THE MACHINERY OF BANISHMENT

By

ROBERT HARKINS

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan said that “Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do.” Not long afterward, I found a sign tied to an oak tree upon which a comedian had scribbled the words, Stop me before I kill again! I laughed out loud. Trees, after all, do not kill. Perhaps, however, I should not have laughed. The Leftist, working from his coloring book, Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, has engaged the machinery of banishment to exile to the wilderness Tea Partiers and all Conservatives. He has launched a campaign of vilification, defamation and inane falsehoods. The strategy is simple enough. If the Leftist succeeds in portraying Tea Partiers as dangerous psychotics, he will at once have destroyed conservative credibility and distracted a public he regards as naïve, malleable, credulous and not overly bright.

Just as President O’Bama, described Virginians as a dim lot, uncultured, and unread, who out of primeval resentments cling bitterly to their long guns so now will the Leftist banish to the wilderness men and women who think, question, and far worse cross examine fearlessly the radical leftist world view of the President and his Congress. The Democrats for the nonce are nibbling caviar and sipping wine. They have mounted to their face painfully wide and desperate smiles. They talk of aggression; they plan conquests; there is nothing they cannot do. And yet, they talk too quickly and loud. They are startled by loud noises. They seem to be waiting for a heavy shoe to drop; and so it will. For “There is something rotten in the State of Denmark.” Hamlet Act 1, scene 4, 87–91. There is something bubbling out of the hollow silence followed the President’s signing of the Health Care Bill.

It is the Tea Partiers create the Leftist’s anxiety. The Tea Partiers are too serious and intelligent. They will not cease from painful questions. They are a determined people. They know too well the cause of freedom breathed them into being. They are calm, well tempered and deliberate. They have challenged the stonewall raised to their question. They have shown contempt for Leftist mendacity, and outright perfidy. They do not hate, but they have this look and rational grace about them says, “Don’t Tread on Me!” It is this look hollows out the Leftist’s confidence, and paints a strained, porcelain smile upon his face.

Leftists, Democrats and Media, have launched a bruising attack upon conservatives. They claim that following the President’s signing of the Health Care Bill conservatives spat on Blacks, called Barney Frank a “fag.” and physically threatened other Democrats. Case closed therefore; we are like the Virginians: a clique of malcontents hold tightly to our guns; our knuckles drag upon the earth, we suck beer, beat our wives, watch too much TV, sing country music nasally and still believe Hank Williams never died. (Well this last, of course, is true; he never did).

There are two defenses must be made to Leftist treachery. The first defense is defiance. It is not enough to rise above, to become detached, to vote Republican. Instead gird your loins, and impeach with truth their libels published to the world. The second defense is to expose Leftist hypocrisy. Here is the truth. The Leftist when he engages the machinery of banishment will defame, libel, intimidate, will banish with sophistry if he can the truth of who and what we are. He will engage in hate speak because for him it is an article of faith that the public will believe anything so long as he shouts it loud and long enough. The press will ignore or approve hate speak directed at conservatives. It will ignore the rampant ugliness of the Leftist at his work.

Here is proof. Conservative journalist Noel Sheppard, in his post of Saturday March 27,2010, found too harsh Mike Malloy’s hopes for the future of several well known conservatives. “As the mainstream media hyperventilate over what is now regularly being referred to as rightwing hate speak, liberal talk radio host Mike Malloy Friday actually called for conservative talkers Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Bill O'Reilly to commit suicide.” Here is the psychotic Leftist who would accuse Tea Partiers of psychotic hate.

"You rat bastards are going to cause another Murrah federal building explosion," said Malloy. "[M]aybe at that point Beck will do the honorable thing and blow his brains out."… Maybe at that point, Limbaugh will do the honorable thing and just gobble up enough - enough Viagra that he becomes absolutely rigid and keels over dead. And… "Maybe then O'Reilly will just drink a vat of that poison he spews out on America every night and choke to death"

And here is Washington Post, Leftist Courtland Malloy. While we are relieved that he does not demand our suicide, still somewhere in the tortuous labyrinth of his mind is a malignant, festering hate.

I know how the "tea party" people feel, the anger, venom and bile that many of them showed during the recent House vote on health-care reform. I know because I want to spit on them, take one of their "Obama Plan White Slavery" signs and knock every racist and homophobic tooth out of their Cro-Magnon heads…I am sick of these people -- and those who make excuses for them and their victim-whiner mentality.

Leftists like the Malloys, if left unrestrained or denied calming medication, would banish Tea Partiers to a fate more dreadful than the wilderness. But tell me Malloy how would we contain the Leftist’s wrath were a Tea Partier to suggest you quaff an overdose of cool aid—if you have not already done so?

Journalist John Hinderker reminded Leftists of the terrorist acts they committed at the 2008 Republican convention in St. Paul. Anti-Bush and anti-Republican protesters,

”…threw bricks through the windows of buses, sending elderly convention delegates to the hospital [and] dropped bags of sand off highway overpasses onto vehicles below… For some reason, political violence was not a concern less than two years ago. Yet today, we can hardly imagine what would happen if a group of tea partiers were to drop sandbags off a highway overpass, trying to kill motorists below. …To my knowledge, not a single Democratic politician condemned this anti-Republican violence or attempted in any way to distance the Democratic Party from it.

In a strategy calculated, brutal and un-American tea party men and women have been smeared by the machine of banishment: By the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, by Congressional Democrats and the President of the United States, Barrack O’Bama. They have called us “Astro turf, Liars, Terrorists, Racists, Nazis, Rednecks, Xenophobes, Ku Klux Klanners, and Homophobes.” We were naive. We discovered later the Left graced us with the nickname “Tea Bagger” words which describe a gross homosexual sex act.

