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Progressives Made Their Beds; It’s Time They Lay In It
Throughout the government shutdown, Democrats, who knew Republicans wouldn’t be able to delay Obamacare, routinely said, “It’s settled law.” President Obama was re-elected, they say – though he said almost nothing about Obamacare during the campaign, and what he did say amounted to platitudes he knew were false. And the Supreme Court ruled it constitutional.
The debate was over, progressives crowed. It was going to happen. Soon they will be eating crow, and Republicans have to position themselves smartly and strategically now to make sure that crow is served up to them on a silver platter.
The roll out of Obamacare has been a disaster that makes “New Coke” look like the iPad. The website rarely works, and when it does, it sends incorrect information to insurers. And when young and healthy people do sign up, they discover they’re going to be paying exponentially more for insurance to subsidize premiums for wealthy retirees.
That last one should stick in the craw of everyone under 35. They will be paying thousands of dollars per year more so retirees who technically have no income but own their homes and are living off savings and investments – which don’t count as income when it comes to subsidies for the “poor.” And they will be paying for this until they reach 65 and go on Medicare, at which point still younger people will be subsidizing them.
In short: Obamacare is a massive wealth “spreading” from the young and struggling to the old and well off.
Add to that Obamacare’s devastating impact on the economy and part-timing of the American workforce, and you can almost see the train flying off the rails.
There will be attempts at bi-partisan “fixes” to some of the more visible problems caused by Obamacare. Republicans and Democrats have been working together to delay or repeal the medical device tax and change the definition of a full-time employee back to 40 hours per week from Obamacare’s 30 – to name just two.
Republicans must resist the urge to help with these “fixes.”
We just spent a month being lectured by arrogant know-it-alls about how Obamacare is “settled law.” So keep it settled.
Obamacare is failing already, and it will continue to fail in more spectacular ways as we move forward, let it.
Democrat wrote the bill, Democrats voted for the bill, a Democrat president signed it into law. It’s theirs. Make them live with it. As is.
Do not change one comma, one letter. It’s settled law! This is what they wanted, this is what people voted for. If the full failure of Obamacare isn’t allowed to happen, if “fixes” are passed, it will live on in a money-sucking spiral of destruction that will lead to a complete and total government takeover of health care in this country – which is their goal.
It’s going to be painful, but it’s also going to be quick. And the pain will be nothing compared to the damage to the economy and our future if this Frankenstein’s monster is helped to limp into permanency.
Meanwhile, this is also a chance for conservative groups to flex their muscles (and ample money) in a non-circular firing squad way. I have to address them directly now.
Set up a website as a clearinghouse for Obamacare failure stories.
I know you don’t play nice with each other, but get over it. One website, not competing websites – and the focus has to be spreading these collected stories to the media, both national and local. I know you love adding to your email lists, but this can’t be about that. This has to be about spreading the truth the media will do its damnedest to ignore.
Gather stories from any source possible, including user-submitted. Verify them and record the actual people going through them on video in 30- and 60-second clips. Then blast them out daily to every local media outlet in their area. And post new ones on the site daily. Go around the media like President Reagan used to. Overwhelm them into covering the truth.
It’s going to take money, but this can’t be a fundraiser for you. Asking people for money is understandable in normal circumstances, but this is not a normal circumstance. Collect stories, film them and get them out there – that is the only purpose here. If you want to win, that is. If you’d rather be the voice of the conservative movement or the Tea Party group, then that’s your priority – not making the country a better place – and I can’t help you.
Republicans have to be united. Conservatives have to be united. If done right, this effort will have no spokesman on TV. It will be a conduit for getting real people with real Obamacare horror stories in front of any camera, at any time, anywhere in the country. It will be a major undertaking, a massive database and possibly the most important thing any or all of you can do over the next year.
Progressives are unified and indignant. They are indifferent to the cost to both the country and individual, and the pain to the individual is, to them, irrelevant. This is about the concept.
