GBTV - Where the Truth Lives

Election Season 2014

And it has brought us to this trainwreck called ObamaCare and we have bankrupted our kids and grandkids!

We are now headed into the 2014 Election Season and common sense and conservatism are on the rise. Please stand-up and be counted!

Reading Collusion: How the Media Stole the 2012 Election is a great place to start!

The Founding Father's Real Reason for the Second Amendment

And remember the words of Thomas Jefferson "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." See Video of Suzanna Gratia-Hupp’s Congressional Testimony: What the Second Amendment is REALLY For, below (u-tube HERE).

The Leaders Are Here... Palin, Cruz, Lee, Paul, Chaffetz....

T'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

Can You Really Still Believe That None of These People Would Have Done a Better Job???

Bloggers' Rights at EFF

SIGN THE PETITION TODAY...

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Watcher’s Council Nominations – Sequestration Boogie Man Edition… Boo!

http://www.theliberaloc.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/boogie-man.jpg

JoshuaPundit on Feb 27 2013Nominations:

Welcome to the Watcher’s Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the ‘sphere, and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing on Friday.

Council News:


Well guess what…we have another WoW birthday to celebrate!

Yesterday was the big day for our pal Greg over at Rhymes With Right, but I think we’ll celebrate it properly today, with some killer ‘cue, and of course, some well chilled Shiner Bock.

Whaddya say, old friend…can you stand another birthday do? I kinda think so….many, many more.

One of our illustrious Council alumni is also in the news..none other than our good friend David Gerstner, AKA Soccer Dad. David took a bit of a hiatus from blogging for awhile, although he continues to put out his superb Middle East Media samplers on an almost daily basis.

Ah, but the ‘sphere has a lure all it’s own. After getting his feet wet with a couple of great pieces published by Pajamas Media, David let me know he’s back in the game, as a co-blogger/galley slave for Professor Bill Jacobsen over at the superb site Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion.

You can check out his latest piece on LI here. Congrats, David!

Also, Council Members Bookworm Room and The Mellow Jihadi were both nominated by Right Wing News in the 11th annual Blogger Awards… Council Akbar! Hit that link and vote early and often.

This week, Crazy Bald Guy, Ask Marion, Right Truth and The Pirate’s Cove took advantage of my generous offer of linkage and earned honorable mention status with some great articles.

You can, too! Want to see your work appear on the Watcher’s Council homepage in our weekly contest listing? Didn’t get nominated by a Council member? No worries.

Simply head over to Joshuapundit and post the title a link to the piece you want considered along with an e-mail address ( which won’t be published) in the comments section no later than Monday 6PM PST in order to be considered for our honorable mention category. Then just return the favor by creating a post on your site linking to the Watcher’s Council contest for the week.

It’s a great way of exposing your best work to Watcher’s Council readers and Council members. while grabbing the increased traffic and notoriety. And how good is that, eh?

So, all that said, let’s take a look at what we have this week….

Council Submissions
Honorable Mentions
Non-Council Submissions

Enjoy! And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us Twitter..’cause we’re cool like that!

Related:

Sequestration: Chicken Little Not Only Fears Armageddon, He Prays For It

Video: Rand Paul: Sequester Is A Pittance

Monday, February 25, 2013

LaPierre: ‘Gun Registry Will Be Used to Confiscate Your Guns’… As DOJ Memo: ‘Outlaw and Confiscate All Guns’ Surfaces

By Marion Algier - Ask Marion

Making the Sunday show rounds, Senator Tom Colburn (R-OK), one of the most respected Senators in Washington, told Fox News’ Chris Wallace that  Senate Negotiators Are Not Close to a Deal on Gun Background Checks ... As one of four Senators working on legislation to expand background checks for firearm purchased, he made it very clear that there would be no record keeping (lists or a national registry created) on law-abiding gun owners in this country.

Coburn has been working with Illinois Republican Mark S. Kirk, New York Democrat Charles E. Schumer (a definite Progressive anti-gun guy) and West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin III on developing narrower ‘background check’ legislation which aims to ensure that criminals and those with mental health issues are not able to access/purchase firearms. 

Being in full agreement, my first reaction is how do you stop the government from creating and keeping a list and can you believe them?  Just look at all the falsehoods and indiscretions that have been leaked about the TSA and other government entities, including the White House. NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre spoke out and continues to speak out on universal gun registration, realizing that it will ultimately lead to the disarming of Americans.  The Founding Fathers painstakingly chose every word that is in the Bill of Rights and the  Constitution for a purpose and giving the American people the right to keep and bear arms is the lynch pin to guarantee that we can keep the rest.  

So, when you have memos leaked from the DOJ about outlawing and confiscating all guns, whistleblowers from the FBI warning about Obama and his team will destroy America once he has the guns, and others leaks about events like Aurora and Sandy Hook being False Flag events it is time to worry, get-involved and to stand-up!!

Wayne LaPierre on Universal Background Checks: That Registry Will Be Used to Confiscate Your Guns

NRA executive vice president and CEO Wayne LaPierre speaks on universal gun registration. (Photo: NRA)

The Blaze: National Rifle Association executive vice president and CEO Wayne LaPierre continued speaking out against President Obama’s recent gun control proposals Saturday night, zeroing in on “the real consequences of background checks,” according to the NRA.

The organization has been targeted by many on the left in the wake of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary last December. While the NRA argues that more guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens creates a safer community, many in the administration and on the left disagree, saying it leads to more gun violence and accidental deaths. But, Gun Ownership at All-Time High and the Nation’s Murder Rate at Nearly All-Time Low… Hmmm?!? Has Someone Told Obama and the Progressive Left?

Most recently, the NRA has been publicizing a memo it obtained from the Justice Department that says the success of universal background checks would depend in part on “requiring gun registration,” and says gun buybacks would not be effective “unless massive and coupled with a ban.”

Video:  Universal Background Checks Means Registering Your Guns - NRA Wayne Lapierre

LaPierre began his speech with a reminder on why he believes it’s so important to counter strict gun control measures:

“The Second Amendment — it’s not just words on parchment. It’s not a frivolous suggestion from our Founding Fathers to be interpreted on a whim. It lies on the very heart of what our country was founded upon. Our Founding Fathers knew that without the Second Amendment, all of our other freedoms could be in jeopardy. [And] our freedoms are the very essence of America. They are what make America unique!

Now, he said, we’re witnessing the single-most devastating attack on that right that “our country has ever seen.”

He discussed NRA proposals to make schools safer, noting that Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) admitted that she had gun control legislation in her desk for a year and was waiting for the “right time” to introduce it. In his opinion, many gun control opponents more about politics than they are proven solutions.

“Waiting for an unspeakable act to occur so the American people could be persuaded to buy her political agenda?” LaPierre commented with disgust. “It’s not about making our kids or our streets safer, it’s all about their decades-old agenda.”

He soon got to the heart of his speech: universal background checks, and what he claims they’re really all about:

“Don’t you be fooled. There is nothing “universal,” nor “reasonable” about it. They ought to stop pretending and stop calling it what it will never be. Criminals will never be a part of it, and I have come to believe that the adjudicated mentally incompetent [won't either]…This so-called universal background check that you’re hearing about is aimed at one thing: it’s aimed at registering your guns and, when another tragic opportunity presents itself, that registry will be used to confiscate your guns.”

“Imagine right now, your name on a massive government list,” he asked the audience, noting that it would be pretty “handy” for a drug dealer, thug, or criminal. “How safe do you think that government list will be?” he continued, noting the flood of personal information released this year by various media outlets on gun owners.

Wayne LaPierre on Universal Background Checks: That Registry Will Be Used to Confiscate Your Guns

The crowd stands and cheers after the NRA executive vice president and CEO Wayne LaPierre urges them to stand for their rights. (Photo: NRA)

LaPierre proceeded to highlight other gun control proposals state by state, concluding with a word on how the Mexican government has asked the U.S. Senate for a registry of all gun owners in the United States.

