When then-candidate Barack Obama accused George W. Bush’s escalation of the national debt “unpatriotic”, there were no doubt a good number of people around the country who nodded their heads in agreement. Common-sense conservatives who seem to have a genetic predisposition and ability to sense a hard-leftist liberal when they see one, however, sent up the warning signs even back then that despite his rhetoric, Barack Obama had every intention of making Bush’s unfortunate record on spending seem like a family day at the ballpark. With the national debt approaching $15 trillion dollars by August 2011 – over five trillion in new spending by Obama in only 2 1/2 years on the job – the first major conflict relative to the political earthquake of November 2010 takes place: the contentious and sometimes heated debate over yet another proposed extension of the nation’s debt ceiling.
August 2 – August 8, 2011 – With the national debt now approaching $15 trillion dollars (as though anyone in America can even fathom what those numbers actually mean), the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and the Democrat-controlled Senate reach what appears to be an absolute stalemate over the proposition to
raise the debt ceiling, an act that if approved, would completely run aground of the most basic tenets of comprehension and common sense. The federal government does, indeed, have bills to pay and will be forced to shut down if the measure is not approved; however, the one largely unspoken idea upon which this situation sheds light is that the United States of America no longer creates its own wealth. It is now dependent on taxing its own people into non-productivity and borrowing billions of dollars from other nations merely to keep its pecuniary nose above water.
After what seems interminable discussion in Congress and on the 24-hour news cycle, a rather haphazard – not to mention extra-constitutional – agreement is reached: the creation of a “Super Committee”, which would be comprised of six Republicans and six Democrats. In exchange for the Republicans’ acquiescence to yet another increase in our national debt, this uncharted committee would be charged with the duty of finding items in the national budget upon which both sides could agree that could be cut from spending.
Clearly done merely as a manner of buying off the American people, it is doomed from the start and never succeeds. At a pre-determined deadline, automatic cuts that had been built into the Super Committee’s charter, in the event of yet another stalemate, go into effect, the most notable being significant cuts to national defense. Worse still is that by the time this situation has completely unfolded, the credit rating of the United States of America is downgraded from its rock-solid “AAA” rating to “AA+”, essentially making it official to the rest of the world’s economy that America, for the first time in its history, is not necessarily a safe financial bet. There’s no hiding from the fact that this takes place on Barack Obama’s watch.
The larger story of this roughly one-week period, however, is the conduct of prominent Democrats. While Republicans – especially members of the new freshmen Tea Party Caucus – were stubbornly trying to hold the line on federal spending and trying to discuss financial policy, members of the Democratic party and the media took to the airwaves in what could only be interpreted in a coordinated offensive intended to assign blame for the fiasco to their conservative opponents.
In addition to the repeated terrorist talking points, David Axelrod and John Kerry (card-carrying member of the “tax everybody for everything” party who avoids paying property taxes on his yacht, for Heaven’s sake, by mooring it in Rhode Island rather than Massachusetts) also take to the airwaves, consistently repeating the words “Tea Party” and “downgrade” in an obvious and unconscionable attempt to have viewers psychologically associate the two terms. Kerry goes as far as to suggest that the mainstream media outlets stop giving equal time to the Tea Party in their political reporting. After all, we wouldn’t want both sides of the debate out in open discourse, now would we?
Strange…. I was always taught that the media’s responsibility was simply to report what was happening in the world, not to decide for us what was actually worthy of telling us. I think the Nazis had other words for it:
censorship and propaganda.
The coup de grace to the entire episode came on August 8th, when Barack Obama held a press conference to discuss the downgrade of the United States’ credit rating. As Obama speaks, the Dow Jones Industrial Average drops 200 points, and it plummets 600 points for the day. Clearly, the principal players in the American economy were preparing to abandon the ship-of-state as piloted by a hard-leftist.
January 18, 2012 – It’s not too much of a stretch to say that amongst the many financial considerations coursing through the DNA of the American economy, oil is arguably first and foremost. Of course, this drives environmentalists out of their minds, so they are therefore determined to prove that we can power our chainsaws and lawnmowers with wind.
Hey – whatever works, right? 
In mid-January, however, Barack Obama found himself between barack and a hard place. With the Canadian government having offered first dibs on a strategic oil reserve to the United States, it seemed like a no-brainer and a win-win for everyone in America. We could take the initial steps in weaning ourselves off Middle Eastern Oil, the economy gets a much-needed boost in terms of real jobs, and the Left’s union acolytes are plenty happy.
Over the past 75-100 years, the Democratic party has cobbled together a loosely-fitting coalition of special-interest social groups that all expect to be treated as favored child number one when it comes to their own agendas. In this case, Barack Obama had to resolve a pesky conflict: if he were to approve the construction of the Keystone Pipeline (running from Canada south, down roughly the middle of the American heartland and finishing at the Gulf of Mexico), his union workers would be plenty happy, but his environmentalists would be plenty mad. As stated earlier, it would still seem to be a no-brainer: the President should first decide for the betterment of the country and then deal with his special interest groups afterward.
Barack Obama’s solution to his quandary? Quite strange, actually. He opts to deny America and his union workers access to the infusion (wouldn’t that be a “stimulus” of sorts?) of work and dollars – to say nothing of the oil – and appeases the environmentalists. In the aftermath of all this, Americans learn that the unions mysteriously gained extra seats on the National Labor Relations Board. Weird.
It might just be me, but it certainly seems to me that Barack Obama chose a middle path that would allow him to continue to pursue his personal political agendas, rather than America’s.
