerk”, “whacky”, “narcissistic”, “all about him”, and “bizarre.”  Little was shown of his actual explanations of his objections to the government takeover of one-sixth of the economy.  His key point of the Affordable Care Act doing little to improve actual medical care but merely redistributing premiums throughout the age and economic spectrum garnered virtually no coverage.  If a modicum of truth in advertising laws applied, Obamacare would have to be renamed the Affordable Insurance Act because getting insurance may be easier than actually getting medical care.  In any event, Wendy’s the lion and Ted’s the demon.

 

Then there’s Nancy “pass the bill to find out what’s in it” Pelosi.  Now she’s doing her best Mother Hubbard impersonation and declaring the cupboard is bare.  If so, exactly how did government come up with the $320 million to bailout the fraud, corruption, and incompetence in Detroit?  What’s the matter, San Bernardino and Stockton, weren’t you corrupt enough to get federal aid?  What about the half million dollars that the Veterans Affairs Department just spent on artwork?  Or the Agriculture Department spending $140,000 on “toner cartridges” in one day!  Then there are the National Science Foundation grants to a new website (SiteJabber.com) to rate the “trustworthiness” of other websites.  Maybe they should start with the cute little animals on the Adorable Health Care website waste of taxpayer money.  Nancy, did you not know about the NSF grant that pays for “meditation and self-reflection” for math, science, and engineering majors?  There are lots more in Tom Coburn’s letters to the Senate.  Don’t forget to check out the YouTube video on how to properly handle a watermelon, another taxpayer funded undertaking.

 

Should someone who calls their opponents “legislative arsonists,” “anarchists,” “bombs strapped to their chests,” and guilty of “political terrorism” be lecturing others on civility?  Yet this is what senior Democrat leaders do repeatedly in demonizing dissent.  Somehow though, real terrorists such as Nidal Hassan are reduced to “disgruntled employees” acting out in “workplace violence.”  What should be demonized is the economic violence from the drop in median income of $2,627 since President Obama took office.  “Political terrorism” is when 27% of Blacks are in poverty and 25.6% of Hispanics have joined them.  “Legislative arson” is when the debt reaches $17 trillion this month, is projected to reach $23 trillion by 2017, and unfunded liabilities are estimated at $84 TRILLION!  THAT deserves demonization.  Equally unsettling is negotiating with terrorists (Iran) and leaving our men behind on the battlefield (Benghazi).  But that is what you get when you vote for the “fundamental transformation of America.”   Now you are finding out what that means.  Now who should be demonized?