View Full Version : Even hard core liberals are beginning to wake up.
Is hell freezing over?
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/05/18/Joe-Scarborough-Piers-Morgan-Concede-gun-rights-activists-not-crazy
GratefulCitizen
05-18-2013, 19:47
People are restrained from taking destructive actions by internal and external means.
Many currently in power have demonstrated they lack internal restraint.
When powerful people sense they are losing their power, desperate actions are often taken.
Liberal defections give me a feeling of foreboding.
From the OP's article:
"Moreover, our government is not only corrupt, it is vigorously protected by a media that is just as corrupt (NEVER forget the media ignored, dismissed, and even defended the IRS targeting conservatives). The government and media can scream all they want that background checks won't be used to create a backdoor registry…
But the government and media are liars."
People are restrained from taking destructive actions by internal and external means.
Many currently in power have demonstrated they lack internal restraint.
When powerful people sense they are losing their power, desperate actions are often taken.
Liberal defections give me a feeling of foreboding.
Excuse me-did anyone read anything about Benghazi in that article? ;)
What's the problem? Let's go golfing (:boohoo ) like someone did today while his Rome burns :confused::confused: Hell, Nixon was better than this during his fall.
Trapper John
05-18-2013, 20:24
Best news I have heard all day. Maybe folks will finally wake up? Aaah, hope springs eternal :D I'll sleep just a little better with that thought. ;)
Thanks for the post, Bro.
Don't get too comfortable...
...this assault is far from over. Usually a lull in the fire isn't because the attackers have given up, its just because they have to reload and maneuver.
Don't get too comfortable...
...this assault is far from over. Usually a lull in the fire isn't because the attackers have given up, its just because they have to reload and maneuver.
Or, they're misdirecting scrutiny, and taking the heat off the most serious problem.
longrange1947
05-19-2013, 08:16
The media is already back pedaling in several op ed pieces. I knew they would still be in his pocket. :munchin :(
Even though the media has been doing its job more over the past week or so, that is still light-hearted. They are acting skeptical and critical which is how they are supposed to act normally, as opposed to their normal behavior as a public relations arm for the administration. Could you imagine if this was President Bush and the IRS had gone after various left-wing groups, and stalled their approval until after midterm elections, and also that the administration, in addition to having a terrorist attack happen on its watch (because they'd criticize Bush for that too) had lied to the American people and done so for an election:eek: There'd be a mob on the White House lawn and there'd be talk of definite impeachment I'd bet.
They'd be hanging Bush in effigy on every campus in the Country, and 3 or 4 hour-long news stories would have already been aired.
Well, the Obama crew is denying responsibility, trivializing the issues, and making counteraccusations. Surprising.
If his pocketpress smells the wind blowing from the other direction, they'll do their best to COA. Some are, anyway. Regardless.
And from the "right"...
'Obamagate' danger for the GOP: political overreach
CSM, 18 mAY 2013
Republicans are jumping all over what they see as major scandals in the Obama administration, including Benghazi, the IRS, and checking journalists’ phone records. But some in the GOP are warning against the perception of overreach for partisan purposes.
<snip>Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich concedes that Republicans “overreached” in 1998 when they pushed for then-President Bill Clinton’s impeachment in the Monica Lewinsky affair.
Today, Gingrich told NPR Friday, House Republicans leading the investigative parade “need to be calm and factual,” proceeding with caution as they sniff out any administration wrongdoing.<snip>
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/2013/0518/Obamagate-danger-for-the-GOP-political-overreach?nav=topic-tag_topic_page-storyList
As well as from History...
Playing the IRS card: Six presidents who used the IRS to bash political foes
CSM, 18 mAY 2013
Here's how six administrations played the IRS card.
Coolidge, FDR, JFK, RMN, WJC, GWB
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2013/0517/Playing-the-IRS-card-Six-presidents-who-used-the-IRS-to-bash-political-foes/President-Calvin-Coolidge-R?nav=topic-tag_topic_page-storyList
The proverbial "Fat Lady" may be warming up, but will she be given an audience to sing? Stay tuned.
