Newtown Tragedy: Irrational Responses Abound

So, our president whose administration lost control of 1,300 AK-47 assault rifles in their Fast and Furious program wants to lead the nation in controlling access to assault weapons. Seems to me he and his administration don't have a clue how to do that so why should we think they can? Oh, I get it! They'll create a huge(!) bureaucracy to do it right this time. Bureaucracies know how to get the job done, right? Right!

And what motivates him to do something about deadly guns getting into the hands of bad guys? 20 children dying in Newtown. Of course that's a tragedy that begs we do something but don't you wonder why the death, mostly by guns, of 20+ school children in Chicago this year ... EVERY(!) year ... hasn't gotten his attention? How can one explain that? If 20 children dying by guns in Newtown is the reason he wants to increase gun controls, why hasn't he gotten on this bandwagon before now? 3,000 children are killed every year in the US and 17,000 are injured. EVERY year! So why hasn't that been reason enough to do more before now?

The more I experience of this president's words and actions the less I understand him. I don't understand his real motivations to do anything any more because his claimed reasons make no sense. And the selectivity of his outrage is mystifying and irrational.

This man who has proven ineptness running a gun-control operation and who doesn't seem the least bit fazed by the other thousands of child deaths by guns annually(!) now wants to do something based on 20 deaths and we're supposed to believe he knows how after his track record?

I DO wish him success fixing this problem but I seriously doubt it will be effective in reducing gun violence because I believe that, as on nearly every other endeavor, he'll not understand the root cause and therefore not arrive at a good, effective solution.

If he decides to pursue reducing the number of assault weapons sold/bought he can probably accomplish that. Problem is, 'bad guys' will simply switch to other weapons they CAN get their hands on and violent gun crime won't be much affected. I read of soooo many liberal folks claiming we need to ban assault weapons, believing that will significantly reduce violent gun crime, especially against our kids. That's completely irrational reasoning for the reason I just explained. Politicians seem to like fixes that feel good and play well in The Media and within their political party but without really caring how ineffective they are, much less whether they have any effect on the real root causes. Since what they want to do obviously won't fix the problem much less make any noticeable dent in it, one can only logically conclude that looking good or simply making themselves feel good has higher priority than doing something that will actually do something about the problem they only pretend to address.

We MUST take time to thoroughly understand the root causes of the violence in our country and fix those! I believe we'll find that declining family values, declining morals, broken homes, divorce, fatherless children. and related/unrelated mental health issues are at the root in the biggest way. If those problems don't bubble to the top of President Obama's list of things needing to be fixed, I believe it's unlikely we'll get significant positive results. The problem is WAY more complex than just the availability of assault weapons on which The Media is fixated so real(!) fixes won't be simple and the results won't come quickly.

Lies Come Too Easily To President Obama: The "Intelligence" Given To Susan Rice

The ease and frequency with which President Obama lies are mighty unnerving. I'm no longer able to believe anything he says because stretched truths and outright lies come from him much too easily and too often.

For example, in his first full(!) press conference in a very long time last week President Obama expressed his indignation over some leading republican senators letting him know that Susan Rice's nomination hearings would consider her handling of the Bengazi attack (ie, her comments to Americans and the UN that the attack was caused by a video). In his reaction at the press conference President Obama said she was "making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received". Fact is, what she had been given wasn't "intelligence" at all, rather a complete fabrication entirely at odds with actual(!) intelligence the CIA had previously given to the administration. To call that nonsense fabrication she was given "intelligence" is itself a complete and extraordinary fabrication.

By the way, remember he promised to be transparent and open? Remember that he promised to have press conferences frequently? He didn't but no big deal. Just another lie to add to all the others. [Check THIS reference for more information on how he's doing regarding press conferences.]

Bush Tax Cuts: Can You Handle The Truth?

