The Bureaucrastein Of The Left

     There is a tenet of human psychology as it relates to behavior which contends that many people will see in others a weakness that they themselves posses. In some cases this behavior will be taken to extreme, and people may actually accuse others of engaging in the negative behavior in which the accuser engages. This transference has always been a staple of the Left, but it has never had a more comfortable home than it does in the current administration.
     Barack Obama and others on the Left have an almost involuntary response to being held accountable for their bad behavior by accusing their political opponents of manufacturing it in order to advance a political agenda. Part of the reason they do this is to escape accountability for their actions, but the larger impetus at work is that they see every scrap of bread from the daily loaf  of public service as a means to feed their own political aspirations. Because they think in these terms, they assume everyone does, and therefore their political opponents can only be questioning their bad behavior for political gain and not because it is the right thing to do. So they accuse their political opponents of manufacturing scandals for political gain because it is what they do.
     Leftists have campaigned for many decades to convince the voting public that they are the "compassionate" and "fair" ones and anyone who opposes them is not. Therefore, anything they do is beyond reproach, even if it is also beyond the law. Such is the case with the many recent scandals that have been brought into the disinfecting sunlight of public scrutiny. But this sense of entitlement to deceive the public that is the Lefts bread and butter of their political and public policy discourse, goes beyond the major scandals and comprises their daily business as usual.  President Obama embodies the "governing through deception" model of every other authoritarian throughout history.
     This "governing through deception" pre-dates Mr. Obama's entrance onto the national political stage and is a tactic he learned as a community agitator. The successful community agitator will develop a skill for manufacturing a problem or crisis, attaching it to a producer in the community such as a wealthy individual or successful business and then fomenting hatred and outrage among the non-producers in the community against the aforementioned target. Illustrative of this point is the issue of health care. In poll after poll for the last 20 years, over eighty percent of Americans were happy with their health care. The problems that did exist were in health care insurance, not the health care delivery system. But Barack Obama, like other Democrats before him, transformed a few problems with health care insurance into a reason for a government take over of health care. He did it by fomenting hatred and derision for insurance companies, doctors and hospitals among those who were likely to abdicate the responsibility for their own health care in favor of having others provide it for them through a big government bureaucracy.
     You may be asking, at this point, "What does health care have to do with Democrats blaming Republicants for trying to politicize the recent administration scandals?" It is the nature of the Leftist beast to deceive, whether the purpose is in the growing of the government monster ever bigger and more intrusive or whether the purpose is to protect the bureaucrastein they have created in their laboratory of deception and lies.   
    
    

Mockery As A Substitute For Leadership-The Obama Way

     We all know that a vigorous debate of the issues and an equal airing of differing political views is not something to which President Obama subscribes. In fact, it is something that the Left in general runs away from at every opportunity. The derision of conservatives is not an end in itself for Barack Obama, but simply a means to a bigger end, i.e., elimination of all opposition to his agenda. Once the public can be convinced that a group of people are less than human, it is easier for that group to be shackled. Either physically in chains (as was the case with slavery in the pre-Civil War South), or virtually by using government agencies such as the IRS to limit their participation in the political process (as is the case today with the Obama administration against Conservative groups).
      Dehumanization was the essential factor that made slavery in the pre-Civil War South such an abomination. When people grew up in an environment that taught them that blacks were less than human, and even inherently more capable of evil than whites, it was easier to have public support for enslavement of the black race. Similarly, the almost daily derision of conservatives as something they are not is not only a means to disagree with their policy positions, but to dehumanize them as not worthy to participate in national life. This was made abundantly clear by President Obama a few years ago when he said Republicants had to ride in the back seat and keep their mouths shut. The closing of Republicant-owned GM dealerships after the Obama administration illegally took control of that company and the raids of Gibson guitar, which has a Republicant CEO, are further evidence of using the power of government to silence opposition. It becomes easier for bureaucrats to discriminate against conservative groups like the Tea Party because after all, "They are just teabaggers, even the President said so."
     Once a community agitator like Barack Obama has succeeded in marginalizing and eliminating the opposition, no plan of his own is needed to get the support of the American people, or any group of people that have been similarly fooled. Last fall's election is illustrative of this fact in as much as not even the most ardent Obama supporter could name one plan or policy that President Obama proffered as anything different than what produced 8 million fewer people working than when he took office in January, 2009 and a gross domestic product that has grown at an anemic rate of less than two percent a year. I remind you that at this point in the Reagan recovery, the economy was growing at six to seven percent a quarter and produced months in which half a million or more jobs were added.
     The public will accept the mediocrity of failed policies when the alternative has been mocked and ridiculed daily by a spiteful President and his legions of sycophants in the media. For those on the Left like Barack Obama, who only have vacuous ideas and an impoverished and failed political ideology, mockery of the opposition is all that is available to them. And mockery, as a substitute for leadership, is not commensurate with the greatest nation in history.
    