But, like I said, it might just be me.
March 6, 2012 – In a scene that couldn’t possibly be made up by a gifted screenwriter – then again, when one considers the ease with which liberal Democrats magically create social issues out of thin air, perhaps even this one didn’t even warrant the raising of an eyebrow – Sandra Fluke is given a national stage from which she is allowed to fire the first shot in the fictional “war on women”. The beautiful part of the entire breathtakingly sad and pathetic scenario is that not only is the issue a complete fiction, but it is also “propped up” (something with which the Democratic Party never has any reservations) by a completely fictional hearing – since Fluke was denied permission by the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Darrel Issa, on the grounds that she lacked professional expertise, was not a member of the clergy (freedom of religion being a foundational tenet of the debate), and because her name had not been submitted in time (I think he probably included a fourth reason – “this is a f***ing joke”, but probably had it struck just before submitting the paperwork), the Democrats simply created an official-looking “hearing” in an adjoining room, to which they made sure all of the major networks were invited.
Fluke’s facial expressions when she is applauded by her adoring admirers at certain points during her speech are both the most precious and most infuriating – clearly, this moment in the spotlight was not something that she took upon herself with any degree of reservation, which is typically why individuals of honesty and integrity take up a legitimate cause. No, for Sandra, this was all about her and impressing her friends, showing them just how important she really is and that she, too, can fight the big, bad culture that is holding down all the little people.
It was clearly also an easy spotlight-and-money-grabbing opportunity as well, since the Democrats have been more than happy to continue extending her sad little 15 minutes of fame (including a major speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention in August) whenever it suited their needs.
I’m sure there’ll be a book with her name on it that comes out eventually, one that tells us all in excruciating detail the degree of suffering that she’s endured throughout her life at the hands of a culture and society that have the temerity to deny her permission to sleep around with whomever she wishes and whenever she wants without fear of an unwanted pregnancy.
It’s rumored that if customers purchase the book and attend any of her book-signings, each copy will come with a complimentary violin.
After all, we wouldn’t want to punish her with a child, now would we?
Little did we know at the time, but this was probably only the first indication of just how low the Democratic Party was willing to stoop in its efforts to have Barack Obama re-elected and to prevent its entire existence from being functionally obliterated.
March 23, 2012 – As Rham Emmanuel famously quoted back during the beginning of the Obama administration, “A good crisis should never go to waste, because you have the chance to make things the way that you want them to be.” Personally, whenever I have family or friends experiencing some type of crisis in their life, I never think of exploiting it to my personal advantage. I actually think about helping them through it.
Silly me.
I often have to chuckle when those on the Left accuse conservatives of “politicizing” an issue, when, in fact, all we do here on the right is look at and for facts. I guess actually trying to determine what may or may not have happened in a given instance is now the “new politicization”. Of course, we can never, ever mention that throughout history, all the political Left has done is to create crises and politicize them in an effort to manipulate people and to gain power. Facts are, indeed, sometimes difficult to digest.
It was therefore not shocking at all when Barack Obama came out on this day and famously quoted, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon”, as though a sitting President of the United States actually has a say in the legal and judicial proceedings of an incident in a small area of South Florida. Yes, George Zimmerman – the man dubbed a “white Hispanic” by the liberal, caterwauling news agencies – fired his pistol and tragically killed Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old black youth. As details of the incident continued to make their way into the mainstream, however, it became clear that not only were the details of the incident at the very least somewhat murky but that the shooting may quite well have been in self-defense. Similar to Barack Obama’s “Cambridge Police” moment, though, this president opts to once again use what should be a law enforcement issue for political gain.
Let’s consider this: if this weren’t for political gain, then why hasn’t Barack Obama shown any degree of concern for the outrageous amounts of black-on-black crime taking place in his own Chicago?
I was just wondering.
June 5, 2012 – Yet another significant indicator that the country as a whole continues to move to the right in the wake of the Obama administration’s radical, leftist agenda for America takes place, as Republican Governor Scott Walker and the people of Wisconsin somewhat easily hold off the attempt by the forces of the progressive, unionized Left in that state to unseat him after only a year-and-a-half in office. Walker’s initiatives have, for the most part, turned the Wisconsin economy around on a dime, and people who have been “freed” from the chains of mandatory union dues being extracted from their paychecks suddenly seem to like the idea. Perhaps the most telling image from the evening is the state electoral map, a state that is traditionally one of the most liberal in the country and the birthplace of progressivism in America:
Red is, indeed, the new freedom.
June 6, 2012 – The gunrunning scandal dubbed “Fast and Furious” begins to take center stage, as the man arguably at the heart of the entire morbid scenario – including the death of two United States’ Border Patrol Agents – Eric Holder, is put on the hot seat and faces some serious questioning by congressional officials. Throughout the entire session, Holder seems to generally if not literally treat the people questioning him with disdain and as though they’re merely nuisances with which he must unfortunately deal; Republican Darrel Issa of California, however, takes a moment and seems to speak for the vast majority of common sense people in America who have had quite enough of the outrageous tactics of the Obama administration:
Days later, Eric Holder invoked “executive privilege” in an effort to not have to answer any more questions. Of course, invoking such a privilege would seem to suggest that his good friend, Barack Obama, also knows something about what happened in this entire scandal, something that he has repeatedly denied.
It’s pretty obvious by this point that these guys have begun to make the Nixon administration look like Boy Scouts.
And, in this case, the media is on the side of the Nixon administration.
Funny how that works out, isn’t it?