To protect their agenda, they will highlight any success story, no matter how dubious. Conservatives must beat them at their own game. They trot out personal stories constantly; we must do the same. If the president gives a speech touting Obamacare in Fresno, Calif., every reporter within 100 miles should be served up a menu of people suffering under it before Air Force One touches the ground.
This is a winnable fight. It’s our fight to win. But if there’s one thing Republicans and conservatives excel at, it’s snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Obamacare is a disaster, not just in code on a website, but in concept and construction. It survives if we allow it to survive. No more delays, no more defunds, and no more changes. Every unconstitutional change the president makes must be immediately met with a court challenge, even if it’s good. It’s his law. It’s his “medicine.” Make him take it.
Obama’s Shutdown Campaign
10.7.13
By Paul Kengor
In the old days, if you wanted to see master propagandists at work, you looked to Moscow, where none honed the craft as crassly as the boys in the Kremlin. The Soviets were so excellent at manipulation and disinformation, at agitation and propaganda (read: agitprop), that they had a government department that specialized in the work. Entire elements of the arm of the state were employed in the ignoble task.
Here at home, Communist Party USA wasn’t too shabby either. CPUSA’s lieutenants excelled at what they called “campaigns.” These were carefully concerted efforts whereby they exploited an issue or cause to further an agenda. Such campaigns were a very effective, still vastly un-appreciated, tactic vigorously employed by the communist movement.
These campaigns took on such a predictable, discernible pattern that they eventually prompted full-scale investigations by the U.S. government. The FBI in the 1950s produced a lengthy classified report on the subject. The bureau defined campaigns as “concentrated, continuous, and concerted succession of agitation and propaganda activities specifically devised and timed to sway public opinion. All communist campaigns are intended to arouse, influence, and mobilize as many people as possible to further communist goals.”
The chief targets in such campaigns were gullible observers, particularly other leftists, moderates, and the apolitical, whose buttons could be pushed. These were the dupes, the “suckers,” and they were deemed indispensable to success. If the campaigns marshaled only the support of the organizers, they would be transparent and would collapse under public exposure.
The FBI noted that, “No other organization has ever engaged in so many diverse, intensive, and extensive campaigns conducted with so much perseverance, deftness, and potency as has the Communist Party, USA.” CPUSA was “never without” a campaign of one type or another, and had been responsible for “an inestimable number of campaigns.”
Notably, a CPUSA member who specialized in these methods was Obama’s Hawaii mentor, Frank Marshall Davis (CPUSA member no. 47544). In my book on Davis, I detail several campaigns he was involved with.
All of that background for this point today:
This tactic is precisely what Barack Obama and his allies are doing right now. Obama’s exploitation of the government shutdown (never let a good crisis go to waste) is a classic old method mastered by the likes of CPUSA. It’s standard operating procedure. What you’re witnessing is Barack Obama’s “shutdown campaign” — and with the liberal media dutifully on his side to amplify the effort.
Here today, in our new America, our own federal government has gotten into the propaganda business full throttle. Its exploitation of the shutdown is shameless. Sure, we expect congressional Democrats to accuse Republicans of starving children, old people, kittens, puppies, fish, and birds; of wanting to kill your grandmother; of gleefully polluting the atmosphere; of hating black people, gays, Latinos, women; of hoping no child gets an education or a school lunch. You know the drill. Democrats do this regardless of whether they have the White House. It’s the air they breathe. When they have the White House, the cacophony is even shriller. Recall the shutdown follies during the Clinton years, when Commandants Clinton and Gore joined the ugly performance. Al Gore was superb at demonizing Republicans; he had a remarkable talent for doing so.
But the performance has reached a higher, uglier decibel level under the Obama administration. This is hardly a surprise, given Barack Obama’s upbringing, mentors, radical associates, and the crucial fact that he was a community organizer who studied and taught Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. That was Obama’s formative experience for his job today, and it has equipped him for the task at hand. As accomplices, add in an army of ever-increasing unionized government employees, prodded by their ringleaders, and who burn with the tenacity and partisanship of IRS employees, and watch out. You see the results.
