Category Archives: Political polemics

WE THE PEOPLE

Posted on February 25, 2012 | Leave a comment

This powerful video speaks for itself.

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Posted in Political philosophy, Political polemics, Videos

MORE ON THE CATHOLIC FLAP

Posted on February 17, 2012 | Leave a comment

Professor Paul Rahe minces no words in writing More Than a Touch of Malice, an article you can read at Ricochet.  He adds his wisdom to the argument that, far from committing a gaffe, Obama’s riling of the Catholic Church was a deliberate and well thought out step taken to define and solidify his base.

In 2008, when he first ran for the Presidency, Barack Obama posed as a moderate most of the time.  This time, he is openly running as a radical. His aim is to win a mandate for the fundamental transformation of the United States that he promised in passing on the eve of his election four years ago and that he promised again when he called his administration The New Foundation.

In the process, he intends to reshape the Democratic coalition – to bring the old hypocrisy to an end, to eliminate those who stand in the way of the final consolidation of the administrative entitlements state, to drive out the faithful Catholics once and for all, to jettison the white working class, and to build a new American regime on a coalition of  highly educated upper-middle class whites, feminists, African-Americans, Hispanics, illegal immigrants, and those belonging to the public-sector unions. To Americans outside this coalition, he intends to show no mercy.

Saul Alinsky, author of Rules for Radicals, taught that transforming a nation with a prosperous middle class like the United States into a Marxist socialist society could only be accomplished if approached as a three act play:

Act I – join the crowd, gain respect, acceptance and legitimacy.

Act II – develop the theme, spread discontent, and build a following for Act III

Act III – the act of final transformation which Alinsky says will of necessity, be violent.

Act I is complete.  The Occupy movement opened Act II; there is ample discontent.  It only needs to be channeled, fanned and kept alive.  “Those damned Regressives, now they want to take away your sex life”.  That will do it.  That’s the Catholic flap.

Act III…, there will be no Act III; we will see to that in November.  But if there were, the curtain would open in January with an Inauguration Proclamation declaring, “I, Barack Hussein Obama, am the way, the truth and the light; there is no way out of this mess but by me”.  And America would be on the road to becoming a Marxist Socialist society.

Bob B

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Posted in Opinion, Political philosophy, Political polemics

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THE CATHOLIC FLAP, A CASE OF PLANNED AGITATION?

Posted on February 15, 2012 | Leave a comment

Dick Morris says the Catholic flap is a planned plot.  The Democrats know the abortion issue is a loser for them.  The idea is to twist it into a contraception issue and then scare the voters into fearing the Republicans may try to ban the use of contraception devices.

The speculation gains credence when you remember how George Stephanopoulos grilled Mitt Romney with the question of whether or not he thought states had the legal right o ban contraceptives.

The question came totally out of thin air and never before existed as an issue. Romney called it a ridiculous hypothetical question, which it was, and refused to answer it.  But Stephanopoulos did not give up easily.  He seemed to be a man on a mission.  Was he doing duty as a surrogate to set contraception up as an issue?  Dick Morris thinks so.  In a prior post I wrote “If there is one thing the President knows well, it is the art of agitation, how to create it, how to use it as a tool…”  Morris just might be right.

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Posted in Audio/Visual, Political polemics

OBAMA GUTS NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND

Posted on February 10, 2012 | 1 Comment

Obama is making law again.  Will he ever stop?  Congress passed a law in 2001 known as the No Child Left Behind Act.  The current President doesn’t like the law, so he cancelled it.

Strictly speaking, a President cannot cancel a law with a wave of his hand or the signing of a document.  But he can sign an executive order decreeing that a given law doesn’t need to be obeyed.  The difference is a mere technicality; the results are the same.  One could also raise the argument that the entire law wasn’t rendered inoperative, only certain provisions.  But invariably when this happens, it is to alter those provisions that were controversial in the first place.  The Founding Fathers gave us a government where controversial matters were not to be decided by one person, but by the House and the Senate where the people are broadly represented.  Of course there is a form of government where the leader does have the power to make, break or change the law.  It is called a dictatorship.

Whether No Child Left Behind is bad law or not is a decision for Congress or the courts to make, not the President.  The establishment of a Rule of Law is an essential requirement for any fair and prosperous nation to succeed.  When laws once enacted by a congressional body are subject to executive change and bureaucratic interpretation you have “flexlaw”.  Flexlaw is not a set of established laws at all; it is a set of whims.  Obama and his Administration are transforming our land from a Republic into a DINO, a Democracy In Name Only.  He must be stopped.

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Posted in News, Political philosophy, Political polemics

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WILL THE CATHOLIC FLAP COST OBAMA THE ELECTION?