Richard
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politic...page-storyList
Now that we know other shiftless politicians have abused the power of the Oval Office, there is no longer a reason to expect any different from the current POTUS.
You can all return to your regularly scheduled programing. Nothing to see here...
Now that we know other shiftless politicians have abused the power of the Oval Office, there is no longer a reason to expect any different from the current POTUS.
You can all return to your regularly scheduled programing. Nothing to see here...
I disagree - it needs to stop and we need to expect 'better' of our 'elected' officials.
However, YMMV.
Richard
I disagree - it needs to stop and we need to expect 'better' of our 'elected' officials.
However, YMMV.
Richard
Obama wasn't re-elected fairly, due to the fact that Tea Party members and other voters of the parties opposing the dems were admittedly suppressed by the IRS.
Since the perpetrators of the suppression confessed, it stands to reason that his party cheated.
The re-election should be rendered null, IMO. (As well as the election.)
Not too mention misleading voters regarding Benghazi.
Obama wasn't re-elected fairly, due to the fact that Tea Party members and other voters of the parties opposing the dems were admittedly suppressed by the IRS.
Since the perpetrators of the suppression confessed, it stands to reason that his party cheated.
The re-election should be rendered null, IMO. (As well as the election.)
Not too mention misleading voters regarding Benghazi.
And you think the IRS "suppressed" voters going to the polls? :confused:
From what I've read, the IRS mucked up the tax determination status of a number of organizations seeking C4 status, both conservative and progressive, but "suppressed"...???
Richard
And you think the IRS "suppressed" voters going to the polls? :confused:
From what I've read, the IRS mucked up the tax determination status of a number of organizations seeking C4 status, both conservative and progressive, but "suppressed"...???
Richard
Suppression is suppression. It boils down to intent.
The dems had carte blanche from the IRS to put together their grassroots movements, while the IRS made it virtually impossible for Conservatives to do likewise. Those movements would have exponentiated non-dem votes, which is why the IRS was used to suppress them.
So-yes.
The Benghazi misdirection also technically suppressed votes in opposition to Obama, because there is a good chance that if the truth were known just prior to the election, Obama would have lost-which is why they fabricated the ancillary youtube shit and changed the talking points 12 times.
People would have known how Obama operates before he was even elected, but his pocketpress wouldn't let him be properly vetted.
Suppression is suppression. It boils down to intent.
The dems had carte blanche from the IRS to put together their grassroots movements, while the IRS made it virtually impossible for Conservatives to do likewise. Those movements would have exponentiated non-dem votes, which is why the IRS was used to suppress them.
So-yes.
The Benghazi misdirection also technically suppressed votes in opposition to Obama, because there is a good chance that if the truth were known just prior to the election, Obama would have lost-which is why they fabricated the ancillary youtube shit and changed the talking points 12 times.
People would have known how Obama operates before he was even elected, but his pocketpress wouldn't let him be properly vetted.
So the IRS shut down the blogosphere, Rushbo, Fox News, PS.com, etc for the last election?
Richard
So the IRS shut down the blogosphere, Rushbo, Fox News, etc for the last election?
Richard
WTF does that have to do with it?
Basically, Obama violated Alinsky's rule #7:
"A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag".
People got tired of the IRS suppression tactic, and the administration got busted for it.
Other tactics he's dragged out too long are not doing a fucking thing but agitate people and enact legislation the public doesn't want.
Richard, I suggest you listen to Rush Limbaugh for a couple months instead of NPR. That way you'll know what the hell is really going on instead of the brainwashing you get from those liberace news outlets.
WTF does that have to do with it?
Everything, according to you who, at every opportunity, decry govt inefficiency, and now claim that IRS' "foot dragging" (expected "big govt" ineffeciency) on the tax status of organizations seeking C4 status was (1) planned by the current administration (which is, in fact, TBD) and (2) the reason BHO was re-elected because the voters weren't informed enough to vote him out.
I say, "BS" to the idea of "suppression" - the voting public was duly "informed"...and the fact that BHO wasn't voted out despite the concerted efforts of the conservative factions in this country is a matter which should be factually examined and of concern to us all.
