Archive for the ‘audio’ Category

Lindsey Graham Gets the Just Recognition He Deserves (Video)

Friday, January 8th, 2021

One More DC Dirt-Bag

I never advocate violence on this site, even when these scumbags in DC really anger me. Given the way the Republican Party has treated Donald Trump over the last four years, misrepresenting us, betraying us, and otherwise sabotaging the President we elected, they should never be permitted to walk down the streets without being shamed for the dirtbags they are. None of them. All of these dirtbag insiders now abandoning the President and otherwise continuing this coup against Donald Trump that’s never stopped over the course of four years, and has always had the nodding support of the Republican establishment must find themselves dealt with by us in a non-violent but aggressively loud manner wherever they go. This goes back to McCain calling the Tea Party “Hobbits” and all the other contempt the McConnell crowd offered to citizens rising up to complain. This includes the consultancy and think-tank class with their bottomless pit of haughty, smarmy, dripping revulsion at we “Deplorables.”

This isn’t about Donald Trump. I have some things to say about him that I will get to in due course, but not now. I’m not going to abandon the man on the field while all of these closet corrupto-crats go scurrying off the ship, damning him as they go. No sir. Instead, from here on out, I’m going to give them the just recognition they deserve, to the extent they deserve it.

That’s almost every Republican in the US Senate, most of the Republican Governors(with just a few noteworthy exception already well-known to you,) and a goodly proportion of the Republicans in the House. There are also all the members of the Federal judiciary who failed to uphold the constitution, many of whom we fought to see seated, who must be similarly treated. This must never end, so long as they remain in office/power. Here is this despicable weasel, Lindsey Graham(R-SC,) escorted by a squad of police for whom WE PAY while mostly blissfully ignoring the protests blooming around him(Explicit Language):

https://twitter.com/iheartmindy/status/1347616155394043904

Can anybody tell me why Twitter feels obliged to slap these stupid, dishonest warnings on tweets? At this point, it’s like a CLICK MAGNET.

Of course, this says nothing of our overt enemies. Their time to face our contempt and derision is nigh, too.

It also includes all the media bastards, all of the various local officials, and from this day forward, none of these people need to be able to walk down the street without scorn and derision loudly heaped upon them.

These people think we’ll back down. That’s NOT happening.

To buttress that point, Mr. L(Explicit Language):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgkmOl65yA0

 

The Silent Coup d’état

Thursday, January 25th, 2018

silent_coup_detat_ft

It’s become pretty clear that the permanent government in Washington DC is corrupt beyond repair.  Tuesday, it was reported that a “Secret Society” was formed at the Federal Bureau of Investigations in order to stop Donald Trump from winning the 2016 election in the first instance, but having failed that, in the second instance to see him removed from office.  The most damnable aspect of this is that the latter is still ongoing.   Before losing perspective, remember that I’m not a particular fan of President Trump, and certainly no apologist for him, but in this instance, it’s certain that the forces arrayed against him are acting outside the bounds of the Constitution of the United States, and they’re showing no signs of relenting.  Worse, because the Attorney General of the United States has recused himself from the “Russian Collusion” investigation, there’s nobody who can put a stop to this madness.  What we have is an open-ended coup d’état in progress against the current President of the United States, putting the entire nation at risk.  Left unchecked, this silent executive branch revolt threatens to demolish our constitutional republic, and every legitimate officer of the United States federal government has taken an oath to prevent this.  I really don’t care about the political differences I may have with President Trump from time to time in this context, because my loyalty is reserved to the republic, and I renew my pledge each and every day: “…and to the Republic for which it stands…”  Attorney General Sessions had ought to review his own oath.  Members of Congress had better review their oaths.  It is time to fulfill them, and Americans are right to demand it.  Mark Levin has been right to call this a “Silent Coup,” and heads must roll.

Naturally, it’s worse than just the text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.  That’s merely the point at which we enter into this issue.  When it became public knowledge last week that there was a classified memo by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, headed by Devin Nunes, there erupted a call for the document to be released to the public by various House members and also people in the media, such as Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham on their respective shows on FoxNews.  This memo purportedly gives some indication of just how corrupt the permanent ruling class in Washington DC has become in administering the Federal Government.   On Facebook and  Twitter, the phrases “ReleaseTheMemo” and “ReleaseTheDocument” became explosively popular hashtags.  On Tuesday, the ranking member of Nunes’ committee, Adam Schiff(D-CA,) together with fellow Californian Senator Dianne Feinstein(D-CA,) sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey, CEOs of Facebook and Twitter, respectively, requesting that they investigate the allegation that “Russian Bots” were driving the meme on those two platforms.

Download the entire Feinstein & Schiff_letter in PDF format

 If you read the letter carefully, you will notice that already, Feinstein and Schiff are trying to distribute their own characterization of the memo, by way of defaming it.  Also, a question arises as to how Senator Feinstein has access to the memo to the extent she can comment about the character of its contents, since the memo is supposed to be classified and reserved at this point only to House members.  So why is a Senator commenting on the character of the memo?  It implies directly that she’s seen it.  Did Schiff disclose a classified document improperly to a colleague in the Senate?  More, when did members of Congress get the authority to make requests that sound more like demands of corporations?  These people certainly appear to be desperate to stop the disclosure of the memo in question to the public, and the reason for this is clear:  It will demolish the entire Democrat Party.  On Tuesday evening, both Schiff’s and Feinstein’s offices were hanging up on a deluge of callers letting the two Democrat hacks know that they were not “Russian Bots.”

There seems little impetus in Washington DC to release the memo, despite all the obvious evidence that the government is completely out of control.  Many Republicans seem more intent on fighting with President Trump than in pursuing the reckless, treasonous cabal that has sought and continues to seek to overthrow the duly elected President of the United States.  I cannot stress this point nearly enough: These people are traitors, and they have committed treason, and if they are not brought to justice, the United States Constitution is dead. If these conspirators are permitted to evade the full measure of justice, and if their masters are likewise able to escape detection and prosecution, our constitution is dead.  The country over.  In such a circumstance, there is no longer any moral law to restrain any person of integrity.  This must be an instance in which the great multitude of the American people must proclaim: “No justice, No Peace!”

Your country is being stolen from you.  At this moment, they are conspiring to steal the law from you.  They are conspiring to steal a duly elected President from you.  You may not like Donald Trump so well, but if you now stubbornly cling to #NeverTrump in spite of the current circumstance, you are forsaking your country.  Even if you are not a Trump fan, you must know what is at stake.  This is the sort of occasion for which sincere pledges of allegiance and oaths to protect and defend the constitution were made.  The last time this nation faced such a thorough mortal threat to its very existence from within, the year was 1861, Lincoln had been inaugurated, and the Civil War had commenced. I do not mean to say that Donald Trump is equivalent to, or even like Abraham Lincoln, as it is all too plain that he is not, but just like Abraham Lincoln, he is the duly elected President of the United States, and the conspiracy against him is no less broad or deep than the conspiracy that resulted in Lincoln’s assassination in 1865.  In fact, it is fair to say that while these conspirators have not yet resorted to violent means, it is certainly true that the conspiracy is wider in scope, and worse, it is secreted within the government of the United States.

None have yet asserted it, but it is possible that Robert Mueller is a party to this conspiracy.  Attorney General Sessions must immediately step in and put an end to Mueller’s bogus investigation.  He must dispatch the US Marshals to secure all pertinent evidence in the Department of Justice, including at the FBI, and within the NSA and CIA, and any other agencies in which there were participants in this attack on the United States.  Make no mistake about it: This was(and remains) a serious attack on the integrity of a US Presidential election, not by Russians, but by agents of our own government, perhaps in coordination with members and officials of the political party in power over the executive branch at the time.  More, there is now evidence that at least two of the conspirators were involved in getting the Mueller investigation going, and getting Mueller appointed by another person who may either be another conspirator, or may have been incompetent in acting as their puppet.  This entire ordeal stinks of wretched, skulking treason, and Robert Mueller is tainted with its stench.  It is time for Attorney General Sessions to formally rescind his recusal, and to appoint a special prosecutor to get to the bottom of this conspiracy, and setting to right all those instances in which justice was thwarted or obstructed, and to bring to justice those who had any part in it.  This must include any members of previous administration(s) who were even tangentially connected, and it must bring charges against all the participants, no matter how highly they had been placed in former regimes. It may be that there are members of Congress, judges, and elected or appointed officials of the executive branch who will be rounded-up under this mandate, but this must be ended, and ended with swift and unyielding reverence for our constitution.

Editor’s Note: As I finished typing up this posting, Mark Levin‘s broadcast of Wednesday evening had begun.  His first hour focused on this subject, and it was Levin who coined the term “Silent Coup” in this context, so he should be credited with that.  I’d urge you to listen to that first hour, as it covers most of the facts we now know, and in truth, it had been Levin who first began piecing together this story of treachery and treason nearly one year ago. You can listen to Levin’s audio rewind in the player below:

Mr. L Sums Up Barack Obama in One Word

Wednesday, October 9th, 2013

On Tuesday, Mr. L had more than a few choice words for Barack “Mugabe” Obama. The nation is becoming understandably angry with Obama, and he’s more than tired  of the dirt-bag politicians who are interested in compromising with Obama and the rest of the statist left.  There’s no point to offering compromise only to be rebuffed by Obama and his henchmen.  Frankly, Rand Paul should know better.  Mr. L gets it right: No more compromise. Another excellent presentation from Mr. L:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipCU-Wx_woM]

You can check out Mr.L’s Tavern here.

The End of the United States of America

Friday, October 4th, 2013

Preparing to Take Over

Unsure as I am as to how much longer I will be able to maintain this blog, it is my intention to cover a few topics of significant gravity, whatever else may come next.  There are certain things a man must be willing to discuss, whatever the cost, because the cost of silence is infinitely higher. What I will address hereunder is one such subject, dire though its context may be, simply because you should be made aware of it. As you already perceive at an almost instinctual level, we are losing the United States. As many of us have feared for at least the last five years, this will be due neither to an outside attack, nor even to the creeping, rotting decay now consuming our culture. Instead, we may now lose the country to the direct predations of an attack from within, launched by those entrusted with defending it.  This attack is likely to come in the form of the final, functional abolition of our constitution.  The precedents will have been set, and the last of the remaining constitutional checks and balances will have been removed by fiat.  Barack Obama intends to seize vast unconstitutional powers, and we shall see the rise of a dictator in the full blossom of his tyrannical authority.