“What is the point of that?” he asked.

“They have all the security they want,” LaPierre said, referring to politicians. “Our ​only​ means of security is the Second Amendment when the glass breaks in the middle of the night, and we have a right to defend ourselves…They don’t have the right to take that right away.”

“Was this what our Founding Fathers intended?” he asked. What Washington needs to do is recognize that Americans really have shared goals: they want their communities to be safer, and they will do anything to protect their kids.

Start focusing on that, he said, and “stop trying to convince the American people that all law-abiding gun owners are criminals in waiting.”

He concluded with an inspiring statement on how many gun control proposals have failed, and NRA members and Americans need to continue standing up and making their voices heard. He told the crowd to call their congressmen and senators this week, then sit down and write a hand-written letter, and follow up with an email.

“We will not be duped. We will not be demonized. And we will not be divided,” he said.

“As lawful gun-owners, we deserve nothing less than absolute respect as people that believe in our individual rights, believe in individual responsibility, believe in protecting our families, and believe in defending our country.”

DOJ Memo: Outlaw and Confiscate All Guns:

DOJ memo states: “Buybacks are ineffective unless massive and coupled with a ban.”

The National Rifle Association has obtained a Department of Justice memo calling for national gun registration and confiscation. The nine page “cursory summary” on current gun control initiatives was not officially released by the Obama administration.

The DOJ memo (downloadable here as a PDF) states the administration “believes that a gun ban will not work without mandatory gun confiscation,” according to the NRA, and thinks universal background checks “won’t work without requiring national gun registration.” Obama has yet to publicly support national registration or firearms confiscation, although the memo reveals his administration is moving in that direction.

The memo stands in stark contrast to the administration’s public stance on so-called gun control. White House spokesman Jay Carney said last month that laws proposed by Obama would not “take away a gun from a single law-abiding American.”

The NRA declined to explain how it obtained the document. The memo was written by the acting director of the Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice, Greg Ridgeway. It is dated January 4, two weeks before Obama mounted his attack on the Second Amendment following the Sandy Hook massacre. Ridgeway came to the Justice Department from the RAND corporation.

The memo says universal background checks on firearms purchases may help the government push to control and eventually outlaw firearms, but it would lead to an increase in illegally purchased guns.

It pointed out that banning high capacity ammunition clips would be ineffective due to the fact there is a large number of them already in circulation.

A Justice Department official said the memo is an unfinished review of gun violence research and does not represent administration policy.

The DOJ memo arrived a few weeks prior to a letter sent out by the Department of Veterans Affairs. “A determination of incompetency will prohibit you from purchasing, possessing, receiving, or transporting a firearm or ammunition,” the sent to military veterans states. “If you knowingly violate any of these prohibitions, you may be fined, imprisoned, or both pursuant to the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, Pub.L.No. 103-159, as implemented at 18, United States Code 924(a)(2).”

“US veterans are receiving letters from the government informing them that they are disabled and not allowed to own, purchase or possess a firearm. If the veteran does decide to purchase a firearm he will by fined, imprisoned or both,” the Gateway Pundit remarked.

NRA’s Chris Cox talks about the DOJ memo:

California Democrat senator Dianne Feinstein reveals the government agenda in 1995 — confiscation:

The Gun Control Playbook: The REAL agenda formulated in 1994 - Rough Draft Proposal for Internal Memo and Five Year Plan

Related:

Letter from Columbine student to President Obama

Summary of Select Firearm Prevention Strategies PDF

‘By All Means, Leave’: The Amazingly Blunt Response One State Rep. Gave a Citizen Who Wrote Him Opposing Concealed Carry in Schools

New York Army Vet Facing 7 Years in Prison Over Empty Ammo Magazines

Gaining Momentum: Now 44 Gun Companies Have Stopped Selling to Law Enforcement In Anti-2nd Amendment

Urgent Impassioned Campaign Against Gun Violence Interrupted for Vacation and Some Golf Lessons… Hmmm?

FBI: More People Killed with Hammers, Clubs Each Year than Rifles

How Likely Are You to Die From Gun Violence? This Interesting Chart Puts It in Perspective

Odds of Dying in America in a Given Year

The reality is that Gun Ownership is at an All-Time High, but the Nation’s Murder Rate at Nearly an All-Time Low… And the Feds have admitted that Gun Laws Won’t Slow Crime. In fact, a study by the Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice has the feds admitting that so-called “assault weapons” are not a major contributor to gun crime.  So, Why Do They Want Us Disarmed?  Because, It Isn’t About the Guns… It Is About Control… Controlling You!  See (Video) as Suzanna Gratia-Hupp explains meaning of 2nd Amendment! to Progressive Senator Chuck Schumer and others. Everyone who has survived living in a totalitarian country knows once they have your guns… it is all over. 

Please don’t be manipulated.  Big brother is counting on you being uninformed!  The reason for the second Amendment, per Founding Father and President Thomas Jefferson, has nothing to do with hunting, or even defending oneself from intruders, although both good reasons to own a gun.  The reason for the second amendment is if and when all goes wrong, for the people to be able to defend themselves against the government and exactly why someone could need and should be allowed to own an AR-15 or any of the other guns and ammo on the so-called assault weapons list. One only has to watch a movie like The Bourne Legacy [Blu-ray/Digital Combo] to figure that one out!

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Adrift at Sea

Cruisin for a Bruisin     

“Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.” Friedrich Nietzsche

AskMarion: The similarities between the horrific voyage of the Carnival Triumph and the tragic voyage of the dysfunctional ship of state we call America are many. We have a ruling class consisting of the President, Congress, Judiciary, Central bankers, Media titans, and goliath corporation CEOs who care not for the citizens of this country. You are ignorant peasants in their eyes. They only care about maintaining and expanding their wealth, control and power through the complete capture of our financial markets, political system and media propaganda to the masses. The health and welfare of the peasants isn’t even on their radar screen. The ruling class steering this ship of fools have no interest in the truth or the best long – erm interests of the country. The vast majority of the passengers on this impaired listing ship prefers to believe the propaganda and lies spewed by the captain and his minions. They prefer the illusion of safety and security to the truth about the real condition of this ship. When the engines of this ship come to a grinding halt, their illusions will be shattered. Big government will come up small when it counts. The government propaganda and public relations will be revealed as nothing but hot putrid air and fecal matter.

Speaking of fecal matter, President Obama’s State of the Union address, which was watched by 33 million (down from 52 million in 2009) believers, was a perfect reflection of the thinking that led to the Carnival Triumph disaster. The reality facing the country is: $220 trillion of unfunded entitlement liabilities; a $16.5 trillion national debt; annual deficits exceeding $1 trillion; 48 million citizens on food stamps; 11 million people on SSDI; a true unemployment rate of 23%; true inflation exceeding 5%; record high gasoline prices; 0% interest rates for senior citizen savers; free money for criminal bankers provided by their sugar daddy Bernanke; not one criminal prosecution of a Wall Street executive for the greatest financial fraud in history; a war department that spends $1 trillion per year and fights undeclared wars around the world; a chief executive that invokes dictatorial executive orders to murder Americans with his fleet of predator drones and imprison citizens indefinitely without charges; and a bureaucratic nightmare called Obamacare that will drive up deficits, drive up healthcare costs for every family, enrich the healthcare industrial complex, drive doctors into retirement, and drive small businesses into bankruptcy.

Rather than deal with this reality, Obama chose the Carnival Cruise Line method of public relations, misinformation, denial and delusion. He has embraced the Big Lie concept as if he had created it. With a straight face he proposes “investments” in infrastructure, new jobs programs, new education initiatives, more green energy projects, pollution control schemes, bailing out more underwater mortgages, and raising the minimum wage, all done for the children – and it won’t add one cent to the deficit. Instead of leveling with the American people and explaining the dire economic issues confronting our nation that require sacrifice, reality based thinking, and tough choices, we got more platitudes, class warfare, divide and conquer, phantom spending cuts, disingenuous twisting of the truth, intellectual dishonesty and fuzzy math. Public relations spin created by Madison Avenue maggots and pronounced grandly by corrupt puppet politician hacks will not prevent the catastrophic engine failure that will leave this country adrift in a sea of its own feces.