Richard
OBTW - I do listen to both Rush and Glenn several days a week, along with all the other news/opinion outlets I peruse.
Trapper John
05-20-2013, 06:44
I was watching a program last night (can't remember what one but I think it was CBS) while channel surfing and playing the damned GeoGuessr game. I picked up something interesting in the middle of a program.
Gist: Using behavioral science and gathering lots of data on possible/probable voters the O campaign developed very detailed profiles on likely voters, undecideds, and supporters. They used the information to target advertising that reached their audiences in some very unlikely and inexpensive places (e.g. National Geographic Channel). They developed very detailed calling plans to target specific voters. The comprehensiveness and detail of this was astonishing to the point of being scarily intrusive.
My point is that the combination of behavioral science and massive data gathering and good algorithms to sort data to produce useful information produced a dynamic picture of who, what, and where to target. Voter suppression played little or no role in the election.
After sleeping on this, the biggest concern to me is that this represents a significant turning point in electoral politics. Certainly, the Republicans are going to adopt this tactic as well. So the net effect is that, for at least national politics, we will be electing the best "manipulator" of public opinion not the best "leader" that promotes ideas and solutions to problems and issues and has the capacity to govern once elected. Philosophy of governance will not matter in the future. I suggest that it didn't matter in 2012!
Now it comes clear to me that all O had to do was continue to orate high minded ideals that were inspirational - i.e. be an excellent motivational speaker. Behind the scenes behavioral science and good information on each voter led to voter manipulation not suppression.
Voila - 1984 here we are :(
The question is how do we combat this new reality? Or do we? To my way of thinking this undermines the very foundation of the principles upon which this great nation was built.
John Galts everywhere rise up! "We have met the enemy and they is us!"
I say, "BS" to the idea of "suppression" - the voting public was duly "informed"...
You must not have perused any of this information:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3021520/posts
It's been established that just about zero conservative grassroots organizations were granted tax exempt status in 2011 leading up to the re-election, while just about 100% of progressive organizations were rubber stamped.
If you can't see how potential Romney votes were suppressed by this tactic, then I don't get your logic.
I'd love to be able to say, "Well, we'll just see how this works out.", but-since the msm didn't report on the suppression for years, I can't trust the fact that they'll report on the truth regarding any of these scandals now.
Even if Obama did throw them under the bus with the AP bug.
No, I hadn't read "Dan From Squirrel Hill's" blog, but read the Congressional hearing pieces of the newly appointed IRS Commisioner and parts of the IG report looking into the situation, a number of reports and opinions from both sides of the aisle and throughout the news media (including this one http://www.npr.org/2013/05/19/185206908/nonconservative-groups-say-irs-scrutinized-them-too ), watched Face The Nation (Bob Schieffer) and This Week (George Will), listened to a litany of opinions being offered up throughout the blogosphere, etc.
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50147143n
It seems to me as if the Democrat reelection movement did prove to be more focused and adept at influencing voters opinions with their narrative than the assundry Republican and Independent movements; the IRS proved yet again the inefficiency and potential perils of a large government agency tasked with carrying out a complex law when yielding such power to a single, overwhelmed, unsupervised, mid-level bureaucrat or office; the current administration confronts what nearly all two-term administrations seem to face - problems it can no longer blame on the previous administration; and the blogosphere will make of it what it will as Congress now tries to convince us it has control of the train it drives in an environment which increasingly appears more hostile as the perception grows otherwise.
But "suppression" and the implying of a willful conspiracy and calls for impeachment (which George Will calls "silly")? I don't see it - yet - and will wait and see what shakes out of it all as the sun rises over the Sierras for what appears to be a beautiful day to be working outside.
Richard
But "suppression" and the implying of a willful conspiracy and calls for impeachment (which George Will calls "silly")? I don't see it - yet - and will wait and see what shakes out of it all as the sun rises over the Sierras for what appears to be a beautiful day to be working outside.
Richard[/COLOR]
George Will calling something "silly" is an argument for your point? He's a freaking closet liberace.
Moderates are going to continue to wave off these rascalous undertakings for as long as they can, but one day the truth will come out.
