Thursday, October 28, 2010

Obama’s War on Me

If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, "We’re going to punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us," if they don’t see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election, then I think it’s going to be harder, and that’s why I think it’s so important that people focus on voting on November 2. – Barack Obama, Univision Interview, Oct. 25, 2010 (emphasis mine.)

That’s right. I am one of the President’s enemies, as are at least 60% of the rest of the country. Apparently, anyone who thinks that illegal immigration is, you know, illegal and dangerous to the sovereignty and safety of our country is an enemy and should be punished, according to our President. In fact, just the fact that you are reading this means that chances are good that you are an enemy of the President, as well.

Of course, this is not surprising. I knew the President held me in low regard before this. He has, at various times, described me as a bitter man, clinging to my guns and religion selfish, and racist. (Full disclosure - I don’t own any guns, but I will admit to clinging to my religion, though I’m pretty sure that Obama didn’t mean that as a compliment.) Just recently, he used the racially charged Jim Crow term to consign me to ride “in the back” of the bus, a phrase that would have been loudly denounced had it come from a conservative, and rightly so.

In Obama’s America, no one has an honest difference of opinion with him. Anyone who disagrees with him has malign intentions and are not opponents to be engaged and debated, but are enemies to be punished. We have seen plenty of evidence of this, such as when the White House tried to institute a boycott of FOX News – a move that failed due to the unexpected spine of the other news networks and the fact that no one hardly watches any other news, anymore.

It is an incredible thing when an American President declares that those with ideological differences are enemies, a designation, let it be known, that Obama will not utter in speaking of Iran, Hezbollah, or other of America’s enemies throughout the world. In fact, the same President who has called me an enemy, shook Hugo Chavez’s hand and addressed him as, “Mi amigo” (my friend.)

This is quite a departure from a candidate who campaigned as a post-partisan, post-racial “uniter, not a divider.” In fact, not since Woodrow Wilson has a president been more divisive. Can anyone imagine Ike, Reagan, Clinton, either Bush, or, yes, even Nixon refer to the majority of Americans as his enemy?

Six weeks after his inauguration, I wrote an article describing how it was obvious that President Obama was in over his head, an article for which I lost at least a couple of friends who, in true liberal fashion, accused me of racism. That is a common tactic of the left – if you can’t argue facts and policy, revert to racism as a conversation-stopper, a temptation that even our “post-racial” President can’t resist. At the mid-point of his first term, however, I am being vindicated by the fact that it appears as if the President’s political party is about to suffer an electoral defeat of near-epic proportions, based on his policies and his accomplishments. He has demonstrated himself to be intellectually vapid and morally vacuous. He is a small man in a big job.

We cannot have a President who thinks of greater than half of Americans as “the enemy.” We have seen that he will not hesitate to push cramming legislation down the throats of a majority of Americans who express a vociferous opposition, simply because he believes that he is right and those who disagree are stupid, special interest shills, racists, or all the above. It is essential that Americans elect a Congress that can stand up to the President and, yes, obstruct some of that destructive legislation. It is a further imperative that this man is a one-term President and that we put someone in office who respects Americans and is deserving of the job.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

A Clear Choice

We are one week away from a historic election. Now, I am not one to indiscriminately encourage people to get out and vote because, frankly, I believe that most Americans have no business voting. Too often, Americans know the smallest detail about how Joey Buttafuco beat Lorena Bobbitt in Dancing with the Stars, but don’t have the foggiest idea of where their politicians stand on issues or even what those issues may be. Consequently, decisions on who we will have governing our country are decided by people who vote for an individual because of the candidate’s hairstyle, because their commercial tells the most convincing lie, or because I’ve always voted for one or the other of the political parties and everyone knows that the other party is evil. In my opinion, people who have not educated themselves on the issues and the candidates have a responsibility to stay home and not vote.

This year, however, the political landscape is different and the issues are much more black and white. This has presented the voters, even those who do not follow politics closely, a clear choice. Because the Democrats have had control of the White House and a veto-proof majority in the Senate and overwhelming majority in the House of Representatives, we know exactly the governing inclinations of the Democrat party.

If you desire a large government that interposes itself in every aspect of business, even to the point of essentially buying those businesses (GM, Chrysler, multiple banks), you should vote Democrat.

If you approve of a government that tells you what commodities you must buy, whether you want it or not, and one that would fundamentally destroy the best health care system in the world, you should vote Democrat.

If it is of no concern to you that those you elect disregard the wishes of the people and pass laws because they, in their wisdom, know better than you, and then complain that you should not be offended, but should, instead, thank them for it, you should vote Democrat.

If you are fine with your elected leaders systematically denigrating large swaths of the populace and stoking racial and class division, you should vote Democrat.

If you think that it is the government’s role to tell you what you can or cannot say, listen to, or even eat, you should vote Democrat.

If you think that giving foreign enemies of our country the same rights as our citizens, if you think it is a good idea to bring them from the battlefield into our civilian courts, and if you think that returning war veterans and the Christian right are as big a threat to our country as Al Qaeda, you should vote Democrat.

If you believe that the way to increase employment is to tax those who create the vast majority of jobs in this country so that we can spend trillions of dollars in order to do things like teach men in Africa to wash their genitals after sex, study the effects of cocaine on monkeys, and build turtle tunnels under highways, you should vote Democrat.

If you truly believe that the “biggest bang for the buck” in stimulus is food stamps and unemployment insurance, you should vote Democrat.

If you believe that a stagnant 10% unemployment rate, in spite of trillions of dollars of debt incurred, more debt in the first two years of this administration than was incurred from the administrations of George Washington through George W. Bush, has placed the country, “On the right track,” you should vote Democrat.

In short, if you think that the last two years of governing has been just wonderful and that you want the country to continue in the direction it is now heading, vote Democrat.

But if you are tired of Washington treating you like you are a child who needs their guidance, if you are think that government isn’t the answer to every question, if you are a believer in the free market and in American ingenuity and exceptionalism, then vote Republican.

Frankly, given their recent track record, I am not enamored of the current crop of Republicans. But like columnist Frank J. Fleming said, the Republicans suck in the manner of a dog barking all night, but the Democrats suck like the zombie apocalypse. We can’t say that we don’t want to escape the zombies because if we do so, we’ll have to go back to listening to that stupid dog barking all night. And, hopefully, the Republicans have been paying attention and will be responsive to their constituents this time. If not, we’ll vote ‘em out in 2012. And, if nothing else, at least the gridlock will stop the destruction of our way of life that is currently occurring.

This is an extraordinarily important election and the choices couldn’t be more clear.