Obama the Destroyer

If somebody were deliberately trying to undermine the very fabric of these United States, he would first vow not just to change its policies but to completely "change America," and then would do just about everything Barack Obama already has begun to do as president.

To undermine this nation, he would attack the essential sanctity of contracts -- exactly as Obama has done. Never mind the "contracts" clause of the Constitution -- who needs to get hung up on the Constitution's actual language when "empathy" is more important?

For that matter, he would denigrate the whole notion of equal justice under the law by criticizing the whole notion of a judge as a neutral umpire. And he would employ, as a senator, outrageous and unprecedented means -- the filibusters of judicial nominees -- to block judges who don't agree with his own choices of who deserves more "justice" than whom.

To undermine this nation, he would selectively release only those portions of intelligence memos that make his nation look bad, but not those that provide context and reasonable motivations for the subject of the memos. And he would selectively edit memos from his own intelligence director to eliminate his statements in support of the effectiveness of the policies discussed in those other memos -- and his statements supporting the motives of those who adopted those policies in protection of their fellow citizens. And he would leave open the possibility of prosecuting earlier administration's lawyers merely for giving legal advice he disagrees with.

To undermine this nation, a president would go on a spending binge so incredibly wild that annual deficits and national debt would reach frightening proportions before most Americans could even absorb the arithmetic of it all. He would be utterly reckless with our grandchildren's tax money, but would turn around and achieve savings -- minor savings at that -- only by cutting or even gutting defense forces.

He would stop paying for missile defenses. He would stop planning for forces strong enough to handle two regional wars at once, and would concentrate only on counterinsurgency needs while hollowing out our conventional forces. He would repeatedly insult our closest ally (Great Britain) while kowtowing to enemies such as Iran, Venezuela, and Nicaraguan communists. He would travel the world repeatedly apologizing for supposed American sins while failing to defend the USA from verbal assaults from tinpot dictators.

He would submit budgets that would eliminate funding for an already authorized border fence, and nominate as top lawyer of the State Department a man who openly mocks the legal underpinnings of American sovereignty.  He would propose raising taxes on corporations, on soft drinks, on investors, on savers, on the grieving families of dead people, on small businesses, and on every family that uses public energy sources.

And worst of all, he would propose unprecedented and underhanded use of a parliamentary maneuver called "reconciliation" to ease the way to an irrevocable government takeover of an entire major sector of the economy -- health care -- without adequate debate and with firm knowledge that the takeover could lead to serious health carerationing and even government-determined decisions on life and death.

To undermine this nation, he would throw out more than two centuries of economic freedom in favor of a modern-day version of Mussolini's economic fascism.

He would refuse to prosecute vote fraud or even guard against it, while repeatedly awarding financial grants to organizations such as ACORN that have been accused of vote fraud on multiple occasions in multiple states. He would stack his Justice Department with highly politicized left-wingers. He would fail, until put directly on the spot, to offer the slightest rebuke to his hand-picked, ethically compromised Attorney General when said AG calls his fellow citizens "a nation of cowards."

In short, to undermine the United States, the president would, as fast as possible, create a massively debt-ridden, tax-ridden, regulation-ridden government whose prosecutors play political favorites but whose stances on the world stage are marked by weakness, self-criticism, and solicitousness towards one's enemies.

Surely this president has other motives. But even if his intentions are good, we all know the substance of the pavement on the road to perdition.

By Quin Hillyer on 5.15.09 @ 6:09AM - a senior editorial writer at the Washington Times and senior editor of The American Spectator.

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Posted:  Knowledge Creates Power

Obama's Recipe For Change Not My Cup of Tea

I had no idea how important this week's nationwide anti-tax tea parties were until hearing liberals denounce them with such ferocity. The New York Times' Paul Krugman wrote a column attacking the tea parties, apologizing for making fun of "crazy people." It's OK, Paul, you're allowed to do that for the same reason Jews can make fun of Jews.

On MSNBC, hosts Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow have been tittering over the similarity of the name "tea parties" to an obscure homosexual sexual practice known as "tea bagging." Night after night, they sneer at Republicans for being so stupid as to call their rallies "tea bagging."