The IRS, AP, F&F, EPA and Benghazi misdeeds were directed from the top down; which cutouts were used, and how, is what needs to be revealed through impartial investigation.
A competent independent counsel should be appointed to dig the reality out of all four scandals.
We'll know whether justice will be served by 1 July of this year.
No, I hadn't read "Dan From Squirrel Hill's" blog,
Classic!:D
No, I hadn't read "Dan From Squirrel Hill's" blog,
IF you're going to pontificate from a position of omniscience, then you'd be wise to not disregard out of hand any points of view. I don't. I watch PBS, Dianne Sawyer and Scott Pelley almost nightly (after taking a Dramamine) in order to collect all the information I can.
That's why I'm aware of the misinformation being dished out by so-called impartial "journalists".
I honestly believed you were too smart to get sucked in...
I watch PBS, Dianne Sawyer and Scott Pelley almost nightly (after taking a Dramamine) in order to collect all the information I can.
Don't know how you can do that without suck starting a pistol.;)
Don't know how you can do that without suck starting a pistol.;)
A few months ago, I realized that the vast majority of political info I was getting, info I used to make conversational points, was from right wing sources. (Duh)
I actually went so far as to disconnect my cable service, which took nearly three months because the provider thought I'd change my mind (no NCIS reruns).
In that manner, I basically forced myself to watch that bullshit.
The spin turned out to be worse and potentially more damaging than I thought, although it was comical to watch Sawyer get drunk during the election.
I joined the Army to fight communists back in '78, and I'm sitting here watching my Country go further in that direction every day.
I don't get depressed or suicidal about it, but it does piss me off to no end.
IF you're going to pontificate from a position of omniscience, then you'd be wise to not disregard out of hand any points of view. I don't. I watch PBS, Dianne Sawyer and Scott Pelley almost nightly (after taking a Dramamine) in order to collect all the information I can.
That's why I'm aware of the misinformation being dished out by so-called impartial "journalists".
I honestly believed you were too smart to get sucked in...
The font wasn't 'pink' and I wasn't "disregarding" it - I just stated that I had not read it (it being the source of your stated opinion).
http://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2013/05/20/compilation-of-the-irss-actions-in-its-targeting-of-conservatives/
And when it comes to politics, none of us are omniscient...just opinionated.
[And when it comes to politics, none of us are omniscient...just opinionated.
Me? Opinionated? Please.
Trapper John
05-20-2013, 11:06
I'm going to lay this one up to hit out of the park for ya: I think I have had an epiphany!:eek:
It doesn't matter, right wing or left. This all a distraction - nothing but misinformation and disinformation that keeps us looking in the wrong direction. Politicians at the national level have gained celebrity status and image has trumped substance. What matters is a polished motivational message and a polished image out front. Behind the scenes its all about gathering data and processing that into information to target individual voter groups and even individual voters. That is how all national elections will be won in the future.
Governance, now that's a different matter. MO: Won't matter which celebrity is the POTUS or which group of professional politicos controls the legislature. Misinformation and disinformation will keep them distracted and dysfunctional. Day to day operation of the government will be run by the professional bureaucratic class anyway. The politicos in power for the moment will use IRS, DHS, and DoJ to further their ends.
Obama Care, the Tax Code, and Gun Control legislation is just about all that is needed. The tax code keeps the masses working so hard just to make ends meet they buy whatever the message is. They don't have time to think let alone critically think. They are bombarded by misinformation and disinformation to the point that is nearly a full time job to sort things out. The tax code makes sure that they will NEVER have the luxury of time. Indentured servants for life. Ergo, the government now controls our financial life.
Obamacare takes control of our health options. The massive data base that is created and controlled by what agency? You guessed it - the IRS! Now the government controls our financial health and our physical health and knows all they need to know about each and everyone of us.
Now add enhanced gun registration - Like that won't create a national gun registry. And just to be on the safe side, have DHS drain the supply of ammo by purchasing it all with our tax dollars. Bingo- a totalitarian state! Only we are so inundated with misinformation and disinformation and arguing over this and that in the side show that we don't realize what has happened let alone see the real enemy to do anything about it.
