It Ain't Necessarily So ............

Josef Goebbels believed that all that was needed for a lie to be accepted was that it must be oft repeated and with a lot of volume. And that strategy is being tried here and now.

While engaging in astonishing viciousness, vulgarity and violence toward conservatives, liberals accuse cheerful, law-abiding Tea Party activists of being violent racists.

Responding to these vile charges, conservative television pundits think it's a great comeback to say: "There is a fringe on both sides."

Both sides? Really? How about: "That's a complete lie"?

Did that occur to the simpering morons as a possible reply to the slanderous claim that conservatives are fiery racists?

The most notorious accusations of "racism" at anti-Obama rallies so far has consisted of the allegation that one black congressman was spat upon and another called the N-word 15 times at an anti-ObamaCare rally on Capitol Hill last March. The particularly sensitive Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., perhaps walking too closely to a protester chanting "Kill the Bill," was hit with some spittle -- and briefly thought he was a Freedom Rider! When observers contested Cleaver's account -- with massive video evidence -- he took back his claim of being spat upon.

The slanderous claim that a protester called the civil rights hero John Lewis the N-word 15 times was an outrageous lie -- never made by Lewis himself -- but promoted endlessly by teary-eyed reporters, most of whom cannot count to 15. The media never retracted it, even after the N-word allegation was proved false with a still-uncollected $100,000 reward for two seconds of video proof taken from a protest crawling with video cameras and reporters hungry for an act of racism not to mention a stash of cash.

When St. Louis Tea Party co-founder Dana Loesch did make the point on CNN that no one spat on any black congressmen at the anti-ObamaCare rally, a liberal on the panel, Nancy Giles, told her to "shut your mouth," while alleged "comedian" Stephanie Miller repeatedly called Tea Party activists "tea baggers."It's like watching Hitler hysterically denounce Poland for being mean to Nazi Germany while Polish TV commentators defend Poland by saying, "There are mistakes on both sides."

Meanwhile, we do have video proof of the New Black Panthers standing outside a polling station in Philadelphia in 2008 with billy clubs threatening white voters who tried to vote. And there is video footage of Sarah Palin, Karl Rove, Condoleezza Rice as well as a slew of conservative college speakers being assaulted by crazed liberals.

We also have evidence of liberals' proclivity for violence in the form of mountains of arrest records. Liberal protesters at the 2008 Republican National Convention were arrested for smashing police cars, slashing tires, breaking store windows, and for possessing Molotov cocktails, napalm bombs and assorted firearms. (If only they could muster up that kind of fighting spirit on foreign battlefields.)There were no arrests of conservatives at the Democratic National Convention.

Over the past couple of election cycles, Bush and McCain election headquarters around the country have been repeatedly vandalized, ransacked, burglarized and shot at (by staunch gun-control advocates, no doubt); Bush and McCain campaign signs have been torched; and Republican campaign volunteers have been physically attacked.

In the fall of 2008, Obama supporters Mace'd elderly volunteers in a McCain campaign office in Galax, Va. In separate attacks, a half-dozen liberals threw Molotov cocktails at McCain signs on families' front yards in and around Portland, Ore. One Obama supporter broke a McCain sign being held by a small middle-aged woman in midtown Manhattan before hitting her in the face with the stick.

These are just a few acts of violence from the left too numerous to catalog. There were arrests in all these cases. There was, however, absolutely no national coverage of the attacks by Obama supporters. Since Obama became president, the only recorded violence at Tea Parties or Town Halls has been committed by liberals.

Last fall, a conservative had his finger bitten off by a man from a MoveOn.org crowd in Thousand Oaks, Calif. Two Service Employees International Union thugs have been charged with beating up an African-American selling anti-Obama bumper stickers at a St. Louis Tea Party in August 2009.

Respected elder statesmen of the Democratic Party have referred to Obama's "Negro dialect" (Harry Reid), said he would be getting them coffee a few years ago (Bill Clinton), and called him "clean" (Joe Biden). And that's not including the former Ku Klux Klan Democratic senator, the late Bob Byrd.

