And so it goes with the constant assertion we hear that health care reform is going to ‘lower our national deficit’.  Most people with common sense will immediately question this claim, because history has shown us that this just is never the case with the government managing something.  Government is politics and when politics get involved, it always costs more money. 

However, when you have an administration that has no scruples and is willing to lie directly to the American people as this one has done on several occasions, and who have the backing of the media in this endeavor, it will be years before people finally realize what was done to them and by then, of course, it will be too late. 

But, for those who do have common sense but are baffled as to how the administration can keep saying that they are going to cut the deficit by 1 trillion dollars while paying for 15 million new people’s healthcare (and eventually another 185 million), let’s go through just how they have gone about this so that hopefully you will be able to identify the tactics in the future.

Now to begin with, where does the president get this figure?  He is taking it from the Congressional Budget Office.  The CBO is a nonpartisan group that is responsible for evaluating legislation and then determining the eventual economic impact of that legislation.  That sounds great, except that the CBO is still a government agency and, more importantly, must abide by specific rules while evaluating legislation.  It is knowing and working within these rules that the administration has acted dishonestly in order to push through legislation that they know will not do what they claim.

One of the areas that congress was told would not lead to deficit neutrality was what has been called the ‘doc fix’ by those in the know.  This is a permanent change to the way doctors are reimbursed for Medicare claims.  This was originally in the legislation but was removed when the CBO warned that, when combined with the rest of the healthcare package, it “would increase the budget deficit in 2019 by $23 billion relative to current law, an increment that would grow in subsequent years.”  So, what was the answer?  The democrats removed the section from the legislation and then passed it on its own.  So, because this is no longer in the legislation, it is not evaluated, even though we already know that once this goes into effect it will result in the same outcome, increasing the deficit.  The CBO has since warned about this but because of their rules they are not allowed to include this information in evaluating the actual healthcare bill.

As you can see, manipulating the CBO, once you know the rules, are easy games that the politicians play.  Because they are not interested in the final outcome matching what they say, they are interested in increasing power to their political party and passing their agenda at all costs.  Honesty is just not a priority, just as liberty and freedom are words they read in a speech while trying to attain the power they work towards.

Of course, that was not the only example, or even the worst.  Another rule is that the CBO must take congress at its word about future, unspecified, cuts in spending.  The legislation mentions that spending will be cut but doesn’t mention how or where, but because it will be cut the CBO has to accept that in its evaluation.  And did they promise some cuts!  Lots and lots of cuts, around $300 Billion, which we all know will NEVER EVER HAPPEN.  The CBO, to their credit, has issues supplemental warnings about this and what would happen if those cuts don’t take place as promised, but those don’t make it into the president’s speeches for some reason.

But wait, there’s more!  In addition to having to evaluation only the specific piece of legislation and having to accept as fact future unspecified budget cuts promised, the CBO can only evaluate the effects of legislation 10 years out from the date of passage.  This is why, in the legislation, it starts collecting for the programs years before any spending takes place and then kicks in to high gear on the spending phase just as that buffer starts to get depleted.  What happens when that clock catches up is beyond the limits of what the CBO can, by their own rules, evaluate.

Of course, this is all trivial considering the history of what government programs end up really costing as opposed to what they are proposed to cost.  Looking at the promised costs of Social Security, Medicare, the Iraq War, just to name a few and comparing them to what the true eventual costs were can leave someone scratching their heads. 

And none of this has anything to do with the political ramifications of what is being discussed.  For example, the blatant unconstitutionality of requiring every single American to be covered under a health insurance plan?  Or the fact that we already have the US government paying for over 50% of our health care with the government spending $1,000 more, per person, for health care than the Canadians do, for example.  Or even the fact that insulating individuals even MORE from the results of their own actions and needs with insurance costs based not on their lifestyles but on how much they make is ensuring that we will become less and less healthy without further governmental action into our lives to tell us how to eat, sleep, drink and live…

And to be honest, that is where I think this is really headed.  Once we buy in that we are all costing each other (and the government) money by how we live, the government will determine that it has an authority to ensure that those costs are mitigated by passing laws restricting how we choose to live our lives.

Definitely NOT a view of freedom and liberty that millions have sacrificed their lives over the years for us to enjoy.

First, I am grateful that I was given the opportunity to write for Watchblog five and a half years ago, I had been doing political writing on and off before then but was just getting into making it a serious endeavor and the people at Watchblog who I agreed and disagreed with over the years made me a better writer than I ever could have been without them.  This is the one positive I can take away from the experience.

Over the past five years there have been many things with Watchblog that I was saddened to see happen to a place that I really believed in.  Writers being dismissed because they disagreed with the Managing Editor has not been an uncommon occurrence, unfortunately.  One writer was removed because he wrote an article that did not link back to another article.  This wasn’t a requirement when I was hired and indeed, I have since seen other writers doing the same thing, including the Managing Editor himself.  Other times it appears that people are blocked access because of who they disagree with rather than how they disagree.  But since none of this is made public, instead we are supposed to accept that the Managing Editor is without flaw, we must continue on and accept the situation as best we can.  Further, asking for such basic things that other blogs have now like ‘share with facebook’ or ‘digg’, etc are just not available on the site, the website’s technology has not changed in 6 years since it was originally put in place, it is even running on a very outdated version of Movable Type.  This, however, is more of the fault of the lack of interest in the site by the owner, Cameron Barrett, than the Managing Editor.