On May 19, 2011 I posted some facts here about Bush's tax cuts. It's amazing to me how many Americans have no idea what the factual truth is. Perhaps worse is the number of people who don't seem to care about the truth. To me, lies matter which is the main reason for this blog.

Mid-year in 2012 I created a more comprehensive analysis and posted the resulting PowerPoint presentation in the form of a video on YouTube. Click HERE to view it.

Truth And History Are Relative Things To Progressives, Especially The Progressive-In-Chief

History, facts, our perceptions and feelings, the founding, the constitution, and even our future's most important legacy ... our kids ... are all things to be manipulated in different ways at different times for whatever purpose du jour. I'm speaking of course about progressives in general but most important, about the progressive-in-chief President Obama. Victor Davis Hansen's article today, "Obama in Never-Never Land" is by far the most straight-forward, common sense description I've seen yet about what President Obama has been up to the past four years.

All things are relative to these people. Truth becomes whatever they can manipulate us into believing makes them look good. Appearance is everything. Success is relative. Content and character are irrelevant. MLK would be horrified! Promises aren't really commitments. Promises are delivered with such passion that it sounds like a genuine promise, a genuine commitment. Performance to goals? You've got to be kidding! Objective measurement? Are you insane? Use common sense? Do not let Americans start thinking for themselves!

How can we measure progress and performance if the goals and promises against which progress and success can actually be measured are malleable things after the fact? To progressives that's not a problem. In fact, that's the whole point! Their only problem comes when we don't buy what they're selling. In that case, they have a tried and true solution: sell it loud enough. often enough and long enough. Eventually the skeptics/unbelievers will believe it. At lest enough of them to control the debate. Perhaps enough of them to accomplish majority control over everything educational and political.

But why should this development surprise us? For generations progressives have been working diligently to replace historical teaching methods, subjects and course content with progressive feel-good versions, first in post-secondary education then, trickle-down fashion, in K-12 education. To my everlasting horror, I now find that they've been succeeding far beyond what I thought possible.

But why is that surprising, considering that progressives have been inflicting this on and inculcating this in K-12 students very aggressively for about 60 years? In teachers-to-be for twice that long beginning with John Dewey; beginning in, surprise (not!), the University of Chicago. For the eye-popping, somewhat horrifying truth about what really happened to our education system I highly recommend John A. Stormer's "None Dare Call It Education". The consequences he describes about what a hundred years of trusting our kids to progressive education professionals has done to that most precious national resource is horrifying to me. To the same extent those children have been our precious resource, while we were napping at the switch our kids became progressives' most important targets and means of brainwashing generations of Americans to advance their agenda. Progressives have been both patient and persistent. In their hands our kids have been their completely political tool for many generations.

We must not let this continue. For the sake of our country's future, parents and communities must regain authority and control over our kids' education and life outside school. We must not submit to the government as 'parent'.

ObamaCare: Taxation Without Representation!

It is most likely true that ObamaCare would not have passed if it had been presented to congress and the American people as a tax. Now that it has been declared a tax in fact that means the people's interest AND WILL were NOT represented when the bill passed. Its passage is (albeit, retroactively) factually and fundamentally taxation without representation. We fought a revolution over this.

By the way, Obama's lawyers were deeply involved in getting it represented to the people as not a tax and to the Supreme Court as a tax. So, which time did the Executive Branch (with Obama's obvious support) lie(!) to the American people? Or would you have us believe that they didn't know whether it was a tax in which case I'd ask you whether it's okay for any branch of government to flip-flop on something as basic as a tax? 

How come "the smartest people (man) on the planet" flip-flop on something so basic and so fundamental to the reason why we separated from Britain? They don't know when something's a tax or not? Are you kidding me? They either lied to The People (to get it passed) or to The Supreme Court (to keep it from being repealed). Is either okay? It is NOT, to anyone who'd call himself/herself a patriot!

Manipulating, Flip-Flopping, Deceiving, & Lying. Do You Care That Describes Your President?

