Rahm Emanuel Should Do More Than Apologize

Once again, Rahm Emanuel has been exposed for being crude and insulting. He has admitted to making a very morally corrupt statement about persons with disabilities. Sarah Palin rightfully called him out on it, and he has reportedly made apologies to several advocacy organizations that support persons with disabilities. Apparently, he takes his cue from the president, who made the comment on the Jay Leno show that he bowls like a Special Olympics person. This White House apparently supports a culture in which people are demoralized and verbally abused. We see our president tour the country, making jokes and poking fun at Republicans, tea party goer's and anyone that disagrees with him. His audiences join him in laughing and pointing condescending fingers at those they believe are beneath them.

The New York Jets just levied a $50,000 fine against their head coach, Rex Ryan, for making an obscene hand gesture at some hostile fans. If the NFL has no tolerance for such conduct, how can the American people allow those in the White House to degrade our citizens?

An apology is not enough. Mr. Emanuel should pay a fine that is either donated to an organization that assists those with disabilities, or to the Treasury Department. At the rate our leadership spews such hateful remarks, they could impact the budget in a big way.

Lest We Forget: He Won

President Obama met with Congressional Republicans yesterday with the expressed intent to listen and discuss policy differences.   As it turns out, he put on his Professor Obama demeanor and sternly wielded his hickory stick within the one-room classroom full of students of the minority party.  Early in his presidency, even back during the days when he stood before a podium adorned with an "Office of the President-Elect" seal, Mr. Obama reminded those in opposition that  he'd won the election, and thus, silence and submission was appropriate decorum for dissenters so as not to muddle the boisterous cheering and adoration of his followers. 

Much is being reported about the president's attitude yesterday during that conference with Republican House members.  He quickly called the class to order and made sure his unruly, defiant students were all facing forward, both feet on the floor, pencils put away and all eyes on him. His photo op crew was there to capture every disdainful wave of his finger, every upward tilt of his head in superiority and every word of reprimand and condemnation.  Class was in session and the GOP was about to be tutored in how to march in lockstep with the majority.  Just as many Americans disapprovingly considered the media release of his midnight salute to fallen war heroes at Dover AFB to be some type of publicity stunt, his Head Schoolmaster routine yesterday in Baltimore is also being seen as little more than a campaign stump speech.  He took it to the Republicans and he wanted his far leftie friends to know it.

During the question and answer period, Mr. Obama noted he is not an ideologue.   The president has had us fooled on that one!   After all, a majority of the electorate now considers the White House and Congress tone deaf to the will of the people.  Democrat leadership has been deliberate in excluding not just Republican input, but that of independent thinkers and some in their own party.     Meanwhile, across the nation letters are penned, emails sent and phone calls  made to this Congress and White House, demanding transparency and adherence to the Constitution.  Time and again, those voices are ignored.   In spite of a vast majority of Americans that disagree with much of the proposed health care reform legislation, Nancy Pelosi put forth a visual on Thursday of her and her cohorts pole vaulting and sky diving if need be in order to pass a bill, targeted for the president's desk. 

When the president called for ideas about health care reform during his State of the Union address, it is possible the CEO's of Safeway Food Stores and Whole Food Stores both were shaking their heads and thinking, "I tried to tell you how successful our company has been in providing quality health care to our associates at a manageable cost, but you and your Congressional majority refused to entertain any suggestions.  The Far Left recommended boycotts of our stores and we were maligned and ridiculed."  Any opposition voiced in the debate has resulted in about as much anger and personal attack as we've ever seen in modern day politics.  We will not soon forget the spectacle of the comedic junior senator from Minnesota basically telling Sen. Lieberman to sit down and shut up on the Senate floor when he respectfully requested another minute of time to express the views of his constituents.  Maybe that Saturday Night Live-type skit was the source of a good laugh in the Oval Office, but Americans were appalled.    When citizens cried foul because the AARP, insurance and pharma companies had private, closed door meetings and emerged with big smiles of support for the reform bill, they were dismissed by the president as being "all wee-weed up".  This was a new phrase in our political discourse and most didn't understand until Press Secy Gibbs graciously clarified for us by saying it is synonomous with bedwetters.   Apparently, in this era of hope and change, a president can make such remarks without reproach, because after all, he won. 