Even worse, the Managing Editor started his own copy-cat blog of Watchblog (politwatch.org) and invited many of the current writers of Watchblog to start writing for his site.  I’m sorry, but this was one of the lowest things I had seen anyone do in a long time, without even having the guts to cut ties with his current responsibilities to Watchblog but to then use his access to the email addresses and contact information for the current cadre of writers to invite them to a new site you are opening while still managing the existing one?  The fact that it is a complete failure doesn’t lesson the ethical embarrassment of what was done.  I of course declined his invitation.

Unfortunately, two weeks ago I found something that struck me to the bone even worse.  In the comments section of an article, I had engaged the Managing Editor about deficits and surpluses, etc.  In one comment he mentioned that I should be using Fiscal Year numbers, not actual year numbers, to be accurate.  I pointed out to him that if he had read the link I had presented, he would have seen that I had done just that.  Then, in his next comment, he mentioned that I should be using actual year numbers, not Fiscal Year numbers.  I was kind of dumbfounded, especially when I had just answered an comment from him stating the exact opposite.  When I went back to find the original comment he had made, I was shocked to find that the comment was no longer there!  It had been edited (or as David pointed out later, deleted and a new comment put in his place, as if that makes a difference) to not say what he had said at all!  Not that a typo had been corrected, which is really the only reason anyone should be editing anything they have previously written.  Or even grammar.  He didn’t even change it to say he really meant actual year instead of Fiscal Year, he just took that portion of the comment completely out.

I’m sorry, but this is inexcusable, not just as a writer, but such an abuse of power from an Editor, especially the Managing Editor!  The response?  Nothing.  No admission of guilt, no apology, no mention of it at all.  It just wasn’t to be talked about.  This would have cost any other writer the privilege of writing there, but the Managing Editor is able to just continue on as if it meant nothing.

So naturally, my disappointment with the way the site was being ran fell to a level that left me wondering why I was even still there.

However, the problem with leaving Watchblog is that your articles that you’ve written are lost forever.  There is no way to allow for a writer’s posts to remain but just cut them access.  Which is insane.  And very sad in the fact that many writers have been removed to have their posts removed allowing for no real history of the place.  I would have recommended changing my password and leaving the articles in place, but apparently this option has never crossed the minds of the Managing Editor, or else he wants to retain that threat to use over the heads of the writers who cross him.

Finally, last week in a comments conversation, much like several I have had over the years with David, he wrote a long reply to one of my comments saying things like calling my views ‘Bullcrap’, that I should ‘Get over it’, restating things as fact that I had refuted several times, and generally being very terse towards my views.  A couple of minutes later, he posted another comment to say ‘Let’s move this conversation to emails’.  This was done as David Remer, not as Managing Editor, as he had done in the past when warning people that they were about to cross the line.  As I was told later, it was still him and I should have shown him his due respect.  So the lesson is that David is the Managing Editor, do not cross him or disrespect him ever, in any way, or your fate may be the same.

So now we have a long public mean-spirited comment towards me left on the comments section and I was not allowed to respond to it publicly.  After everything that had happened and the lack of respect that had been shown me while writing for Watchblog, including multiple accusations of racism, I was not about to let it go without  making it clear that I did not approve.  So, my response was simply:

You mean, “let me make wild accusations, reclaim things that have already been shown to be false, jump to all kinds of conclusions and leaps of logic of dizzying hights, all in a public venue, but don’t respond to me in public…”?

Nah, I’m good with leaving it as it is.

This is what cost me five years of work and the ability to continue even commenting on anything at Watchblog.  In the emails that followed, I was told that the reason for the request to go to email was because David ‘had a feeling I would end up crossing the line in my replies’ which of course hadn’t happened in our conversations, which were much more heated over the years than this was.  Worse, he then told me that I had ‘proven him right’ by responding as I had, with a personal attack.

Now, you can say what you want about this being a personal attack.  I disagree, it was an observed redefinition of what he had said, a tactic he has used himself over the years.  But, beyond that, to not even accept that his actions of posting such a comment in public towards me and then not wanting me to respond?  To not admit that he was wrong in any way?  I just chose not to take it anymore.  I responded to him in email and let him know of my displeasure.  He responded that since my response was not sufficiently ‘bowing and scraping’ enough, that I was not
showing him any reason to be reinstated.  My response was that I had not asked to be reinstated and would not be asking such a thing since he could not accept for himself that he had done anything wrong. 