Three problems are undermining the fabric of America. We have such short memories, integrity matters too little any more and so does the spirit of our constitution.

Everyone understood the seriousness of our economic troubles four years ago. That's why ANY legislation that created a tax, especially a big tax, was doomed before it began. Even Democrats embraced "The Bush Tax Cuts" as necessary and good for our ailing economy ... albeit while holding their collective noses.

Three plus years ago President Obama and Democratic leadership were lock-step vociferously proclaiming that the individual mandate IS NOT a tax. (Remember the exchange between Stephanopoulos and Obama described in this article?) Was it because they believed it wasn't a tax? Hardly, and their charade was exposed in this month's arguments before the Supreme Court and in that court's ruling today.

The reason the "individual mandate" was upheld today: White House lawyers convinced the Supreme Court that the individual mandate IS a tax. If even the Supreme Court believes it is a tax, most certainly in their hearts those in the Obama administration believed three plus years ago that is a tax. To argue otherwise is to claim Obama is even more clueless than most conservatives think. The proclaimed (self- and otherwise) smartest person on the planet couldn't possibly change his mind on something so fundamental as whether the biggest tax in our history is a tax or not. A rational person doesn't change his mind on something so fundamental. (Note the assumption.)

That leaves us choosing between only three possible conclusions. Either he knew it was a tax all along and he lied to us to get it passed, he's completely irrational or he's so politically vested in the progressive agenda that he doesn't understand or care(!) what he did (ie, he's not so smart after all, just off-the-scale 'political').

So, his own words prove he's a flip-flopper (check the Stephanopoulos reference above). That fact also means he lied to and deceived us (unless you're willing to admit he's so not smart after all).

Bottom line: he and the American people are losers in this proposition. Yes, he's a winner in terms of this battle but how he did it defines him in terms of integrity, honesty and genuine fairness as a loser. Americans are losers for two reasons: ObamaCare was upheld and we have a proven, totally agenda-driven deceiver as our president. If a Wall-Streeter had consciously mislead investors about what an 'investment' would cost them in this way liberals would be outraged, he'd be sued for all he's worth and he'd likely be going to jail. What just happened is a crime. It may not be a crime in a legal sense but it is a crime punishable by removal from office.

Martin Luther King And Our Founding Documents

It's becoming popular for people, including African Americans, to make a point of MLK's imperfections as a person. Of course it's useful to understand the person as well as his accomplishments but let's remember what he stood for. He was human but his message is good and right.

It has become 'popular' to call MLK's movement as one seeking "social justice" and that, in order to honor, respect and preserve what he started we should therefore extend his "fight for social justice". Unfortunately, that's a dishonest hijacking of his values for modern political correctness purposes.

In fact, Dr. King was a Christian first and his movement was "faith-based". What he pushed for was not secular, rather Christian. Judgement based on moral character was a pre-eminent need to him. To him, the expansion of and dependency on a welfare state would represent a failure of society, including African Americans who seem to have no problem with their increasing dependency resulting largely from a willingness to be okay with it. To Dr. King, this trend would no doubt represent a significant decrease in self-respect, a diminished will to succeed on one's own merit ... by choice more than by circumstances. Accepting the role of victim would be reviled by Dr. King.

Dr. King saw the original principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as foundational to economic and social freedom for all. He said(!), his dream was one "deeply rooted in the American dream" embedded in "the magnificent(!) words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence". He said as much many different times in many different ways but he believed it to be true. How one can say he didn't respect or love the principles(!) of those documents defies logic. To say he must not have really understood them is an ignorant thing to say about this man who studied philosophers and old cultures. He understood the value of those documents as unique(!) counterpoints to historical evils.

The greatest surviving highly politically correct claim is that those documents are racist in nature. Dr. King certainly didn't think so. Doesn't that matter? In fact, the most often repeated example is nothing but PC nonsense and twisting of historical truth for purely political purposes.