Health care reform is one of the president's premier pieces of legislation that he's determined to sign into law, forever engraving his name affectionately on the hearts of those in the progressive movement . The House bill created the first fire storm as citizens learned of cuts here, spending (and borrowing) there with lots of gray areas in between.  In one response,  the White House hosted a pathetic press conference in the Rose Garden on a fine autumn day, inviting several physicians that are also Obama supporters.  We learned later, many in attendance were not doctors at all, but rather were devoted Obama fans/SEIU activists.  The president spoke to the gathering of people, garbed in stereotypical white lab coats,  provided courtesy of the American Taxpayer.  The message was clear: "America, can't you see that your doctors support the president and Congress regarding the future of your care and access?  It is time for the public to disengage about this matter and allow the federal government to take over health care delivery.  Trust us, you''re going to love our plan.  We don't trust you to make good decisions for yourselves and your families, so we are asking you to trust us to do it for you."  The point  of that particular photo op/campaign ad/indoctrination attempt was to make sure that the average American not only stopped demanding a 'nay' vote from their House representatives, but that they simply stopped questioning the process all together.    No press coverage or photo op's were allowed for the 100,000 physicians that gathered from across the nation about the same time on the steps of the Capitol to voice their opinions.  The White House made sure that group of physicians were denied white coats and a Rose Garden reception.  They disagreed with him; their professional assessments were not valued.  After all, he won.

The president lectured and scolded Republicans yesterday and his chastisement kicked off his new direction as we head toward the November elections.  He and his Congress will now try to flip every complaint against him as being the fault of the GOP.  He knows the country is bored and annoyed with his blame game toward George W. Bush, who remains typically silent when wrongly attacked.  In Obama's America, he scorns Fox News and he sets his jaw and steels his stare at anyone that takes issue with something he says or proposes. Yes, he won in November, '08, but he is completely out of touch with middle class reality. Most Americans consider themselves conservatives, Fox News consistently has the highest ratings of all news networks. Conservative talk radio is exploding in popularity, while progressive Air America is now belly-up.   Activists, tea party patriots, independents, Republicans and conservative Democrats are not going away quietly.  House Republicans stood their ground yesterday in questioning the president. 

Maybe the president should simply remind the country that he won.

BHO 2010 echoes FDR 1938

When praising his own “accomplishments” Barack Obama has an unusual fondness for the word “unprecedented” though invariably his assertions lack any historical validity. In contrast the voters of Massachusetts can now claim an accomplishment that entirely justifies the use of that word. To find an event in American history reasonably comparable in character and impact to the Massachusetts Earthquake we must go all the way back to Franklin Roosevelt’s 1937 attempt to “pack” the Supreme Court. That is the last-perhaps the only- time in our history that a President commanding huge congressional majorities sought with breathtaking arrogance to redesign the constitutional, social and economic foundations of the country and was stunningly defeated by the very people who long had been his party’s staunchest supporters.

With a righteousness and sense of invincibility engendered by three consecutive triumphal election cycles that had given him and his party an extraordinary dominance Roosevelt sought to demonize the “nine old men” of the Supreme Court who had the temerity to strike down key elements of the New Deal as unconstitutional. With little consultation outside his inner circle and apparent indifference to how such a radical move would be received in the country Roosevelt advanced sweeping legislation that would increase the membership of the Supreme Court from nine to fifteen and replace lifetime appointment with mandatory retirement ages, moves which would enable him to swiftly “pack” the Court with hand-picked minions.

It was at this point that ordinary Americans and several key Democratic leaders like Montana’s Senator Burton K. Wheeler decided that Roosevelt’s radical power grab was going too far and actively threatened the nation’s hallowed Constitutional traditions. The Court “packing” scheme was decisively defeated in the Congress and the final political result was the Democratic Party losing seven Senate and 80 House seats in the 1938 mid-term elections.

That was America’s last peacetime election before World War II restored the country’s economy, ended the Great Depression, and redeemed the political fortunes and historical reputation of Franklin Roosevelt. Nonetheless 1937 remains a decisive turning point in American history when the overarching ambition of a well-intended but tone deaf President were dramatically rebuffed by a most unlikely combination of opponents who read the national mood far better than he.