In the Leftist’s engagement of the machinery of banishment, there is no moral or rational line he will not cross nor words, however rife with hate, he will not shout out loud and long. Harvey Wasserman and Bob Fitrakis justify their libel of former President George Bush by reliance on the hate speak of Senator Robert Byrd. First, however, they shower the former Ku Klux Clansman with fawning praise.[1]

A conservative Democrat who has represented West Virginia in the Senate for decades, Byrd is one of America's leading Constitutional scholars. He is known as the master of Senate procedures. A passionate student of the English language, his epic orations for peace and the preservation of historic American freedoms are likely to grace school texts for decades to come.

Here the Leftist employs a tactic by which they quote each other’s trash as if it were Byronic prose.

"That the mainstream media has again found newsworthy the long-established connections between the Bush family and the Nazi Party is also instructive. . . . For sixty years it has been a matter of public record that Prescott Bush helped finance Hitler's rise to power and world war. . . . But right-wing Bush fanatics continue to deny those ties existed. . . .”

US Senator Robert Byrd, on the floor of Congress, on October 17, has explicitly compared the Bush media operation to that run by Herman Goering, mastermind of the Nazi putsch against the German people. Coming on the floor of the US Senate, Byrd's searing critique indicates that the equation of Team Bush with the Nazi elite has gained a certain mainstream credibility That the cautious, thoughtful Byrd has conjured explicit comparisons between the infamous mass murderer Hermann Goering and the administration of George W. Bush is a stunning commentary on how far to the right the Republicans have really gone. Goering was convicted of crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg Nazi war crimes tribunal after World War II. He killed himself just before he was to be executed.

Carl Rove didn’t escape the Nazi epithet. Here the authors giveth and taketh away. While on the one hand they publish Al Marten’s withdrawal of his accusation that Rove is a Nazi, they paste him with the epithet again because of a remark they claim Rove made at a base ball game.

Widespread allegations linking Karl Rove to family ties of explicit Nazi origin have been withdrawn by Al Marten, who originally publicized them through his web site. But Rove is quoted in Bob Woodward's best-selling BUSH AT WAR as comparing the reaction of a New York Yankee crowd to an appearance by Bush as being "like a Nazi rally."

Leftists have also labeled Rush Limbaugh a Nazi. What is their proof? The moronic notion that as Mr. Limbaugh takes medication for chronic back pain, just as did the late Hermann Goering, Rush Limbaugh must also be a Nazi. Vilification does not require a high I.Q.

Does Rush's apparent narcotic addiction resemble that of Hermann Goering? Is [Limbaugh] the Right's real minister of propaganda? Do his "dittoheads" resemble the unthinking brownshirts that terrorized millions?"

These are the same wing nuts who just recently attempted to characterize Sarah Palin as a Nordic Alaskan berserker simply because she used the term “Reload” to describe the gearing up of her campaign and the term “target states” to identify the state where she would speak. “On Thursday's American Morning, CNN's John Roberts [awash in crocodile tears] repeatedly decried the "troubling language" against pro-ObamaCare congressman which "violate any sense of common decency." Really? “But his own program over three years earlier helped promote a controversial 2006 movie, which forwarded an imaginary assassination attempt against then-President George W. Bush.”[2]

Leftists believe that Carl Rove is no respecter of Constitutions. You may remember the nice lady, a member of the leftist Code Pink who drenched her hands in pig’s blood, entered the Senate chamber and attempted to assault Condoleezza Rice. Michelle Malken writes that Code Pink O’Bama supporter “…Jodie Evans pulled her old “citizens’ arrest” prank and stormed right up to Rove with handcuffs. She and other members tried to incite the crowd with shouts of “war criminal.” Carl Rove “was shouted down and forced to leave the stage.”

Another woman screamed at Rove, “The only comfort I take is that…you’re going to rot in hell.” Rove, [insensitive, boorish, and cruel, so say Leftists]… charged that the people shouting him down were an example of the “totalitarianism of the left…they don’t believe in dialog…they don’t believe in courtesy. They don’t believe in first Amendment rights for anyone but themselves.”

What might have been the Leftist’s response? “Is Mr. Rove without conscience or sense of courtesy? Must he answer legitimate debate with strident condemnation, particularly when debating a defenseless woman? How dare he accuse her of usurping the First Amendment merely because she wished to take comfort in expressing her belief that Mr. Rove a “war criminal” was going to rot in hell? We know most certainly that he will. Well then Mr. Rove have you no respect at all for the Constitution or common courtesy?”

Finally, the grand Buchanan, in his March 29, 2010, column The real anti-Americans summarizes the shameful history of the American Leftist. He reminds us of the violence raged in the cities and towns of America, in American Universities in the burning of ROTC buildings, in the vandalizing of professors' offices, and the taking over of Columbia University in 1968. He reminds us of the Leftist’s support of the Communist Viet Cong National Liberation Front, and his feverish hatred of the American soldier who—as the Leftist chanted poems in praise of Ho Chi Min— was fighting and dying by the hundreds in Viet Nam.

Where is the Leftist’s shame? Why will he not admit his guilt for the death of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese who upon the surrender of Vietnam were reeducated, disappeared or the Boat People who were forced to brave a piratical sea. Why does he pretend innocence when he is guilty of a Cambodian holocaust that history justly has laid at his feet?

Well, we have listened to rank theories, and hypocrisy. And now the Leftist claims that, like a powder keg, we will ignite, explode, cry havoc, torch automobiles, heist 7/11s, and loot chitins and gravy, ammo and TVs from Walmart stores. Worse still they allege we male rogues will most likely satiate our wanton lust, in the riotous deflowering of innumerable Democrat maidens. The very thought is wearying.