I’m sorry, but i can no longer work for this type of management of a weblog.  It is irrational and mean-spirited, accepting more of those that agree with than disagree with David politically and I simply will no longer be treated in such a manner by anyone, even if it does mean that I will no longer be writing at Watchblog.

The unfortunate piece is that I started doing this writing because I wanted to make a difference, to affect and influence the minds of people to think beyond what they are told and look at things in a new way.  I never wanted to ‘brainwash’ anyone, but to kick start the thinking processes in others so that they could come to better informed conclusions themselves.  I am saddened that it appears that no one was ever affected, that my missions was for naught.  I received one email about my leaving, I had sort of expected there to be more.  It just appears that I was not as much of an influence as I had hoped that I would be and has caused me to further evaluate my purpose in doing this writing as opposed to the other things in my life that bring me pleasure and happiness. 

If I decide not to do any more writing, I’ll make sure to post on that before I shut down this blog, but as it is I am not sure how much motivation I have to continue.  That is some soul-searching that I am going to take on and determine over the course of the next few weeks…

The idea behind it is intriguing at first.  Principles.  Libertarians, as members of the Party of Principle, can easily be lured into this movement if they are frustrated with the discourse in DC and getting little response for their concerns as is the case with both the left and right these days.  It is easy to jump to a large group of people who seem to share the same concerns and think that finally the tide is turning and people are understanding!

The problem is, in the case of the 912 Project, they miss the road.  They seem to be close to understanding but swerve at the end of the driveway and drive headlong into the weeds.

I won’t get into the whole list of 9 Principles and 12 Values, I’m sure a search on the Internet will provide the answers, but as I started to read this 21 ‘items’ it only takes me 2 of them before I realize that this movement is not speaking for me, nor should it be for any Libertarian.

The first principle is easy enough.  “America Is Good”.  Ok, it is a bit simplistic.  ‘America’ can mean a lot of different things to different people, sometimes good, sometimes bad and it all depends on how ‘America’ is behaving at the time.  Most likely both good and bad at the same time!  But, as a simplistic opener it could be worse, I suppose.  Actually, it does get worse.

#2 – I believe in God and He is the center of my life.

*sigh*  And into the weeds it goes.  Now, if you DO believe in god, great, then you probably don’t see much of a problem with this.  Well, if you weren’t in a good understanding of Libertarian values.  There is nothing at all wrong with believing in a god if you want to.  But to list it as one of the guiding principles of a political movement?

Now, understand that Glenn is definitely not trying to win over the Libertarian voter.  I’m sure he doesn’t care if he offends and alienates anyone who fervently believes that if you want to believe in a god or which god you choose should not be the business of politics.  But anyone who is searching for a philosophy and gravitate to the project should take heed.  This is NOT part of Libertarian thought.

The bad part is that a lot of the other principles are very much Libertarian values.  Such as having a right to pursue happiness but not the guarantee of achieving happiness.  That the individual should be the ultimate authority over themselves.  Although, he slips up here as well by making the principle about the family.  You know, marriage, between a man and a woman, considering you were listening to that second point.

It is frustrating to talk to some of the people who are getting together for Libertarian organization when they start talking about the 912 project.  It is as if you were talking to your brother about football and all is going well until they point out that they think it is obvious that they should change they way pro’s decide overtime.  You have that momentary flash of ‘Do I *know* you?’ 

Pushing your religion onto others is definitely NOT a Libertarian principle and anyone falling for such obvious manipulation should expose it as what it is, one of the first violations of human rights by a group bent on keeping you ignorant and obedient.  But, that may just be me and how I view the history of religion to begin with.

The worst part is that Glenn Beck is ‘going away’ to develop ‘The Plan’, much in the way Moses went away from his flock and returned with the 10 Commandments.  This plan will be ‘revealed’ to us in Washington DC in August of next year, just in time for the mid-term elections.

On August 28, 2010, I ask you, your family and neighbors to join me at the feet of Abraham Lincoln on the National Mall for the unveiling of The Plan and the birthday of a new national movement to restore our great country.

Anyone who doesn’t believe in a god or who doesn’t believe in the right of a political movement to tell anyone what they can or can’t believe, be afraid.  The problem with manipulators such as Glenn Beck is that they are good at manipulation and eventually this goes to their heads and leads to some very unfortunate things, as history has shown us.  Especially when they use religion as the tool for their narcissistic manipulations.

Rumor has it that not only is Israel looking to take out Iran’s nuclear installations, but they are actually looking to President Obama on the go ahead call. As Benny Morris writing in the Guardian tells us:

But it is not only Israel’s leaders who will have to decide. So will Obama, a man who has, in the international arena, shown a proclivity for indecision (except when it comes to Israeli settlements in the West Bank). Will he give the Israelis a green light (and perhaps some additional equipment they have been seeking to facilitate a strike) and a right-of-passage corridor over Iraq for their aircraft? Or will he acquiesce in putting atomic weaponry in the mullahs’ hands?