As has been reported, and is unmistakably evident to all but the most naïve, federal employees have been ordered to exploit this crisis, to make the government shutdown as uncomfortable as they can. The White House is actively soliciting complaints from the general public on “how the government shutdown has affected you.” These testimonies are tools sought for the propaganda kit; the better to agitate with.
One infamous culmination is the despicable display at the World War II Memorial at the Mall, which has been blocked off, wired off, and barricaded so no visitors can get near it. I’ve been to that memorial. No government employee is needed for you to stroll up and look at it.
But for the churner of propaganda, the agitprop artist, the spectacle of elderly, crying, dying, heart-aching, wheelchair-bound WWII vets travelling hundreds to thousands of miles to honor their fallen brothers, perhaps for a final earthly time, only to be denied by cruel, intransigent Republicans, is just too delicious to pass up. Moreover, you must consider the mindset of liberal Democrats: They and their party and ideology and followers are already fueled by emotion. Well, this WWII debacle is tailor-made to gas up the tanks, the planes, and everything else in the arsenal.
And then the propaganda coup de grâce, the topper: a compliant media on hand to film the charade and spin it in your direction. Utterly delicious. A lovely opportunity. You can picture the propaganda maker salivating at the spectacle.
Of course, the World War II Memorial is just one of numerous examples of Obama’s shutdown campaign bearing its (intended) bitter fruit. What other welcomed pain might be generated? What other lambs might leftists conjure up for the sacrifice?
Well, it was only a matter of time before this propaganda ploy found another way to assault our religious liberty — the favorite new tack of the left to advances its various causes, from “abortion rights” to “marriage rights.” And alas, that has likewise come to fruition.
As reported by Steve Skojec at Catholic Vote, priests who serve as chaplains for the U.S. military are being threatened with arrest if they celebrate Mass in defiance of the government shutdown — even if they do so voluntarily.
Outrageous? Absolutely. A surprise? Absolutely not.
Imagine: It is the literal sacred duty of these priests to celebrate Mass. In America the way it used to be, when we had a First Amendment whose religious freedom provision was honored by people with honor, the priest was respected and free. In Obama’s new fundamentally changed America, however, religious freedom is trumped by priorities that “progressives” deem superior. Thus, the HHS mandate on abortion. Thus, a Christian couple who owns a bakery in Oregon is sued for not making a “gay wedding” cake. Thus, a Christian photographer is voted down by the New Mexico supreme court for refusing to photograph a gay couple. And on and on. Now, a military chaplain is told to bow to a government ordering him not to perform Mass during a shutdown that’s less shutdown than theatrics. The priest must serve not the Body of Christ but Barack Obama’s body of propaganda.
So, enjoy the spectacle of Obama’s shutdown campaign. For the extreme left, it’s really nothing new — though, sadly, it’s totally new to have this emanating so egregiously from the White House. But, hey, this is the fundamental transformation that oblivious Americans elected. Those of us who understand can do little more than suffer through it, its organizers, and its suckers.
Americans never give up your guns
By Stanislav Mishin
These days, there are few things to admire about the socialist, bankrupt and culturally degenerating USA, but at least so far, one thing remains: the right to bear arms and use deadly force to defend one’s self and possessions.
This will probably come as a total shock to most of my Western readers, but at one point, Russia was one of the most heavily armed societies on earth. This was, of course, when we were free under the Tsar. Weapons, from swords and spears to pistols, rifles and shotguns were everywhere, common items. People carried them concealed, they carried them holstered. Fighting knives were a prominent part of many traditional attires and those little tubes criss crossing on the costumes of Cossacks and various Caucasian peoples? Well those are bullet holders for rifles.