The final assault on the fabric of our constitution will be launched by constitutional law professors working in concert with an aggressive executive who will with crisis-born pretense impose his dicta upon this nation.  The script is already written.  The pieces are nearly in place.  “Go-time” is drawing near, because this will be his last great opportunity to finally, fundamentally transform this nation into a cesspool of totalitarianism.   Conservatives will call for his impeachment, to no avail, as the US Senate is controlled by his philosophical cohorts.  There will be no undoing this peaceably, whatever some, even those near and dear to us may claim.  I believe the probability is unusually high that we will now witness the final days of the Republic you had known, and this historic human tragedy will be visited upon the people of the United States by Barack Hussein Obama, a criminal now ensconced in the office of the United States Commander-in-Chief, who has previously hinted at his dictatorial inclinations.

Mark Levin has discussed this, even on Thursday, explaining how Barack Obama will make a claim of constitutional authority for which there is no reasonable or valid claim anywhere in its text.  Levin still clings to a thread of hope that somehow, we will at some future date reverse this disastrous, wretched attack on our Republic by restoring it through constitutional process without reference to Washington DC.  If he will have been correct, at some future date, we would find ourselves able to reverse this attack by virtue of constitutional amendments instigated by the states, but such will not be plausible, or even possible, if Barack Obama makes this lethal claim of authority.  For years, leftists have been making the claim that there lies within the fourteenth amendment the authority for a President to ignore the debt ceiling in satisfying the debts of the United States.  While such claims have no rational basis, the amendment itself stating nothing of the sort, and with a Congress composed of sufficient statesmen of both parties in both houses who would oppose it, there might be a chance.  Sadly, we no longer have such a Congress.  The President need not worry about opposition even from the House, where Republican leaders continue to plot the undermining of the country in concert with Barack Obama.

Here’s the segment of Levin’s show in which he discusses the threat posed by Obama’s anti-constitutional plot:
 

Alternative content

While many of us may have been surprised pleasantly to see Boehner and Cantor standing somewhat more firmly than in recent budget impasses, they are merely playing their assigned roles now.  If Levin’s warning is correct, they will scarcely be relevant to what is about to happen to our Republic.  Barack Obama has been talking-down the stock market, and he’s brought the captains of finance into his offices for discussions.  Wall Street wants the borrowing and printing to continue unabated.  They’re making out like bandits, robbing us blind by paying paltry sums of interest on money being dumped by the wagon-load into the markets.  They want the gravy-train to continue, and the President is willing to let them for now.   You see, like all such men of finance, they have accepted a well-worn lie about the power of capital and the efficacy of money.   They believe money is the source of all power, and that as the cliche goes, it “makes the world go ’round.”   They have certainly adopted happily the notion of the bastardized form of the Golden Rule: “He who has the gold makes the rules.”  The problem is that their thesis is wrong, and in the end, they’re going to learn it.  Money is not a cause, but merely an effect. You see, Barack Obama studied under a different philosophy, one that references directly the most ruthless of his philosophical antecedents, Mao Zedong, who in brevity offered:

“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

The Wall Street types don’t understand this.  Obama understands this too well, having been mentored by radicals Ayers and Davis, who taught him the value of force, and who understood that only violence and its threat actually enforce political power.   The men of high finance are those who have learned that money can buy anything, but their lessons were corrupt.  They believe politicians are always open to bribes, and why wouldn’t they?  What they do not understand is that there exists a class of true believers, some good but many evil, who are not subject to this sort of temptation because of the strength of their beliefs.  I now believe Barack Obama may well be one such man, because his vision for America trumps any number of dollars you might offer him.  Bother now to ask yourselves what sort of historical monsters could not have been tempted from their pursuit of naked power for any amount of wealth, knowing that on their path, they will have access to all the wealth they could ever need.  Attempt to understand by asking of yourself: “How does an unarmed man in the proverbial dark alley bribe a pistol-waving mugger to take only some of his cash?”  This is the question these captains of finance and wizards of stock markets have blinded themselves from seeing.  They still think there’s something to negotiate.  Suffice it to say that by the time Obama is done with them, they will have asked themselves that question, even if much too late to matter.

Ask the Swiss bankers who folded like cheap napkins when Obama’s IRS went demanding account information on Americans.  How many potential opponents were then neutered forevermore?  What do you think that was about, anyway? What do you think Dodd-Frank is about?  Those who couldn’t wait to heap more regulations on the financial industry will soon learn the full impact of that law.  So will the average American when he learns his deposits are subject to be frozen or seized by whim of the chief executive and the Secretary of the Treasury acting at his behest.

All Obama now needs is an excuse, and the Republicans in Congress will give it to him, and he will be justified by all the lunatics who call themselves “constitutional scholars” he has brought along with him.  These will be people who do not need the arm-twisting that was used on John Roberts in order to see things the President’s way on Obama-care.  These are other true-believers.  They see their arguments as being full of the same holes you and I see, but that doesn’t matter so much as the fact that they will make them, insistently, irrespective of all facts, all standards of language, and all legal precedents.  Their only job is to buy Obama the time he will need for the controversy over his intended act(s) to die down, and for Mr. and Mrs. America to return to their football, their NASCAR, their baseball games, their “reality TV,” and the myriad other distractions that will seem more pressing and much less boring than an argument over the President’s constitutional authority or evident lack thereof.  In that moment, the Republic’s death will be imminent.

If the President can concoct any old excuse to ignore his constitutional limitations, no matter how perfectly absurd or patently unreasonable the justification, the constitution will be dead.  Absent the constitution, the Republic will no longer exist, and what you had known as the United States of America might still linger a while, even years, but its fundamental core, and its beating heart will have been stilled even if there is still a dimming signal for a while emitted by its expiring brain.  What will he do?  Clearly, all the evidence exists that he intends at some point to initiate a maneuver by which he will claim an extraordinary authority in the face of a real or concocted emergency from which he will promise to save us all, while driving the final nails in the casket of the Republic.  Worst of all, he is now and has been conspiring to create that crisis.  The time has now arrived for this nestling to take wing.

He has been talking a good deal about how Congress must pay the debts it has previously incurred, but this too is tortured language because Congress hasn’t incurred a debt until it’s borrowed the money.  What he intends is that by the “full faith and credit” clause of the fourteenth amendment, he will simply issue an executive order seizing control of the treasury.  There is some precedent for this, having been done in lesser measure by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933,  claiming the aegis of a vast emergency “almost as great as that of war,” and using the “Trading With the Enemy Act of 1917” as subsequently amended.  Obama will make the same tyrannical claim, but he is much more self-assured than even Franklin D. Roosevelt, and he intends to carry it to its logical conclusion this time.  He will ignore the legal debt ceiling, claiming the fourteenth amendment compels him to act.  Close attention to the amendment reveals that only Congress is mentioned in that amendment, and there is no mention of additional executive authority.  This is the moment of the trick.  This is where he will step across all constitutional boundaries and forevermore become a dictator, and since he will be largely unopposed, who will object?  Harry Reid?  John Boehner?

What the last week has taught the President is that he is running out of time.  The mood of the country is such that he now rightly expects that on our present course, he will not re-take the House in 2014, and he will be lucky to hold the Senate.  If he loses the Senate, his chances to take such actions will have elapsed, because Congress and the Republicans would be in a position to at least theoretically impeach and remove him from office if he threatened the Republic.  His time is dwindling, and his opportunities to take these steps are expiring as well.  Now may be his last, best hope to finally and irreversibly transform the United States to its fundamental core by wrecking the constitution that had been its beating heart, however bruised and damaged, for these last two-hundred years.  He and those who have helped him obtain office and maintain it are too close, having come too far to let it all slip away now.  Their goal is within reach.  All they need now is to grab it.

As I have explained before, the fourteenth amendment does not authorize the sorts of action Obama is now contemplating, but that some in academia are now exhorting him to exercise.   Today, Mark Levin discussed this article from the leftist Brookings Institute, arguing that the fourteenth amendment is the vehicle by which Obama can traverse all constitutional barriers.  As I wrote last year, citing the fourteenth amendment:

“As to the proposition that the 14th Amendment provides some authority for the President to circumvent Congress, this is a preposterous claim.  The relevant sections of the Fourteenth Amendment states:”

“Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.”

“Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article”

“Notice that section 4 was intended to deal specifically with war debt accrued by the Union in fighting against the Confederacy during the civil war.  The leftists who advocate on behalf of section 4 as a proscription against a debt ceiling are lunatics.  It not only requires the setting aside of the context of the amendment, but also ignoring the subsequent section, that specifically empowers Congress to enact legislation pursuant to this amendment.”

We need  not wonder any longer as to whether this amendment provides an actual constitutional basis for the actions Obama now contemplates.  Flatly, it does not, and only the sort of tortured mind that labors in the basement of the Brookings Institute in devoted service to all things statist could imagine otherwise.

I relate this information not to frighten readers, but in order to arm them with the facts.  The media will launch endless arguments if Obama should attempt this, and they will, along with academia, conspire to provide him the needed delay.  Mark Levin still expresses the opinion that his prescription, using Article V of the US Constitution to amend it without the cooperation of Congress, and one must certainly give him all due credit for bringing that strategy to life, and we must try it, but I fear that Dr. Levin is grasping at straws in light of this development.  What evidence exist to suggest that this or any Congress would act to obey Article V of the US Constitution. (By some counts, Congress has already received sufficient petitions from states to recognize a convention of the states.) If Obama attempts this, and Congress and the courts permit him to get away with it, the constitution will be dead.  At that point, Article V is most probably moot, along with the rest of our founding document, and the supreme law of the land will have shifted indefinitely (and probably permanently) from that noble piece of aged parchment to the whim and will of Barack Hussein Obama. Game over.

You may wonder how he will justify all of this, but you need only let your imagination expand to the limits of what this malignant narcissist sees as his mandate and his authority.  He is conspiring even now to collapse the US economy, which is why he now speaks specifically of “economic collapse.” This is why he’s going out of his way to scare the fire out of Wall Street.  He and his friend Ben Bernanke have built the biggest bubble in the history of man, and he intends to burst it.  Even before Labor Day this year,  the price of gasoline had begun to fall.  It’s still falling, and in the main, this is because general demand is low as the economy remains barely above water.  To the degree the economy remains afloat at all, it is riding on an over-inflated life-preserver made up of borrowed money, leveraged assets, and consumer credit stretched to the breaking-point.  College student loans now represent trillions of dollars of debt, since the government took over the administration of Federally-Guaranteed student loans.  How hard do you really think Obama will need to work in order to explode the entire US economy by the 17th of October, when we reach the legal debt ceiling(which we’ve already actually surpassed, illegally?) That good old debt clock to which only a few Americans pay even scant attention has been frozen in place for more than four months.  Do you really believe they haven’t exceeded it?