What conclusions may be drawn from this Leftist strategy? That we don’t get it? That we are a bunch of ignorant white people, genetically shrived of compassion and of any sense of commitment to the less fortunate? That we are selfish and care nothing for our country and society? That we are deserving of banishment. For this alone, our banishment, the Leftist will try to push Tea Partiers beyond the pale, will whip them hard with ridicule, will corrupt their name, character and reputation, will prove them unworthy of belief, will try to convince the world that Tea Partiers are fanatic, false and ignorant, illegitimate and uninformed. They will attack and demean the character of the Tea Partier rather than engage him in debate—because for Leftist the debate is already lost—and all that now remains for him is libel.

What is to be done? Well, Tea Partiers have a sense of humor. We forgive and forget. However, it may be that Democrat Leftists have offended one or two of us who, riled by their betrayal and mendacity, their snake oil shtick now stroke their lovely loaded guns and whet their Bowie knives, sprout hair, fanged teeth and howl at the bloody moon, and…and… no wait! I’m ok… I think. Don’t be afraid. Your house is safe; your maidenhead remains unspoiled.

So hey, we’ll see you at the November polls: The true and merciless Machinery of Banishment. We will be there.

---

[1] Sen Byrd, Media Begin To

Cover Bush-Hitler Connection

By Harvey Wasserman & Bob Fitrakis

The Scoop

[2] CNN Condemns Threats Against Pro-ObamaCare Reps, ‘Death of a President’ OK by MATTHEW BALAN Mar 25, 2010 | NewsBusters.org

“Term Limits & Tenure”
by John Alexander Madison
March 29, 2010

Many states have imposed term limits on their elected officials from Governors to other statewide elected officials to legislators. Many counties have imposed term limits on their elected officials as well. In addition, many counties have extended term limits or, in some cases, eliminated them. So what’s the confusion all about?

On the one hand term limits create citizen legislatures and eliminated career politicians; on the other hand they establish more power in government employees and the bureaucracy.

On the one hand term limits eliminate bad politicians; on the other hand they remove good ones.

Term limits encourage elected officials to vote on principle rather than be concerned about re-election.

Term limits encourage more voter participation in elections with new faces rather than having automatic re-election of entrenched, well-known politicians. Name recognition and incumbency have their advantages.

On the other hand, long-entrenched elected officials have proven to develop a feeling of entitlement, arrogance, and self-importance and may become indifferent and perhaps cynical. Contrast that with mere mortals who go to work every day and work hard to perform well and keep their jobs in order to provide for their families. Ironically, many hard working, middle class Americans often end up losing their jobs when entrenched politicians impose too many regulations and taxes on business to the extent that these businesses are forced to trim staff and create greater unemployment for those who produce---with little consequence for themselves as their jobs never seem to be in jeopardy. Indeed, entrenched politicians build significant war chests from special interest groups in order to help ensure their re-election by an increasingly disengaged, helpless electorate.

The advantages of incumbency are often overwhelming and that’s a pretty good argument for term limits. However, if an overwhelming number of constituents (a large majority) approve of the results of their elected officials why then would one support artificial term limits which will force these “good, effective politicians" from office? After all, isn’t that what elections are all about? If you don’t like them, throw the bums out. If they are serving their constituents well, allow them to continue to serve.

Arguments against term limits include causing a loss of knowledge of legislative processes. In addition, there are what we may call “marginal” politicians…those who are not dynamic but often seem to be more acceptable to the voters than the unknown candidate on whom we may be “taking a big risk.” After all, don’t most politicians nowadays “run to the right (or middle) and legislate from the far left?” (Please, John, did you have to bring up the November 2008 election?)

What is similar to the absence of term limits?

A discussion on term limits would seem more complete if we also consider tenure for university professors. After all, aren’t they very similar? Once you are “in,” once you have towed the line for university standards and exhibited some level of competence in your field and not rocked the boat (too much) or brought extreme embarrassment upon the institution, you can gain tenure. That means, overnight, it is no longer necessary for the incumbent to maintain any particular level of competence, it means you can become more radical in your views and you cannot be fired…in the name of “academic freedom.”

According to Wikipedia, “academic tenure is primarily intended to guarantee the right to academic freedom: it protects teachers and researchers when they dissent from prevailing opinion, openly disagree with authorities of any sort, or spend time on unfashionable topics. Thus academic tenure is similar to the lifetime tenure that protects some judges from external pressure. Without job security, the scholarly community as a whole might favor "safe" lines of inquiry. The intent of tenure is to allow original ideas to be more likely to arise, by giving scholars the intellectual autonomy to investigate the problems and solutions about which they are most passionate, and to report their honest conclusions. In economies where higher education is provided by the private sector, tenure also has the effect of helping to ensure the integrity of the grading system. Absent tenure, professors could be pressured by administrators to issue higher grades for attracting and keeping a greater number of students.” (or caving into administrative pressure to advance students of offspring of wealthy alumni who quite likely are future building donors.)

There is little doubt that a large majority of college and university professors share a liberal agenda. It’s difficult to find any study to dispute the fact that an estimated 75% of nationwide professors are liberal, with that number increasing among “elite (undefined) institutions.”

Does it follow that one who opposes term limits also favors tenure for university professors. Or conversely, if you favor term limits are you opposed to tenure?

EPILOGUE

In an era when an ultra-liberal, inexperienced, first-term Senator has ascended to the presidency of the United States and has become the most powerful person in the world one has to be grateful that term limits for the President are in place. In his first year in office, this president has brought this nation to the brick of bankruptcy by implementing an anti-free market, big government, one-world economy, and socialistic agenda.

Is it a coincidence that control of our universities (and the minds of young, impressionable university students) and our federal government are now in the hands of liberals, socialists or, dare we say, Marxists?