Posted on February 9, 2012 | 2 Comments

The Catholic outrage could cost Obama the election.  But Obama doesn’t believe it will or he would not have taken the stance he did.  If there is one thing the President knows well, it is the art of agitation, how to create it, how to use it as a tool for accomplishing an objective and even how to deal with it if it turns negative to your cause.  The role of a community organizer could be summed up in three words – agitate, intimidate, mediate.  You remember, do you not, that in the primaries for 2008, Obama cited his organizing experience as a reason why Democrats should choose him over Hillary Clinton.  Politics is his profession; agitation is his method; don’t sell him short.

The Catholic demographic is heavily comprised of white middle class traditional, Truman/JFK style Democrats.  They are the tradesman, the small business entrepreneurs, the salt-of-the-earth people, proud to be American and proud of their self sufficiency and loyal to their church.  This demographic, once a stalwart of the Democratic Party, has been migrating away in recent decades.

To voters, politics is all about choosing the best people to govern them.  To a politician, politics is all about strategy and strategies are subject to change over time.  Last November, the New York Times wrote:

For decades, Democrats have suffered continuous and increasingly severe losses among white voters. But preparations by Democratic operatives for the 2012 election make it clear for the first time that the party will explicitly abandon the white working class.

Catholic Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh put it this way,

“The Obama administration has just told the Catholics of the United States, ‘To Hell with you!’ There is no other way to put it. To Hell with your religious beliefs. To Hell with your religious liberty. To Hell with your freedom of conscience.”

The far left has always felt contempt for the church, any church.  With the advent of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid trinity the Democratic Party’s policies and tactics are those of the far left.  A great many of the Democrat electorate have not yet realized that their party has left them.  This is a wake-up call for the Catholic Church.

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Posted in Opinion, Political philosophy, Political polemics

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TWO VISIONS of AMERICA – A STUDY IN CONTRAST

Posted on February 7, 2012 | Leave a comment

President Reagan believed in the greatness of America as a nation and the can-do spirit of the American people.  Obama believes America is a nation with an eroded foundation whose people have become lazy and unable to manage for themselves.

President Reagan restored the economy that had begun to slip under his predecessor Jimmy Carter, and he gave the credit for the recovery to the resilience of the American people.  Obama has not restored the economy he inherited and offers only accusations and excuses for his own failure to do so.

One man was an inspirational leader from the start, as head of the Screen Actors Guild, to Governor of California and then as President.  The other man was an agitator from the start, as a community organizer and then an ACORN lawyer and is still is an agitator as President.

But both men have their own brand of greatness.  One is known as The Great Communicator, the other The Great Divider.

Happy Birthday, Ron

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Posted in Audio/Visual, Political philosophy, Political polemics

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THE PARTY OF PERSONAL DESTRUCTION – A CONFIRMATION

Posted on February 3, 2012 | Leave a comment

The New Yorker magazine carries the best cartoons in the industry.  The humor is mostly apolitical without a hint of underlying agenda beyond getting the reader to smile.  However, that is where the magazine’s objectivity ends.  Judging by Talk of the Town which opens every issue, one would think Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi were the publishers.  If you want to know how an honest liberal thinks, read the New Yorker.  (That is not to say that Reid and Pelosi are honest liberals.)

Ryan Lizza is the Washington correspondent for the magazine.  Lizza poured through 11,000 pages of Washington documents and wrote a 13 page article for the New Yorker entitled The Obama Memos with the tagline The making of a post-post-partisan Presidency.  Post-post-partisan?  Isn’t that a double positive making it a negative?  Yes, it is.  Lizza contends that no President has been more willing to find common ground and work with the other side than Barack Obama has.  He came into office, Lizza says, with the hope and every intention of putting partisan bickering aside and becoming a post-partisan President.  When it didn’t work as he expected, Obama gave up the idea, reversed his strategy and became a post-post-partisan President.  Lizza may be right about that, but if Obama really thought he would get Republicans to accept some of his far left socialism it wasn’t out of naïveté, it was sheer hubris.

Conservatives have long known the Democratic Party to be the party of personal destruction.  From a lowly plumber named Joe to a lofty Supreme Court Justice, many a conservative has felt the injustice of the Party’s character assassination.  That is what makes this excerpt from Lizza’s article so interesting.

Another hard-edged decision helped make him [Obama] the Democratic Presidential nominee. In early October, 2007, David Axelrod and Obama’s other political consultants wrote the candidate a memo explaining how he could repair his floundering campaign against Hillary Clinton. They advised him to attack her personally…, that all campaign slogans, even the slogan “Change We Can Believe In”- had to emphasize distinctions with Clinton on character rather than on policy.