    

How To Destroy The Best Health Care In The World

     Ronald Reagan, the fortieth president of the United States of America, once remarked that leftists see something moving and they tax it, if it keeps moving they regulate it and if it stops moving they subsidize it. Nothing could sum up the Lefts destruction of health care over the last 40 years better than this Reaganism. And with the one party imposition, and subsequent implementation of ObamaCare, we are witnessing the latter part of the aforementioned Reagan quote on steroids.
     ObamaCare care would be horrible enough if it were only another big government entitlement program, but its tentacles have greedily groped their way into the very sanctuary of liberty and have sacrificed the American spirit at the alter of freedom using the destructive immorality that is Leftism. Sadly, it is only now after it was rammed through Congress with only Democrat support, been upheld by a politically intimidated Supreme Court and is on its way to gobbling up large chunks of the private economy, that people are beginning to realize the horribly disfiguring disaster ObamaCare is and how it will forever transform, not only the nation's health care industry, but our very way of life.
     An example of the unchecked power given to the Executive branch through the Secretary of Health and Human Services by ObamaCare, was recently illustrated by the current Secretary, Kathleen Sebelious. Amid the many recent revelations of scandalous activities by the Obama administration, Ms. Sebelious' activity to illegally fund implementation of a part of the new law which Congress specifically excluded from funding, was hardly noticed by anyone. Congress refused to fund the hiring of 10s of thousands of new federal employees to promote ObamaCare across the country while at the same time signing up participants as Democrat voters. So, in violation of federal law, Secretary Sebelious "solicited" funds for this purpose from businesses in the health care industry, which she regulates. This is just one example of the virtually unlimited can of worms ObamaCare opens with its many hooks for such practices with the phrase, "as the Secretary shall determine."
     In addition to realizing that the rationing of health care, long waits for medical tests and procedures and budget-busting premiums for insurance are now going to be the norm for a once free people with the best health care in the world, the American people are beginning to realize the crushing new taxes that ObamaCare imposes. Just about every financial transaction made by the American people will require a tribute be paid to the federal government for its gracious management of the citizens' health care. Privately held retirement accounts require a 3.8 percent pizzo (protection money paid by businesses to the Italian Mafia) as do all real estate transactions. And the ObamaCare taxes are virtually unlimited. And most are coming straight from the hides of middle-class Americans, the group that President Obama promised would not see any increase in their taxes. Just one in a gaggle of promises broken by this president to the American people he took an oath to serve.