Every host on Air America and every unbathed, basement-dwelling loser on the left wing blogosphere has spent the last week making jokes about tea bagging, a practice they show a surprising degree of familiarity with.

Except no one is calling the tea parties "tea bagging" -- except Olbermann and Maddow. Republicans call them "tea parties."

But if the Republicans were calling them "tea-bagging parties," the MSNBC hosts would have a fantastically hilarious segment for viewers in San Francisco and the West Village and not anyplace else in the rest of the country. On the other hand, they're not called "tea-bagging parties." (That, of course refers to the cocktail hour at Barney Frank's condo in Georgetown.)

You know what else would be hilarious? It would be hilarious if Hillary Clinton's name were "Ima Douche." Unfortunately, it's not. It was just a dream. Most people would wake up, realize it was just a dream and scrap the joke. Not MSNBC hosts.  

The point of the tea parties is to note the fact that the Democrats' modus operandi is to lead voters to believe they are no more likely to raise taxes than Republicans, get elected and immediately raise taxes.

Apparently, the people who actually pay taxes consider this a bad idea.  

Obama's biggest shortcoming is that he believes the things believed by all Democrats, which have had devastating consequences every time they are put into effect. Among these is the Democrats' admiration for raising taxes on the productive.

All Democrats for the last 30 years have tried to stimulate the economy by giving "tax cuts" to people who don't pay taxes. Evidently, offering to expand welfare payments isn't a big vote-getter.

Even Bush had a "stimulus" bill that sent government checks to lots of people last year. Guess what happened? It didn't stimulate the economy. Obama's stimulus bill is the mother of all pork bills for friends of O and of Congressional Democrats. ("O" stands for Obama, not Oprah, but there's probably a lot of overlap.)  

And all that government spending on the Democrats' constituents will be paid for by raising taxes on the productive.

Raise taxes and the productive will work less, adopt tax shelters, barter instead of sell, turn to an underground economy -- and the government will get less money.  

The perfect bar bet with a liberal would be to wager that massive government deficits in the '80s were not caused by Reagan's tax cuts. If you casually mentioned that you thought Reagan's tax cuts brought in more revenue to the government -- which they did -- you could get odds in Hollywood and Manhattan. (This became a less attractive wager in New York this week after Gov. David Paterson announced his new plan to tax bar bets.)

The lie at the heart of liberals' mantra on taxes -- "tax increases only for the rich" -- is the ineluctable fact that unless taxes are raised across the board, the government won't get its money to fund layers and layers of useless government bureaucrats, none of whom can possibly be laid off.

How much would you have to raise taxes before any of Obama's constituents noticed? They don't pay taxes, they engage in "tax-reduction" strategies, they work for the government, or they're too rich to care. (Or they have off-shore tax shelters, like George Soros.)

California tried the Obama soak-the-productive "stimulus" plan years ago and was hailed as the perfect exemplar of Democratic governance.

In June 2002, the liberal American Prospect magazine called California a "laboratory" for Democratic policies, noting that "California is the only one of the nation's 10 largest states that is uniformly under Democratic control."

They said this, mind you, as if it were a good thing. In California, the article proclaimed, "the next new deal is in tryouts." As they say in show biz: "Thanks, we'll call you. Next!"

In just a few years, Democrats had turned California into a state -- or as it's now known, a "job-free zone" -- with a $41 billion deficit, a credit rating that was slashed to junk-bond status and a middle class now located in Arizona.

Democrats governed California the way Democrats always govern. They bought the votes of government workers with taxpayer-funded jobs, salaries and benefits -- and then turned around and accused the productive class of "greed" for wanting not to have their taxes raised through the roof.

Having run out of things to tax, now the California legislature is considering a tax on taxes. Seriously. The only way out now for California is a tax on Botox and steroids. Sure, the governor will protest, but it is the best solution ...  

California was, in fact, a laboratory of Democratic policies. The rabbit died, so now Obama is trying it on a national level.  

hat's what the tea parties are about.

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Ann Coulter is Legal Affairs Correspondent for HUMAN EVENTS and author of "High Crimes and Misdemeanors," "Slander," ""How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)," "Godless," "If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans" and most recently, Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and their Assault on America.

Posted:  Knowledge Creates Power