The week that saw the unbelievably improbable election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts also witnessed the startling collapse of the recently “inevitable” Obamacare legislation, and the absolute implosion of the Democratic Party in a tawdry spectacle of shock, fear, anger, finger-pointing, pseudo-contrition, confusion, chaos, and general cluelessness.

Not in living memory has a dominant political party been so devastated, so quickly by a single wildly unpredictable event.

It is easier to search the past for perspective on this American melodrama, than to divine its future conclusion. Much will turn on the choices made by the Democratic Party. Will there be a Clintonesque dash to the center, (“the end of big government and welfare as we know it”) by a President in hot pursuit of re-election?

Or, will the Party in certain knowledge that it will never again enjoy such Congressional dominance heed the frenzied howls of its far left and “double-down” on the strategies of bigger government, redistributionist legislation, and intolerable taxation that have so alienated the public?

Rational calculation would seem to demand the former direction, but in critical degree today’s Democratic Party is far more radical than the Party that was dethroned in 1994. The dominant Furies that energize and fund the Democrats are of an ideologically obsessed mindset unlike anything that ever before captured control of a major American political party.

President Obama’s utterances since the upheaval are suggestive of self-pity and delusion. Excusing his inattentiveness because he was “so busy getting stuff done” and then claiming that both he and Scott Brown were elected by the same anger at George Bush bespeaks a man quite out of touch with reality. His lame attempt at populism-Let’s punish those greedy bankers- is nothing but the class warfare and general assault on capitalism that has been the thinly disguised agenda of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Axis from the beginning. What’s new is that now the American people know it and are determined with their votes to decisively defeat it.

Socialist Obama: It Could Be

By Tom Graham - Part 2 (Editor: Graham continues his brief, begun here, for specific policy evidence of President Barack Obama's socialist ideals and intentions.) Another one-two level economic mainstay, the construction industry, especially housing, is also an Obama target. Control of housing is cleverly approached from different angles. The issue of increasing traffic congestion makes public transit projects popular. However, the moving of people without autos is only an incidental byproduct of “transit oriented development.” This features aggressive campaigning by advocates of very high-density, heavily-subsidized housing. Although this was around before the emergence of Obama, it was announced during the Democratic Convention that the attack would now be aggressively pursued. Various groups connected to the “Progressive” movement see this as a step in control and Socializing of housing.

Good to their word, the Obama administration announced in mid-January that priorities for transit project funding would be based on the level of development opportunity created. The criteria of reducing travel time would be rescinded. Can everyone out there spell “Socialized housing?”

Many real estate brokers will recall implement-ation of the Community Reinvestment Act, whereby they were urged, sometimes threatened, to direct minority buyers away from “ghetto” enclaves, ostensibly for the goal of integration. Radical activist Saul Alinsky campaigned for implementation of the Act with the hope that it would lead to the crippling of banks, overloading of welfare rolls, and disruption of local governments. This strategy was taught to ACORN volunteers by Obama. The policy required brokers to abandon the universal practice of qualifying buyers by verifying enough income to afford the expense of home ownership. Brokers were instructed to direct buyers to certain lenders who package risky “sub-prime” loans into incorporated instruments with phony high ratings. Brokers and bankers had lived through the sub-prime underwater loan fiasco of the 80s, and the incredible incompetence of Resolution Trust, which was organized to dispose of the millions of HUD-foreclosed properties.

Astute brokers and investors predicted that resurrection of sub-prime lending would flood the market with homes having more debt than value. Few realized it would total trillions and cause the current national financial disaster. This contrived “crisis opportunity” paves the way for Socialist takeover. People without adequate income, encouraged by liberal policies to purchase homes, will build little equity and lack pride of ownership. They become ripe for Socialized housing. We haven’t met anyone who doesn’t consider the sub-prime market to be the cause of the current recession. Nor are there many who don’t believe this crisis to be a forerunner to government interference with housing and the construction industry.