Obama was never going to negotiate with the Republicans.  If they had passed a “clean” continuing resolution, he’d have concocted some reason to reject it with Harry Reid’s help in the Senate.  Of course, at this late date, the Republicans would be foolish to do anything but stand fast, or risk losing such credibility as circumstances have afforded them.  At this point, all they can do is press for maximum advantage, while trying to arouse popular sentiment against the President so long as they are able.  Once before in our history, the financiers conspired with a president to set us on a similar course in justification of all he would thereafter do, but now we have a president who has set them up, and he’ll be using them for his purposes in a manner that the likes of Chairman Mao would approve.

By undertaking this approach, Barack Obama is signaling that he is ready to go for it all.  In this moment of national turmoil, we will emerge either as a dictatorship with a smiley-face concealing big government’s scowl like a putrid death-mask, or we will find we had somehow prevailed and the President will become the longest serving lame duck in our nation’s history.  This will be for all the marbles.  It is at this point that we must reconsider that great intellectual benefactor of the Republic who urges us to follow the path laid down in Article V to reforge our Republic.  Dr. Levin educates as much as any in the public eye, and his breadth and depth of knowledge on the subject of constitutional law knows few bounds.  Still, in light of Obama’s presumed aggressive strategy against the Republic, one wonders if an Article V undertaking would gain any traction so long as we suffer under an Executive that willingly denies, ignores, and tramples the constitution.  What good would it be if the United States government would refuse to recognize amendments instigated by a convention of the states and subsequently ratified by them?

At long-winded last comes the danger:  If Obama undertakes this strategy as some now urge, and others now dread, our President will be in open insurrection against the Republic.  He will be acting in clear opposition to the plain language of the supreme law of the land.  At stake will be the question: “What is the supreme law of the land? The constitution, or the contrived edicts of Obama?”  If the latter is permitted to stand, the United States of America will have perished.  I have no hope that a popular majority of Americans now possess and will maintain sufficient outrage to compel a presidential retrenchment, else Obama-care would never have become law, much less seen its first days of implementation.  This begs the question I would not now ask you to answer aloud: “What are you prepared to do?”  Civil disobedience?  What?  Don’t answer this in words, but instead ponder the question, and decide for yourselves now what your answer will be when it comes to the real asking.

If Barack Obama is permitted to abscond with our constitution and its checks on his power, we might just as well bulldoze that memorial our aged heroes have visited, for its very meaning – their meaning – will have been lost along with the proposition that ours is a nation of laws but not men.  This is what Barack Obama seeks most to overturn, and with it, to bear forth that most fundamental transformation with which he’s been threatening a nation and her people.  At present, the best the American people can hope is to dissuade him from that course by open chastisement and vocal disapproval.  The time may be drawing near when we will be compelled by events to answer that most dangerous question, and with its answer, to decide in finality whether we will remain a free people or submit to a brutal despotism of historic proportions.  The choice remains yours.

For now…

Mark Levin Issues Warning to DC Thugs

Thursday, October 3rd, 2013

In an explosive moment on his Wednesday evening show, radio talk-show host Mark Levin warned the people behind the government shutdown not to mess with the World War II vets at their memorial on the mall in Washington DC.  He’s right: Obama’s thugs are doing his bidding.  There was no reason to put up “Barrycades” around the memorial.  It was funded privately, and there’s generally no security there anyway.  It’s an outdoor site, so one might just as well put up fences around the Capitol steps.  This is simply an attempt to inflict pain on the American people and her veterans who risked all so that moral midgets like the President and his cohorts in Congress could claim some sort of political victory.  Levin warned that he’d bring a half-million people to the memorial if one veteran was harmed or man-handled or arrested.  Levin is right, and we should not permit our public officials to behave like bullies.  Barack Obama is despicable.  We are coming to a time of mass civil disobedience to this would-be emperor, and it’s overdue.  We are Americans, and there’s no reason to accept this from any politician. Here’s the audio, courtesy DailyCaller:

 

Levin is right. There’s no justification for this treatment of men who served their country with honor and distinction. There’s no possible reason to hurt them, or deny them what might be their last opportunity to come to this memorial, except as a shameless political maneuver. This is what has become of the United States of America under Barack Obama. The President should be ashamed.

Calling All Conservatives: Time to Draw a Line

Wednesday, April 24th, 2013

Drawing the Line

I  realize that at this very moment, you are being attacked on all fronts.  Our voices have earned us a temporary reprieve on gun control, but they’re trying to tax sales on the Internet again, and they’re pushing a ludicrous, maniacally self-destructive immigration bill. I realize we’re all a bit depressed by the unrelenting onslaught of big government, and I would understand if fatigue had set in for many of my friends  and fellow conservatives.  Ladies and gentlemen, we don’t have time to be depressed.  We might survive an Internet sales tax, but conservatism will not survive the immigration reform bill now being pushed by the “Gang of Eight” senators, or probably the version being pushed in the House by none other than Congressman and former Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan(R-WI.)  The immigration bill must be stopped if conservatives are to retain any political future.

There’s a very good reason the DC establishment has co-opted these “fresh faces:”  They know you won’t listen to the likes of John McCain or Lindsey Graham, but you might be convinced to listen to Paul Ryan or Marco Rubio. They walk these younger guys off a plank, in part because they’re more effective than the old bulls, but also in part to dominate them and keep them in check. If Rubio and Ryan are ultimately damaged by the immigration debate of 2013, who will benefit? Setting the inside politics aside, however, let’s be blunt about the ramifications of the immigration bill: If it is enacted, it will destroy movement conservatism as an electoral force for a generation or longer.  For conservatives, this is a fight for survival and it must be fought with all hands on deck.

Naturally, there are others who see danger in this bill.  Among them are African-American groups who see the potential for making themselves less vital and more disposable to the Democrat Party.  Wouldn’t it be astonishing to find that in the House, we may see the Congressional Black Caucus moving to oppose any immigration bill because it represents an almost complete displacement of their power base in the Democrat Party?  It is said that politics makes for strange bedfellows, but in this case, we may see an alliance of the extremely liberal members of the CBC with House conservatives to put the axe to immigration reform. Honestly, if it weren’t for the mortal  damage this bill would do to our nation, I’d almost be inclined to let it go through unchallenged just to make the Congressional Black Caucus moot.  Apart from the fact that the CBC would likely be an unreliable ally, the fact is that this bill would do immeasurable damage to the country and leave us wide open to more of the same we’ve faced over the last decade, with the added “bonus” of the “Californication” of the rest of the nation inside a decade.  States that are now light red would become deep blue, and states that were solidly red would become purple or even blue, in the case of Texas, and Arizona.  You can forget winning the White House. Just forget it.

This bill’s rejection is as important to the survival of conservatism as was the presidency of Ronald Reagan. If we don’t find a way to stop this, it will finish conservatism for the next two decades.  More, it will dispirit conservatives and we will lose the House in 2014, resulting in two years of a lame-duck President who will never be held to account and who will then have two years of a majority in both houses of Congress, a condition that we will find impossible to reverse.  If you have any doubts about the seriousness of the implications of this issue, I’d commend to you this clip from Tuesday’s Mark Levin Show.  In this clip, Dr. Levin sounds many of the same warnings, and for many of the same reasons I have brought to you previously on Tuesday.  You can download the entire show from Mark Levin Show Audio Rewind.  Here is the relevant clip:


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If you understand what Dr. Levin has explained, then you must see the seriousness of the threat posed by this bill. We must begin to attack the provisions of  the bill, but also the basic concept that they are trying to shove another de facto amnesty down our throats, once again with promises of improved security for which they have no real intentions to enforce.  More, it will weaken our security in the face of continued attacks by radical Islamists, with no end in sight.  One of the provisions of the Rubio-Schumer bill actually requires that this amnesty must not be applied to any who arrived in the US illegally after December of 2011.  The idea is that  this prevents the law from acting like a magnet in the short run to draw more immigrants across the border in a mad rush for amnesty.  The problem is that there is absolutely no way to demonstrate when they arrived.  That’s right, we’re going to take their word for it, since they are by definition undocumented.  How many do you suppose will proclaim that they had arrived after that date? Even if there was the slightest willingness on the part of some to faithfully apply such a provision, what is to prevent Barack Obama from simply waiving it?  Nothing.  There is nothing to prevent the whole thing from blowing up in our faces.

Paul Ryan discussed with Joel Pollak at Breitbart the questions surrounding the immigration bill, and Ryan claimed dishonestly that this would create new economic growth.  As I explained on Tuesday in my rebuttal to Senator Rubio, such an argument is a farce.  There is no net economic benefit to the people of the US from immigration, and in fact, a notable economic detriment.  As Dr. Levin rightly observed in the clip linked above, if we are looking for unskilled labor on the cheap, we could just as easily begin cutting welfare-state benefits to our own citizens and realize a real economic gain, since we would be removing people from the roles and they would begin to fill all of those jobs “Americans aren’t willing to do.”  I imagine that if their option is starvation, booted from clutching bosom of the welfare state, they will damned-well become willing.

This isn’t the time to consider immigration reform that will merely strengthen the Democrats in perpetuity.  This isn’t the time to create new and larger holes in our security in exchange for contrived and demonstrably false economic advantage.  We are at a point in American history that if we do not rise to fight against this, the loss of our country and all the liberties we have enjoyed is certain.  I understand there  are those who will see the looming Internet sales tax proposal as the worst threat facing us at present, but I must ask those of that view to reconsider:  The Internet Sales Tax can be repealed if it’s enacted, but amnesty is forever, and so is the electoral advantage to be gained by Democrats if it should pass.  When even the leftist political site Politico notes the grotesque advantage the immigration bill represents for Democrats, we are right to try to stop this at all costs.  The simple fact of the matter is that we can defeat this bill or prepare to yield our shrinking liberties.  It’s as simple as that.

 

The Dishonesty of the Gang of Eight

Tuesday, April 23rd, 2013

Water Carrier?

Breitbart is carrying informative stories on the bogus “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” bill that is being pushed by the “Gang of Eight” senators.  I would urge readers to pay close attention to Breitbart.com for more news on the issue.  Byron York of the Examiner is also doing fantastic work exposing the gaping holes in this bill.  Breitbart’s William Bigelow has revealed another fatal flaw in the supposed reforms offered by the Rubio-Schumer/Gang-of-Eight bill that will leave a giant opening for the administration to do absolutely nothing in enforcing the allegedly strict measures contained in the new law.  As reported by the Byron York, via the Examiner.com, the feature of the bill described by Marco Rubio on Mark Levin’s show last week that would create a commission including the four border-state governors is nothing less than a sham.  There are no teeth to the provision, and no means by which to guarantee that provided there are recommendations by a commission of four governors, but also six bureaucrats selected by the President, any of these recommendations would see the light of day.  York explains:

“It sounded tough, intended to convince skeptical conservatives that reform would be based on stringent border security.  But as it turns out, the structure Gang sources described is simply not in the bill.”