Fate accompli! and we did it to ourselves.:mad:
I'm going to lay this one up to hit out of the park for ya: I think I have had an epiphany!:eek:
It doesn't matter, right wing or left. This all a distraction - nothing but misinformation and disinformation that keeps us looking in the wrong direction. Politicians at the national level have gained celebrity status and image has trumped substance. What matters is a polished motivational message and a polished image out front. Behind the scenes its all about gathering data and processing that into information to target individual voter groups and even individual voters. That is how all national elections will be won in the future.
Governance, now that's a different matter. MO: Won't matter which celebrity is the POTUS or which group of professional politicos controls the legislature. Misinformation and disinformation will keep them distracted and dysfunctional. Day to day operation of the government will be run by the professional bureaucratic class anyway. The politicos in power for the moment will use IRS, DHS, and DoJ to further their ends.
Obama Care, the Tax Code, and Gun Control legislation is just about all that is needed. The tax code keeps the masses working so hard just to make ends meet they buy whatever the message is. They don't have time to think let alone critically think. They are bombarded by misinformation and disinformation to the point that is nearly a full time job to sort things out. The tax code makes sure that they will NEVER have the luxury of time. Indentured servants for life. Ergo, the government now controls our financial life.
Obamacare takes control of our health options. The massive data base that is created and controlled by what agency? You guessed it - the IRS! Now the government controls our financial health and our physical health and knows all they need to know about each and everyone of us.
Now add enhanced gun registration - Like that won't create a national gun registry. And just to be on the safe side, have DHS drain the supply of ammo by purchasing it all with our tax dollars. Bingo- a totalitarian state! Only we are so inundated with misinformation and disinformation and arguing over this and that in the side show that we don't realize what has happened let alone see the real enemy to do anything about it.
Fate accompli! and we did it to ourselves.:mad:
Very well said!
Obamacare takes control of our health options. The massive data base that is created and controlled by what agency? You guessed it - the IRS! Now the government controls our financial health and our physical health and knows all they need to know about each and everyone of us.
Now add enhanced gun registration - Like that won't create a national gun registry. And just to be on the safe side, have DHS drain the supply of ammo by purchasing it all with our tax dollars. Bingo- a totalitarian state! Only we are so inundated with misinformation and disinformation and arguing over this and that in the side show that we don't realize what has happened let alone see the real enemy to do anything about it.
I don't want to come across as a smartassed knowitall, but I've been bitching about this epiphany for years.
Trapper John
05-20-2013, 12:06
I don't want to come across as a smartassed knowitall, but I've been bitching about this epiphany for years.
Naaah, don't worry Bro! We all know you're a smart-assed-know-it-all and we love you anyway (no not in that way)! :D
Just that some of us are a little slow on the uptake ;)
uspsmark
05-20-2013, 12:47
I saw this the other day..."If you're going to be a smart ass, at least be smart. Otherwise, you're just an ass!"
I saw this the other day..."If you're going to be a smart ass, at least be smart. Otherwise, you're just an ass!"
When did I ever deny it?
The entire article is too long to post - but link to complete article below.
It Can Happen Here
by Victor Davis Hanson
PJ Media
May 19, 2013
Shortly before the second-term inauguration of Barack Obama this January, I wrote [1] the following of my worries over the Obama way of doing business:
But the untruths and hypocrisy hover in the partisan atmosphere and incrementally and insidiously undermine each new assertion that we hear from the president — some of them perhaps necessary and logical. Indeed, the more emphatically he adds “make no mistake about it,” “let me be perfectly clear,” “I’m not kidding,” or the ubiquitous “me,” “my,” and “I” to each new assertion, the more a growing number of people will come to know from the past that what follows simply is not true. Does this matter? Yes, because when the reckoning comes, it will be seen as logical rather than aberrant — and long overdue.
I ended my prognostications with the warning, “And so a reckoning is on the near horizon. Let us pray it does not take us all down with his administration.”
Four months later, it almost has.