Our liberal educational institutions have dumbed-down the citizenry to such an extent that lessons from history have been lost. And in concert with our current crop of far-left (and I might add arrogant) “leaders” in Congress can anyone honestly argue that our nation is on a dangerous and unsustainable path.

For these reasons, voices from across the nation are now clamoring for Congressional term limits.

According to Lord Acton “Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts, absolutely” (Sir John Dalberg-Acton, 1834-1902)

That goes for both Congress and our educational institutions. It IS time for change, change “We the people” can believe in.



NOTE: John Alexander Madison is a weekly contributor to The Jeff Crank Show blog site on KVOR radio. He posts every Monday morning. www.jeffcrank.com

My Daughter, Jessica, and my hunting dog, Indy, singing together

SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES

By

ROBERT HARKINS

Twixt my finger and my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. (Witch on the approach of Shakespeare’s Macbeth).

In a spectacle of corruption, and chicanery, the Democrats, in breach of their oath to preserve and protect the Constitution, passed a healthcare bill, declared it splendid—and now are crowing victory. Americans, however, are shouting their wrath even as they pledge the political obliteration of Democrats. Well Done Democrats! Again Well Done! You have worked from your own rope the hangman’s noose will swing thee in the November winds.

The Democrats who voted yea sought to camouflage their faithlessness in contrivance, in fig leafs, however small, might cover their moral nakedness. Some pitched a beauteous vision: The Bill will irradiate the deficit, though they know as well as we the Bill will impose trillions in debt upon Americans and their children yet unborn.

Others embrace the tactics of Machiavelli. They believe that so long as they dump truckloads of cash into the pockets of their constituents, they will survive. The Chicago Presidential Administration love these Democrats. For they are of one mind, know the subtleties of crookedness and blowing smoke. Indeed, they are of one alloyed ambition: self-aggrandizement and the ascendance of a welfare state. So for the President there is no promise too great or small, too brazen or profane for which he will not squander American wealth or plunge American children into unquenchable deficits and penury. There were others of course who drape themselves in religion. One politician announced piously he would vote for the bill only after a soulful talk with his Catholic priest. He is not worth more words than this: Suffice to say he holds himself in religious awe.

Rep. Bart Stupak and the Democrats who pledged their conscience to the protection of an unborn child’s right to life promised to vote No to the Bill—until at last, just as the cock crowed, they betrayed the peoples’ sacred trust. Suddenly, Rep. Stupak saw the light; he would vote for the Bill because President O’bama, the most pro abortion President ever to take office, would publish an executive order urging the prohibition of federally funded abortions. Clear conscience indeed. Rep. Stupak, and the pro life Democrats who joined him knew then and now that the President’s Executive Order when signed will be a nullity that it cannot constitutionally trump the legislative language of the Bill or the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade.

In Roe, the Supreme Court legitimized de facto, despite its restrictive words, any and all abortions, any time. If Rep. Stupak, and the few pro-life democrats were ignorant of the impotency of executive orders, why then didn’t they research the law? Why didn’t they ask the Council of Bishops for a copy of the briefs written by their legal staff? They would have discovered that an executive order is powerless to alter legislation or contest the ruling of courts?

The question for unborn children is one of life and death. Therefore, our would be champions must demand certainty. Why then didn’t Rep. Stupak and the pro life Democrats find out whether they could rely upon the President’s executive order to stop the taking of innocent life? As both the President and Stupak know the President’s executive order is a profane farce then, upon what law does Stupak rely to keep safe unborn children from the abortionist? The silence is deafening.

How quickly has principle surrendered to expedience. Perhaps Rep. Stupak simply erred. But why then did he so fiercely excoriate Republicans who proposed an amendment to the Bill, framed precisely in the language of the first Stupak amendment— an amendment that would have protected unborn children from federal extinction? And if Democrats are of one mind with the President and believe therefore, that his executive order will prevent federal funding of abortions why did Rep. Stupak and the rest of the Democrats vote the Republican amendment down? Why have Democrats adamantly rejected an amendment to protect unborn children from abortion that presumably is in harmony with President O’Bama’s executive order?

After the bill passed, Republicans introduced a motion that sought to send the bill back to committee and amend its abortion language using the kind of wording that Stupak originally wanted. Stupak spoke against the motion, leading to the shouts from some Republicans. Stupak told the chamber that the president's executive order would assure that "the sanctity of life is protected," and that the motion was "nothing more than an opportunity to continue to deny 32 million Americans health care.” For the Republicans to now claim that we send the bill back to committee under this guise of protecting life is disingenuous," Stupak said. "This motion is really to politicize life, not prioritize life.” The motion did not pass. CNN politics. Monday, March 22, 2010

From the beginning, President O’Bama and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi conceived out of the secular caverns of their radical vision a health care bill unmoved by facts or consequence. There they discovered the Bill would lower the deficit, bend the cost curve down, insure well over forty-five million Americans presently uninsured, eliminate billions in fraud, lower the cost of annual family health care premiums by $2500.00 and probably make us all immortal. But when well-researched and incontestable facts shattered their shtick, Democrats raised a stonewall against debate or challenges to their vision, flung racial or Nazi epithets at those who tried to debate and resorted in the end to shabby gimmickry. They wrung out of the Congressional Budget Office (CB0) an opinion would confirm their vision. But they know, as do all Americans, that the CBO’s findings, as they are constrained by the presumptions provided by the Democrats are nothing less than fiction.

Tacitus wrote of the Romans They made a desert and called it peace. Just so would the Democrats make of America a welfare state and call her still a democracy. Their constituency, however, the American people detest hypocrisy. Americans also detest the arrogance of politicians who would defy the Constitution, the States and its people. Finally, the great majority of Americans want to protect unborn children from the abortionist. That’s why so many Americans placed their trust in Rep. Stupak—and in a President, remember, who promised that the Bill would not fund the aborting of unborn children.