The memo went on to say we must

“frame the argument along the character fault line, and this is where we can and must win this fight.” [We will say] “Clinton can’t be trusted or believed when it comes to change because she is driven by political calculation not conviction.”

Neera Tanden is now the President of the Center for American Progress.  She was the Policy Director for Hillary’s primary campaign then later became Barack Obama’s campaign director in the general election.

“It was a character attack,” Tanden said recently, speaking about the Obama campaign against Clinton.  “I went over to Obama, I am a big supporter of the President, but their campaign was entirely a character attack on Hillary as a liar and untrustworthy. It wasn’t an issue contrast, it was entirely personal.” And of course it worked.

That’s the sad part, it works.  And who is to blame for that?  The voters.

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Posted in Opinion, Political philosophy, Political polemics

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NEWT’S WARS

Posted on January 31, 2012 | Leave a comment

Newt Gingrich has already declared war.  What would he do if he were President?

His war with the press continues, “I won’t debate Obama if media moderates..”  So does his war against Mitt Romney, “Mitt Romney is a liberal and a liar who is no different from Barack Obama.”  Newt’s strategy is to leave no prisoners.  Gingrich showed lack of wisdom in refusing to allow the media to moderate debates with Obama.  In his attacks on Romney’s wealth, Gingrich employs the same of class warfare demagoguery as the President.  It seems to me that between the two, it’s not Romney, but Gingrich who is closer to Obama.

In Newt’s wars the winner is Obama.  The President has divided this nation as never before since the Civil War.  Newt is dividing the Republican Party, perhaps as never before.  Nonetheless, whoever wins the nomination must get whole-hearted support or America’s descent into full blown socialism will accelerate under Barack Obama.

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Posted in Opinion, Political polemics

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GLOBAL WARMING’S LAST GASPS

Posted on January 30, 2012 | Leave a comment

Poor Al Gore, his schtick is losing its oomph.  The temperature stats are in for 2011 are in.  NASA has declared that global warming ended in 1997.  And a report from the British meteorological authorities at the infamous East Anglia University laboratories agrees.  For the alarmists out there I would point out these reports are not from Rush Limbaugh.  They are from NASA and East Anglia, the United Nation’s most favored source for climate change data.

The UK Daily Mail reports,

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met [Meteorological] Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997. 

There were some warming deniers but the serious debate over the last decade or more was about the cause, not the temperatures.  The cautionary side said “We think the reason the planet is warming is because the sun is emitting more heat.  It’s a cycle.  It’s not because there are too many lawn mowers and farting cows.  We know that scientists disagree over whether or not the warming is anthropological.  Let us not be rash lest we wind up playing Don Quixote to the sun.

The alarmists, on the other hand, stated flatly that the warming was man-made.  They said the science is settled, which it is not.  The warming alarmists also claimed there is a consensus and that proves their point of view.  But consensus has no standing in science.  Consensus once held that the sun revolves around a world that is flat.  Science politicized is science polluted.

The hoax is still running.  There is still money to be made.  But when the mantra changes from the Global Warming Crisis to the Climate Change Crisis it’s a sign the easy money has already been made.

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Posted in Environment, Political polemics

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CHINA’S SECRET FOR SUCCESS

Posted on January 27, 2012 | Leave a comment

Thomas Friedman, a thoroughly honorable man of the left, champions China from the pages of the New York Times in the same way his predecessor Walter Duranty did of Stalinist Russia from the pages of the same newspaper.  Duranty denied Stalin’s atrocities; Friedman ignores China’s lack of human rights.  Friedman argues that we could solve our economic problems if only we would do as China does.

Here is a glimpse of how China does.

In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad   New York Times Jan 26, 2012

The explosion ripped through Building A5 on a Friday evening last May, an eruption of fire and noise that twisted metal pipes as if they were discarded straws….Two people were killed immediately, and over a dozen others hurt. As the injured were rushed into ambulances, one in particular stood out. His features had been smeared by the blast, scrubbed by heat and violence until a mat of red and black had replaced his mouth and nose.

[Workers must submit to] onerous work environments and serious — sometimes deadly — safety problems.

Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste…

More troubling, the groups say, is some suppliers’ disregard for workers’ health. Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens. Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77.

There is a Laffer curve for regulation.  No one has ever drawn one but one surely does exist.  Total regulation would stifle an economy and there would be no prosperity.  No regulation would be destructive to humanity and there would be no prosperity.  Somewhere in between, the curve peaks.  We are on the right side of the slope (over-regulation) and trending down.  If you want to know where China is, ask Tom Friedman.  But be prepared; he may not know.  He may not have thought about it.

Bob B

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Posted in Opinion, Political philosophy, Political polemics, Regulation