Our cruise of illusions and delusions is headed for troubled water. The math challenged citizens on this ship have been enjoying the 24 hour pizza buffet without the labor required to pay for the bounty. When your leaders boldly lie and tell you we don’t have a spending problem, refer to proposed spending increases as “investments”, and hail $1.6 trillion of spending cuts that did not happen, you’ve got a ship that will be signaling SOS in the imminent future. Both political parties are laughable in their blathering about spending cuts as Bush and his Republican cronies drove spending from $1.9 trillion in 2001 to $3.0 trillion in 2008 with their unfunded wars, unfunded new entitlements (Medicare Part D), Wall Street bailouts, and creation of police state agencies (DHS); while Obama and his Democrat co-conspirators have driven spending up to $3.8 trillion in four years with new unfunded entitlements (Obamacare), expansion of warfare in the Middle East (they sit on top of “our” oil), $800 billion stimulus handouts, $60 billion hurricane relief pork handed out for $25 billion of uninsured losses, and bailing out banks, auto companies, homeowners, and other gamblers who took undo risks and lost to the tune of hundreds of billions. Politicians and the inhabitants of this country have forgotten there are consequences to their actions and inactions.

Carnival Cruise Line is trying to buy off the passengers with refunds and $500 bribes to keep them quiet and sedated, while protecting their continued hundreds of millions in profits and million dollar bonuses for their executives. The ruling class in the United States has bought off the American people with entitlement promises that can’t possibly be honored, food stamps, SSDI, tax rebates, homebuyer tax credits, loan modification programs, Cash for Clunkers, payroll tax cuts, $1 trillion of taxpayer financed student loans, taxpayer financed subprime auto loans, and a myriad of other handouts designed to keep the masses sedated, while the ruling class continues to pillage the national wealth. It’s as if the entire country has been charging their food, drinks, excursions, and purchases to their room number and the bill has reached $16.5 trillion, rising by $3 billion per day. This voyage is reaching an end and the bill is coming due. The engine is on fire but the captain is telling us all is well. Eventually, everyone will know the captain lied.        

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died

Leonard Cohen – Everybody Knows

VIDEO:  Leonard Cohen - Everybody Knows

h/t to MJ

Related:

It Finally Hit Me: Barack Obama Will Never Be Held Responsible for Anything

Saturday, February 23, 2013

‘Obama’s Mess’: Just What the Sequester Fiasco Needed…An Explosive PAC Ad

TheBlaze:  As the automatic spending cuts (i.e. the sequester) set to take effect on March 1 quickly approach and Washington, D.C., ratchets up its hand-wringing doomsday rhetoric, we wondered: What else could be added to the drama?

How about a Super PAC ad?

Good news, everyone! Crossroads GPS has got us covered:

Video - Crossroads GPS: ‘Obama’s Mess’

“The sequester is Obama’s mess. Don’t help him clean it up,” reads the video’s description.

Well, the president did play a role in this political soap opera, but he wasn’t alone:

Yes, as TheBlaze mentioned a few days ago, “the sequester is the result of a deal struck by Congress in 2011, the president signed off on it, and now no one wants to take responsibility for it.”

(@BecketAdams) on Twitter  -  Featured image screen grab.

Related:

Rand Paul: Sequester Is A Pittance

Flashback Video: Obama said he would veto any attempt to stop Sequestration

Friday, February 22, 2013

Rand Paul: Sequester Is A Pittance

Video: Rand Paul: Sequester Is A Pittance

The ‘Sequester’ is a pittance and a distraction; another distraction to divert the attention of the low-informed populace from what is important and what is really going on in Washington and the world, flamed by the complicit mainstream media (MSM) that keeps the average American misinformed, if not uninformed, as Team Obama, RINO’s in both parties and the Progressive Left work their agenda.  It is part of the Cloward and Piven strategy and Saul Alinsky’s  tactics of blaming your enemies, the Republicans and patriotic Americans dubbed the Tea Party in this case, for everything… even your (the left’s) own unpopular ideas and policies. Make your opponent the enemy in the public’s eyes and twist the conversation, with the help of the MSM, to make yourself (your side) the hero or at least the good guy is the strategy.  Pay attention America, that is exactly what is happening and President Obama, his team and his handlers are governing…  And we, the American people, are being played.  The sequester (Sequestration) is not only a diversion and a pittance but it was Obama’s idea!

Related:

Sequestration? It was Obama’s plan from the start

The truth about sequestration 'cuts' and the Washington blame game 

Whose idea was the sequester? And does it matter? (+video)

Video: Bob Woodward (Reporter of Watergate Fame): Sequester Was Obama's Idea

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Sarah Palin to Address CPAC in March

palin_cpac_2012_AP

Sarah Palin Rocked the CPAC House in 2012 on Her Birthday

Big Government: The American Conservative Union (ACU), which runs the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), announced on Monday that Sarah Palin will speak at the 40th annual gathering of conservatives in March.

“We are pleased to again welcome Governor Sarah Palin to CPAC in March,” ACU Chairman Al Cardenas said in a statement. “Governor Palin electrified the crowd in 2012 and we are thrilled to welcome her back this year.”

CPAC 2013 will be held Thursday, March 14 through Saturday, March 16, 2013 at its new location in National Harbor, MD at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center.

The non-Washington, D.C. location of this year's conference is fitting for Palin, who blistered the permanent political class and crony capitalism during her 2012 address last year in the nation's capital in her first appearance at the conference.

Last year, she was mobbed in the hallways before her speech. Palin stayed for nearly an hour after speaking, engaging conservatives and supporters who were there to listen to her. Reporters and observers at CPAC noted in 2012 they had not seen anyone who resonated with the conservative base more than Palin.

At CPAC 2012, Palin said Washington, D.C. had become "something that our forefathers never envisioned, and they would have sworn their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor to change."

Conservative Super Star Sarah Palin: Brought the Red Meat to CPAC and They Loved It… Loved Her!

Palin said the "old Washington of our Founders" was a place where people "came to serve your government, not prosper over it and on it and from it and off of it." She mentioned the country's wealthiest counties were all around the D.C. region, a theme director Stephen K. Bannon and Peter Schweizer's Government Accountability Institute would later document a year later in "Boomtown."
She referenced her speech in Indianola, Iowa in 2011 when she spoke of "crony capitalism" that "isn't the capitalism of free men and free markets, of risk and sacrifice, of innovation and hard work." She said the new crony capitalism is one of "connections" and of "government bailout and handouts" and waste, "corporate welfare and corruption."

After her Indianola speech, "crony capitalism" and "permanent political class" were injected into the political vocabulary.

"This is the capitalism of Barack Obama and the permanent political class," Palin said at CPAC in 2012.

She lambasted the Occupy protesters who were at the conference in 2012, saying they should be instead protesting at Obama's White House, which has "spurred the expansion of government which diminishes freedom and opportunity for all to rise and to succeed."
Palin derided politicians who come to Washington, D.C. "denouncing the place as the cesspool of corruption" only to, after a year or two, see it as a hot tub.

"And they are hopping in and enjoying the Jacuzzi," Palin said, noting it was "time we drain the Jacuzzi and throw the bums out with the bath water."

After Palin turned down Fox News' offer to renew her contract, she spoke exclusively to Breitbart News about her future. When asked what her response was to the mainstream media's declarations that she and the Tea Party were "buried," Palin said she was raised "to never retreat and to pick battles wisely, and all in due season."

"When it comes to defending our republic, we haven’t begun to fight! But we delight in those who underestimate us," Palin told Breitbart News last month.