This too will pass, they think. So the President’s office has announced a unique media blitz will calm the circus rubes. The President will make lots of speeches. He will tell us that if we want to we can keep our old policy, our old doctor, that we will pay much less for health care, that the Bill will reduce the deficit, improve health care, particularly for the elderly presumably by striping five hundred billion dollars from Medicare. But wait, all this sounds too familiar. Must we hear this rot again? Perhaps not. Here is an American, Mitt Romney in A Campaign Begins Today.

Today America has just witnessed an unconscionable abuse of power. President Obama has betrayed his oath to the nation — rather than bringing us together, ushering in a new kind of politics, and rising above raw partisanship, he has succumbed to the lowest denominator of incumbent power: justifying the means by extolling the ends. He promised better; we deserved better. he calls his accomplishment “historic” — in this he is correct, although not for the reason he intends. Rather, it is an historic usurpation of the legislative process — he unleashed the nuclear option, enlisted not a single Republican vote in either chamber, bribed reluctant members of his own party, paid-off his union backers, scapegoated insurers, and justified his act with patently fraudulent accounting. What Barrack Obama has ushered into the American political landscape is not good for our country; in the words of an ancient maxim, “what starts twisted, ends twisted.”

His health-care bill is unhealthy for America. It raises taxes, slashes the more private side of Medicare, installs price controls, and puts a new federal bureaucracy in charge of health care. It will create a new entitlement even as the ones we already have are bankrupt. For these reasons and more, the act should be repealed. That campaign begins today.

 — Mitt Romney is the former governor of Massachusetts and author of No Apology03/22 09:24 AM

It is time again to gird our loins, to fight, to screw our courage to the sticking place, to vow we will not fail, to cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war. After all, we are not undone nor will we be undone by the likes of Stupak and the President.

Let us condemn this obscenity: The Democrats, the President and his Congress have breathed into life a law will serve up unborn children to the fatal attractions of abortion. What have they done! What have they done!

What do you Think?

Not Over Yet

By Kelly Sloan
William F. Buckley once said, “The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry”. Well, the citizenry has certainly been assertive in the health care debate. And yet…219 representatives still voted to put America on the road to serfdom Sunday night.
So what does this mean? That America, as we know it is finished? The great American experiment in self government and liberty has failed? That we have crossed a threshold into usurpatory government from which there is no return?
Not at all. America is not that easy to kill.
Clearly, many of her elected officials openly flouted the will of the people, in a manner that amounted to a direct effrontery to the system endowed to us by the architects of the republic, when they enabled legislation that exhibits an unconscionable injection of government into both private enterprise and individual lives. But America, perhaps unique among nations, is more than the mere sum of her laws - rather America is an idea; a majestic concept, a shared ideal of individual sovereignty, ordered liberty, and rule of law, with a focus on the process as opposed to the weight of the law itself.
The package passed on Sunday night, without a single Republican vote, is perhaps the largest ink stain to yet soil the bridal whiteness of American individual and economic liberty. For the first time in U.S. history, a law was passed that tells an individual that he or she must engage in an economic activity, at the behest of the government, simply because they exist; the costs, in spite of budgetary gimmicks designed to obfuscate their true scope, are indeed debilitating, as are the taxes that will be required to attempt to pay for them; and the insurance industry, when all is said and done, will become effectively nationalized, acting on the direction of the government. Left unchecked, this bill does represent the genesis of a grotesquely unaffordable, single – payer, price controlled system.
But it is not unchecked. America is about the checks. Constitutional challenges from the states will be a first step. But in this nation, the ultimate check resides in the individual citizen with a No. 2 pencil; the true fate of this healthcare bill is whatever the American people want it to be. After all, this is still America, and that is, by prescription and design, not so easy to change.

“ObamaCare…A (One) Man Made Disaster”*
by John Alexander Madison
March 22, 2010


*(reprinted from March 15, 2010)
(March 22, 2010 Comment: Leadership in Washington is not listening. The ONLY change I can believe in is the need to remove from Congress anybody who votes for ObamaCare. ObamaCare is fraud, plain and simple. Kool-Aid anyone? Remember Jonestown? The President is killing our nation. We must stop the spending madness, including this and other legislation to follow. If these unending social programs pass the U.S. bond rating will begin to tumble, along with this great nation. November 2, 2010 cannot come quick enough.)

You may have imagined from the headline that this week’s remarks would aim criticism on what many believe is a national disaster of catastrophic proportions…the national healthcare plan our President is foisting upon an unwilling public. While I do not want to disappoint you I’ve decided not give in to temptation and indulge you. That would be considered “piling on.”

Across the nation for more than twelve months now Americans have raised their collective voice in outrage over not only the “plan” but the arrogance with which it is being presented. As House Speaker Pelosi (D, CA) recently implored, ‘we must pass this bill quickly so Americans can then read it and see what it’s in it.’ However, I have decided to let others weigh in on this misguided President’s misguided healthcare plan for America.