York continues:

“In the legislation, the Commission would be formed if the Secretary of Homeland Security “certifies that the Department has not achieved effective control in all high-risk border sectors during any fiscal year beginning from the date that is five years after the enactment of this Act.” The Commission’s “primary responsibility,” according to the bill, “shall be making recommendations to the President, the Secretary, and Congress on policies to achieve and maintain the border security goal” of 100 percent surveillance and 90 percent apprehension.  The Commission will have six months to write a report “setting forth specific recommendations for policies for achieving and maintaining the border security goals [specified in the bill].”  That report shall contain, according to the bill, “recommendations for the personnel, infrastructure, technology, and other resources required to achieve and maintain [those goals].””

As if this isn’t bad enough, York then delivers what should be the final nail in the coffin of this horrible legislation:

“The bill requires that the head of the Government Accountability Office then review the report to determine whether the Commission’s recommendations are likely to work and what they will cost.  And then — the process stops.  “The Commission shall terminate 30 days after the date on which the report is submitted,” says the bill.

“There is nothing about the Commission going from “being an advisory panel to a policy-making one.”  The strict trigger that Gang sources advertised as being in the bill just isn’t there.

“As far as the “money set aside in escrow” for the Commission and its enforcement plan, the bill specifies that $2 billion “shall be made available” to the Secretary of Homeland Security “to carry out programs, projects, and activities recommended by the Commission.”  It is not clear whether there is any directive for the Secretary to actually do anything.”(emphasis added)

What this all means is that when Marco Rubio appeared on Mark Levin’s show on Wednesday of last week to explain the bill, he misled the audience and presumably the host. Levin asked tough questions despite being friendly with the Senator, but it seems that Senator Rubio “dissembled” a bit on some of the details.  The Daily Caller quotes Rubio from his appearance on Dr. Levin’s show:

“If, in five years, the plan has not reached 100 percent awareness and 90 percent apprehension, the Department of Homeland Security … will lose control of the issue and it will be turned over to the border governors to finish the job …. which is not a Washington commission, made up of congressmen or bureaucrats.  It’s largely led by the border state governors, who have a vested local interest in ensuring that that border is secure … and there’s money set aside in the bill for them to do it.” [Emphasis added]

You can listen to the audio of the segment here, from Mark Levin’s Audio Rewind:

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Unfortunately, as the Daily Caller goes on to detail, this is a bit less than fully honest:

“True, the bill does create a $2B pot of money for the DHS to use to carry out the commission’s recommendations–but there’s nothing that compels the DHS to actually spend it on all of them, or any of them, let alone to actually achieve the “90 percent apprehension” goal.

“Nor, if the goal isn’t reached, does the bill delay the issuance of green cards to the already-legalized former illegals (as Rubio at one point seems to suggest to Levin).

“Oh, and the commission isn’t “made up of the governors” of the border states–they only control four of the 10 commission seats. The other six are “Washington” appointments (see pages 14-15)

“Aside from those things, everything Rubio said about the commission was true.”

Whether the statements of Senator Rubio were intentionally misleading, or whether he is simply being led around by the nose by staff or other senators on the plain language of the bill, what is deeply troubling is that by appearing on the Mark Levin Show, repeating falsehoods(whether or not he knew them to be falsehoods,) Senator Rubio has done much to contribute to the lack of ill will and distrust over this legislation.  Whatever other supposed virtues this legislation may have, it’s wrecked by the propaganda being spread in this instance by Senator Rubio.

As this goes on, Rubio’s own spokesman, Alex Conant, is on Twitter comparing immigrants, legal and illegal, to slaves, H/T Twitchy:

Alex Conant @AlexConant

@conncarroll We haven’t had a cohort of people living permanently in US without full rights of citizenship since slavery.

If this is the attitude of Rubio’s spokesman, one must wonder about the strategy being employed by Rubio. The claim that immigrant are akin to slaves is a ridiculous notion, and frankly, Rubio should fire Conant.  It leaves open the question as to whether Senator Rubio might endorse such notions, and while I doubt that to be the case, it won’t help the Senator’s cause. Likewise, it isn’t helpful when one sees a conservative senator going around arm-in-arm with Charles “Chuck-U” Schumer(D-NY,) one has every reason to believe that Rubio may have relied on the characterization of the bill provided by the likes of Schumer.  I wonder if Rubio isn’t being made a patsy, but then again, I’m not sure it matters because there is something disturbing about a purportedly “conservative” senator relying on the explanations of the legislation of anybody.  Why isn’t he reading the language?

Schumer has taken a slightly different approach, going on the offense and claiming that some would use the occasion of the Boston Marathon Bombing to stall or obstruct the Immigration Reform legislation.  I must say that given the disclosures about the actual provisions of the bill revealed over the last week, I sincerely hope some conservative senators will do precisely that.  It makes no sense to pretend that this ridiculous immigration bill will accomplish anything but to make our nation less secure, and the Boston bombing clearly exposes that for the average citizen. The dishonesty being employed by proponents of this legislation is very much like an Obama campaign, and that’s all the more despicable when you think that a rising star in the Republican party may have diminished himself into nothing more than a flash in the pan.  That’s a sad prospect, one that could be headed-off if these politicians would simply read the legislation they’re advocating.  Senator Rubio owes us an explanation for the incomprehensibly misleading statements made on Levin’s show, but one probably won’t be forthcoming.  Draw your own conclusions as to the reason(s).


Establishment GOP Abusers and Their Willing Victims

Saturday, February 9th, 2013

Will We Take Another Beating?

We ought to become acquainted with how we conservatives must appear to GOP establishment politicians, analysts and strategists. At every instance of their serial abuses of the grass-roots, conservatives “go wobbly” and buckle, ultimately returning to the fold. They know how to pull at our heartstrings and seize on our desperation in order to get us to back down from our outraged, uppity high horses. They play the loyalty card, the race card, the poverty card, and anything else they can contrive in order to convince us to return their waiting arms in order to comply with their wishes, but it’s the whip they hold to which we ought pay more attention.  They don’t see us as equals, but as a herd of inferiors to be managed, and in order to do so, sometimes they recognize the need to grovel a little.  It should sound familiar to conservatives any time they listen to the latest establishment attempts at re-framing their disgusting behavior into something born of the “best intentions.” Just like serial domestic abusers, the establishment always make a rationalized, dishonest appeal in order to avoid charges of abuse, and just like the real victims of domestic abuse, we conservatives keep going back when they offer their excuses:

“I didn’t mean any offense. I didn’t want to hurt you.  It was all just one big confused misunderstanding.  I’m sorry you took my actions as a sign that I meant you harm.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Can’t we just get along and make it all better?  We can seek counseling.  I’ll enroll in AA!  You know I really love you, and I only do these things because I love and need you so much. I didn’t want you to make the choices you did because I only wanted to protect you[from yourself.] Baby, this will never, ever happen again.”

Of course, that’s what they say, but it’s not what they mean. For example, Karl Rove is trying to undermine Iowa Congressman Steve King in any attempt to run for Senate in the next election cycle, and  he’s happy to point to dishonest statistics about King’s re-election campaign in 2012.  What Rove won’t tell you is that King’s re-election bid was as narrow as it had been because Democrats made his district a priority, dumping millions of dollars of anti-King advertising into the district.  As Mark Levin pointed out during the second hour of his Friday show, Rove wasn’t satisfied with mere distortion when availing himself of the podium of Sean Hannity’s radio show.  Instead, he resorted to outright lies. Here’s audio from Dr. Levin’s show:

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This process by which the establishment wing of the GOP attacks grass roots targets should seem familiar to readers. It should also sound familiar to anybody who has ever worked in law enforcement, social services, or even listened to a few tapes of 9-1-1 calls.  Millions of women and not a few men have lived through the self-imposed nightmare of returning again and again to an abusive spouse(or significant other) in order to retain some semblance of normalcy and predictability in their lives.  They just want the beatings to stop.  They just want it to end, but so desperate to hold onto some part of their lives, they frequently return for another dose, often ending in tragedy.  After all, haven’t we conservatives behaved with freakish precision like sufferers of what had been known formerly as “battered wife syndrome?” Do you doubt me? Imagine Karl Rove in a plain-white sleeveless undershirt.  You get the picture.

Many people ask the obvious question about battered spouses: “Why do they keep going back?”  If you’re a member of the Republican party, but also a conservative in principle and philosophy who has become annoyed or offended by the direction of the GOP,  it’s time for you to ask that same question of yourself.  Some will say I have been too crass in posing such an analogy, but I think it’s fitting because it seems to me that when it comes down to the point at which rational people would flee for the sake of self-preservation, too often, we stop and return to the scene of the abuse, knowing what must be coming eventually, despite all the promises of reformation. We’ve heard the rationalizations:

“It’s better now.  Fault has been admitted, and we’re seeking counseling, and I’m treated much better now.”

All of these are preludes to the real confession of helplessness that follows:

“Besides, what else was I going to do? Leave? Where would I go? What would I do?  Better to stay put.”

With respect to the Republican Party and its miserable, corrupt establishment, who among conservatives hasn’t contemplated some version of these notions in order to trick themselves into holding the nose and walking back in to the booth to pull the lever for the GOP’s preferred candidates?  Right.  Me. You. Virtually all conservatives have gone through this one or more or even dozens of times, and each time, we knew with virtual certainty what would be coming: Another attack by the establishment on the grass-roots, or another surrender by party leadership to the leftist agenda would soon be in the offing.  Once the electoral objectives are met for the cycle, we and our issues are discarded and off we go with the next Republican-led effort at big government statism, and further support of a purely leftist agenda.  It happens so often that we cringe now when a Republican hand is raised, expecting it to smash down on us as it has done so many times before.

Many were outraged by the actions of the GOP establishment in 2011-12, but in the end, how many of us did their bidding anyway?  We keep coming back.  Even a dog learns that if you recall him, only to bash his nose with a rolled-up paper, approaching you is something to be done at his peril.  Eventually, the dog won’t come back at all, and no amount of false praise or treats will make him return when called because he has learned recall is the prelude to another beating.  Are we conservatives not more able to recognize our antagonists than are dogs? Do we not possess the requisite self-esteem to leave?

What we have done is to reinforce the behavior of our batterers. It’s gotten so bad that fleeing for a night or a week to the political battering victims’ shelter of the blogosphere or talk radio to voice our displeasure will no longer be enough.  It’s time finally to press charges and stand up for ourselves and go, never to return.  Yes, there will be hard times as a result, but the long-run dangers of staying are worse, and at some point, for people who claim to be concerned with the welfare of their children, shouldn’t we correct the environment in which they will be growing?