The debacle hasn’t discouraged more of the same. Lenders are scraping the bottom for unqualified buyers and aggressively advertising loans of 105%-110% of value. An example of the market: 65% of all Nevada households owe more than their home’s value, according to American CoreLogic. Three days after Christmas, Obama gave blank checks to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac without announcing any strategy, encouraging speculators to pour money in. Analysts consider it money down a rat-hole.

FHA guaranteed a quarter of all US home loans in ’09, having learned nothing from the 80s. For the first time in history cash reserves are below the Congressional stipulated minimum. The government has taken over 80% of Fannie and Freddie, and will take the remainder after the forthcoming complete failure, which in turn will lead to complete control of the housing industry, in contrived Communist style.

Obama has blamed loans that couldn’t be paid back for the crisis, although the architect of sub-primes and long-time Fannie Mae chief Franklin Raines, is one of his economics advisors. It should also be well noted that as general counsel for ACORN, Obama sued banks to force them to make loans to low income buyers.

The President views health insurance as a right, and as an egotistical personal goal, worth political risks. In all the thousands of incomprehensible pages of proposed legislation, there lurks the “public option.” Make no mistake about this, titled “affordable choice,” being the entire motivation behind the issue of health care reform.

First of all, this is a classic case of manufacturing a problem and selling a solution to the non-existent situation. The 47 million uninsured hype is a count of everyone who may be without a policy for as little as one day during a year. Subtract the young and healthy who can afford insurance but choose not to have it, and those in the country illegally, and the figure is 5 million. Of course the “pathway to citizenship” for illegal aliens makes them eligible for health care entitlement.

Accounting for one-sixth or one-fifth of the economy, depending on who does the calculation, it is an essential element of the Socialist movement. Little intelligence is needed to see that private health care providers and insurance firms cannot compete with subsidized government programs that have no bottom line commitments. Consumers rationally choose the cheaper. The public is told that creates competition that will drive costs down. At the same time, they oppose the ultimate competition of an interstate market, because that would stall Socialization.

A key element of the confusing legislative mess is a federal subsidy for most people’s insurance. The fine print reveals that this will not take effect until 2014. Legislation calls for mandatory purchase of specified insurance to force everyone out of their chosen policies. Willful failure can result in a $25,000 fine and a year in jail, or $250,000 plus five years in jail for felony evasion. People who want additional, more costly “Cadillac” plans will be taxed. Preferential deal-making by Obama provides exemption from the tax for union members, who constitute the majority of “Cadillac” plan holders, as well as an Obama voter base.

Obama’s press secretary advised us after Christmas that the administration’s goal was to stop plans where employees are given better than average insurance plans as part of their compensation. Those considered excessive by Obama czars would be eliminated. Articulating Obama’s position, Speaker Pelosi stated that health insurance companies are the problem, and there would be a crackdown, including a requirement that they spend 85% of their revenues on benefits.

A temporary back-off to mollify the skeptical popular majority, calls for the private companies to participate in “non-profit” plans. If there is foot-dragging, the public option will be triggered. The trigger is a foregone finality. This is one major segment of the economy that could start out as Communist with the intent to make it Socialist. A feature of all plans is the requirement that people cannot be denied membership because of pre-existing ailments. This would be like insuring your car after an accident. In other words, health insurance becomes a Socialist redistribution of wealth.

Of course with the possible loss of a filibuster–proof Senate, “Obamacare” it is not a done deal. The closed-door meetings, taking the place of traditional open bi-cameral conferences, have so-far failed to produce Congressional agreement. The administration may ignore political repercussions and fight for this ultimate command-and-control segment of government, while ignoring the lack of Constitutional provision for any of it.

A major element in soaring medical costs, frivolous lawsuits, could be corrected with tort reform. However, this has been carefully sidestepped at the direction of trial lawyers, who are the second largest contributors to the Democratic Party.

A big step toward Socialized medicine is the proposal to reduce Medicare age to 55 or lower. Where the money comes from is anybody’s guess. Taking $500 billion out of one Medicare pocket and putting it into the other pocket is the plan to help pay for it. The SCHIP “children’s program,” insuring people up to age 25, and as old as 37 in some cases, and covering many who are financially sound, is another inroad to Socialized medicine.