Yes, the Constitution made Blacks three fifths of a person ... for apportionment sake ... but one has to take it totally out of context to conclude it was racist in a negative sense. Southerners, a large Democratic(!) block of states, wanted to preserve slavery and wanted to institutionalize it in the Constitution by counting slaves as whole persons for enumeration purposes but still not giving Blacks the right to vote. Being able to count slaves as whole persons without giving them the right to vote would have given Southern Democrats the POWER in congress to fight AGAINST freedom for slaves. The slaves wouldn't have gotten ANY more power by being counted as whole persons, only racist(!) Southern politicians would have been the benefactors!!!

The constitution convention delegates were faced with this dilemma. Either yield to Southern states and give them the power to resist freedom for slaves (by giving them enumeration numbers sufficient to do so, free of voting opposition by slaves) OR say no in which case the Southern states were prepared to remain separate from the United States. The former choice would, at a minimum delay freedom for slaves if not render it impossible and the latter would probably enshrine slavery as a fact of life in whatever country The South decided to create separate from the USA. Either way(!), southern slaves (minorities in general) would have been big losers if NOT for the three-fifths rule.

Then someone decided to try a compromise: count Blacks as three-fifths of a person. The southern states agreed to that because they thought they could still resist freedom for slaves (rights, voting, etc) while deriving the benefits from being part of a larger federation of states. What that three-fifths rule did was PRESERVE the ability of the Constitution's principles to migrate our laws to provide rights to minorities. Indeed, that the three-fifths law was eliminated is proof that the three-fifths approach worked. That would NOT have been possible if slaves had been counted as whole persons for enumeration sake without the ability to vote OR if the southern states had chosen to separate from the USA. If today's PC crowd had its way, slaves would have been counted as whole persons which probably would have led to the institutionalization of slavery in the South. Counting them as three-fifths of a person gave us the opportunity to overcome that detestable practice over time.

The Constitution, therefore, was ANTI-RACIST because the three-fifths compromise preserved the union in way that allowed us to eventually eliminate slavery in the South and give minorities all the rights that the Constitution promised. Without the three-fifths rule, the South would be far less free than it is today.

As far as Democrats being the historical fighters for minorities rights, that's complete nonsense. For nearly 200 years Democrats or those who were to become Democrats fought strongly for slavery and no rights for Blacks. In fact, they opposed most civil rights legislation. Too few people remember or know, for example, that it was Democrats who fought AGAINST the Civil Rights Act the strongest by a margin of 2 to 1 over Republicans.

Don't believe the revisionist history of the PC left. MLK's movement was a faith-based movement for equal rights. MLK loved the principles of the Constitution. The Constitution that MLK loved was NOT a racist document, rather it held the Union together (for the good of southern slaves) and set us on a trajectory to eliminate discrimination. Yes, we're not done even yet but we're still headed in the right direction.

Daniel Hannan's Warning To America: You Don't Want To Become The EU

For our own sake, we should not dismiss lightly Mr. Hannan's warning in his book, "A New Road To Serfdom". For one thing, barely a couple of years since its publishing, events are validating his concerns. The EU is unravelling economically and cultural/societal red flags abound in ways he said seemed pretty inevitable. How far must the EU go down that road before we accept the inevitability (you don't think they wanted to go there do you?) and that making similar socialist-type choices doom us to the same undesirable fate?

Here's a link to the Hoover Institution's excerpts from his explanation of various elements of his book:
http://www.hoover.org/multimedia/uncommon-knowledge/53911

The consequences he describe are pretty jaw-dropping considering how they're being validated every day in Europe. THAT really can happen here? R U Kidding Me? In fact, we can count on it happening here if we remain headed in the same direction. Just the very reasonable realization that it COULD happen here for the same reasons it happened in Europe ought to make us pay attention to Mr. Hannan's warning. There's too much at stake to ignore it because if there's any truth in what he said it won't be long before the inertia of the choices we've been making render the same results unavoidable.