I say “we must go.”  Otherwise, how many black eyes will we endure?  How many betrayals?  How much infidelity must we accept?  We might claim that we had no choice but to stay, or to return, but after the tenth 9-1-1 call to Rush Limbaugh, our whining begins to lose its impact.  Do you think the GOP establishment hasn’t noticed our regular return to the fold, irrespective of what they do to us next?  We fall for their sweetened tone because we want to, and because it’s harder to strike out on our own than to come back and live in terror of our next beating at their hands. It’s time to recognize that it is our fear of the uncertainty that fuels our repeated returns, but also that in so doing, what we are guaranteeing instead is a certain result that will only grow worse. We must ask instead how much we value such predictability, if it amounts only to the certainty of our next beating. It’s time for conservatives to reject the continued abuse at the hands of their tormentors in the Republican establishment. It’s time to break the cycle.

Note: It’s not my intention to minimize domestic abuse, but instead to demonstrate how conservatives have responded to their abusers in the same way many victims of real domestic abuse react to their plights. I don’t intend to compare the horrors inflicted on such victims with the political victimization that goes on the Republican party, except as an illustration of how dependent conservatives have become on their abusers.  The immediate results of the political context I’m discussing in no way measure up to the terror under which victims of domestic violence live, but I will point out that in terms of the country and its future, the dire consequences of permitting the abuse of the GOP establishment to continue will be no less severe on a national basis.

Mark Levin Demolishes Rove’s Claims

Saturday, February 9th, 2013

The Great One!

It was inevitable that given the shellacking Karl Rove has taken over the last few days that he would use any opportunity to advance the idea that he is a conservative. As I posted earlier on Friday evening, Rove made claims to conservative credentials on O’Reilly that were later debunked.  Mark Levin took the debunking to a new level in the second hour of his show, making it plain that Rove was being disingenuous, to say the least. Here’s the audio:

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As Dr. Levin explains later in the same hour, he’s now attacking conservatives with blatant lies. You can listen to the entire show here.

Class in Session: Mark Levin Declares RINO-ism Dead

Wednesday, January 23rd, 2013
graduation dresses

RINOism Dead!

There should be no mistake about what Mark Levin believes, or even the vast reach of his influence over the debate about government.  Many left-wingers and not a few establishment Republicans accuse Dr. Levin of being a yelling mad-man, but that ignores the extent to which he influences the public debate.  At an event last year in support of Ted Cruz, in the run-off that made him the Republican candidate, one attendee asked quite simply:  How can we stop the construction of Ameritopia?  What was stunning wasn’t the fact that the Senate Candidate knew full well what the questioner meant, being a friend with Dr. Levin and a campaign season guest on his show, but that all around the room, heads nodded up and down, because they knew the meaning of the question too.  When the Senator answered, he demonstrated an understanding of the implications with respect to the US constitution, but unlike your typical rally of Democrats, the audience understood his points in part because some of them are lifetime students of our civil society, but also because among them were many listeners of Mark Levin’s show.

On Tuesday evening, frustrated with the talking points and narratives of establishment Republicans who wish to blame conservatives for last November’s losses, Levin launched:

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Dr. Levin holds a special contempt for so-called RINOs, or as I have recently dubbed them, “Mini-Dems.” They don’t believe in conservatism, or near as one can tell, much of anything.  Instead, theirs is the worship of a brand of vague pragmatism that ends in Republican defeats.  Of course, Dr. Levin realizes the RINOs aren’t going away, but here I think the larger point is that the underlying strategies and arguments that comprise RINOism are dead, as demonstrated by their repeated failures in election after election.

Levin’s reach into the blogosphere is deep and wide, as almost daily, some blogger somewhere, much as I’m doing now, is posting a vital clip from his show, and this acts as a spark for debate, not merely between left and right, but more importantly in the wake of last November’s election defeats, between and among Republicans and conservatives.  This is because Levin spares no feelings, or at least not many, in making the essential and incisive points that establish the conditions of the debate.  This may explain more than anything else why Levin’s show has grown while others have remained fairly static.  He engages one’s mind, and he demands you follow the logic.  He makes no apologies for supporting the Tea Party, or the conservative wing of the party, as Levin came up in politics in the watershed year of 1976, campaigning for Ronald Reagan.  Though Reagan lost that election, it set the stage for his nomination and election in 1980, and Levin was there to learn the critical lessons.

Most listeners to Levin’s show comprise a group of studious, committed pupils, attending a a constitutional classroom in which the principles behind the founding of the country and the framing of its constitution are the daily lesson plan.  What’s more, while it’s relatively early to draw this conclusion, as conservatives are searching for answers to their current political morass, it seems as though more are turning to Levin for the answers.  It’s not as though Levin claims to be an all-knowing font of wisdom on what ought to be conservatives’ course, but his determination to fight and keep moving is enough because what becomes plain to his listeners is his unfailing commitment to see the battle through, whatever form it takes.  Part of this may owe to the fact that in the wake of the 2012 election, conservatives are looking for a strong, articulate leader to make their best case for liberty, but I believe it’s a good deal more substantive than that.  Levin seems almost instinctively to understand what the left will try next, which may explain why the stories he reads on one day so often become the topic of discussion throughout the blogosphere on the next day.

It’s been true on this site, almost from its inception, and on many occasions, I have brought readers audio from Dr. Levin’s show.  My readers will have no idea on how many occasions Dr. Levin had stolen my thunder by covering a stories that I had in draft form as Levin’s show began, only to later discard them because on topics of substance, he generally leaves so little to be explained.  That’s fine by me, but it highlights another important point about Levin: He’s plugged-in, and he works tirelessly outside the confines of his show, not merely to prepare for his daily three-hour lesson in liberty, but because in other efforts, he’s at the tip of the spear.  The Landmark Legal Foundation is his other instrument of our republic’s defense, taking up cases of constitutional import on behalf of a grateful people.  This level of involvement means that unlike so many other talkers, he’s in the trenches with us, and often as the point-man out ahead of us, spotting danger and directing the initial engagements.

Given all this, you’d think more Republican politicians would heed his advice, but where Dr. Levin is fearless, all too often, elected officials won’t follow his lead, out of a fear frequently masquerading as an overabundance of prudence.  Levin understands this, and he often asks politicians questions that he then suggests they not answer, instead completing the thought on his own, knowing the precarious state of any official’s office.  Levin’s show is probably also the largest network of plugged-in conservative activists in the general right-wing sphere, and his audience is unashamed to lean on politicians and to begin with the phrase: “I heard on Mark Levin’s show that you were going to vote for…”  It is for this reason that so many of the DC Republican establishment tunes into his show, and while most won’t admit it, the fact is that they are well aware of Levin, and they feel his electoral influence. Politicians on the receiving end of his support love to hear the phrase “Levin surge” pronounced on their behalf, just as they cringe when they pop up on Levin’s radar for the sake of a well-deserved critique.  They know they’re about to find their email and voice-mail full, and they’re going to get it both from Levin on the radio as well as from their constituents.

What may make Levin the most compelling and influential of the talkers and political media figures is that he expresses his contempt for the malfeasance of politicians and parties in the context of legal concepts on which he daily refreshes his audience.  Apart from this blog, and rare few like it, you will not often witness a discussion of the principles underlying our supreme law.  Law can be a minefield as any layperson will know, but there’s something precious about the ability to breath life into the collection of words, explaining their meaning and the context in which they were formulated in a manner that both educates and engages listeners.  Very often, listeners to Dr. Levin’s show evince a reverence for our republic’s charter that is both touching and sincere, but also ironic in light of how easily their alleged “betters” dispense with both its words and spirit inside the beltway.

This kind of reformation movement isn’t religious, but its most ardent supporters would contend that while they may cling to their guns and their bibles, they haven’t turned-loose of their constitution either.  Listening Tuesday evening, as Levin mentioned the effect he suspected his show might have on the national dialogue, I wondered aloud in response to my deaf computer screen as to just how many of the people I know are now loyal Levin listeners, and the truth is something staggering.  I may live in rural Texas, where we tend to value liberty more than the average, but even friends from the distant large cities, in this state and out, all seem quite familiar with Levin’s show, his daily “lesson plans” frequently filling my morning inbox:   “Did you hear what Mark [Levin] said last night?”  There’s no denying he’s a bold and entertaining talk radio phenomenon, but more than this, he’s also the commander of constitutional defense headquarters on a national scale.  When people seek the low-down on the latest Obama executive usurpation, they tune to one show on the dial and in streams across the Internet, because for better or worse, they know they’ll find the answers.

Dr. Levin can be heard Monday-Friday, 6-9pm Eastern, both on terrestrial radio and streaming from his site, as well as  affiliates.  If you miss the live show, he also offers free downloads of his podcasts here.

The Role of the GOP Establishment in the 2012 Disaster

Saturday, November 10th, 2012

Can it be revived?

My readers deserve the courtesy of bluntness, since it’s preferable to get the unpleasantness out of the way early.  I’ve always been a “save the good news for last” kind of fellow, and if you’ll bear with me, I’ll get to that eventually.  If you’re a loyal and strident fan of John Boehner, Mitt Romney or anybody named Bush, you may wish to exit this blog for the duration.  Let me first say that if I had to point to a date on which Mitt Romney’s loss was cemented, it would have to be after the ides of July, 2011.  At the time, we were headed for a shutdown of the federal government over the debt ceiling.  Congress must authorize the amount of money the federal government can borrow, and at the time, what was particularly disconcerting to conservatives had been how willing John Boehner seemed to be to pull the rug from beneath the feet of conservative House members.  He went through the dog-and-pony show of letting the House pass “Cut, Cap & Balance,” but only because he knew it would die in the Senate, since he already had a tentative deal worked out with Reid and Obama.

I knew this would doom Republicans in 2012, so I urged members to stand fast, and I was particularly harsh when they didn’t, perhaps undeservedly so with respect to one particular freshman representative from Florida.  Like a number of others, he was told to walk the plank and vote for the “deal” and after some fussing, he folded, and the bill was passed.  That would come back to haunt us in the election of 2012.  Giving Obama a pile of money to spend through the election would give him unlimited resources for spending on the “power of the incumbency” as the vote drew near.  That’s precisely what happened.  The Strategic Petroleum Reserve was cracked open to drive down the price of gas at the pumps. Giveaway programs including everything from foodstamps to Obama-phones accelerated to new heights.  All of this free stuff was purchased with your money, but the irony is that it is money you and your children have yet to earn.  Thank John Boehner and those operating his strings for the colossal debt incurred to keep Obama in office. The Debt Ceiling Deal of 2011 basically guaranteed it would be difficult to beat Obama, if not impossible, and at the time, there were reports that Romney had urged the deal.