So I'm thinking that maybe when conservatives are called racists on TV, instead of saying, "There are fringe elements on both sides," conservative commentators might want to think about saying, "That is a complete lie."

Liberals explode in rage when we accuse them of being unpatriotic based on 50 years of treasonous behavior. They have zero examples of conservative racism, but the best our spokesmen can think to say when accused of racism is: "Man is imperfect."

Conservatives who prefer to come across on TV as wonderfully moderate rather than to speak the truth should find another line of work and stop defaming conservatives with their "both sides" pabulum.


Puhlease!

Pride and what follows ..........

The battle lines have been joined and the provisions of Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070 are in the maw of the judicial system.

Whatever was going to happen yesterday, this attempt by a state to protect its citizens from an invasion of illegals, kidnappers, drug cartels and violent criminals, was headed for the Supreme Court of the United States. In fact, after Mexico City, Phoenix holds the title of “World Capital for Kidnapping”,

The judicial decision wasn’t a surprise to many but I suspect that the aftermath may be. For a start, the Federal Law is still intact and many jurisdictions in Arizona may well seek to enforce it even more rigorously than before. Remember that the new Arizona law mirrored the Fed stuff that’s been around since the 1940’s except for one aspect. The new state law required that police officers determine a person’s immigration status if it was in doubt but only if they had been stopped for another offence.

Before, on the other hand, the police merely had the discretion to go that one step further but not the mandate. My guess is that the number of cases referred to ICE will increase. Waddya’ think?

The real message here is one of raw politics with more than a tinge of money thrown in.

Employers want cheap labor with no rights and no benefits.

Unions want membership dues.

Obama and the liberals want voters who they believe will prolong their grip on the reins of power.

Sounds good if you’re a liberal but it may not be quite that simple. And, of course, if you are a liberal it has to be made simple.

What is the missing unknown from this hypothesis? Where is the “X”?

The absent element is the American citizen, the voter, the poor Schlub who picks up his lunch pail inside his front door each morning and heads off to another day of uncertain labor.

The absent element is that across this great country an overwhelming majority want to see illegal immigration brought under control. Of course, Obama didn’t win Arizona last time and there is no way in Hades he would do so again. But, of course he knows that, which is why it was OK to sic his DOJ attack dogs on this state.

But what about all the other states that were planning their own version of SB 1070? Well that was another reason for the federal lawsuit against Arizona. It was the warning shot across the bows.

However, it’s just possible that Obama’s hubris will be his undoing. A clear majority, nay a close plurality, want illegal immigration stopped and any conservative candidate this November or in 2012 who doesn’t use this perfectly sharpened spear doesn’t deserve to prevail.

Does Obama know this? Well on an intellectual level he must, even if he’s only half as smart as his acolytes profess.

But then perhaps, his own belief in his own invincibility gets in the way.

And we all know what comes before a fall.

Paint Your Wagon!

There are many people, smart and good people, who are deeply confused about the direction of the current administration. They are baffled as to why Obama and his acolytes cannot see what is happening to our economy. They keep telling everybody that we’ve turned the corner and yet all I seem to see are businesses in strip malls closing and no new ones being opened.

My mind goes to the old story of the IBM salesman who has failed to consummate his marriage and after several months just sits on the edge of the bed telling his new bride how wonderful it’s going to be.

I recently heard from of a gentleman who holds some real estate investments. We had met through Republican politics, but I sensed he was really uncommitted politically and certainly was no staunch Republican. It all started when he asked me how I was doing. I replied that I was doing great compared to many and said so.

He said, “You’re doing great? You are the only one I talk to who is doing great. All my tenants are struggling. These people in the Administration are so smart, why don’t they understand what is going on out here?”

What an opening – how could I pass on that one? So I told him what I thought he understood already. Yes, the folks in the Administration may be smart, but they have no experience. Virtually none of them has ever participated in the free enterprise system creating income and jobs, so how – and why – would you expect them to create policies that would help entrepreneurs and small-business owners move the economy forward. They may be smart, they may be great at writing papers and drawing charts with arrows and symbols, but they are fairly low on wisdom. Wisdom comes from suffering experiences in life – not just living arcane social and economic theories.