LOL-Losing Our Literacy

     I am not in favor of abbreviations or acronyms playing a prominent role in our daily communications with each other. In fact, I despise such practices as causing the age of the great illiteracy. The dawn of the texting generation has especially been responsible for making abbreviated communications ubiquitous. For the most part I am not even in favor of contractions, I consider them tools of literary sloth.
     The danger incurred to society with the increase of abbreviated communications is that as goes our written communications so goes our cognitive abilities. One who writes in abbreviations is only training his mind to think in abbreviations. And the abbreviated mind is less capable of critical thinking and rational thought and more susceptible to being lead by emotion. This is the reason that politicians like Barack Obama are able to get elected speaking complete nonsense. To the weak and abbreviated mind, the nonsensical ramblings sound worthy and true. So when the President says "No one succeeds until we all succeed", the abbreviated mind does not grasp the full implications of that statement, it responds completely with emotion.
     A perfect example of the deterioration of the language that is a symptom of abbreviated communication is the expressions "may as well" and "for all intents and purposes", which have respectively become "misewell" and "for all intensive purposes." This combining of words has been encouraged instead of discouraged in our schools and has only accelerated with the modern age of text and email communications. I recently saw a sign in front of a school, advertising some function at the school, and it was replete with abbreviations. I would have hoped that a school, of all places in our society, would have some dedication to literacy.
     My rant is not only about preserving the language, but the effect literacy has on civility. I contend that the level of rancor and anti-social behavior rampant in our culture, in some sense can be attributed to the loss of civility that comes as a result of abbreviated communications. "Pardon me" has been transformed into "Huh", which is a digression to our ancestors who lived in caves. How can there be respect between people when they use a bastardized version of the language to communicate with each other? The mitigation of the mind in the process of human communication results in all humanity being removed from our daily interactions with each other. This regression of the species threatens to destroy the advances in the human condition which have grown symbiotically with the development of language and literacy.

The Real Scandal Lies Within Ourselves

     Founding father and primary author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, once wrote that when the government fears the people there is liberty, and when the people fear the government there is tyranny. The recent Obama administration scandals involving the abuse of power at the IRS and the Justice Department, targeting political opponents of the President in the former and Associated Press journalists putting into print their concerns over the Benghazi attack in the latter, is the very essence of what Thomas Jefferson so eloquently stated over two hundred years ago. The people's fear of their government in a tyrannical system, the kind to which Jefferson alluded, has been given abundant life by this administration.
     Journalists now must fear improper investigations by the Justice Department if they dare to write or report any information that the Obama administration deems "inappropriate." And individuals, wishing to involve themselves in the political process, must now fear reprisals from an authoritarian regime through the tax collection agency known as the Internal Revenue Service. One of the special aspects of the United States has always been its citizens ability to vociferously oppose their government without fear of reprisal. That aspect is in danger of being lost to history forever with the continued existence of the Leftist power base which currently has its home in the Obama administration.
      These recent Obama scandals are not so much scandals as the modus operandi of an administration that employs the thug tactics of Chicago gangland politics on a national level. These tactics are business as usual for Marxists in general and the Obama administration specifically, for the purpose of imposing an unpopular agenda on a fearful and cowering public. The real scandal is that so many Americans fell for this style of banana republic government, not once but twice, while the alarm bell was being wrung by people successfully characterized by the administration as radicals. And now the Obama regime's guns are turned towards its own sycophants in the media, who are so dedicated to the cause that they will sacrifice themselves as willing collateral damage in the battle to advance the administration's Marxist agenda.
     I recently remembered a statement by President Obama early in his first term about creating a government civilian force that was more powerful than the military. His own version of brown shirts, not his words but my interpretation of his words. Now I fully understand the enormity of his statement when I realize that he was talking about using the IRS, the Justice Department and any and all bureaucracies within the government to eliminate any challenge to the imposition of his Utopia on the free people of the United States of America. The civilian force to which the President alluded comprised agencies of the government that could operate outside the law to advance his twisted version of fairness and equality. The ends justifying the means, however immoral or unjust those means are, is the mission statement of the Obama administration. And the recent revelations of the inner workings of the Obama machine are just the tip of an iceberg which seeks to sink the previously thought unsinkable ship of liberty and freedom.