Obama’s first-term methodology was in line with his history of dissimulation—promising to accept public campaign financing before becoming the first presidential candidate in the general election to refuse it; demagoguing the Bush-Cheney anti-terrorism protocols as a senator as useless or unlawful (e.g., Guantanamo as “al-Qaeda’s chief recruiting tool”), only to embrace or expand them all once he became president; and stoking racial animosity by weighing in during the Professor Henry Louis Gates psychodrama and the Trayvon Martin murder case, and asking La Raza activists “to punish our enemies.” The president had a strange habit, like a moth to a flame, of demagoguing the wealthy as toxic (spread the wealth, pay your fair share, fat cat, you didn’t build that, etc.), while being attracted to the very lifestyle that he damns, a sort of Martha’s Vineyard community organizer. Sometime in 2009, $250,000 in annual income became the dividing line between “us” and “them.” When we hear the president remind us that he is not a tyrant or monarch, then we assume he laments that fact; “make no mistake about it” ensures that you should believe that the president is not being “perfectly clear.”
Of course, in January I did not know yet that the IRS had targeted conservatives, in partisan fashion, to deflate their activism by denying their organizations pre-election tax-exempt status. (Do we now suspect why Harry Reid claimed that he knew the tax records of Mitt Romney, or why Austan Goolsbee popped off about the tax records of the Koch brothers, or how ProPublica had access to confidential tax information about Crossroads GPS [2] [compare the ProPublica boast on their website: “Now, for the first time, ProPublica has obtained the group's application for recognition of tax-exempt status, filed in September 2010. The IRS has not yet recognized Crossroads GPS as exempt, causing some tax experts to speculate that the agency is giving the application extra scrutiny”]?)
I did not think that the administration would be so haughty to go after the Associated Press and monitor their official and private communications, especially given that the source of most national security leaks par excellence was the Obama White House itself. Recall the sordid details of the AP scandal: the AP sat on a story until they were given a quiet administration go-ahead to publish the account—even as the administration desperately wanted to scoop them and high-five over the story of the Yemeni double agent 24 hours earlier than the AP.
The AP was not first advised of the administration investigations, nor were the phone checks focused and narrow. Instead, the administration went whole hog after two months of phone records to send a message to its pets in the press—secure that Eric Holder, in Fast and Furious fashion, could always go to Congress with “I don’t now,” followed by executive privilege and stonewalling.
Meanwhile, in Machiavellian fashion the Obama administration had divulged classified information about the Stuxnet virus, the bin Laden raid, and the drone targeting—in order that sympathetic Washington Post and New York Times reporters might have pre-election fuel for the hagiographic accounts of Obama, the underappreciated commander-in-chief.
While we all knew that a filmmaker did not prompt a riot that just happened to kill four Americans, we did not, until the testimony of State Department officials and the published communications of White House, CIA, and State Department staffers, appreciate just how far the administration would go to further a false narrative. And quite a myth it was: lead-from-behind Libya was still a success; al-Qaeda was still scattered; Obama was still on the global front lines condemning anti-Islamic bigots like Mr. Nakoula, whose religious hatred supposedly had spawned violence that even the Nobel laureate Barack Obama could not deter.
Yet in some sense, Obama won. The IRS, AP, and Benghazi scandals were all adroitly kept under wraps for months before the 2012 election, as Goolsbee and Reid thundered about right-wing wealthy people not paying their fair taxes, and the press echoed a “how dare you” when anyone questioned the frightening state of events.
And now?
Suddenly in 2013, what was once sure has become suspect. All the old referents are not as they once were. The world is turned upside down, and whether the government taps, politicizes, or lies is not so important if it subsidizes the 47%.
The National Rifle Association is now supposed to be a suspect paramilitary group, in the way the Boy Scouts are homophobes. One day we woke up and learned that by fiat women were suddenly eligible to serve in front-line combat units—no discussion, no hearings, no public debate. We had a “war on women” over whether upscale Sandra Fluke could get free birth control from the government, but snoozed through the Dr. Gosnell trial. The latter may have been the most lethal serial killer in U.S. history, if his last few years of snipping spinal cords were indicative of the his first three unmonitored decades of late-term aborting.