You see, Mitt Romney was never supposed to win.  That may be why the Bush clan endorsed him.  They needed a fall-guy.  They needed somebody who would believe he could win, be controlled if he somehow did, but most importantly, prevent any real conservative from making it into the Oval office.  They surrounded him with their own campaign stooges, many part of the permanent political consultancy class in DC, and many of whom undoubtedly gave him counterproductive advice, and gave him false assurances about his situation in the polls. Romney believed that come election day, he would have the full support of the team, and they were going to bring new technology to the voting process, using a mobile app on smartphones among their volunteers to track and report and to try to get people to the polls.  For some odd reason, the technology failed.  That’s right, the technology failed all day long, and the passwords volunteers were supposed to use to access it didn’t work, but the good news was there was a password reset tool, and the worse news is that it didn’t work either.  Poor hapless volunteers stood around with no back-up plan, and some went home early in disgust.  As I said, whether Romney knew it or not, he wasn’t supposed to win.

Whether Mitt Romney was so inept on his own, or was instead the unwitting victim of really bad, sabotage-laden advice, we may never know, but what is clear to me now is this:  As soon as Romney conceded the race, almost before the smoke cleared, there were those in media who had prepared remarks about how this was the result of demographic changes to the country, and that the Republican Party ought to get behind “Comprehensive Immigration Reform.”  Yes, you see, the argument was that the Hispanic vote went with Obama in search of an amnesty of some sort, in the form of the “Dream Act,” or similar. I was not shocked therefore when I heard an account of John Boehner telling Dianne Sawyer in an interview on Thursday that his legislative priority would not be jobs, the fiscal cliff, Benghazi-gate, or anything of the sort, but instead: Comprehensive Immigration Reform.  You might wonder where this would originate, since it’s almost incomprehensible that Boehner came up with this on his own, and you’d be right.  Jeb Bush, the former Governor of Florida, and brother of George W. Bush, is about to publish a book on the issue.  It’s part of Jeb’s agenda: Comprehensive Immigration Reform.

Plausible Deniability

One might ask how all of this ties together, and I will admit that my evidence is thin, except for the events we’ve all witnessed in puzzled disbelief.  I believe that JEB Bush will run for President in 2016, and since the Bush clan has been hot and heavy for comprehensive immigration reform for decades, but doesn’t want the political pain involved in shoving CIR down the throats of conservatives, they’ll have Obama, Boehner and Reid get it out of the way.  In fact, the Bush clan has had a hand in subverting US sovereignty via what is known as the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, whereby the notion of a EU-like North American Union was conceived(and you’ll doubtless notice how well the EU has come out for member nations.)  A necessary part of that union will  be open borders, and this is why the Bush presidencies never resulted in any tangible results in getting control of our borders.  The problem for the advocates of SPPNA is that to get it through, and to realize it fully, they will need a good deal more votes in the Senate.  I would ask you to view the results of Tuesday’s election in light of the SPPNA, and ask yourself if it was a positive or detrimental outcome for the SPPNA adherents.

Boehner is one of the people bringing this to us, and he wanted to eliminate through this election any members he thought might be trouble.  He succeeded in large measure, and he almost rid himself of Michele Bachmann, who received no help from the party, as she’s been a squeaky wheel.  At the same time, the establishment had to sabotage Richard Mourdock, because he wasn’t one of theirs.  Lugar had been a supporter of the SPPNA and he’s a big fan of comprehensive immigration reform. When conservatives in Indiana dumped Lugar, Mourdock couldn’t be allowed to win.  The GOP establishment and a bunch of disgruntled Lugar supporters(I call them Lugies) showed up to sabotage Mourdock in every way they could.  In fact, as I look at the candidates closely, what I notice is that those new faces who made it into the Senate tend to be people who are amenable to the SPPNA and Comprehensive Immigration Reform.

If we had 41 Senators who were staunchly opposed to CIR or SPPNA, those things would never gain ground.  It was therefore imperative that any candidates who made it into the Senate be CIR and SPPNA advocates.  Go look at the results.  I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions, but if Jeb Bush is about to publish a book on the issue of immigration, and if he intends to run for President in 2016, one of the things you ought to consider about him is this whole business of CIR and SPPNA.  You ought to consider likewise the impact Jeb and the family Bush had on this election.  Was Mitt Romney an unwitting placeholder?  After all, the name “Bush” is still toxic even among conservatives, and that family wouldn’t want to risk that an actual conservative might get into the White House, so they could have supported Romney knowing he would lose, but knowing that with their help, he would be strong enough to freeze out the others. I’d like you to consider the whole of the 2011-2012 primary season in this light.  For those who still believe this election failure had been about “outreach to Hispanics,” I urge you to read this piece by Heather MacDonald.

For those of you who wonder at my dislike for the Bush policy agenda, let me put it in these terms: “Compassionate Conservatism” is merely Establishment Code for “We’ve got free stuff too!” If we can’t make the Bush family irrelevant in the GOP, then we’ll need to abandon the party.  They still control many levers of the party machinery, including in Texas and Florida, but also other states.  We must rid ourselves of these people.  They’ve never managed to do anything but sink us in the long run, and they have advanced the statist ball down the field more reliably than most Democrats. On Friday, it was reported that Jeb’s son George P. Bush intends to seek office.  The times article quoted a State representative in Texas:

“George P. was recently our guest down here in the Valley, where we held an event for him,” said a state representative, Aaron Pena, a Republican who represents part of Hidalgo County in the Rio Grande Valley. “The level of excitement was through the roof. Here you have arguably the most famous family in American political history, embodied in a person who is much like ourselves. After the trouncing that Republicans received in losing the Hispanic vote in the recent presidential election, George P.’s candidacy is the sort of remedy that we’re looking for.”(emphasis added)

Apart from the subtle racism  implicit in Mr Pena’s remarks, I find it troubling that yet another Bush intends to run in order to advance the family agenda.  It’s for this reason that I submit that we won’t repair the Republican Party until we finally accept the Reverend Jesse Jackson’s advice, but only this one time, and only with respect to the family Bush:

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(click “play” for Jackson’s advice)

Really people, “stay out da Bushes.”  I don’t think we’ll ever have another conservative President until we excise the Bush influence from our body politic.  America is not a land of royalty, and no single family should wield so much power over so long a span.  There is nothing peculiar to the Bush family that makes them more suited to leadership.  Nothing.  The problem is, they want the power and prestige because they have goals that supersede your interests or mine, in their view.  The SPPNA is just one of them.  They don’t mind being out of power for eight years if that’s what it takes to rehab their family name.

When you take all of this in, it stings a little, but it also begins to make sense.  I don’t believe Mitt Romney was supposed to win, and I think that the Bush family intends to restore their family name, a name that took a beating as a result of many of their policies while in power, not only from rigid leftists, but also among conservatives who have rightly noted that the Bush family seems to have extensive sympathies with statists, and with globalists who are more interested in big ideas about global governance than with American sovereignty.  The Bush family seems to wish to drag us unwillingly into their global vision, and I’m not going without a fight. Neither should you.  We conservatives simply must stop walking into these minefields.

After all, who will be their next moderate patsy, and will we go along with that one too?  If their family name is still too toxic in 2016, expect them to put up another stand-in.  I think the next one will be a big fan of donuts.  He’s shown himself willing to help, but he may now be damaged goods himself.  Time will tell.

Solution to two problems?

Insofar as Boehner, he is a cog in this machine.  The good news is that we can rid ourselves of this particular tool, and I even have an idea as to how we might do that. I realize this may be slim consolation, but we need a win. We need to start somewhere, and I think this is as good a place as any.  As you know, there is no requirement that the Speaker of the House be a voting member of the House of Representatives.  If they wanted to, they could elect Rush Limbaugh…or me. (Though if nominated, I would not run, and if elected, I would not serve…)  It just so happens that we have a plausible candidate for the position, since he’s recently been left jobless after being set up for defeat through redistricting in Florida.  He’s still contesting the results, but win or lose, Allen West would make a great Speaker of the House, and there’s no reason we shouldn’t call our respective representatives to insist on it. I’m not trying to start a movement, but I think we must finally rid ourselves of Boehner, and the best way to do that is to replace him with somebody we want.  While it’s not likely, it is possible, so that when they vote for the Speaker for the next term, we can make a difference.

For readers who want more background on the immigration argument, Heather Mac Donald also wrote this piece some time ago.

 

One-Half of One-Third of the People Screwing Us [Again]

Wednesday, August 1st, 2012

Boehner and the Boys

There must be something in the water in Washington DC, and I think it’s about 80 proof.  Speaker John Boehner has led the abandonment of principle once again, and I can’t believe these are allegedly our guys.  This evening, the rotten Republican leadership sent down the word that Republicans ought to support a bill that eliminates Senate confirmation for an additional 169 Executive branch positions, meaning that they just let Barack Obama have his way with 169 more positions he can fill, unchecked by Congress, and able to appoint the most maniacal leftists he can dig up.  Thankfully, it was a roll-call vote, and you can look to see how your Representative voted.  My own Representative voted “Aye” on this hogwash, and before this evening is over, his office is going to hear about it, and tomorrow, his offices both in the district and in DC are going to hear about it.  The purpose of confirmations is that there should be Congressional oversight on these appointments so no President can become too powerful.  Boehner and the boys just voted to reduce their own power but according to Mark Levin’s sources, there’s a reason they did so:  Mitt Romney told them to do it on the basis that he would like it if he were to become President.  What?!?

The purpose of this collection of elected jack-wagons is not to dispense with the Constitution, or to weaken the legislative branch on the basis that somebody from their party might become President at some date in the future.  It is their job to protect and defend the constitution, and that means to uphold its intent, which includes the Congressional responsibility of oversight over Presidential appointments.  Who in the world do these people think they are?  It’s not their job to “remove obstructions” to the process.  For the love of Pete, why don’t Boehner and McConnell just get together with Obama and give him all power of Congress, since Mitt Romney might want to be dictator someday?  This is preposterous.  It truly is disheartening, but more than that, it’s a bit more evidence that we cannot salvage the Republican party.  It’s broken.  It doesn’t represent us in many cases, and it certainly doesn’t represent our interests when our elected Republican majority throws we and our constitution under the bus in the name of expedience.

Others may take a somewhat less terse approach, but I no longer give a damn about holding back “for the sake of party unity.”    When they sell us out, I am going to scream it.  What party unity?  The only “unity” I see in this matter is that between John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Hussein Obama: They’re united against us!  I heard part of Mark Levin’s commentary on this, so I’ve decided to share it with you.

Clips 1 & 2:

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Ladies and gentlemen, if you want to know what’s wrong with the Republican party, look nowhere beyond this instance of dire stupidity.  Or is it something else?  Barack Obama is a dangerous thug wearing the office of President like the robes of a king, and yet the Republican leadership in the House just gave him a pass on 169 appointments.  Their excuse is that Romney wanted it?  What if Romney doesn’t win???