For starters let’s get Karl Rove’s opinion about the general direction of our 44th President’s programs (London Times, March 2010) “He’s governed too far from the centre of American politics, he’s too out on the left fringe and he ill-prepared the American people for the things he was going to do,” he says. “And he’s weak.”Ask

Charles Krauthammer to weigh in and he says “Not that Obama considers himself divine (He sees himself as merely messianic, or, at worst, apostolic.) But he does position himself as hovering above mere mortals.” (June 12, 2009 Washington Post)

Regarding healthcare Florida Governor Charles Crist has urged, “Don't scrap ObamaCare...but I can't name one part worth keeping. There are three parts of it that I would like to see scrapped: It would raise taxes significantly, it would raise rates significantly and it would take half-a-trillion dollars out of Medicare.” (Feb 28, 2010 Weekly Standard)

Not to be ignored is Ann Coulter who is never shy about sharing her views. Quite clearly, she isn't pleased either, writing: "Bureaucrats at Health and Human Services will electronically collect every citizen's complete medical records and determine appropriate medical care." She continues: "Instead of your treatment being determined by your doctor, it will be settled on by some narcoleptic half-wit in Washington who couldn't get a job in the private sector." (Science Business blog, Feb 18, 2010) Narcolepsy: A disorder characterized by sudden and uncontrollable, though often brief, attacks of deep sleep, sometimes accompanied by paralysis and hallucinations.

In January, Tony Quain, at TonyQuain.com, wrote an article entitled “Massachusetts Senate Election Proxy for Failed ObamaCare Experiment.” He wrote, “The Massachusetts Senate race is not just a thermometer of how the most liberal state in the country feels about the ObamaCare legislation in Congress; it measures how the most liberal state in the country feels about the closest thing to an experiment of ObamaCare.” And we can add to that analysis the fact that the recent gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia also changed to Republican hands as a further rejection of Osama’s reckless spending and ill-advised policies, with healthcare at the top of the list.

A most alarming scenario in the August 2009 edition of Whistleblower magazine entitled “Medical Murder” described gruesome and depressing detail “why ObamaCare could result in the early deaths of millions of baby boomers.” It described an infected patient lying in a nursing home, "on soiled sheets…attended to by a resentful and underpaid aide taking out their anger (and worse) on you.” This article ends by asking if you find such a situation difficult to imagine then concludes “this is not a fantasy – it is what is already occurring in other 'civilized' nations, including Canada and Britain, that have adopted the same government-run system." In fact, ObamaCare is likened to a “program of age-based medical rationing.” Are you frightened yet, ready to panic?

Senator John Boehner (R-OH) weighed in on February 28th saying “For his part, President Obama comes to the table with the same massive government takeover of health care that the American people have already rejected. In effect, the president’s proposal actually takes the 2,733-page bill that the Senate passed on Christmas Eve and manages to make it worse. Even more Medicare cuts. Even more tax hikes. Plenty of special-interest deals still in place. A trillion-dollar price tag.

“This is the same arrogance and overreaching that the American people are so fed up with. It’s why Massachusetts happened. It’s why Americans waited for hours in the August heat to get into town hall meetings and make sure their voices were heard.

“The president can hold all the summits he wants, but the toothpaste is out of the tube: The American people don’t want this massive government takeover of health care. No summit or speech or sales pitch can fix a fundamentally flawed 2,000-plus-page health care bill that spends money we don’t have and kills the jobs we need to get our economy moving again.

”Let’s listen to the American people and let’s start over.” Senator Boehner’s analysis seems frighteningly on target.

In the words of Democrat Majority leader Congressman Steny Hoyer (D, MD): “No one would vote for ObamaCare if they read the bill.”

Hello, is anybody out there...willing to stop this madness?

EPILOGUE

According to a recent story being circulated on the internet, a physician named Starner Jones sent a letter to the White House and stated (in part) “Our nation’s healthcare crisis is not the result of a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. Rather, it is the result of a ‘crisis of culture,’ a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on luxuries and vices while refusing to take care of one’s self or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance. It is a culture based in the irresponsible credo that ‘I can do whatever I want to because someone else will always take care of me.’ Once you fix this ‘culture crisis’ that rewards irresponsibility and dependency, you’ll be amazed at how quickly our nation’s health care difficulties will disappear.”

The Heritage Foundation’s March 12, 2010 Morning Bell reported that last week’s Associated Press survey indicated 68 percent of Americans believe the President and Congressional Democrats shouldn’t pass their health care plan without Republican support. Columnist George Will added “the very essence of progressivism sublimates the democratic process to the rule of experts in Washington. No one can say if this bill will finally pass, but if it does, it is abundantly clear that our republican form of government will be permanently damaged by it.”

Any analysis of the Obama, Reid, Pelosi health care plan for America would not be complete without asking Newt Gingrich to weigh in. Gingrich opined last year “ObamaCare is the most corrupt legislation I've seen.”

I could not have said it better myself, Newt.

NOTE: John Alexander Madison is a weekly contributor to The Jeff Crank Show blog site on KVOR radio. He posts every Monday morning. www.jeffcrank.com

The Right Word
By Kelly Sloan
THE MYOPIC SLAP-DOWN OF ISRAEL

Washington’s reaction earlier this week to Israel’s poorly-timed announcement of its urban-development plans in East Jerusalem highlighted quite nicely the current administrations’, shall we say, unique approach to foreign policy; namely chastising and isolating our friends and allies, while offering concessions and making nice to our adversaries, all the while doing everything we can to downplay our own stature and influence on the world stage. (Brilliant! Now why has no one else thought of that strategy in the last 4000 years?)

During a visit to Israel, when Jerusalem’s Regional Planning Council announced plans to build 1600 new family housing units in disputed East Jerusalem, Vice President Joe Biden decided to shift the rhetoric up a gear or two by using words like “condemn” (which in diplomatic parlance is the equivalent to a knee in the groin) to describe the action. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, and White House advisor David Axlerod similarly used language more commonly associated with pariah states like North Korea than friendly western-style democracies.

At the heart of this new hard-line approach to Israel is the fallacious notion that strong arming further concessions out of the Israelis is the key to Mideast peace, the Holy Grail of liberal Presidents since Carter. There are several problems with this approach.