It is clear – and should be by then to all but the most supine appeasers – that the diplomatic approach is going nowhere, with the Iranians conning and stonewalling and dragging their feet, all the while enriching more uranium. And Tehran is laughing, as it were, all the way to Armageddon. Ahmadinejad and the mullahs know full well that the west will never impose the only sanctions that could work (a complete boycott of Iranian oil and cessation of the export to Iran of all products).

If there is an attack, it will not be just a surgical strike and we go back to the status quo. It will be an all out war with retaliation from Iran, Hezbollah and probably Hamas. And even if we don’t assist in the attack, it is most likely that Iran will not just retaliate against Israel. Most likely, US forces will be targeted in every arena, possibly even by suicide bombing on US soil.

The alternatives? Distance from Israel and allow Iran to have nuclear weapons. Or, the US could take out Iran’s military infrastructure completely like it did with Iraq in 2003, allowing for the power vacuum to create enough chaos in Iran to put them back a decade as a danger to the rest of the world. None of these options are politically beneficial to the President.

It will be a no-win decision that President Obama is going to have to make. And most likely will have to make quickly. To date, this isn’t something that he has shown a proclivity to do.

So while we spend time debating things that, compared to what may be coming next spring, are pretty minor (partisan power plays notwithstanding) the powder keg that has been building for what seems like thousands of years may actually be about to go nuclear.  We can all only hope that he is getting a decision ready now, we have just about enough time for him to make his mind up on what to do.

Yes, that is correct.  Dustin Almon was walking along  a street alone on November 8, 2008.  As he was walking he noticed two men in dark clothes following behind him.  Those two men were Liquor police, one a trainee that officer Anthony Cattabriga was training.  Why that training involved following a man walking down a street was not entered into the record, nor was the name of the trainee.  Dustin looked back twice and then turned around and asked the two individuals “Why are you following me?”  In his hand he had an opened knife with a two inch long blade, his hand held down by his side, pointing the blade to the ground.

The officers, who were both armed with guns and Tasers, responded by saying “police”.  At this point, Dustin closed up his knife and clipped it back onto his belt and complied with all instructions.

Officer Cattabriga testified that he feared for his safety.  Remember, Officer Cattabriga and his partner were folllowing Dustin, in plain clothes, while carrying both guns and Tasers under their jackets.  And HE was the one who feared for his safety.

The judge ruled Dustin guilty after examining the knife.  When his attorney made the very plausible case that Dustin was acting in self defense, Judge Sawako Gardner suggested that it did not matter.  He was sentenced to 30 days in jail and a $500 fine.  Dustin HAD no previous record.  He does now.

I am wondering if this is really how we want to be handling interactions between the police, who we give the power to hold a gun to our heads, and the citizens who might just be concerned for their safety with two individuals following them down a street.  Dustin wasn’t doing anything wrong, he wasn’t a criminal and he had never been in any kind of trouble before.  There is no reason to suspect that he was over-reacting to the way he was being followed.

I am sure that there are a lot of people glad that this person was found guilty.  Perhaps next time he is walking down a dark street and being followed by two people who aren’t police officers but muggers, he will think better of defending himself.  That’s the last thing a country like ours wants, an armed and dangerous citizenry.

Dustin’s attorney has stated that he will be appealing the decision. 

Now, I am decidedly not a Fox News watcher.  The opinion shows are dreadful to listen, let alone watch and what they pass off as news is appallingly stomach turning at best.  But I don’t limit my disdain to JUST Fox News as most liberals do, or to CNN and MSNBC as most conservatives do.  In fact, I find most ‘TV News Channels’ to have become a cacophony of bleating egos, more concerned with attaining ratings than anything approaching integrity, including the precious NPR who has admitted, finally, that they do accept advertising as most of us has already accepted some time ago.  So while I am not standing up for Fox News practices in any regard, to have the Executive Branch of the United States of America getting the idea that they can give a thumbs up or thumbs down to what is or isn’t valid journalism.  I’m pretty sure that most everyone who isn’t playing partisan games will agree that no governmental agency should be attempting to make that determination.

Fortunately, real news people who are interested in the integrity of the relationship between government and the press have spoken up.  Granted, the number is far smaller than I would like to see, but leading the charge appears to be ABC’s Jake Tapper.  Jake got into a back and forth with He Who Cannot Be Trusted To Tell The Truth (Robert Gibbs) and made it clear that their attempt to get the other news organizations to play ball with their pushing out of Fox News from their brotherhood wasn’t going to be a walk in the park.  Soon, faced with the idea of standing up for Journalistic Integrity and trying to make your news network suddenly number one, the ones real Journalistic Integrity are starting to make themselves known.  And so are the others, such as MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann who wouldn’t know what journalism was if it sat on his lap and called him daddy.  Can anyone spot the ironies in his discussion with Richard Wolffe?

It’s not about news, it’s about personal attacks," Wolffe argues.

Does he just realize that he said that to the man who runs a segment called ‘Worst Person in the World’?  Who has made a lucrative living by being one of the major attack dogs for the liberal community?

Did he not get the IRONY?