A perfect example of this wisdom deficiency is the newest member of the administration, Donald Berwick, the man chosen to administer the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. These two behemoth bureaucracies consume 4% of our gross domestic product, and that’s even before Obamacare vastly increases the amount of money running through their bureaucratic fingers. So one might think Dr. Berwick would have had some experience running a major medical operation or a similar entity.

It turns out that his most significant position was as President of the non-profit Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). If you go to the IHI website, they self-describe the organization as “a small organization with a very big mission.” Not exactly the credentials most of us would consider when looking for someone to run an organization that dispenses hundreds of billions of dollars.

The important thing for Obama it seems is that Dr. Berwick has studied health care organizations and written heady papers and pontificated in speeches about how the health care system should be run. Since that is the background of the occupant of the Oval Office and almost all of his advisors, Dr. Berwick seems to be a natural choice.

Obama believes that should be good enough especially since Dr. Berwick shares his view of the world and how things should be. But it’s not as we shall surely see. And the people who should be pointing all this out are almost entirely silent.

Instead, the media simply circles the wagons!

It's nice to know it's not just me ..............

I do this only rarely for all kinds of reasons but mostly for three. When I was in school the biggest sin was plagiarism. Secondly, I hope you find here stuff that you cannot easily find elsewhere. Plus the fact that I’m addicted to my own deathless prose.

However, when I read the following, I had to pass it along. It was written by Robert Weissburg and published in “American Thinker”. And I am indebted to friends I’ve had in the San Francisco Bay Area for decades. Thanks Guys!

“As the Obama administration enters its second year, I -- and undoubtedly millions of others -- have struggled to develop a shorthand term that captures our emotional unease. Defining this discomfort is tricky. I reject nearly the entire Obama agenda, but the term "being opposed" lacks an emotional punch. Nor do terms like "worried" or "anxious" apply. I was more worried about America's future during the Johnson or Carter years, so it's not that dictionary, either. Nor, for that matter, is this about backroom odious deal-making and pork, which are endemic in American politics.
After auditioning countless political terms, I finally realized that the Obama administration and its congressional collaborators almost resemble a foreign occupying force, a coterie of politically and culturally non-indigenous leaders whose rule contravenes local values rooted in our national tradition. It is as if the United States has been occupied by a foreign power, and this transcends policy objections. It is not about Obama's birthplace. It is not about race, either; millions of white Americans have had black mayors and black governors, and this unease about out-of-synch values never surfaced.

The term I settled on is "alien rule" -- based on outsider values, regardless of policy benefits -- that generates agitation. This is what bloody anti-colonial strife was all about. No doubt, millions of Indians and Africans probably grasped that expelling the British guaranteed economic ruin and even worse governance, but at least the mess would be their mess. Just travel to Afghanistan and witness American military commanders' efforts to enlist tribal elders with promises of roads, clean water, dental clinics, and all else that America can freely provide. Many of these elders probably privately prefer abject poverty to foreign occupation since it would be their poverty, run by their people, according to their sensibilities.

This disquiet was a slow realization. Awareness began with Obama's odd pre-presidency associations, decades of being oblivious to Rev. Wright's anti-American ranting, his enduring friendship with the terrorist guy-in-the-neighborhood Bill Ayers, and the Saul Alinsky-flavored anti-capitalist community activism. Further add a hazy personal background -- an Indonesian childhood, shifting official names, and a paperless-trail climb through elite educational institutions.

None of this disqualified Obama from the presidency; rather, this background just doesn't fit with the conventional political résumé. It is just the "outsider?" quality that alarms. For all the yammering about George W. Bush's privileged background, his made-in-the-USA persona was absolutely indisputable. John McCain might be embarrassed about his Naval Academy class rank and iffy combat performance, but there was never any doubt of his authenticity. Countless conservatives despised Bill Clinton, but nobody ever, ever doubted his good-old-boy American bonafides.