Various armies, such as the Poles, during the Смута (Times of Troubles), or Napoleon, or the Germans even as the Tsarist state collapsed under the weight of WW1 and Wall Street monies, found that holding Russian lands was much much harder than taking them and taking was no easy walk in the park but a blood bath all its own. In holding, one faced an extremely well armed and aggressive population Hell bent on exterminating or driving out the aggressor.
This well armed population was what allowed the various White factions to rise up, no matter how disorganized politically and militarily they were in 1918 and wage a savage civil war against the Reds. It should be noted that many of these armies were armed peasants, villagers, farmers and merchants, protecting their own. If it had not been for Washington’s clandestine support of and for the Reds, history would have gone quite differently.
Moscow fell, for example, not from a lack of weapons to defend it, but from the lying guile of the Reds. Ten thousand Reds took Moscow and were opposed only by some few hundreds of officer cadets and their instructors. Even then the battle was fierce and losses high. However, in the city alone, at that time, lived over 30,000 military officers (both active and retired), all with their own issued weapons and ammunition, plus tens of thousands of other citizens who were armed. The Soviets promised to leave them all alone if they did not intervene. They did not and for that were asked afterwards to come register themselves and their weapons: where they were promptly shot.
Of course being savages, murderers and liars does not mean being stupid and the Reds learned from their Civil War experience. One of the first things they did was to disarm the population. From that point, mass repression, mass arrests, mass deportations, mass murder, mass starvation were all a safe game for the powers that were. The worst they had to fear was a pitchfork in the guts or a knife in the back or the occasional hunting rifle. Not much for soldiers.
To this day, with the Soviet Union now dead 21 years, with a whole generation born and raised to adulthood without the SU, we are still denied our basic and traditional rights to self defense. Why? We are told that everyone would just start shooting each other and crime would be everywhere….but criminals are still armed and still murdering and too often, especially in the far regions, those criminals wear the uniforms of the police. The fact that everyone would start shooting is also laughable when statistics are examined.
While President Putin pushes through reforms, the local authorities, especially in our vast hinterland, do not feel they need to act like they work for the people. They do as they please, a tyrannical class who knows they have absolutely nothing to fear from a relatively unarmed population. This in turn breeds not respect but absolute contempt and often enough, criminal abuse.
For those of us fighting for our traditional rights, the US 2nd Amendment is a rare light in an ever darkening room. Governments will use the excuse of trying to protect the people from maniacs and crime, but are in reality, it is the bureaucrats protecting their power and position. In all cases where guns are banned, gun crime continues and often increases. As for maniacs, be it nuts with cars (NYC, Chapel Hill NC), swords (Japan), knives (China) or home made bombs (everywhere), insane people strike. They throw acid (Pakistan, UK), they throw fire bombs (France), they attack. What is worse, is, that the best way to stop a maniac is not psychology or jail or “talking to them”, it is a bullet in the head, that is why they are a maniac, because they are incapable of living in reality or stopping themselves.
The excuse that people will start shooting each other is also plain and silly. So it is our politicians saying that our society is full of incapable adolescents who can never be trusted? Then, please explain how we can trust them or the police, who themselves grew up and came from the same culture?
No it is about power and a total power over the people. There is a lot of desire to bad mouth the Tsar, particularly by the Communists, who claim he was a tyrant, and yet under him we were armed and under the progressives disarmed. Do not be fooled by a belief that progressives, leftists hate guns. Oh, no, they do not. What they hate is guns in the hands of those who are not marching in lock step of their ideology. They hate guns in the hands of those who think for themselves and do not obey without question. They hate guns in those whom they have slated for a barrel to the back of the ear.
So, do not fall for the false promises and do not extinguish the light that is left to allow humanity a measure of self respect.
Stanislav Mishin
The article reprinted with the kind permission from the author and originally appears on his blog, Mat Rodina
Source: Pravda
Related articles
- Pravda: Americans Never Give Up Your Guns (economicpolicyjournal.com)
- Pravda tells America: Keep your guns (wnd.com)
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