The hypocrisy for me, to be honest, was to see the attacks against Fox News being made on MSNBC.  Just about every claim they can and have made against Fox News has been committed by MSNBC in their zeal to try to take views away from Fox News and doing so by ‘playing their own game’.  No one can possibly take any of this seriously when they use an organization that is as left leaning as Fox News is right leaning and then complain that they aren’t ‘real journalists’.  And one of the worst accusations made by Fox News critics has been that they get their ‘talking points’ from the White House directly (now from the RNC).  But if this is a bad thing, why is it apparently ok for the White House to email Mika Brzezinski and for her to read this email ON THE AIR, accepting the WH view of the topic they were discussing as the accepted truth and moving on?  As bad as Fox News is, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything close to that level of brash disregard for Journalistic Integrity, even Joe Scarborough was a bit shocked.

But these events just appear to me to be the latest attempts by the left in the United States to build and sustain an Echo Chamber of political views, not just to feed their own egos but to push an agenda that is fraught with problems.  It is too politically dangerous to have to defend these new programs and laws, if there can be a way to stifle and marginalize opposition to them then the safer the politicians who are being tasked with enacting these policies can feel.

When President Obama was elected the thought from the left was that they had everything they needed to enact their policies, the people wanted everything that they had been selling and now was the time to push it all through.  Despite that being a different mindset than President Obama had suggested was the right way to govern, that was what started to happen.  But a funny thing happened on the way to the Senate and House floors.  The people, who wanted something different but weren’t necessarily willing to go as far as it appeared the Executive and Legislative branches wanted to go, started to grumble.  Much as I had predicted would happen the day after President Obama was elected.  And the right picked up on this dissent and did what they could do to whip it up and get it frothing. 

No one is guaranteed to have no opposition to their agendas when it comes to politics.  But many on the left felt as if they had been promised such and were searching wildly for something to blame all of this dissent on.  After all, it couldn’t be their agenda, the people WANTED it!  So they started off attempting to marginalize the opposition.  Attacking groups that were getting involved and helping further the Tea Party protests that had been going on for years before the election of 2008 they felt that they had successfully limited this effort.  However, in doing so they had marginalized many in the middle who were upset about the direction of the new president who they had just helped elect and alienated them, stripping away their trust and turning them away from their agenda.  Still, the numbers were small and an acceptable hit.

Then came the attempt to pass the Health Care reform packages without any kind of debate.  More people got upset about this, it not only portrayed the arrogance of Washington to many who were uneasy about the increasing power of the federal government over the past 80 years, but highlighted an area that President Obama had campaigned on, transparency.  So when that attempt stalled and the congressmen went on recess, those people made their voice heard.  And, as they did with the Tea Party protests, the right picked upon the dissent and helped forth it for their own political gain.

This was too much for the left.  They again went after the groups who were involved in assisting with the Tea Party protests, but when this didn’t work as well, they started in on the protesters themselves.  This failed even more miserably and finally they pulled out their big trump card and labeled the ‘majority’ of the dissent coming from racist views.  To their credit, the administration backed off on this tact, but not very loudly, allowing the Echo Chamber that was being constructed to start its positive feedback loop and make the accusations true, whether there was anything behind it or not.

The bad news from all of this is that the numbers for the president continued to decline.  They are down for the Democrats in congress.  They are down f
or the Republicans in congress.  There are some on the left that try to use this as a positive, at least their negative numbers aren’t as bad as their opponents, but it sounds a bit weak to me.  Bad is bad.

So now, it appears that more work needs to go into ramping up the Echo Chamber.  This is where Fox News comes in.  Long an enemy to the left, if they can push Fox News out of being considered a legitimate news source, unlike the good news organizations like MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS and NPR, then the left can further marginalize and segment off a portion of the voting public as being ‘inconsequential’.  They can increase the positive feedback loop they are trying to create and block out the largest portion of the negative feedback that has been preventing it from getting ramped up to their liking.  At least, this appeared to be the plan.

However, the administration made two crucial mistakes.

First, it underestimated the power of Journalistic Integrity and how much of it still exists, even in those who they see as friendly to the administration.  The insinuation is that if Fox News is ‘bad’ and ‘unfriendly’ to the administration, then the other news organizations are ‘friendly’ to the administration.  And the last thing a real news journalist in post-Watergate America wants to be considered is ‘friendly’ to anyone.

Second, it attempted to push Fox News out of the bureau pool too soon.  The pump was just not primed well enough.  If the administration had not offered the interview of the Pay Czar as a  bureau pool interview and instead simply made the interview a private affair to the other organizations but Fox News, as it had done with the President Obama interview a month earlier, they could have started a precedent, one that could have eventually worked in alienating Fox news.  But they overreached and the Bureau Chiefs, all of them, rejected the notion.  They appear to understand that if this is possible to do to Fox News, it could be them who is targeted next.  Once the biggest enemy is dealt with, a new enemy must take their place and I don’t think any of the other news organizations wanted to be next on that list.