The suspicion that Obama is an outsider, a figure who really doesn't "get" America, grew clearer from his initial appointments. What "native" would appoint Kevin Jennings, a militant gay activist, to oversee school safety? Or permit a Marxist rabble-rouser to be a "green jobs czar"? How about an Attorney General who began by accusing Americans of cowardice when it comes to discussing race? And who can forget Obama's weird defense of his pal Louis Henry Gates from "racist" Cambridge, Massachusetts cops? If the American Revolution had never occurred and the Queen had appointed Obama Royal Governor (after his distinguished service in Kenya), a trusted locally attuned aide would have first whispered in his ear, "Mr. Governor General, here in America, we do not automatically assume that the police were at fault," and the day would have been saved.

And then there's the "we are sorry, we'll never be arrogant again" rhetoric seemingly designed for a future President of the World election campaign. What made Obama's Cairo utterances so distressing was how they grated on American cultural sensibilities. And he just doesn't notice, perhaps akin to never hearing Rev. Wright anti-American diatribes. An American president does not pander to third-world audiences by lying about the Muslim contribution to America. Imagine Ronald Reagan, or any past American president, trying to win friends by apologizing. This appeal contravenes our national character and far exceeds a momentary embarrassment about garbled syntax or poor delivery. Then there's Obama's bizarre, totally unnecessary deep bowing to foreign potentates. Americans look foreign leaders squarely in the eye and firmly shake hands; we don't bow.

But far worse is Obama's tone-deafness about American government. How can any ordinary American, even a traditional liberal, believe that jamming through unpopular, debt-expanding legislation that consumes one-sixth of our GDP, sometimes with sly side-payments and with a thin majority, will eventually be judged legitimate? This is third-world, maximum-leader-style politics. That the legislation was barely understood even by its defenders and vehemently championed by a representative of that typical American city, San Francisco, only exacerbates the strangeness. And now President Obama sides with illegal aliens over the State of Arizona, which seeks to enforce the federal immigration law to protect American citizens from marauding drug gangs and other miscreants streaming in across the Mexican border.

Reciprocal public disengagement from President Obama is strongly suggested by recent poll data on public trust in government. According to a recent Pew report, only 22% of those asked trust the government always or most of the time, among the lowest figures in half a century. And while pro-government support has been slipping for decades, the Obama presidency has sharply exacerbated this drop. To be sure, many factors (in particular the economic downturn) contribute to this decline, but remember that Obama was recently elected by an often wildly enthusiastic popular majority. The collapse of trust undoubtedly transcends policy quibbles or a sluggish economy -- it is far more consistent with a deeper alienation.

Perhaps the clearest evidence for this "foreigner in our midst" mentality is the name given our resistance -- tea parties, an image that instantly invokes the American struggle against George III, a clueless foreign ruler from central casting. This history-laden label was hardly predetermined, but it instantly stuck (as did the election of Sen. Scott Brown as "the shot heard around the world" and tea partiers dressing up in colonial-era costumes). Perhaps subconsciously, Obama does remind Americans of when the U.S. was really occupied by a foreign power. A Declaration of Independence passage may still resonate: "HE [George III] has erected a Multitude of new Offices [Czars], and sent hither Swarms of Officers [recently hired IRS agents] to harass our People, and eat out the Substance." What's next?

What’s next indeed?

Well for a start, November 2nd.

And I can see it from my house.

Things I learned at my Grandmother's knee .....

The Democrats are depressed about their collapsing poll numbers, so it's time to start calling conservatives "racist."

As we now know from the Journolist list-serv, where hundreds of liberal journalists chat with one another, and which was leaked to Daily Caller this week, journalists cry "racism" whenever they need to distract from bad news for Obama. (Ironically, this story did not make headlines.)

When the Rev. Jeremiah Wright scandal broke during the 2008 campaign, the first response of Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent was to demand that they start randomly picking conservatives -- "Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares -- and call them racists."

Ackerman, frequent guest on MSNBC's "Rachel Maddow Show," continued on Journolist: "What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a right-winger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically."

This is what "racism" has come to in America. Democrats are in trouble, so they say "let's call conservatives racists." We always knew it, but the Journolist postings gave us the smoking gun.

This explains why we've heard so much about Tea Partiers being "racists" lately.