Palin Obviously Plans to ‘Shake Up the GOP Machine’ and Perhaps the Next Two Elections

Sarah Palin

Reuters (Photo) Palin Bats Clean-up at CPAC… Hits Home Run (2012)!

The Lesson in the Betrayal of Sarah Palin

2016 – The Election of the First Female President of the United States?

Palin Derangement Syndrome Continues

Related:

Romney to Speak at CPAC

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Senator Ted Cruz Not Only Swept the Senate Floor but Took Out the Trash

Video: Senator Ted Cruz Not Only Swept the Senate Floor but Took Out the Trash

Common sense spoken over and above the passionate emotion of the hearing. Most refreshing in the age of quarrel and hypocrisy, but the left is now already beginning their focused attacks on Ted Cruz (R-TX), like waged on Rand Paul regularly, or Marco Rubio last week after he gave the rebuttal to the State of the Union and like they did with Sarah Palin right out of the shoot… and they are still doing it to Sarah Palin today.  They did it to Dan Quayle decades ago.  It is more of the same… Derangement Syndrome by the left focused on anyone who tells the truth, appeals to the masses or threatens their power.

h/t to BarracudaBrigade

Monday, February 18, 2013

President’s Day

President’s Day, in theory, is a day for Americans to honor their presidents… all their presidents, yet many feel that we should be celebrating Washington and Lincoln‘s Birthdays, respectively, as has been done for generations.  Many feel that kids should spend their days at school on the 22nd (Washington) and the 12th (Lincoln) learning about these men and their times instead of having a couple days off to ‘hang out’, and that parents (adults) who are off should spend the day taking their kids to a (relatively) nearby presidential library or watching a movie or reading a book with their kids, grandkids, nieces or nephews about these two men or another American president… instead of shopping or hanging out in Vegas or at the river.

Many feel that there is no such thing as President’s Day:

We don't care what that newspaper ad says, there's no official 'Presidents' Day' holiday. By law, it's 'George Washington’s Birthday' honoring the Father of Our Country, and only him.

0218-no-presidents-day.jpg_full_380[1]

John Godzieba, portraying Gen. George Washington, walks with his troops toward the boat dock during a re-enactment of Washington's historic crossing of the Delaware River. A strong current kept the re-enactors from making the crossing from Pennsylvania to New Jersey.  Joseph Kaczmarek/AP

It’s not ‘President’s Day.’ It’s Washington’s Birthday (2012)

WASHINGTON: We know we’re swimming up a creek without a paddle here, but there is no federal Presidents’ Day holiday. We don’t care what your mattress ad says – is that a legal document?

The official name of Monday’s day off is “George Washington’s Birthday.” It’s supposed to honor the Father of Our Country, and only him. Not Abraham Lincoln, not Franklin D. Roosevelt, not any other of the nation’s former chief executives. Chester A. Arthur will just have to get his own holiday, if he can.

If you still don’t believe us take a look at the federal government’s Office of Personnel Management list of 2013 holidays. It’s the official word for the time off US bureaucrats enjoy. It calls Monday, Feb. 18, “Washington’s Birthday,” with an asterisk. At the bottom of the page the asterisk leads to a footnote.

“This holiday is designated as ‘Washington’s Birthday’ in section 6103(a) of title 5 of the United States Code, which is the law that specifies holidays for Federal employees,” says OPM. “Though other institutions such as state and local governments and private businesses may use other names, it is our policy to always refer to holidays by the names designated in law.”

Washington’s Birthday has been a national holiday since 1885.

In 1968, when Congress was considering a shuffle of three-day weekends with the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, some Illinois lawmakers tried to get the February holiday stretched to cover Abe Lincoln by calling it “Presidents Day.” But according to an account in the National Archives Prologue Magazine, Virginia legislators, jealous of their state’s prerogatives, blocked the change and maintained Washington as First in Our Hearts, First in the National League East, and First in Special-Today-Only Used Car Discounts.

Mt Rushmore 07.23.11 10

Some Obama supporters are already talking about putting Barack Hussein Obama on Mount Rushmore; a little premature don’t you think… even if you do like him?

How about Ronald Reagan first, if we are going to add someone?  He is a man/president that almost everyone loved or at least respected, while he was alive and in office, even if they didn’t agree with his politics.  Not so with BHO…

"A Time for Choosing" by Ronald Reagan – Video

U.S. Presidential Libraries

Thought or the Day… What Would Our Former Presidents Have Thought and Said If They Were Alive Today?!?

"If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." -- Winston Churchill

Related:

Reagan’s home could become a parking lot for Obama’s library

Not All Presidents Are Equal

Urgent: impassioned campaign against gun violence interrupted for vacation and some golf lessons… Hmmm?

By Marion Algier – Ask Marion

"Gun Ownership at All-Time High, Nation’s Murder Rate at Nearly All-Time Low… Hmmm?!?  Has Someone Told Obama? Or is that why Obama has time to vacation and golf in the middle of his impassioned (created) campaign against gun violence?? 

HotAir wrote: I know what you’re thinking but let’s be fair. If he took a break from insinuating that gun-rights supporters don’t care about children getting shot for nothing more than a few lessons with the local club pro, that would be callous. But he’s not. He’s taking a break from those insinuations for lessons with thousand-bucks-an-hour top pro instructor Butch Harmon. He’s not taking this gun-control thing lightly, guys. Not now, I mean. He took it pretty lightly for the past 10 years or so, especially during election years, but now he’s serious. Or he will be, once he finally gets the kinks out of his swing.

Rest assured, he’ll be back on the trail soon working hard on not solving the problem.

The President’s golfing weekend at The Floridian GC in Palm City, Fla., will include more than golf on a Tom Fazio course or an afternoon of ball beating at the Harmon School of Golf on campus. The Harmons, Butch and son Claude III, are flying in to work with President Obama, who inquired through an aide if they would be on property during his stay…

“He’s a left-handed player, I’ve seen film of his swing before,” said Harmon, who analyzed Obama’s swing when the President first took office. “It’ll be fun to get him down in the learning center, show him stuff in his golf game and see how he takes it to the course. He’s just like all of us that play golf. He wants to get better.”

Related Tweet: MEEchelleO@MEEchelle O :  Barack got a $1000 a hour golf pro so I'll get MEE a hunky ski instructor. Gotta be named "Sven"! –mao Winking smile

Bush famously golfed in his down time, and was famously castigated for it, until 2003 when he stopped because he couldn’t justify an elite leisure pastime when Americans and their allies were suffering in Iraq. Well, we’re out of Iraq now; America’s suffering is over. Tee it up. Here’s The One this afternoon in Chicago, the current gun-control capital of the U.S. and the gun-violence capital of the U.S., calling for more gun control, naturally. But not just gun control; this clip captures him in a rare moment of genuine insight, not just pushing the talking points du jour.

Hmmm… and could that be because this is all a ruse for control not a fight for safety from gun violence?  In fact: 4 People Shot Within 90 Minutes in Chicago After President Obama’s Departure… the city with probably the toughest gun laws in the United States.

President Barack Obama spoke about his new gun control initiatives during a quick visit to his hometown of Chicago Friday, but the violence in one of the most dangerous cities in the United States did not abate.

The Politico relates:

Four separate shootings took place in the span of 90 minutes Friday evening in Chicago, the first coming less than an hour after Air Force One departed O’Hare Airport after President Obama spoke on the culture of gun violence and economic decay that plagues many cities, including his hometown.

[...]

An hour earlier, Obama wrapped up a personal speech at Hyde Park Academy on the South Side, where he mourned the killing of Hadiya Pendleton, the teen who visited Washington for his inauguration just a week before she was gunned down not far from the school. “This is not just a gun issue. It’s also an issue of the kinds of communities that we’re building, and for that we all share a responsibility as citizens to fix it,” he said.