The Obama administration had decided to shut down as many coal plants as it can, stop most new gas and oil drilling on federal lands, and go after private companies ranging from huge aircraft manufacturers to the small guitar concerns—based not on law, but on certain theories of climate change and labor equity. As in the case with the IRS, the EPA is now synonymous with politically motivated activism designed to circumvent the law. The president in his State of the Union address assured us that cap-and-trade will be back, given, he says, the atypical violent weather that hit the U.S. in his term—even as global temperatures have not risen in 15 years, and hurricanes are now occurring more rarely than during the last administration.
For the first time in my life, I can not even find rifle shells on the store shelves—amid rumors that the Department of Homeland Security, at a time of national acrimony over the Second Amendments, believes it is an opportune moment to stockpile gargantuan amounts of ammunition—again, a sort of force multiplier in ensuring panic buying.
Are You a Correct Citizen?
So we are in unchartered territory. The IRS has lost our trust, both for its rank partisanship and its inability to come forward and explain its crimes. Eric Holder wants us to believe that he has no idea why his office was monitoring the communications of journalists, and yet now warrants the renewed trust of the president. Susan Rice serially misled on national television about Benghazi and so will probably be promoted to national security advisor. Even the Washington Post has decided that the president was lying in his defense about Benghazi (albeit with the funny sort of childhood rating of “four Pinocchios”) after the president’s team serially blamed the violence on an internet video, while the president simultaneously claimed that he also identified the crime immediately as a terrorist hit.
On campuses, the Departments of Justice and Education have issued new race/class/gender guidelines that would effectively deny constitutionally protected free speech in universities, a sort of politically correct idea that proper thinking is preferable to free thinking.
If you oppose “comprehensive immigration reform” you become a nativist or worse—and apparently are one of the “enemies” the president wants to “punish.” The president just condemned American guns that wind up in Mexico–implying right-wingers opposed his own remedies of new gun control and neglecting to mention that his own Fast and Furious operation sold thousands of lethal weapons to Mexican drug cartels.
Now What?
Government has become a sort of malignant metasisizing tumor, growing on its own, parasitical on healthy cells, always searching for new sources of nourishment, its purpose nothing other than growing bigger and faster and more powerful—until the exhausted host collapses. We have a sunshine king and our government has become a sort of virtual Versailles palace.
I suppose that when a presidential candidate urges his supporters to get in someone’s face, and to take a gun to a knife fight, from now on you better believe him. And, finally, the strangest thing about nearing the threshold of 1984? It comes with a whimper, not a bang, with a charismatic smile and mellifluous nonsense—with politically correct, egalitarian-minded bureaucrats with glasses and iPhones instead of fist-shaking jack-booted thugs.
http://victorhanson.com/wordpress/?p=5879#more-5879
Trapper John
05-20-2013, 13:44
The entire article is too long to post - but link to complete article below.
It Can Happen Here
by Victor Davis Hanson
PJ Media
May 19, 2013
And, finally, the strangest thing about nearing the threshold of 1984? It comes with a whimper, not a bang, with a charismatic smile and mellifluous nonsense—with politically correct, egalitarian-minded bureaucrats with glasses and iPhones instead of fist-shaking jack-booted thugs.
http://victorhanson.com/wordpress/?p=5879#more-5879
And that's the way it is May 20, 2013 :(
Is that a tear I see in Lady Liberty's eye?
Outstanding post, tonyz.
That article should be required reading for everybody in the Country.
VDH has captured the essence of what is the Obama administration debacle.
The Hanson piece may not wake the hard core brain dead Obama supporters - but those on the fence, or those paying even a modicum of attention should IMO read and consider his article.
ETA thanks D - your efforts over the years have not gone unnoticed or unappreciated.
Sigaba doesn't like VDH
...or his cohorts, FWIW. RMPLMAO.
Is that a tear I see in Lady Liberty's eye?
IMO, that tear was originally shed January 20, 2009.
She may weep occasionally - probably until these Statists are out of office.
She may weep occasionally - probably until these Statists are out of office.
Lady Liberty will be lucky if she isn't euthanized before then...