In the end it is a good thing that they seem to have failed at this point.  While the followers of the left are so in the tank, much like those of the right with their political leaders, that they refuse to accept that this is an area that government should not be involved in in any way,  perhaps this will allow some negative feedback into that Echo Chamber and spin it crashing down upon itself, as should be the case.  We need the other side in these discussions to hold back the excesses of the ruling party.  The administration must be held in check, even if you agree with their agenda.  This is a fact that was true during the Bush years with wiretapping, torture and the Patriot Act as is still true today.  Which side of the equation you are on should not be making that fact invalid, if it is perhaps you should think about watching Fox News yourself and allowing some negative feedback into YOUR Echo Chamber.

The card was added to the arsenal of the Democratic Party when they fought against their own after decades of being the party of race.  The party of Jim Crow, filibustering Civil Rights legislation, Separate but Equal, etc.  The country as a whole made strides against the ignorance of idea of racism and the last ones to come along was the Democratic Party.

But this wasn’t a wholly altruistic action.  The reality is that finally, the majority of people in the US started to have a real problem with people who were racist.  It was clear that after the Civil War, the majority of the people were no longer racist themselves, but they tolerated the racism in others, not necessarily overtly but in a way that said that there were more important things and we can’t tear ourselves up worrying about whether someone, in their heart, is a racist still or not.

However, finally the US got it’s collective head out of it’s collective behind and realize that the ignorance that they were allowing to exist was still tearing us apart as a nation and was unconscionable.  How could we say we were a truly free society when we allowed laws that treated individuals differently than others based on nothing but the color of their skin to remain on the books?  The answer, thankfully, was that we couldn’t.  And the people of the day fought the good fight and triumphed over evil.

But something untoward came out of that debate.  That second civil war.  The Race Card was a new tool to be wielded by the small minded man.  You see, for the card to have any power, the majority of people not only have to not be racist, but have to be aghast at the thought of any individual still holding these ignorant ideals.  If racism was no big deal then the card held no power.  It held no sway.  Calling another individual a racist (true or not) would not give you any power if they AND those around them didn’t care about it.

However, there was a catch.  Because it had power meant that few people would tolerate a racist and even fewer people would hold on to that ideology.  So calling someone a racist was a hand that couldn’t be un-played with ease.  It bypasses most people’s BS detectors because they really really don’t want to be seen as supporting such evil ideals.  In much the same way as dropping an A-bomb on a defenseless country might be seen as ‘overkill’, using the Race Card on anyone and everyone who disagreed with someone was a dangerous thing to do.

Over the years, though, it has been used in ever increasing fashion.  Not because racism is on the rise.  No, that wouldn’t work.  If that were the case, the card would hold less power, not more.  Today, with there being so few real racists in the country and willingness to support such ideals being at an all time low, it gained power.  Seductive power.  Power over your enemies allowing you to smite them without barely breaking a sweat.

And this is where we are now.  We now have a president that has some black heritage.  And while he was popular there was no issue.  But recently, the positions he has taken and decisions he has made have started to make people wary.  I wrote about how this was going to transpire during the week of his election, there was going to be entrenched opposition that he was going to have to fight not only against his political opponents, but many of the people in his own party, for a variety of reasons.  None of them were because of the color of his skin. 

His supporters are worried.  They are seeing the opposition and they can’t understand it.  It is obvious (to them) that this is how things should be, but how on earth can someone be opposed to it?  When this happened before, it was not really possible to use the Race Card en masse, it could only be brought out in sparing use on specific issues.  The Drug War was racist, the judicial system was racist, welfare reform was racist, etc.  The support or opposition for individual programs could be seen as racist.  Some on the left even tried to label the entire Republican party as racist.  Other cards had to be played.  The ‘AntiAmerican’ card, the ‘Socialist’ Card, the ‘Communist’ Card, etc.  But it wasn’t until the election of President Obama that the very act of opposing ANYTHING that a president wanted to do could be seen by the small minded politician as racist.

But that is just where are now.  It seems to start innocently enough.  I was listening to Pete Dominick and was hearing people starting to call in saying ‘The Republican Base is racist’, ‘Anyone who opposes the president is a racist’, ‘The racist morons who protested on Sunday should be shut down’, etc.  To Pete’s credit (though I feel reluctantly) he pushed back on the more upset and over the top talk of entire groups of people being racist.  It’s simply idiotic and small minded to assert that an entire group of people are all racist just because they disagree with you.  But that seemed to be what these people were doing.

That was part of talk radio though.  I have heard similar things on other left-leaning talk radio programs.  Support for Van Jones and the truther movement in whole, labeling anyone who disagrees with you as racist, celebrating the deaths of political opponents, these are things that are heard on these talk shows on the left and, in their own ridiculous ways, on the right (birthers, communists, anti-american, etc).  So when I started hearing these things I did what I normally do and just shook my head and felt sorry for those individuals, so filled with bile and hatred where their brains should be that they genuinely seem to miss the crux of the ideas that are being talked about.