Obama had said little about Chicago’s murder problem — there were more than 500 in 2012 — before Friday, instead focusing on mass shootings in his post-Newtown gun control push. But at a high school just two miles away from his Chicago home, he acknowledged the depths of devastation that street violence generated in the city.

“Last year, there were 443 murders with a firearm in this city, and 65 of them were 18 and under. That’s the equivalent of a Newtown every four months,” he said. “That’s precisely why the overwhelming majority of Americans are asking for some common sense proposals to make it harder for criminals to get their hands on a gun.” [Emphasis added]

Chicago already has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, but some legislators say looser gun laws in neighboring states cancel out their efforts.

According to the Chicago Tribune, 3 men and a woman were the victims of Friday night’s 90-minute crime wave. The woman died; the men did not.

Obama Gun Speech in Chicago

See raw video of the president’s remarks on gun violence, which he gave at a local high school 

How Likely Are You to Die From Gun Violence? This Interesting Chart Puts It in Perspective

Odds of Dying in America in a Given Year

The reality is that Gun Ownership is at an All-Time High, but the Nation’s Murder Rate at Nearly an All-Time Low… But what about not resting until every American that wants to work has a job? As Rush realized in his epiphany while watching the State of the Union… Obama will Never Be Held Accountable of Anything… He is the Eternal Campaigner… Says one thing while his team and handlers (the global puppet masters) do another… manipulating the uninformed while fundamentally transforming America using the Cloward-Piven Strategy and the Alinsky Tactics, just like when he was the Community Organizer… as most Americans sleep!

FBI: More People Killed with Hammers, Clubs Each Year than Rifles

Related:

The Gun Control Playbook: The REAL agenda formulated in 1994  -  Rough Draft Proposal for Internal Memo and Five Year Plan

The Aurora, Colorado shootings: Gun Rights vs. Gun Confiscation: You Decide!

Gun-Owning Feinstein Rolls Out Restrictive Gun-Control Bill For the Rest of Us… NRA Responds

Firearm Confiscation by Law Enforcement in a Nutshell

Innocents Betrayed – The History of Gun Control

Sandy Hook Hoax and Cover-up… to Promote Obama’s Gun Control Agenda

Pravda tells America: Keep your guns

Gun Control is Genocide – documentary by Mike Adams

Former FBI Informant Says: Obama Will Destroy America Once He Has All The Guns… as Details of False Flag and Conspiracy in Connecticut Shooting Appear

Bombshell Alert: U.N. Arms Trade Treaty Negotiations – ATT DRAFT! LEAKED – Treaty Does Ban Guns

English Warning To Americans: DONT GIVE UP YOUR GUNS!

Obama Seeks US Congressional Ratification of UN Global Gun Control Treaty

Global gun control law pushed by Clinton – Updated

U.N. Agreement Should Have All Gun Owners Up In Arms

Why does anyone need an AR-15?

Obama Would Call on Military to Disarm Americans During National Emergency

Convenient New Efforts To Curtail Posse Comitatus As More Questions About Colorado Massacre Surface…

Final UN Arms Trade Treaty Disarms America With Clinton’s Signature

Globalist Plan to Disarm America

Stampeding Gun Control Through Crisis

It Isn’t About the Guns… It Is About Control… Controlling You!

Educate yourself… The American people are being played!!!

Sunday, February 17, 2013

David Horowitz: How Republicans Can Win

Powerline: I’ve known David Horowitz for more than 20 years, from the time he came through town with Peter Collier talking about their book Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the Sixties. As Jay Nordlinger has written, David was a leader of the New Left who became a leader of the fighting Reaganite Right: “He is a thinker and a doer, an intellectual and an activist. His mind ranges widely, and so do his books. He has written about politics and policy, of course. But he has also written about matters literary, cultural, and spiritual.” He remains a prolific writer and voluble observer.

David is the author, most recently, of the pamphlet “Go For the Heart: How Republicans Can Win.” David has granted us permission to publish it on Power Line. It may be a little long to read comfortably online, but David’s essay can easily be printed out and read at your leisure, as it deserves to be. David writes:

After voters re-elected an administration that added five trillion dollars to the nation’s debt, left 23 million Americans unemployed, surrendered Iraq to America’s enemy Iran, and enabled the Muslim Brotherhood to gain control of the largest country in the Middle East, the one lesson Republicans should agree on is that elections are driven by emotions, not reason. Moreover, when it comes to mobilizing emotions, Democrats beat Republicans hands down.

Worse, Republicans appear unable to learn from their losses. Year after year, Democrats accuse Republicans of the same imaginary crimes – waging wars on women, not caring about minorities, and inflicting pain on working Americans to benefit the wealthy. And year after year, Republicans have no effective responses to neutralize these attacks. Or to take the battle to the enemy’s camp.

In the 2012 election, Democrats attacked Republicans as defenders of the wealthy who are not paying their “fair share.” Republicans responded by deploring “class warfare rhetoric,” which does not answer the charge that Republicans are defending the wealthy and are uncaring. There are plenty of answers to these libels but Republicans don’t have them.

“Caring” is not one among many issues in an election. It is the central one. Since most policy issues are complicated, voters want to know above everything else just whom they can trust to sort out the complexities and represent them. Before voters cast their ballots for policies or values they want a candidate or party that cares about them.

How crucial is this concern? In the 2012 election, 70% of Asian Americans cast their ballots for Obama, even though Asians share Republican values, are family oriented, entrepreneurial, and traditional. Asian Americans voted for Obama because they were persuaded that he cared for minorities – for them, and Romney didn’t.

The Republican response to the Democrats’ attack (that’s “class warfare rhetoric”) doesn’t work because it’s an abstraction. “Class warfare rhetoric” has no human face; it’s about a political style. Criticizing the wealthy for “not paying their fair share” is a direct attack on an easily identified target, which is why so many wealthy taxpayers – including entertainment figures who are normally Democrats –were outraged by the slander. More importantly, the Democrats’ attack on the rich is an emotional appeal to those who are not rich. It tells them that someone cares about them.

Using the term “class warfare” is a polite way of discussing a problem, a habit Republicans seem unable to break. It avoids finger pointing – naming an adversary and holding him accountable. Elections are adversarial. They are about defeating opponents.

Elections are necessarily about “us” and “them.” Democrats are as adept at framing “them,” as Republicans are not. Democrats know how to incite envy and resentment, distrust and fear, and to direct these volatile emotions towards their Republican opponents. Meanwhile, Republicans are busy complaining about the style of the Democrats’ argument.

Republicans are defending the rich at your expense. Democrats are employing class warfare rhetoric. Which argument is going to grab voters more effectively? Which is going to make voters believe the candidate cares about them.

An exit poll conducted by CNN asked, “What is the most important candidate quality to your vote?” Among the four choices were, “Strong Leader,” “Shares Your Values,” “Has A Vision for the Future,” and “Cares about People.” Romney won the first three by more than 54%. But he lost “Cares About People” by 81-18%. That says it all.

The margin Romney lost by wasn’t insurmountable. He had the advantage of a good election year for Republicans. Every activist on the right thought the fate of the country hung in the balance. By contrast, Democrats went into the campaign having disappointed a significant segment of their political base. They continued wars they had promised to terminate; and they presided over an economy with high unemployment among key constituencies — women, Hispanics and African Americans. Yet they were able to marshal enough fear and anger towards the Republican rich who were outsourcing jobs and allegedly not paying their fair share to energize their base and produce a win.

Behind the failures of Republican campaigns lies an attitude that is administrative rather than combative. It focuses on policies rather than politics. It is more comfortable with budgets and pie charts than with the flesh and blood victims of their opponents’ policies. When Republicans do mention victims they are frequently small business owners and other “job creators” – people who in the eyes of most Americans are rich.