First, it has no precedent. Every time Israel has made concessions – giving up land, destroying settlements, de-restricting shipments, what have you – it has been rewarded by a renewed campaign of violence. Second, if Obama thinks he can sway Netanyahu by coercive diplomacy, then he is (disturbingly) naïve – historically, any outside pressure tends to coalesce the Israelis around their leader, a trait whose provenance lies in their somewhat sequestered history. Any attempt, therefore to divide the Knesset would stand a strong chance of backfiring.

Furthermore, Obama’s entire notion of Mideast peace is myopic. Beyond the quasi-theological impetus behind the antagonism towards Israel’s very existence, neither Fatah nor Hamas would benefit from a lasting peace with Israel; their funding, arms and support from their various Arab and Iranian backers is contingent on continued unrest. As the two groups vie for domination in the region, both rely on continued struggle with Israel not only as their raison d’être, but as a tool for carving out their own relative positions. Even the tentative support that Fatah enjoys from the U.S. is only as a result of the ongoing internecine conflict with the more malignant Hamas. As such, nothing that Israel could ever offer, and nothing that the U.S. could browbeat Israel into offering, would be enough to appease the Palestinians.

Not to mention that with a strong yet unbalanced Iran poised to take the lead in the Islamic worlds crusade against “Zionist aggression”, and with memories of Anwar Sadat not yet relegated to antiquity, it is difficult to envision any Palestinian leader totally disregarding his own survival in favor of peace.

Then there is the moral dimension. One could cite the ample legal justification for Israel’s existence, dating back to the Balfour declaration, (and beyond), sensitivity to the memory of the Holocaust, or merely the fact that Israel represents a successful, free, democratic society driven by a market based economy and rule of law, virtually alone in the region in those regards (I wonder if a Palestinian parliament would include Jewish members, as the Israeli Knesset includes Arabs?). One could also point out the blatant double standard applied to the two sides; The Palestinians claims, repeated so often that you almost have to think they mean it, that the entire region must be wiped clean of the “Jewish stain” (in other places known as “ethnic cleansing”, or “genocide”), are all but ignored in the West, while the actions of Israeli police and paratroopers trying to protect their citizens are examined under an ethical microscope. Or, as Clifford May points out, how Fatah can dedicate a West Bank town square in the memory of one Dalal Mughrabi, a terrorist by any definition, who in 1978 hijacked a bus and ultimately killed 37 Israeli civilians (including 13 children) and one American, without any condemnation from the U.S. Vice President or Secretary of State.

The real issue is not the building of apartments in East Jerusalem, or the quest for a mythical mid-east peace treaty. As the Israelis realize, the issue is the very real nuclear threat posed by Iran. American insistence on isolating Israel serves no purpose beyond emboldening Tehran, and at the same time forcing Israel into a corner. Israel’s collective focal principle is that it will never again allow the Jewish people to be led to the slaughter, nor will it abandon their security to the goodwill of others. Israel will strike Iran – it has no choice - and if felt abandoned, they will do so with as much power, force and rage as they can muster. If Obama is truly concerned about peace, he would be wise to consider this the next time he wants to use his ruler on David’s palm.

LEVIATHAN

By

ROBERT HARKINS

Leviathan. Etymology: Middle English, from Late Latin, 14th century. The political state; especially: a totalitarian state having a vast bureaucracy. Something large or formidable.

House Democrats have conceived from the Leviathan a “parliamentary tactic” to circumvent compliance with the American Constitution. They will not, as President O’Bama promised, vote up or down on the latest version of the health care bill; they will instead simply “deem it” voted into law. The tactic will serve to place the bill on the President’s desk for signature. Democrats also hope that it will rescue Democrats from the wrath of Americans who vote. Democrats will be able to tell the American people that they did not vote for the health care plan, that it was “deemed”— presumably by persons unknown—into law. Hence they will argue pitifully that as they did not actually vote for the health care plan they are innocent of wrongdoing. The tactic, of course, reveals contempt for Constitutional government. That Democrats believe it will convince voters that they are not responsible for passage of the health care plan reveals an extraordinary contempt for the intelligence of the American people.

The provisions of the Constitution, of course, may be changed or increased by an amendment process, the drafters intentionally made difficult and onerous. The Constitution, however, may not be changed by the Leviathan imagination of politicians who believe that parliamentary trickery will suffice the plain words of a Constitution. The drafters did not write deeming language into the Constitution. The language of the Constitution is plain. An understanding of its provisions does not require an exploration of the psychology of the drafters. Article 1, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution clearly and simply mandates that,

Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it becomes a Law, be presented to the President of the United States.

In a Wall Street Journal Article Michael McConnell, noting that Speaker Pelosi’s tactic is unprecedented in American history, writes,

“The Slaughter solution attempts to allow the House to pass the Senate bill, plus a bill amending it, with a single vote….But this means that no single bill will have passed both houses in the same form. If Congress can now decide that the House can vote for one bill and the Senate can vote for another, and the final result can be some arbitrary hybrid, then we have abandoned one of Madison’s core checks and balances.

Here is summary of conservative reaction from the Weekly Standard.