But then I started hearing it from the supposed ‘pundits’ and ‘leaders’ of the Democratic Party.  That is when it started really hitting home that there was not going to be a way to put the genie back in the bottle anymore and the left had just done the political equivalent of dropping an a-bomb on Cuba (not a real threat but making lots of noise…).  And to be honest, some on the list surprised me.

Ray Hanania on the Huffington Post was one of the more major accounts, but ok, he’s just a comedian spouting on a liberal-leaning website, and badly at that.  The leaps he has to take in this article to try to equate opposition to the president’s ideals to racism are astounding, IMO.  Bad, but not enough to get too upset about.

Then there’s Keith Olbermann.  Ok, so he’s one of the smallest minded of the small minded people, but he seems to hold some sway on progressives for some reason, probably the same reason why Rush Limbaugh is popular on the right.  They both take a ‘no holds barred’ approach ag
ainst their political rivals and attempt to inject humor into the mix from time to time.  His use of the card was annoying but somewhat expected, having such a tiny little mind and all.

But then we get into current representatives for congress.  This is the part that starts to frighten me.

“As far as African-Americans are concerned, we think most of it is,” said Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), when asked in an interview in between sessions how much of the more extreme anger at Obama is based upon his race. “And we think it’s very unfortunate. We as African-American people of course are very sensitive to it.”

Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.), chairman of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, agreed with his colleague that elements of the opposition can’t accept the reality of a black president.

You would think that these people would have more intelligence than this, to make such judgments or give them any credence will just make it harder for the president, not easier.  But worse is that they actually believe them to be true.  If you disagree, you must be a racist.

But now we see it even more troubling.  Nancy Pelosi is calling out the opposition and suggesting that they are leading the country to violence.  Knowing of course that all of the violence of the tense town hall protests have come at the hand of the left, including the ransacking of their own buildings to try to pin it on Republicans.  The incident she refers to in regards to Harvey Milk was at the hand of a fellow Democrat.  And Rep. Pelosi would have us blaming the opposition for these violent acts. 

People who make political speeches “have to take responsibility for any incitement that they may cause,” the California Democrat told a news conference yesterday in Washington.

I’ll leave aside the obvious issue with this fitting into the views of the left concerning personal responsibility.  The fact is that she is trying to demonize the opposition and, while I haven’t heard of the Race Card being played by her or her office yet, it seems that she is heading in that direction.  I just hope she has a bigger mind than some of us are giving her credit for.  Make note, however, that she has now gone from calling people who are in opposition of the Democrat’s version of health care reform “un American” and is now going even further to link such opposition to political assassinations.  So my hope is on the thin side.

However, by far the most troubling are the comments by former president Jimmy Carter.  Now, most of my respect for Jimmy Carter was lost in 2004 when he stumped for John Kerry and all Democrats.  Not that he supported him or his party, but the way he attacked the opposition.  It made me sad for a fellow former Naval Nuclear Engineer who I liked and respected as a person, but seldom saw eye to eye with on political matters.

"I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African-American," Carter told "NBC Nightly News."

Yet, it wasn’t racist when those in his own party held intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Bush.  Everything was A-OK then.  And thus the small mind is exposed.

Thankfully, the current president is not being tempted to use the card so freely.  In fact, I honestly feel that he doesn’t believe that the opposition he gets is based in racism, but instead believes it is based in a difference of opinion that is more prone to be more intense because of his attempt to move the status quo off of its base.  To implement real change, as it were.

Today, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama didn’t think opposition political rhetoric posed a danger of violence. “Passions have always been high, particularly around important issue debates,” Gibbs said. During President George W. Bush’s time in office, “passions ran high.”

Still, Gibbs said “we all have to check our emotions despite the depth of our beliefs.” On Sept. 16, Gibbs said Obama, the nation’s first black president, doesn’t believe that criticism of his policies is grounded in racial prejudice.

So, are there racists in the United States?  Of course.  Of all different colors and political persuasions.  Should we care?  Not really.  They are in the minority and they are obviously so filled with their own self-loathing and internal bile to really make much of themselves anymore.  When the society accepted racist views, it was one thing to go with the flow and be a racist because that is what society said was ok.  But now that it has been decades since it has been accepted, a real racist has to really run hard against the mindset of the country.  And the most common reason for that is an intense dislike for yourself.  Take a look at any racist and they do not just hate one race or another.  They hate anything different than themselves.  Because their own self-worth is so fragile, so on the edge of caving in upon itself and the facade that has been created inside their own minds to keep from crumbling into a heap of self-pity, that they have to project that out onto anyone who is different than they are.  To reinforce the notion that they are not as worthless as they know themselves to be.

They are to be pitied, not feared.  Despised, not hated.

But the people who use the Race Card to get their political way?  The small minded man who doesn’t want to do the hard work of winning (or losing) on real ideals?  They are the ones to be feared, to be hated.