To counter the Democrat attacks on them as defenders of the comfortable and afflicters of the weak, Republicans really have only one answer: This is a misunderstanding. Look at the facts. We’re not that bad. On the infrequent occasions when they actually take the battle to their accusers, Republicans will say: That’s divisive. It’s class warfare.

Even if voters were able to “look at the facts,” these are not exactly inspiring responses. They are defensive, and they are whiny, and also complicated. Of course elections are divisive – that is their nature. One side gets to win and the other side loses. But even more troublesome is the fact that responses like this require additional information and lengthy explanations to make sense. Appeals to reason are buried in the raucous noise that is electoral politics. Sorting out the truth would be a daunting task, even if voters were left alone to make up their minds.

But voters are not left alone. They are barraged by thousands of TV and electronic media messages, which confront them with contradicting data and malicious distortions. These deceptions are not inadvertent. They are the work of the professionals who run political campaigns and who are hired because they are experts in disinformation and misrepresenting the facts. In the world outside politics this is called lying; in politics it’s called spin, and to one extent or another everybody does it. But Democrats do it far better and far more aggressively than their Republican targets.

Democrats Are Different

There is a reason for this, and it affects everything that goes on in political campaigns. Republicans and Democrats are not similar people who make opposite judgments about common problems and their solutions—spending is good, tax hikes are bad. Republicans and Democrats approach politics with fundamentally different visions of what politics is about. These visions color not only the way each side thinks about questions of policy, but how they enter the arena to face their opponents.

The Democratic Party is no longer the party of John F. Kennedy, whose politics were identical to Ronald Reagan’s (militant anti-­Communist, military hawk, for a capital gains tax cut and a balanced budget). It is not even the party of Hubert Humphrey, who supported the Vietnam War – a war that every contemporary Democratic legislator and operative opposes in retrospect, and many, like John Kerry and Bill and Hillary Clinton, opposed at the time. The Democratic Party has been moving steadily to the left since the McGovern campaign of 1972. It is now a party led by socialists and progressives who are convinced that their policies are paving the way to a “better world.”

This vision of moral and social progress has profound consequences for the way Democrats conduct their political battles. Unlike Republicans, Democrats are not in politics just to fix government and solve problems. They are secular missionaries who want to “change society.” Their goal is a new order of society— “social justice.” They think of themselves as social redeemers, people who are going to change the world. It is the belief in a redemptive future that accounts for their passion, and their furious personal assaults on those who stand in their way. When he was president, Bill Clinton once told Dick Morris he had “to understand that Bob Dole” – a moderate Republican – “is evil.” It is the same missionary zeal that allows Democrats to justify a campaign ad accusing a decent man like Mitt Romney of causing the death of a female cancer victim.

Republicans see Democrats as mistaken. Democrats see Republicans — whatever their individual intentions and behaviors—as enemies of the just and the good. Republicans have no parallel belief that drives them and their agendas, and no similar cause to despise and hate their opponents.

If Democrats’ priority was fixing government problems would they have failed to produce a budget for four straight years? If Democrats were pragmatic politicians, when they came to power in the face of a national crisis like the 2008 financial collapse, their first step would have been to seek bipartisan support to fix the most pressing problems: jobs and reviving the economy. This is exactly what Obama promised during the campaign and is one of the reasons why he was elected. But this was just a campaign promise and is not what he did. He spent his first two years in office pushing a massive new entitlement program. If Obama and the Democrats were interested in addressing the immediate economic crisis they would not have used their monopoly of power to pursue a trillion dollar new social program opposed by half the nation and by every Republican in Congress.

The reason the Democrats made ObamaCare their priority is because they are social missionaries whose goal is to “fundamentally transform” the United States of America, as Obama warned five days before the 2008 election. Creating a massive new government program that would absorb one-sixth of the economy and make every American dependent on government for his or her health care was the true order of their business. This was a program they saw as a major stepping-stone on the way to the fundamental transformation of American society.

That’s the way progressives think and Republicans had better start understanding just what that means. Progressives are not in politics to tinker with the existing system, although they understand that tinkering and fixing problems along the way gets votes. They are in politics to achieve “social justice” – to transform the system and the way Americans live.

Why do progressives not see that the future they are promoting – with its socialist “solutions” – has already failed elsewhere, and particularly in Europe? Because in their eyes the future is an idea that hasn’t been tried. If socialism has failed in Europe it’s because they weren’t in charge to implement it and there wasn’t enough money to fund it.

It is the very grandeur of the progressive ambition that makes its believers so zealous in pursuing it. Through government programs they are going to make everyone equal and take care of everyone in need. They are going to establish social equality and create social justice. It is an intoxicating view and it explains why and how they are different from conservatives. It doesn’t matter to them that the massive entitlements they have created — Social Security and Medicare — are already bankrupt. That can be taken care of by making more wealthy people pay more of their fair share. In their hearts, progressives believe that if they can secure enough money and accumulate enough power they can create a future where everyone is taken care of and everyone is equal. Everything Democrats do and every campaign they conduct is about mobilizing their political armies to bring about this glorious future, about advancing its agendas one program and one candidate at a time. No Republican in his right mind thinks like this.

The vision of the glorious future puts urgency into their crusades and encourages them to hate their opponents. A Republican like Mitt Romney may be a decent person, but he stands in the way of their impossible dreams. Therefore, he is hateful. The very grandeur of the dream – guaranteed health care for everyone, guaranteed housing for everyone, guaranteed incomes for everyone – is so inspiring it motivates them to seek the promised land by any means necessary. If this requires lying, voter fraud, or demonizing their opponents as racist, selfish and uncaring, so be it. The beautiful ends justify the not-so-beautiful means.

When Democrats demand free contraceptives and claim that their opponents are conducting a war on women, Republicans shake their heads in disbelief. How could any sane person believe that? The Republicans are missing the point. The issue for progressives is never the issue. The issue is always the transformation of society that they are hoping to achieve. As Sandra Fluke herself put it, the issue of providing free contraceptives is not just about contraceptives, it’s about the whole range of changes that will liberate women (the more government provides for them, the freer they become) and that Republicans oppose.

Progressives’ hatred for conservatives is thus not a reaction to a particular issue, or a particular slip of the tongue. It is a hatred for what conservatives are. Conservatives are people who believe in limited government. By its very nature, limited government means the death of progressive dreams. In progressive eyes, conservatives and Republicans actually are anti-woman, anti-minority, and anti-poor. Republicans oppose the very idea that government should function as a social savior.

Republicans are reactionary and hateful because they stand in the way of a society that can and should care for every man, woman and child from cradle to grave. Republicans take a view of politics that is fundamentally different. Republicans do not aspire to change the world. They want to repair systems that are broken. They are not missionaries, and they are not selling a land of dreams. Such practical agendas do not inspire them to despise their opponents or regard them as evil. Republicans think of their opponents as mistaken about how to fix particular problems.

Because Republicans are mindful of the past, they are uncertain about the future, and therefore wary of impossible dreams. They hope for a future better than the present but they are mindful that things could be even worse. Many problems are intractable and will not go away. Because this is their attitude, conservative emotions can never be as inflamed as their progressive opponents’.

Their instinct is to come up with practical plans and explain how specific problems might be solved. That is why they reach for facts and arguments, and spend a lot of time explaining things to voters. But voters have already been told not to trust their arguments because they are the arguments of enemies of women, children, minorities and the middle class.

The only way to confront the emotional campaign that Democrats wage in every election is through an equally emotional campaign that puts the aggressors on the defensive; that attacks them in the same moral language, identifying them as the bad guys, the oppressors of women, children, minorities and the middle class, that takes away from them the moral high ground which they now occupy. You can’t confront an emotionally based moral argument with an intellectual analysis. Yet this is basically and almost exclusively what Republicans do.

A Winning Strategy for Republicans

1. Put the aggressors on the defensive.

2. Put their victims — women, minorities, the poor and working Americans -­-­ in front of every argument and every policy in the same way they do.