But despite a frantic search, the media have been unable to produce any actual evidence of racism at the Tea Parties. Even the trace elements are either frauds or utterly trivial.

For example, there was blind terror last week over a Tea Party billboard in northern Iowa that showed a picture of Adolf Hitler, Obama and Vladimir Lenin under the headings: "National Socialism," "Democratic Socialism" and "Marxist Socialism."

Overheated? Certainly. Racist? No. Unless liberals are about to break the news that Lenin and Hitler were black, what we have here, is not racism.

I'm not even sure why liberals are so testy: As an aficionado of liberal talk radio, because it’s important to know your enemy, I've heard both Ed Schultz and Randi Rhodes repeatedly say socialism is terrific. (Given their ratings, this is understandable.) And let’s not forget about Air America.

To the Al Franken supporters I would say, don’t go there. Right now I don’t have the time and it’s off-topic anyway.

Most sickeningly, the mainstream media continue to spread the despicable lie that someone called civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis the "N-word" 15 times during the anti-ObamaCare rally in Washington. Fifteen times!

That turned out to be another lie.

About a week after the protest, Andrew Breitbart offered a $100,000 reward for anyone who could produce a video of Lewis being called the N-word even once -- forget 15 times.

And whether the recent Breitbart tape and associated hoo-haw was real or not in terms of the words and context, what was undeniably real was the approval of the Black audience to racism aimed at Whites.

With hundreds of news cameras, cell phone cameras and camcorders capturing every nook and cranny of the Capitol Hill protest -- and news media hungry for an ugly, racist act -- it defies possibility that someone called Lewis the N-word once, much less 15 times, without one single camera capturing the incident.

And yet, to this day the reward remains unclaimed.

The truth is that Democrats did their best to provoke an ugly confrontation by marching a (shockingly undiverse) group of black Democrats right through the middle of the anti-ObamaCare protest. But they didn't get one, so the media just lied and asserted Lewis was called the N-word.

Indeed, news anchor after news anchor has indignantly claimed to have footage of the incident, teasing viewers by saying, "We'll get that right up" or claiming personally to have seen the video -– and then you watch the whole program without ever seeing footage of anyone calling Lewis the N-word.

Dateline: April 18, 2010, CNN's Don Lemon: "We have the tape here at CNN. I saw it on CNN's 'State of the Union.'" And yet, Lemon never got around to showing viewers that tape. IF YOU HAVE THE TAPE, DON, CLAIM YOUR $100,000 REWARD!

And now this week, with the NAACP accusing the Tea Partiers of harboring racists, and conservatives demanding proof, the George Soros-backed Center for American Progress ran a 45-second video allegedly showing racism at the Tea Parties.

One of the videos shows what turned out to be a liberal plant announcing, "I'm a proud racist!" Apparently this was their best shot, because they had to work this video into the montage twice, amid utterly innocuous posters, for example, saying, "God bless Glenn Beck." So I guess they didn't have anything better.

Here's the part Soros' people didn't show you: In the fuller video shown on the Glenn Beck show, the Tea Partiers surrounded the (liberal plant) racist, jeering at him, telling him he's not one of them and to go home. In a spectacularly evil fraud, all that was edited out.

Just hours later on MSNBC, Chris Matthews was loudly proclaiming that he would believe the Tea Partiers weren't racist when he sees "just one of those Tea Party people pull down one of those racist signs at the next Tea Party rally. I'm going to just wait. Reach over, grab the sign and tear it out of the guy's hands. Then I will believe you."

Well, here it was. The (liberal plant) racist was driven from the Tea Party by the Tea Partiers. Frankly, I hope they got out of camera shot and beat the crap out of him but, as my Grandmother used to say, “If wishes were horses then beggars would ride”.

The Magnificent Seven

One of the lines we've heard again and again from the Left and even from mediocre Republicans like Bob Bennett and Lindsey Graham is that the Tea Party has no agenda. The idea is supposed to be that the Tea Party is just a bunch of slack-jawed, backwoods hillbillies who are rallying against progress and a black President. Of course, this is not true. The reason the Tea Party exists is because patriotic Americans all across this country are deeply concerned about our nation's future.