“[U]sing such a dicey procedure to enact President Barack Obama's biggest domestic initiative — the most far-reaching social policy change in decades — could inflame a public that's already annoyed at the legislation's tortured path and disgusted with Congress.” (McClatchy, 3/16/10)Any member of Congress who believes in the Democrats’ health care plan – one that raises taxes $500 billion, slashes Medicare by another $500 billion, forces taxpayers to fund abortions, and gives bureaucrats power to make medical decisions – should be willing to stand up and be counted. And editorial boards across the country have begun to speak out about the “disgusting process”:


“That may help some House members dodge a politically difficult decision, but it strikes us as a dodgy way to reform the health-care system. Democrats who vote for the package will be tagged with supporting the Senate bill in any event. Why not be straightforward about it?” (Washington Post Editorial, 3/16/10)

“Democrats are, literally, consuming their own majority for the sake of imposing new taxes, regulations and entitlements that the public has roundly rejected but that they believe will be the crowning achievement of the welfare state. They are also leaving behind a procedural bloody trail that will fuel public fury and make such a vast change of law seem illegitimate to millions of Americans.” (Wall Street Journal Editorial, 3/16/10)

“This disgusting process, which Democrats brazenly wish to bring to conclusion this week, is being done with little regard for the opinions of a clear majority of Americans who, while they may believe health care reform is necessary, think this particular approach will take our nation down the wrong economic path.” (Cincinnati Enquire Editorial, 3/16/10)

The President, Senators and Congressmen swore an oath to protect and preserve the American Constitution. The oath is taken to emphasize the gravity of the public trust the people place in these men and woman and also, the oath takers’ solemn pledge to govern strictly within the boundaries and prohibitions established by the Constitution. Why this oath? Because the Constitution is the legitimate and exclusive law of the land. The president, senator or congressman who trespasses its boundaries violates his oath, and worse still, demeans the Constitution’s critical function, its reason for being—to prevent the usurpation of a sovereign people by a despotic government, by Leviathan.

In emphasizing the importance of Constitutional government, the great 19^th century Edmund Burke raged against the great evil, that governments sooner or later visit upon their citizens. His words fit well this modern Democrat Congress and its too prominent House celebrities.

Many of the greatest tyrants on the records of history have begun their reigns in the fairest manner. But the truth is, this unnatural power corrupts both the heart and the understanding. And to prevent the least hope of amendment, a king is ever surrounded by a crowd of infamous flatterers, who find their account in keeping him from the least light of reason, till all ideas of rectitude and justice are utterly erased from his mind….

Unbounded power proceeds step by step, until it has eradicated every laudable principle. It has been remarked that there is no prince so bad, whose favorites and ministers are not worse. There is hardly any prince without a favorite, by whom he is governed in as arbitrary a manner as he governs the wretches subjected to him. Here the tyranny is doubled.[1]

Burke’s analysis has been tragically confirmed by twentieth century events: Hitler’s legal ascension to power in a German parliamentary democracy, and the Lenin/Stalin destruction of a budding Russian parliamentary system following World War I. The evil to be prevented, therefore, is government power unleashed, unaccountable and grotesque—. That is precisely why Americans met at Philadelphia to draft an American Constitution. The drafters were intelligent and well read men who were well aware of the French philosophes, Robespierre, and the sentiments which inspired the French Revolution: Liberté, égalité, fraternité. It is, of course, impossible that the sincere practice of such noble virtue could have led to Robespierre, to mass homicidal slaughter, to the collapse of French government, and the beheading of untold numbers of innocent, brilliant and patriotic citizens. Indeed, the famous Lafayette and his wife, who supported the American Revolution, were themselves, by The Revolution, condemned to the guiotine. They were saved only by the clandestine intercession of the then American Ambassador to France the future President James Monroe.

History had proved for the drafters of the Constitution a most sober lesson. Noble sentiments alone will not keep safe a people from its government. The nature of all governments is to accede to ever greater power, to consume by degrees the substance, wealth and freedom of its people, to debase their currency, to bind them to unquenchable debt, to engage them in fruitless and destructive war, to demean their noble sentiments, and finally to disgrace, defame and bring them down to ruin. This doesn’t happen at once but over time. Government trespass begins by degrees and may attain a savagery that history records is boundless, irrational and unrestrained.

The Constitution, therefore, is not a “living document” a socialist euphemism intended to suggest that its principles should be made to evolve according to the intellectual inclinations of utopian intellectuals, an academic passion to experiment with human tradition, or a social scientist’s passion to engineer a brave new world out of the scraps and pieces of a Constitution.

The “living, breathing” theory suggests that America today faces challenges that did not exist in 1787. The theory, however, requires that we ignore history, human avarice and the Nietchean will to power that is the genetic heart and soul of Leviathan. Worse, those who embrace the “living, breathing” metaphor miss entirely the critical function of constitutions; it is to restrain to the strictest limits workable a government that unrestrained will by its very nature ruin the people who breathed it into being. Hard words: But what was the fate of the men and women who sought to build a government of Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Where now is Stalin’s Soviet Union, or Mussolini’s “New Rome?” Indeed, where is Athens? Where is the ancient Rome? And what was their peoples’ fate?

In a parliamentary stroke unprecedented in American Constitutional government, the Democrats will try again to pass a Health Care Bill they know will grievously increase the intervention of government into the lives of its people, and will plunge Americans into obscene and lethal debt. They will try again to pass this bill knowing full well that the majority of the American people, for good reason, protest its passage. In its creation, the President and his Congress have resorted to threats, to blatant bribery, to outright falsehoods and, of course, to an economic shell game intended to convince presumably ignorant Americans that the cost of health care will somehow curve downward. Not a one of these Democrats believe a word of this economic nonsense. In a column posted March 16th, 2010 by Heritage Society: Obamacare Slaughter Rule is without Precedent, it author Brian Darling writes that,

Yesterday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) endorsed the rumored Slaughter Rule to send the Senate passed Obamacare bill to the President without a direct up-or-down vote in the House.

In this scenario, the House members would not vote “up or down” on the Bill but simply “deem it passed” without voting. This is Constitutional trespass and a violation of the oath sworn by those congressmen who will surrender principle and honor to this Constitutional outrage.

“Unbounded power proceeds step by step, until it has eradicated every laudable principle.” In this way Leviathan casts off the constraints of constitutions. What follows always at the end, sooner or later, is infamy.

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[1] The Works of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, In Twelve Volumes. London, John C. Nimmo. 14. King William Street. W.C.