3. Start the campaign now (because the Democrats already have).

The Weapons of Politics Are Hope and Fear

The weapons of political campaigns are images and sound bites designed to inspire the emotions of fear and hope. Obama won the presidency in 2008 on a campaign of hope; he won re-election in 2012 on a campaign of fear.

Hope works, but fear is a much stronger and more compelling emotion. In a political campaign, it is directed at one’s political opponent. Democrats exploit this emotion to the hilt; Republicans often seem too polite to even use it.

The other emotion, hope, is not only weaker, it is at odds with conservatives’ basic pessimism, and their skepticism about political solutions. Unlike progressives, conservatives don’t expect cosmic results from political programs – saving the planet, creating a just world. Consequently, for Republicans, hope is less effective as a political appeal.

Republicans seem to think the way to inspire hope is by offering voters practical solutions, such as Paul Ryan’s plan to balance the budget. Paul Ryan is a smart conservative and the Ryan Plan is probably a good one. But with control only of the House, Republicans had no chance of implementing it when they voted on it. Worse, in the real world of political combat, facing an unscrupulous opposition, a plan offered by a party with no means of implementing it is a self-­inflicted wound. You can’t put the plan into effect to show that it works, and no one besides policy wonks is going to even begin to understand it. All the plan does is provide the spinners with multiple targets to shoot at – something they will do by distorting the specifics and ignoring the plan itself. For virtually all voters, the plan will be so complicated and its details so obscure that it will remain invisible. Only those who already trust its designers will be persuaded that this is a reason to vote for them.

Hope in politics is an appeal to the heart, not the head; to emotions, not reason. Since it is an appeal to emotion, it is normally based on large quantities of hot air. In the 2008 election, hope was the first black man running for president with a serious prospect of winning. It was Obama making an empty promise: “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America. There is a United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America, a Latino America, an Asian America, there is a United States of America. No blue states or red states but the United States.” All Obama had to do to inspire hope was to be black, speak standard English and make this gesture – dishonest and empty as it turned out to be – that promised to unite Americans and move the country past its racial divisions.

The Campaign Narrative

The two emotions that drive politics — hope and fear — are tied together by a narrative that underlies all American political contests. This narrative is the story of the underdog and his triumph over odds. Both Democrats and Republicans shape the narratives of their election campaigns using this story, but do it in dramatically different ways.

When Republicans use the underdog narrative it is mainly as a story of opportunity, of Americans rising from humble origins. This was a principal theme of the Republican presidential convention in 2012 and of keynote speeches by Ann Romney, Governor Christie, Marco Rubio, Susanna Martinez and Condoleezza Rice. It was an appeal to voters to protect and/or restore the values and the institutions that provide such opportunities.

This is a good story of hope, and was effective in the hands of speakers like Rice. But it is not very strong on promoting fear, or in directing that fear towards political opponents in a way that maximizes its emotional impact. Insofar as there is any negative side to the Republican narrative, it is policies rather than a human actor that stands in the way of opportunity. Higher taxes and too much regulation—too much government — will stifle opportunity for Americans who are on the way up.

Here is how Obama dismissed the Republican argument in his acceptance speech at the Democrats’ convention: “All [Republicans] have to offer is the same prescription they’ve had for the last thirty years: Have a surplus? Try a tax cut. Deficit too high? Try another. Feel a cold coming on? Take two tax cuts, roll back some regulations, and call us in the morning!”

The Republican narrative is an abstraction. It’s about policies and prescriptions, over which reasonable people can disagree: How much opportunity will a three or four percent higher tax rate — the rate that prevailed in the prosperous Clinton years — stifle opportunity?

The entire argument remains intellectual until Democrats enter it, and then it becomes emotional. Democrats present themselves as champions of the powerless, the American underdogs. Their counterargument is that government is required to provide opportunity for those who lack it – whatever the tax rate. In the Democrats’ narrative the private sector doesn’t provide enough opportunity for those left behind, and government programs are necessary to fill in the gap. Democrats want to help people who need help. That is a powerful emotional appeal to all Americans, even Republicans. The Republican argument looks selfish by contrast: Republicans care for helping themselves (don’t raise taxes on the rich) — or helping people who can help themselves — people who can take advantage of opportunities without government help. Unless you understand how the economic system actually works, that’s a tough position to sympathize with.

When Democrats tell their underdog story it is not an abstraction but a powerful, polarizing, emotionally charged attack on their Republican adversaries. In the Democratic narrative, Republicans are cast as oppressors. They are the enemies of hope, and in particular, the hopes of America’s underdogs for equality, a fair share, and a helping hand when they need it. While Republicans set their narrative in a land of peace, Democrats place it on the frontlines of a nation at war. Here is a dispatch from the Democratic convention, September 2012:

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (Reuters) – Two dozen Democratic women from the U.S. House of Representatives brought the charge that Republicans are waging a “war on women” to the party’s convention stage on Tuesday with sharp denunciations of Republicans on healthcare, equal pay and domestic violence. Led by Nancy Pelosi of California, the only woman to serve as speaker of the U.S. House, the women pressed the party’s argument that the Democrats will protect women’s interests against what they described as Republican attacks.

This staged declaration of war was led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Its purpose was to jump start the campaign’s central narrative: Republicans are waging “war” on women, minorities and the middle class. The Democrats’ narrative centered on how these victim groups were oppressed — or in the case of minorities suppressed — by evil Republicans seeking to turn back the historical clock, denying the powerless and those in need of their shot at the American dream. This is a powerful emotional message.

But there is nothing new about this Democratic strategy. Here is a call to arms from the 1996 Democratic convention: “We need to work as we have never done before between now and November 5th to take the Congress back from … the Republicans, because ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, the Republicans are the real threat. They are the real threat to our women. They are the real threat to our children. They are the real threat to clean water, clean air and the rich landscape of America.”

Republicans are the enemies of women, children and the environment! The speaker of this anathema was New York governor and presidential prospect Mario Cuomo. This declaration of war was made 16 years ago. Republicans have been the target of this kind of attack through at least four presidential elections. Yet they haven’t begun to answer it, and in particular, respond to it in kind.

To this day, no Republican speaks like that about Democrats, and certainly no Republican who is a national figure and party leader. The 2012 Democratic Convention was all about the victims of Republican policies, and about casting Republicans as their victimizers. Democrats had been in power four years, but at the 2012 Republican convention, there was almost no mention of the victims of Democrat policies.

At an election post-mortem, Romney’s deputy campaign manager analyzed the defeat this way: “The bottom line is that the Obama campaign [had] a candidate that was very hard to lay a glove on because [he] was somebody that the American people, by and large, had decided that they just liked.”

This is classic excuse making. That’s what campaigns are supposed to do: make the other candidate unlikeable. The Obama campaign devoted itself to doing just that to the Republican candidate. They defamed a decent, hard-­working American as a dishonest, untrustworthy predator. It was the failure of the Romney campaign to lay a glove on Obama that was the reason he was still liked.

Obama’s campaign manager was at the same conference. His team did not have the view that their candidate was so likeable Romney couldn’t lay a glove on him. Quite the opposite. Their view was that “they would lose the election if it was a referendum on the president.” They chose a strategy of diverting attention from their candidate by attacking Romney as a member of the wealthy uncaring class who fired people mercilessly, shipped jobs overseas and was too rich to care about other people.

Taking A Page From the Democrats’ War Plans

Throughout the Republican campaign, there was a lot of talk about “job creators.” There were a lot of defenses of “job creators,” whom Democrats quickly redefined as rich people who don’t pay their fair share. That’s the problem with playing a “prevent defense.” Most Americans see job creators – employers – as rich people. If you’re defending the top dogs, you’re losing. If you’re fighting for the underdogs, you have to go on the attack.

What about job destroyers? What about Democrats who are killing the jobs of ordinary Americans — not just failing to create them—which is an antiseptic, bloodless way of putting it?