Even if Romney does, do we want him filling those jobs without Congressional oversight, or the ability of the American people to call their Senators to object to appointments?  What happens when Romney begins filling these jobs with RINOs?  What happens when he fills them with more of his friends, in payment for their support?  What are we to do then?  I’ll tell you:  We should thank John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell and all the other all-star losers in the Republican party who voted for this garbage.

Your voice as a check on the power of the Presidency is being stolen from you, but the they’re not finished.  They intend to bypass the confirmation process for up to an additional 270 positions.  That’s 440 total possible instances in which some President will have no need to worry that he’s appointing a louse, whether it’s the current jerk, or some future occupant of that office.  Do you not see what they are doing to us?  Do you not realize it?  They are systematically converting the courts and the Congress into a mechanical auto-pen for the office of the President.  In short, they’re building a dictatorship, and I don’t much care whether the dictator has a “D” or an “R” behind the name.  It matters not one whit to our liberty what party a tyrant might claim.

The Republican establishment is a part of the disease in Washington DC, and with incidents like this, it’s becoming apparent that they’re the larger part.  Obama and the Democrats can only get away with this because guys like Romney, Boehner, and McConnell let them, and this sell-out is a prime example.

We pay the price, every time.

This isn’t about Mitt Romney.  This is about the separation of powers under our constitution, and the role of the Senate in confirming Presidential appointees.  It doesn’t matter that Mitt Romney may become President.  It doesn’t matter if Ronald Reagan were to rise and somehow become President again.  This is a bad idea, no matter who the President is, and the fact is that at present, the occupant of that office is Barack Obama, and it may just be him again.  Defending the separation of powers is something our Congress ought to do, and on Tuesday evening, the Republican “leadership” in Washington DC failed us again.

 

 

 

Palin to Rally for Cruz in Texas; Dewhurst’s Desperation Showing

Thursday, July 26th, 2012

Desperation

I hate that this is the case, but I must say that the antics of Lt. Governor David Dewhurst are despicable.  Dewhurst began running a new ad this week on the Internet featuring a woman crying about her son who killed himself, implying that Ted Cruz was somehow to blame is a scandal.  I find it offensive that any politician seeking to be the Republican Senate candidate would run such an ad, but I cannot believe any even vaguely conservative Texan would knowingly vote for this man.  The internal polls must not be looking all that spiffy for Lt. Gov. Dewhurst.  It’s time we go to the polls and give him a taste of how bad it can get.

On Wednesday evening’s show, Mark Levin also addressed this latest attack ad by Dewhurst.  Here’s audio:

 

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Dewhurst is an amoral politician who seeks only power.  The worst part may be that a large number of Democrats may be voting in this run-off as Republicans in order to skew the vote in Dewhurst’s favor, and he’s quietly courting their support.  Democrats clearly realize Dewhurst is a guy who will frequently go their way in tough votes in the Senate like Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, or Lindsey Graham.  They expect he will be a reliable aisle-crosser.

What this means is that you had better turn out for Ted Cruz, or the liberal Republicans and the Democrats will combine to elect another squish.

To the polls, Texas Conservatives!

In related news, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and South Carolina’s Senator Jim Demint will be rallying in support of Ted Cruz on Friday at the Woodlands, near Houston, and I will be there to join in the support!

Texans, get out there and show your support!  Show David Dewhurst he can’t get away with skewing reality this way, and vote for Ted Cruz!

 

It’s True: Bush Did It; Obama’s Finishing the Job

Monday, July 23rd, 2012

He Signed a Lot of Liberal Laws

As Senator Jeff Sessions(R-AL) made plain on last Thursday’s Mark Levin Show, George W. Bush in 2002 signed into law an act that made foreign nationals from Mexico eligible for food-stamps. That’s some damned-good “compassionate conservatism,” don’t you think?  What this reveals is more evidence of what I’ve been arguing right along:  What is killing our country is the unwillingness of conservatives to stand on strict principle, and the intentional undermining of conservatives by establishment Republicans at every turn.  I listened to Dr. Levin launch a tirade aimed at the policies of the former President and those like him, as well as at the government of Mexico for several minutes.  He was right in virtually every detail, and he was right to feel betrayed and put-upon by the people who are supposed to be on our side, but with all due respect to the radio giant and conservative beacon, he missed a few things.  I do not intend here to criticize Levin, but I want instead to show conservatives how he had erred, not in his appraisal of the facts, but instead regarding what we ought to do about them.  Dr. Levin’s error is the inevitable result of the contradictions too many conservatives accept,  even those with the intellectual clarity to have known better:  There is no compromise possible between liberty and tyranny, whatever one’s excuses for the latter.

Here’s the clip:

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Nearing the conclusion of his justifiable tirade, Dr. Levin began to speak of Mitt Romney.  He offered:

“I sure as Hell hope that if Romney is elected President, that he doesn’t pull these stunts.”

As Dr. Levin said this, in my own mind, there issued a challenge to the Great One:

“What if he does pull these stunts, Mark?  What will you do?  Not vote for him in 2016?”

Yeah, right…

You see, this is emblematic of why we conservatives have lost much(if not all) of our power within the Republican party.  They’ve called our bluff too many times, and on far too many of those occasions, we have gone along despite our protests.  We always rationalize it in terms of “saving the country” from this liberal demon or that leftist monster, but the fact is that when it comes down to it, we are the ones who have blinked, time and time again.  Anybody who had been confused about the matter should see it plainly now:  Conservatives have been neutered in this manner because we have largely demurred from carrying out our threatened walk-outs.   We lose our spines, the walk-outs never materialize, and therefore, we are seen by the party establishment as mere paper tigers to be managed, but never respected, let alone feared.

You might say to me “but Mark, really, we simply must win, because we won’t survive four more years of Barack Obama. The country won’t survive.”  You may be right, but then again, you may not be.  It could be argued that the country is already dead in constitutional and cultural terms, and Levin is among those who has effectively articulated that very argument.  In 2000, I was assured by establishment Republicans that if Al Gore won the presidency, the country would be over, but I told the person with whom I argued that if George W. Bush was elected, it wouldn’t be much different.  Yes, Gore would have pushed the enviro-fascist agenda harder, but then at least the Republican Congress would have opposed him.  Yes, Gore would have tried some of the same tactics of executive fiat that Obama has tried, but again, at least the Republican majority in both Houses of Congress at the time would have been more inclined to do battle with him.  They didn’t oppose George Bush as he extended the power of the presidency through ever more extra-constitutional power grabs.  Instead, we had a Republican President who had a majority Republican Congress for six of his eight years, and he did immeasurable damage to our republic, whether you’re willing to acknowledge it or not.  Yes, he defended the country after 9/11, and yes, he commanded honorably in his role as commander-in-chief, but he had many failings, and the weight of those failings multiplied by the gargantuan multiplier of Obama now smothers us.

To have signed into law a bill that provided for food-stamps benefits to illegal alien Mexican nationals was a crime against every tax-paying citizen in this country, and to all those who will be forced to pay for it over the next several generations, assuming the country survives as a political compartment.  He expanded other social programs as well, created vast new bureaucracies, and otherwise set the stage for everything Barack Obama has done to further the damage ever since he assumed the presidency in 2009.  One might argue that Bush had been well-meaning, but as you know by now, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and it doesn’t much matter whether they’re born in the mind of somebody with an “R” or a “D” after their names.  This is perhaps the single greatest contradiction faced by conservatives like Dr. Levin, who also have good and honorable intentions, and who usually are able to see the folly in pursuing them.

Levin lamented the fact that this isn’t a mere safety net any longer.  He implied that it was instead something monstrous, and he’s right, but let me say to the good Dr. Levin, certainly one of the most talented advocates for our constitution:  There is no rational place in which to draw a line once you begin to build a publicly-funded safety net.  The march of Progressivism throughout the 20th and 21st centuries has proven it, if you needed evidence.  In the early days of our republic, some of our early Presidents drew a firm line when Congress would undertake to create some compassionate measure intended to provide relief to this class or that, always on some construction of the concept that somehow, it could be limited, and that it could be justified in moral terms.  I am here to tell you that it cannot be true that safety nets can be limited and specific, because the primitive nature of pre-humanity is to seek the path of least resistance, or to exercise the least possible discomfort for the greatest comfort available at ease. At its founding, America had the greatest prospects in all of the world precisely because this notion was frowned-upon, and banished in a socially scathing manner, and we tended to consider the purveyors of easy money and easy solutions as con artists and frauds.

Social Security began as a program for widows and orphans.  How long did it remain as such?  The space of a generation had not elapsed before it was extended to wider and wider groups of recipients.  The entire welfare state, from the first bits of Medicaid and Medicare, to AFDC and Food-stamps have all undergone similar transformations, at first for a very limited group, to a broadened eligibility that encompasses vast segments of the American people.  This is what happens, always, once this chain of destruction commences.   It works this way: I say there should be no public safety net. Dr. Levin admits there should be a small, limited one.  His argument is based on his own subjective evaluation of what is the proper level of compulsory compassion.  George W. Bush comes along arguing for food-stamps for foreign nationals.  Levin cries foul, but after all, why is his subjective limitation on compulsory compassion any more valid than the one proposed by President Bush, or President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, or some future statist politician? Simply, it is not.

This is how it gets out of control, and it’s really quite elementary: Once it begins, there is no way to reduce it for long.  You might curtail it a little here or there, but eventually people will come to power who will advance it again, and then still more.  This is why our earliest Presidents, fresh from our post-revolutionary travails, did all they could to oppose the encroachment of any of this redistribution under the guise of “compassion.” James Madison, eventually our third President, and the man thought by many to be the father of our constitution, offered this, as he served in Congress debating a bill providing for some sustenance and relief for French refugees from the Haitian revolution.  He said:

“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” –3rd Congress, Annals of Congress

This makes the matter plain.  There is no room in that statement for a public safety net of any description or purpose, and being one of the authors of the Constitution, one would suspect he understood its intended limits.  Madison would not be the last to make this sort of delineation, and subsequent Presidents actually stated the same sentiment in vetoing legislation proposing various forms of relief for this group or that.  It was not until the rise of the Progressives, in both parties in the early 20th Century that the first great transgressions of this principle began in earnest.

I would argue that Dr. Levin is right insofar as his evaluation of the Bush enactment of the law permitting the provision of food-stamps to illegal alien Mexican nationals, but I must also suggest in the strongest possible terms that Dr. Levin, and those like him of apt reverence for the constitution ought to consider the contradiction implicit in their protestations on behalf of any public safety net. Once it begins, it will not easily be stopped, and usually terminates with the death of the country in the upheaval of bloody revolution.  Only by rapidly undoing it all are we to avoid such mortal discomfort, though the time-frame to undo it all needn’t be overnight, still it mustn’t exceed much more than a half-decade.  We are living with the necessary result of the contradiction explicit in trying to create some firm boundary along the lines of flexible, subjective criteria, perpetually open to reinterpretation by whomever holds the reins of power. Our constitutional principles are fixed, but it is only our adherence to them that has been flexible.