The Barackacy Of The IRS Scandal

     The Obama administration is representing an acre of swamp land as a hundred acres of prime real estate with their explanation of the IRS scandal. What they expect the public to buy is that the targeting of only conservative organizations by the division of the IRS that is the sole authority over non-profits in the nation, was in no way politically motivated. Furthermore they expect us to believe that the incessant demonization of these groups by their boss, Barack Obama, and the public statement that these groups should be targeted, by the powerful Senator Baucus who chairs the Senate committee that oversees the IRS, had no influence on the "rouge" agents who engaged in the "non-political" witch hunt.
     I caution those conservatives that are doing handstands over the media seemingly asking tough questions of the administration about the IRS targeting groups with "Patriot" or "Constitution" in their name or public statements that contain phrases like, "less government", not to be fooled by their curiosity. It comes from a thirst for direction in which way to steer the narrative and not from any journalistic integrity to reveal the truth. The media was caught flat-footed by the IRS story and had no story prep from the administration, and being narrative-dependent children, are looking to the administration to feed them their angle on the story for the coming days and weeks. Do not be surprised if the main thrust of the story reported by the media is the administration's assertion that they are outraged by the "unacceptable" and "isolated" actions of a couple of "low-level" agents.
     The IRS's admission that organizations were targeted based on their conservatism also begs the question that many have been asking, "Isn't this the bureaucracy that is charged with implementing large swaths of ObamaCare?" And if a couple of "rouge" agents can deny non-profit status to organizations based on their politics, is it unreasonable to assume that a "low-level" agent could conceivably deny someone health care based on those same politics? This is not just right-wing paranoia, but with recent revelations, is a real possibility. We have recently discovered that ObamaCare requires doctors to ascertain if patients are gun-owners, and it is not a stretch to imagine that they will be charged with mining for all sorts of information that has nothing to do with their patients health concerns. And it further follows that based on this information, certain types of care, or care in general, may be denied by over-zealous Leftists working in the bureaucracy that is ObamaCare.
     What the IRS and other recent scandals illuminate in very stark terms is that the government of, for and by the people has been transformed into a Barackacy. And maybe this was what Barack Obama meant during the 2008 campaign when he said he wanted to fundamentally transform the country. He has succeeded to a large extent in replacing the representative republic that has served this country and the world well for hundreds of years with a system of patronage where government bureaucracies are used to reward his friends and eliminate his opposition.
      

The Habit Of The Creature

     There have been many who have suggested that much analysis of the events surrounding the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, is pure speculation. And that may be true. But as was a popular Democrat refrain shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, one should be able to connect the dots to get an accurate picture from the available information. Using the same process, we can  flesh out the actions and non-actions of the Obama administration by connecting the dots of what we know to be concrete in order to add substance to those areas which may not be as hardened with facts.
     What we do know is that the consulate was attacked by an Al Qaeda-style group, four Americans including our Ambassador were killed and the Obama administration deliberately mischaracterized the attack as a spontaneous demonstration in response to an anti-Muslim YouTube video. We also know that Hillary Clinton received a call from Gregory Hicks, second in command of the U.S. diplomatic core in Libya, at 8:00pm Washington time on the night of the attack. Mr. Hicks told then Secretary Clinton that the Benghazi consulate was under attack by terrorists and he feared Ambassador Stevens had been captured by local Al Qaeda operatives. And further, we know from the official record, that Hillary Clinton spoke to President Obama at 10:00pm Washington time and it was shortly thereafter that the media reported that the attack was the result of a protest spurred by the video.
     It was convenient for the Obama administration that there was an actual protest of the anti-Muslim YouTube video in Cairo, Egypt, instigated by U.S. embassy personnel there apologizing for the video before any Muslims were even aware of its existence. Thereby informing Muslim radicals that they should be offended by it. We may never know if President Obama ordered the preemptive apology, but he is responsible for the ethos which spawned it. The classical definition of which is, "the habit of a creature in its place." The habit of the Obama administration creature is to hold American exceptionalism responsible for the bad behavior of every anti-social in the world and to apologize for that very exceptionalism. Just as it is the habit of the Obama administration creature to think of conservative groups like the Tea Party as enemies of the state worthy of special attention by government agencies like the IRS.
     Aristotle talked about the immediate cause and the final cause, e.g., the immediate cause of a sculpture is the tools and stone used to bring it to life, the final cause is the reason for which the thing is done. The immediate cause of Benghazi and the other Obama administration scandals recently coming into public view, are the events themselves. The final cause is the ideology and world view of Barack Obama who, like the creature in its place, creates the ethos or habit of anti-Americanism abroad and corruption at home.