Now, I'm not volunteering for the job but there is no "Tea Party leader" nor any one person who can speak for the Tea Party. Still, I've attended Tea Party events and I think I have a pretty good grip on what people at the Tea Parties want but I’ll spell that out in a moment.

But all that being said, Tea Partiers tend to be considerably more informed than the average person about politics; so most of them are well aware of the legislative limitations we'll face if the GOP takes back the House, but doesn't control the Senate or the presidency. Additionally, it's no secret that the American people and the Republican base have very little confidence in the GOP.

So, let's be honest here: if the GOP takes the House back, it will be because of the American people's deep dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party, not their love for the Republican Party.

Ever since its inception the movement has held three concepts close to its heart and these are smaller government, fiscal responsibility and adherence to our Constitution. But perhaps these are a little too general and therefore they have to be “codified” into a humble, limited agenda that helps rebuild the American people's confidence in the GOP's ability to govern. Here are seven doable agenda items that can help make that happen.

1) Kill earmarks: Earmarks don't make up a large percentage of the budget, but they have become a tremendous corrupting influence on Congress. The American people believe, quite correctly, that campaign contributors give money to congressmen and they pay them back for the favor by funneling millions of dollars in earmarks their way. We will not have an honest government in this country as long as this practice continues.

2) Read the bills: During Obama's tenure, we've been treated to massive bills that have been passed without ANYBODY actually reading them from end-to-end. This is simply unacceptable to the American people. Yes, every congressman might not read every bill, but at least their staff should read the bills so that they can inform them about what they're voting on.

Recently Rand Paul said he believed Congress should have to wait one day for every 20 pages of a bill before it’s voted upon.

That seems to me to be a fairly reasonable proposition.

3) Kill the funding for Obamacare: To fully repeal Obamacare, you need to control the House, have 60 votes in the Senate, and control the presidency. That's not going to be the case in 2011. Still, the GOP needn’t be helpless. Simply refusing to fund this monstrosity would do a lot until we can send Obama back to wherever he comes from and that means taking back control of the Hill.

Consider this;

"The IRS might have to hire as many as 16,000 new employees to enforce all the new taxes and penalties the bill calls for! And that doesn’t include all the other government jobs from the 159 new agencies, panels, commissions and departments this bill will create."

What does it take to fund all those government jobs, agencies, panels, & commissions? Tax dollars. Your dollars.

Now, who controls the purse strings? Congress. …

So, can we gut Obamacare by refusing to fund it? YES. WE. CAN. Is this a viable strategy? Yes, it is.

Defunding Obamacare isn't as good as repealing it, but it can stop the bill in its tracks until we do have the votes to repeal it.

4) Security first border proposal: Even the most diehard advocates of amnesty and open borders in Congress claim to be for security when they're called on it. So, if the GOP takes back the House, there will be an opportunity to separate the wheat from the chaff by passing a tough new security law that finishes building the fence, adds more border patrol agents, beefs up interior enforcement, severely penalizes businesses that knowingly hire illegals, ends catch and release programs for people of all nationalities, and do a better job of tracking people who come into America on visas of whatever flavor.

Then, the American people will be able to see once and for all who on Capitol Hill wants to actually end illegal immigration -- and who just gives lip service to the idea while privately doing everything possible to make sure the border remains open.

5) Investigate, investigate, investigate: The Obama Administration has been engaging in more than a few questionably legal maneuvers with no oversight of significance from Congress. If the GOP takes over the House, it will get subpoena power and it can start to get the sort of answers the public has been waiting for in the Sestak/Romanoff bribery case, the dropped Black Panther prosecutions, and the partisan corruption of the census -- among other issues.

Barack Obama has been treated as being above the law by the Democrats in Congress and it's about time that his administration was forced to start playing by the rules.

6) Get the government out of private industry: Congress controls the purse strings and it can make sure that not another dime goes to fund bailouts at private companies or at Freddie and Fannie. Moreover, the GOP needs to do what it can to move the government out of private industry as quickly as possible. We need to work to get the government out of the banks, the car companies, and student loan industry by 2012.