In a letter to Edmund Pendleton, James Madison also wrote:

“If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.”

Is this not now the state our republic has attained?  We have undergone precisely the reversal here-described by James Madison, and it will be our undoing.  I am certain that a constitutional scholar with the precision and vigorous intellect of the sort made plain by Dr. Levin’s long history in service to that document and to the republic it had authored must see and be convinced of the fatal dangers of this contradiction harbored so widely, even among our greatest minds.  It is time that we decide if we are going to live in a constitutional, representative republic, or if we prefer instead to be subject to the indefinite power of a colossal government.  It is the choice made plain in the great book Ameritopia, and as a complete work in defense of our liberty, one would expect that with the fullness of time, its author will ultimately embrace the full wisdom of that which he so magnificently defends.

For we conservatives, it is long past due that we should embrace the meaning of Madison’s admonishments.  He didn’t offer exceptions to the principle, but it is only because no exceptions are rationally feasible.  The danger implied was grievous enough that Madison would not countenance its passage, despite surely being as compassionate and charitable a man as any.  He understood that the only manner in which to draw this line was to make it absolute.  He also understood that any less a proscription would lead inevitably to the national turmoil into which we are now sliding.  This is our true challenge as conservatives, because we mustn’t merely begin the already seemingly impossible chore of diminishing the size and scope of the festering blight of the welfare state, but we must begin the process of excising it from our country altogether.   This may seem a fantastical, practically impossible proposition, and yet if we are to restore the republic to the land of possibilities it had been at its beginning, no less will do.

We must undo Obama-care, rolling it back to 2009, but we must roll back to 2002, and then to 1982, and eventually to 1964, and to the 1930s.  We must keep going until it is gone, replacing government with private, volitional charity of the sort that had permitted us to take care of the truly unfortunate persons among us, but that left no room for graft of any sort at taxpayers’ expense.  One-hundred-forty-four million or so Americans now rely upon the welfare state in all its various forms.  That number is exploding, and will soon top half our population, and when it does, there will be no rolling it back, and surely no salvaging of our republic.  Our desire to help others must be restrained from the realm of government.  The contradiction explicit in attempting to have a system that regards the wealth of citizens as one part private property and one part public loot must be abolished, even if there is some temporary pain.  It’s our last chance, time is quickly running out, and I dare say time is a good deal shorter now than any of our public officials dare admit. It’s time to draw an indelible, solid line.

Are You Kidding Me? “Silver Linings” Again?

Monday, July 2nd, 2012

Is This a Joke?

I watched the Huckabee Show on Fox News this Sunday, and while Scott Pruitt, and Ken Cuccunelli(Attorneys General for Oklahoma and Virginia respectively,) both acquitted themselves reasonably well, Pam Bondi, the Florida Attorney General, and Huckabee himself, looked foolish. In truth, however, Cuccinelli said some troubling things, both in this appearance and earlier on Fox and Friends. I can even permit that Huckabee was playing dumb for the sake of dragging out answers to questions to which he really knew the answers, but if I was a Floridian, I would know that my state had been cursed with the dumbest Attorney General to appear regularly on TV. After discussing with the panel the absurd logic implicit in Roberts’ decision, and after positing the notion that Roberts had bent to pressure in switching his vote, Bondi went on to state that she believed Justice Roberts was of the highest integrity. What?

I don’t understand how one can be both the sort of noodle who wilts under pressure and simultaneously maintain one’s alleged integrity. The two notions simply don’t fit in the same conceptual soup. If one is true, the other is almost certainly false. She explained that Roberts was seeking to maintain the integrity of the court, but she didn’t explain how voting in what he knew to be exactly the wrong way accomplishes that end. I believe Pam Bondi is confused about the meaning of the word “integrity.” Being on Mitt Romney’s Health-care task force, this doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in that candidate’s promises.

(Fox News hasn’t made this segment of the Huckabee show available on-line – if they do, I will post it here.)

Pam Bondi is, after all, the same AG who bent to political pressure along with her governor, appointing a special prosecutor for the Trayvon Martin case, going after George Zimmerman for murder when all the evidence in-hand really suggests a murder charge is not warranted. In truth, Bondi’s appearance on Huckabee was riddled with similar incongruities in her apparent thinking, and one wonders if she’s qualified to be Attorney General in a State the size of Florida simply on the question of her mental capacity. Being charitable, she spoke like an empty-suited politician, full of hot air, most of it without any discernible meaning, and all of it intended to serve some aim other than to discuss the outcome of this case. Does she have other cases pending she expects to be elevated to the Supreme Court, hoping to win “nice points” with the wayward Chief Justice? Your guess is as good as mine, but after listening to her spewing gobbledygook, I really wanted to turn the channel, though I wound up suffering through the segment until the bitter end.

Another disappointment in the discussion, that I think would apply across the board to all the participants is how they all claimed this had not been foreseen, and that nobody had briefed on the issue of taxes, instead focusing on the commerce clause arguments. This is simply not true, because Landmark Legal Foundation, spearheaded by the brilliant Mark Levin, spent many pages in the Landmark amicus briefs (Here and here) discussing this very matter, taking great care to show how the penalty could not fit into the definition of any of the constitutionally allowable forms of taxation Congress has the power to impose. I like Ken Cuccinelli, and I think he’s a good Attorney General, but I wonder if in this case, he wasn’t a bit asleep at the switch. The same is true of Scott Pruitt. Wake up, fellas!

As for Huckabee, for a guy who has been “working tirelessly” to kill Obama-care, I would have expected he would know the issues a good deal more thoroughly than he did. After all, he did serve as governor of Arkansas, so one would tend to expect he’d have a little more sophisticated understanding of the legal matters, but I suppose it is possible that he was playing dumb to draw out answers, but honestly, that’s not the impression I got from his statements. It made the segment all the more baffling, and doubly disappointing. I kept waiting for him to break out the guitar and sing the Obama-care Blues.

I suspect our troubles with this law are worse than we may have imagined. The more I watch, the more I notice the tendency of some to shrug their shoulders and to tell us to “get used to it.” I have noticed that there is also a tendency to to paint this as though there is some positive, and I was surprised at Ken Cuccinelli’s attempt to tell us about “silver linings” to this decision. Watch this schlock from Fox and Friends:

 

What? There is no limit in this decision. The commerce clause was not restrained. There is no majority decision in restraining the commerce clause. It’s astonishing to see this, and while I know Mark Levin holds Cuccinelli in high regard in most instances, Levin has completely debunked these alleged “silver linings,” as has been discussed here already. Here is the first few minutes of Levin’s show of Friday, 29 June, 2012, to explain why Cuccinelli is absolutely wrong about his “silver linings” thesis:

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The evidence of what Levin is saying is plainly evident in these two amicus briefs filed with the court going all the way back to 2011, both in the Florida suit, and the Virginia suit. No two states’ Attorney Generals should have been more prepared for the tax argument than AG Bondi and Cuccinelli, but they’re pretending that this material hadn’t been covered, and was completely unforeseen. Why? What’s the coverup? This is an embarrassment. Surely, somebody bothered to point this out to these Attorneys General before they embarrassed themselves all over Fox News on Sunday.

Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t pretend to have any special insight into this case, but I can read, and I can listen. What I’m reading and hearing these days from our ostensible leaders is that we ought to just suck it up, “accentuate the positives”(while pretending there are some,) and prepare to live with it. “But be sure to vote for us in November if you’re really, really mad!” There’s no excuse for these Attorneys General not knowing the briefs in this case, inside and out, and the fact that they don’t means they’re spending too much time in front of a camera and too little time practicing law. I realize they have clerks and associates, and junior attorneys to handle some of this, but let’s not ignore that while Mark Levin has been providing them the answers right along, they’ve been oblivious to the details. Mark Levin is a hero in this, and his Landmark Legal Foundation is doing great work, despite the fact that neither the court nor the states’ AGs seem to be paying enough attention, and if you want to know the difference between the leaders we have, and the leaders we ought to have, you need look no further. Dr. Levin would decline such a role, but that merely means we need to listen to his counsel all the more closely. I suspect he would be much more generous to these Attorneys General than I have been in this posting, but only because he is much more gracious than I.

I have maintained that in all such cases, we can discern who is with us, and who is against us, or at least those who may be ambivalent to the outcome. It’s becoming clearer in the wake of this ruling, and I think we conservatives should begin to recognize that when it comes to guarding our constitution against the statist hordes, we are all alone. It’s we conservatives against them all.

Two Sponsors Ditch Limbaugh – I Will Not Buy Cowards’ Products

Saturday, March 3rd, 2012

Does He Need to Worry?

In an irony one could scarcely script, two companies responding to complaints from Twitter users decided to pull commercial advertising on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show due to his comments on Wednesday regarding Sandra Fluke.  Sleep Train Mattress Centers and Sleep Number Beds have pulled their support.  Perfect.  While Sandra Fluke demands that government be inserted into the bedroom, the bedroom is being pulled from under Rush Limbaugh.  At the same time, Politico is also reporting that Pro Flowers is reconsidering its ad campaign on Limbaugh’s show.  All we need now is the wine and dine advertisers, and it will be a complete set.  I think Rush ought to begin running his old parody ad for Bungee Condoms in their place in the rotation.

What all of this reveals is what happens when you’re stuck with what Tammy Bruce calls the “Gestapos” who will apply commercial pressure to silence a radio personality.  Well, in the case of these sponsors, at least the two bed manufacturers, they’re dead to me.  The irony is that I am shopping for a bed, so now I know with whom I won’t be doing business.  All of this is nonsense, because what Limbaugh said is only outrageous before you consider that Sandra Fluke is an activist for radical feminist objectives, and that those same feminists have been trying to reduce the impact of the word “slut” to carry a less negative connotation by organizing what they call “slut-walks.”

Still, these advertisers really annoy me.  I would never have heard of their products without Limbaugh, and now I’ll be obliged to buy my next bed from somebody else.  I’m actually glad they chickened-out now, because later, I might have been sleeping on one of their products and be forced to  dump it at substantial loss.   Nevertheless, it is not advertisers who are the biggest wimps in all of this, as Dana Loesch at BigJournalism reveals.   A number of high-ranking or well-known Republicans are running from this story, and it demonstrates what cowards they really are.  These people who so easily tuck tails and run are not going to win anything in 2012, and the fact that this includes Speaker John Boehner simply proves the point.

Kudos to Dana Loesch for carrying on despite the pain!

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