I oppose the president in many of his initiatives, not because I am a racist, but because I have a different viewpoint.  And when I am called a racist by inclusion by these small tiny minds I will not stand for it.  I will not allow it to permeate our consciousness and I definitely will not respect the ignorant and tiny minded who think so ill of me that they don’t even care to find out what my actual opinion is before labeling me as one of a group of racists…

I choose not to play that game of cards.

During that meeting the President-to-be stated:

“Our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives,” he said. “You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are going to regenerate and they have not.

“And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

This is a great example of how those who believe that Government is the Answer can’t understand how anyone else, especially people who so obviously need help, doesn’t see the same thing.  The Government is here to help you should be a welcoming rescue, not made to appear to be a wretched curse.  How could this possibly be?

So they look for reasons.  It’s their guns and religion that is holding them back from this enlightenment.  It is big business keeping them scared of government that must be doing it.  It must be racism.  It must be fears of those who aren’t like them.

What they don’t get is that people who live in small towns are not stupid.  They understand what is going on when the government says that they are ‘here to help’.  More importantly, they understand the costs of allowing that to happen.  And they would rather live their lives as they are than to get some temporary help from the government, knowing it will have permanent costs afterwards.

Government, as they understand the truth of it, is force.  The government exists for the sole reason to enforce laws.  If it wasn’t doing that, if it was a benevolent charity like Red Cross, for example, there would be no need for the power of being able to use force against the citizens.  There would be no need to write laws to accomplish their goals.  Laws are not a written guideline of how the helpers will operate, they are enforceable rules that can rob a person of their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

That was the dilemma of the founding fathers.  We needed to ensure that the US government was not dictating what people could and couldn’t do, but we still needed, from time to time, to have the government enforce basic laws for the safety and protection of the citizens.  For that, we entered into an agreement that we would allow for a body of our representatives to act with a single voice to our external friends and foes and use force on our citizens only when absolutely necessary.

And that is a lot of power.  No business has that kind of power.  No individual has a chance of wielding such a power as that.  It is a power greater than anyone else can imagine and, unfortunately, it is a power that is all too tempting for people to acquire and use.

Again, the founding fathers were aware of this.  They knew that once they gave a little more power to the Federal government than was allowed for in the Article of Confederation that it was only a matter of time before people started trying to control that power as their own.

So, in order to prevent that abuse from being too tempting, they put strict, tightly-laced limits upon what the federal government could do.  The constitution, as it is written, is not a ‘guideline’ within which to operate, or a loose set of ideals to try to emulate.  They are the functions, and ONLY the functions, that the federal government is allowed to operate within.  Never to step out of.

Unlike many other countries, the constitution didn’t list what the citizens were allowed to do and be safe from government intervention.  Instead, it lists the limits of what the government is allowed to do with its power over the citizens.  Liberty, the freedom from government intrusion into our individual lives, was paramount.  And it wasn’t something that government could give, it was something we all had just by being born.

That liberty, that knowing that you are free to live your life as you want without having someone else tell you you can’t, is vital for most Americans.  Especially in rural America, which still makes up the majority of the population of the United States.  THAT is what those people in those small towns are clinging to.  Not guns, not religion, but the freedom of both and a whole lot more.

When a law gets created a little more liberty is taken.  Now, sometimes that law is necessary as there is jut no other alternative.  There is no other way of achieving the results that is needed other than to enforce those rules onto all Americans.  But more often than not, they end up making things worse, having unintended consequences and almost never being repealed once in place.  Instead, the view by those who want to wield that power is that the law just wasn’t written well enough, we can make it better!

Progressives and Conservatives see this power and covet it.  Progressives see it as a means to ending the woes of the downtrodden  without understanding that in order to force their views of life onto others they have to do so while taking more of their liberty from them.  Conservatives think that they are healing the ills of humanity by incarcerating anyone who violates the morals that they individually believe to be correct.  And between the two, we just end up with less and less liberty and more and more of an oligarchy.

The end result is that no one is trusted to live their lives as they want, individual responsibility is not encouraged or even acknowledged as being a necessary thing and any thought outside of those who are in charge at the time are bad for the nation as a whole.

President Obama falls into this trap.  The view that the government CAN help without harming more in the long run.  Instead of looking for solutions that ALSO respect individual liberty, we have just another politician who thinks that they know what is better for us in our personal lives.  A government who pushes ideals upon us instead of letting us come up with our own ideals and succeeding OR FAILING based on them.

That is why the left in this country appears to be so shocked at the anger that is coming at them from the liberty minded in this country.  How is it possible, they think, that these people who we are just trying to help can be so upset with us?  We are the good guys!

I heard a great comment from John Dvorak the other day.  He was making the point that the left in this country in the 60s and 70s were screaming ‘Question Authority’.  Now, when they are the ones who are the Authority, they just abandoned those ideals?  We aren’t supposed to question their motives, their tactics, their ideas?

There is just a limit to how much ‘help’ that a person is willing to accept at the cost we know it will take.  Small town America is not being duped.  And that is the real issue for those in charge now, they are unable to do the duping that they need to obtain the increased power that they covet so much.