Democrats, who understand the psychology of the underdog, accused the Republicans of just that – destroying jobs. They targeted Mitt Romney with a $300 million ad buy as the nation’s number one job destroyer victimizing working Americans.

Job destroyer was a description ill–suited to a man whose business was reviving bankrupt companies. But it was — or should have been — a perfect fit for his Democratic opponent. How many jobs did America lose under Obama’s anti­business reign?

How many unemployed did Obama create among African Americans, Latinos, women? The official unemployment rate in Detroit after 50 years of Democratic rule and four years of Obama stimulus was 19% but actually 45% were unemployed.

Thirty-­five percent of Detroit’s citizens are on food stamps. Democrats destroy jobs and make people poor. Why wasn’t there a $300 million Republican campaign saying this?

Why are Republicans so reluctant to name the victims of Democrat policies, particularly the victims among America’s minority communities and working classes? Why don’t Republicans identify Democrats as a threat to those communities as Cuomo declared Republicans a threat to women? How can you win a war when the other side is using bazookas and your side is using fly swatters?

Defending the victims of job destroyers is morally and emotionally stronger than defending rich “job creators.” It creates sympathy and arouses anger. It inspires concerns about justice. It’s how the Democrats’ recruit and energize their troops. It’s the way — the only way — Republicans can neutralize the Democrats’ attacks on them as defenders of the rich, and return their fire: by framing them as the enemies of working Americans and the middle class.

During Obama’s four years in office, African Americans – middle-class African Americans – lost half their net worth as a result of the collapse of the housing market. That’s one hundred billion dollars in personal assets that disappeared from the pockets of African Americans because of a 25-­year Democratic campaign to remove loan requirements for homebuyers. Yet in 2012, Republicans were too polite to mention this!

The fingerprints of Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barney Frank were all over the subprime mortgage crisis. The campaign to remove loan requirements for African American and other minority borrowers started with Jimmy Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act. It snookered thousands of poor black and Hispanic Americans into buying homes they couldn’t afford, which they then lost. How traumatic is the loss of one’s home?

By securitizing the failed mortgages, Democratic bundlers on Wall Street who had poured $100 million into the 2008 Obama campaign made tens of millions off the misery of those who lost their homes. In other words, with the help of Clinton, Frank and Obama, Wall Street Democrats made massive profits off the backs of poor black and Hispanic Americans. But Republicans were too polite to mention it. Here was a missed opportunity to neutralize Democrat attacks on Republicans as the party of the rich and exploiters of the poor. It was an opportunity to drive a giant wedge through the Democratic base.

The bottom line is this: If Republicans want to persuade minorities they care about them, they have to stand up for them; they have to defend them; and they have to show them that Democrats are playing them for suckers, exploiting them, oppressing them, and profiting from their suffering.

Large populations of the African American and Hispanic poor are concentrated in America’s inner cities – Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Harlem, South Central Los Angeles. In these inner cities the unemployment rates are off the charts, the school systems so corrupt and ineffective that half the children drop out before they graduate and half those who do are functionally illiterate. They will never get a decent job or a shot at the American dream.

In these inner cities, every city council and every school board and every school district are 100% controlled by Democrats and have been for more than 70 years. Everything that is wrong with the inner cities and their schools that policy can affect, Democrats are responsible for. Democrats have their boot heels on the necks of millions of poor African American and Hispanic children and are crushing the life out of them every year. But Republicans are too polite to mention it.

In the middle of the 2012 campaign, a teachers union strike shut down the schools in Chicago, Obama’s home town. The issue was not pay but the union’s refusal to allow teacher rewards to be connected to teacher performance. African American and Hispanic children were the true victims of the determination to protect bad teachers and not to reward good ones. Yet Republicans ignored the strike, and never put a face on its victims.

At the Republican convention, one keynote speaker referred to the teachers unions and the issue of teacher rewards and union obstruction. This was Governor Chris Christie, probably the most aggressive and articulate Republican warrior. But here is how Christie framed the Democrat/union atrocity:

We believe that the majority of teachers in America know our system must be reformed to put students first so that America can compete….We [Republicans] believe that we should honor and reward the good ones while doing what’s best for our nation’s future — demanding accountability, higher standards and the best teacher in every classroom.

They believe the educational establishment will always put themselves ahead of children. That self-interest trumps common sense. They believe in pitting unions against teachers, educators against parents, and lobbyists against children. They believe in teacher’s unions.

And that’s all he said. The issues are there – accountability, standards and rewards for teacher performance. The policy is there. But the moral outrage is missing. The victims are missing and the culprits aren’t named. It’s not the “educational establishment” that’s ruining the lives and blocking the opportunities of African American and Hispanic children. It’s the Democrats – they are the educational establishment in every failing public school district. The Democrat teachers unions and the Democrat Party that supports them are destroying the lives of African American and Hispanic students whose parents are too poor to put them in private schools – the same private schools where Democrat legislators and union leaders send their own children.

Democrats will fight to the death to prevent poor parents from getting vouchers to provide their children with the same education that well-heeled Democratic legislators provide for theirs. This is a moral atrocity. This is an issue to get angry about and mobilize constituencies over. This is an issue that could drive a Gibraltar-size wedge through the Democratic base. But Republicans are too polite to do that.

This is merely the most obvious atrocity that Democrats are committing against America’s impoverished minorities. Subverting family structures through a misconceived welfare system, encouraging food stamp dependency, providing incentives to bring into this world massive numbers of children who have no prospect of a decent life just to earn a welfare dollar. These are the corrupt fruits of Democratic welfare policies which are spiraling out of control. Republicans criticize these programs as “wasteful.” They need to start attacking them as destructive, as attacks on the human beings who are ensnared by them.

The way for Republicans to show they care about minorities is to defend them against their oppressors and exploiters, which in every major inner city in America without exception are Democrats. Democrats run the welfare and public education systems; they have created the policies that ruin the lives of the recipients of their handouts. It’s time that Republicans started to hold Democrats to account; to put them on the defensive and take away the moral high ground, which they now occupy illegitimately. Government welfare is not just wasteful; it is destructive. The public school system in America’s inner cities is not merely ineffective; it is racist and criminal.

Democrats regard politics as a war conducted by other means. Their agenda is not to seek compromise over practical solutions to complex problems. It is to achieve power to dictate the fundamental transformation of American society into a socialist-redistributionist state. Democrats regard Republicans as enemies standing in the way of social justice and social progress. Every issue for them is a means to a greater end, which first of all is power, and beyond that the transformation of American society into a socialist-redistributionist state.

Because Democrats regard politics as war conducted by other means, they seek to demonize and destroy their opponents as the enemies of progress, of social justice and minority rights. Republicans can only counter these attacks by turning the Democrats’ guns around — by exposing them as the enforcers of injustice, particularly to minorities and the poor, the exploiters of society’s vulnerable and the reactionary proponents of policies that have proven bankrupt and destructive all over the world.

David invites readers to check out the the site of the organization he has established to disseminate the message of this essay: GoForTheHeart.org. David acknowledges the support of James Cowden in making possible the printing of this essay in pamphlet form.  His most recent book is: Radicals: Portraits of a Destructive Passion

David Horowitz is a prolific author and has been fighting the good fight for America and against liberalism for years, coming from a very unique perspective.  Below are are just a few recommended books authored or co-authored by David Horowitz:

The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party

From Shadow Party to Shadow Government: George Soros and the Effort to Radically Change America

One-Party Classroom: How Radical Professors at America's Top Colleges Indoctrinate Students and Undermine Our Democracy

Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey

The New Leviathan: How the Left-Wing Money-Machine Shapes American Politics and Threatens America's Future

Government Unions: How They Rob the Tax Payer, Terrorize Workers, and Threaten Our Democracy

The Muslim Brotherhood in the Obama Administration

The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America

Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam And the American Left

The End of Time

Horowitz’s 2009 article:  The Manchurian Candidate