If that means some companies go out of business, that's unfortunate, but any corporation that can only survive with the government's help deserves to go out of business. Although it's probably too much to hope for, that should apply to corporate welfare for farms and inefficient alternative sources of energy as well.

7) Pay for all new spending: Here's a simple rule: Any NEW spending, including "emergency spending," has to be paid for by cutting spending from other places in the budget. This will flatten the growth of government, impose spending discipline as the "new normal" in D.C., and get people used to the idea of cutting government programs -- something that has rarely happened in recent years.

If the GOP can do at least that much, in combination with stopping earmarks and preventing Obamacare from being implemented, it can restore its reputation for responsible governance and fiscal discipline while setting the stage for the sort of gains we need in 2012 to get the country back on track fiscally.

And those are all things that resonate with a huge swath of the American people.

They’re easy to understand, get behind and articulate and can be the platform we need to build in order to rid ourselves of this odious little boy in the Oval Office.

Of course, liberals might want to change the title of this post to, "The Seven Deadly Sins" but that's their problem.

Get rid of all the lawyers starting from the top

Yesterday evening I had an amazing conversation and I report on it now. The person is a liberal although that person pretends I’ve got that all wrong.

Anyway the thrust of the concern was the cost of the upcoming changes to the healthcare system in this country, more commonly known as Obamacare.

Well I couldn’t wait to thrust my boot into that soon-to-be corpse and so I related a conversation with an insurance broker. That person affirms that insurance companies cannot, in future, refuse coverage because of pre-existing conditions.

Whoopee! Fireworks! Champagne and Cake! Liberal victory!

Not so fast. The cost will be between $400 and $900 per month and I’ll leave it to you to do the math.

If you are surprised you should not be.

When Congress required most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, Democrats denied that they were creating a new tax. But in court, the Obama administration and its allies now defend the requirement as an exercise of the government’s “power to lay and collect taxes.”

Administration officials say the tax argument is a linchpin of their legal case in defense of the health care overhaul and its individual mandate, now being challenged in court by more than 20 states and several private organizations.

The individual mandate is a tax, denials of the administration to the contrary. And, as it now seems clear, the administration is now going to enthusiastically call it a tax in order to keep it from being thrown out as blatantly unconstitutional. You see, the Commerce Clause argument falls down when you put too much pressure on it.

It was at this point that I had the uneasy feeling that I was approaching waters, the depth of which, I was ill-equipped to handle. So I asked the granddaughter of a friend. The granddaughter has just finished 1st year law school and this is what I got.

"To assess the constitutionality of a claim of power under the Commerce Clause, the primary question becomes, 'what class of activity is Congress seeking to regulate?' Only when this question is answered can the Court assess whether that class of activity substantially affects interstate commerce. Significantly, the mandate imposed by the pending bills does not regulate or prohibit the economic activity of providing or administering health insurance. Nor does it regulate or prohibit the economic activity of providing health care, whether by doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, or other entities engaged in the business of providing a medical good or service. Indeed, the health care mandate does not purport to regulate or prohibit activity of any kind, whether economic or non-economic. To the contrary, it purports to 'regulate' inactivity."

Now this kid will go far but it really didn't help me too much and so I asked for more. And I got this.

"Proponents of the individual mandate are contending that, under its power to 'regulate commerce…among the several states,' Congress may regulate the doing of nothing at all! In other words, the statute purports to convert inactivity into a class of activity. By its own plain terms, the individual mandate provision regulates the absence of action. To uphold this power under its existing doctrine, the Court must conclude that an individual’s failure to enter into a contract for health insurance is an activity that is 'economic' in nature– that is, it is part of a 'class of activity' that 'substantially affects interstate commerce'"'

But I did understand this bit. Never in this nation’s history has the commerce power been used to require a person who does nothing to engage in economic activity.

Now it's all crystal clear. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's almost certainly not a gekko with a cute Cockey accent. It's a tax which means, by the way, that when Obama promised not to raise taxes: …. he lied.

And he thinks that the American people will swallow that lie, because he and his party’s leadership cadre all think that the American people are stupid.