You have noticed the TV ads endorsing reform. These are part of a sweetheart deal with Obama, who promised favors to the drug industry in return for a $150 million ad campaign, paid for by pharmaceutical firms. With monumental hypocrisy the left demonizes the drug industry, while simultaneously taking their money.

Columnist and self-styled economist Paul Krugman has announced that Obamacare critics are the “lunatic fringe.” He added, “…now that (Republican) policies of tax cuts and deregulation have led us into an economic quagmire, their prescription for recovery is…tax cuts and deregulation.”

A recent metaphor likened the Socialist health insurance takeover struggle to the Greek myth, where Sisyphus is condemned to push a boulder up a hill for eternity. Although Obama may temporarily pull back after the Massachusetts message, we cannot envision abandonment of this capstone of his first year whether he is a Socialist or a Communist.

Element R takes charge

(Denver Post, Jan. 24) Why did Gov. Bill Ritter fold his reelection campaign? Why is Sen. Michael Bennet so far behind in the polls? Why did Scott Brown win in Massachusetts? Why is Barack Obama struggling to save his presidency, one year after taking office in triumph? Because Americans have completely lost patience with irresponsibility. For years this column has talked of the need for a responsibility movement to challenge both political parties. “We’ll call it Element R and launch it today, right here in Colorado,” I wrote in 2007. What the country has seen in recent months is Element R, in fact if not in name, starting to take charge. Surveys foretold what elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and now Massachusetts have confirmed: sharp declines in Democratic support, benefiting Republican candidates but not greatly boosting Republican registration. It’s the independent voters whose ranks are growing. Citizens are less inclined to ally with either the donkey or the elephant. Both have forfeited confidence.

People’s aroused insistence for responsibility instead of irresponsibility, on the part of those we entrust with power, best explains the new political landscape. To start with definitions, responsibility means keeping a trust, doing your duty, facing the music. Whereas irresponsibility means shirking, acting in disregard of consequences, behaving as if 2 and 2 don’t make 4. Examples abound.

Ritter’s fatal wound, absent-father guilt aside, seems to have been either fiscal and executive recklessness or an impending legal-ethical scandal. He might have brazened it out, whatever the case, if years of gubernatorial irresponsibility by the likes of Davis in California, Blagojevich in Illinois, and Sanford in South Carolina hadn’t inflamed public disgust. But in 2010 the odds have become prohibitive, so he’s quitting.

The responsibility deficit for Bennet as an interim senator from Colorado matches that of Martha Coakley in her failure to become an interim senator from Massachusetts. Neither grasped that the country’s tolerance for unserious political palaver-as-usual is exhausted. The national BS detector is pegged. Bennet’s phony indignation over corrupt deals in the health care bill, and then over secret negotiations for same, backed up in neither case by his vote, simply spelled game over.

As for our glib young president, Mr. Obama set a trap for himself on inauguration day. After calling for a “new era of responsibility,” he has proved epically irresponsible ever since – weakening us against our enemies, selling out our allies, ballooning the deficit, expanding government, worsening the recession by bullying business, and obsessing over socialized medicine like Ahab with the whale. No wonder his numbers are at record lows.

The irresponsibility epidemic, a contagion long carried by Democrats but often caught by Republicans as well, finally triggered public fury in last year’s tea parties and townhalls. This is the uprising I’ve called Element R. But is it a movement – perhaps even a force capable of remaking the GOP? Or is it merely an electoral mood?

The responsibility backlash will continue taking its healthy toll. Whether it’s durable enough to take charge, time will tell. Though unaffiliated voters hold the balance of power, the coherence of their views is doubtful. Here in Colorado, it would be interesting to see Element R gel and assert itself to the point of asking questions that the established parties shrink from. These might include:

Does the initiative process make government so responsive as to be irresponsible? Is marijuana prohibition working any better than alcohol prohibition did? In redefining pregnancy, marriage, and parenthood to the vanishing point, have we signed a demographic suicide pact? Is Muslim sharia law compatible with liberty?

Dems and GOP alike have done none too well with our sacred responsibility for “keeping the republic,” in Franklin’s words. May they both feel the righteous wrath of Element R.