The Razor

Here’s Pat Sajak’s opinion on why Hollywood is full of liberals.

Is it hypocritical to ask people to drive electric cars while you’re flying in a Gulfstream? Or to tell them to conserve energy while the cumulative square-footage of your homes is measured in the tens of thousands of square feet? Or to ask them to pay more taxes while your high-priced accounting firms are protecting your money? Of course it is, but hypocrisy cannot penetrate the bubble.

And I particularly like this point:

And, frankly, I would be appalled if anyone made an important political or lifestyle decision based on the advice of a TV game show host. Maybe that’s the best news about the bubble: it not only protects us, but it protects you from us.

When the Left gets violent it doesn’t make the news. Sure do love this new civility.

As Jim Treacher writes:

This violent creep is with the Communications Workers of America, one of the groups that protested in front of FreedomWorks today, where Tabitha works. “Get a little bloody.” “Take ‘em down.” Assault a young woman who’s doing nothing but videotaping you. All part of the New Tone. I know Tabitha. She’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. I’m sick of this crap. We get months of “Teabaggers are violent” — hell, years — when in reality, Tea Partiers have been the recipients of violence. Meanwhile, these union guys are ratcheting up the violent rhetoric and now actually assaulting people in broad daylight. Come on, somebody defend this violent jackass. I dare you.

It’s almost as good as Qaddafi’s protection of human rights in Libya.

I have never bought the “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism” line. This line was a favorite of the Left during the Reagan-Bush years, then disappeared from bumper stickers during the Clinton years only to reappear alongside even worse bumper stickers during the administration of George W. Bush. Now the slogan has disappeared again, but this time, worse is afoot.

The attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, a Jewish woman, by Jared Lee Loughner, a man who out tin-foils tin-foil hat wackos everywhere, is being turned into a political cudgel to slam government critics. So far Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and Tea Party activists have borne the brunt of these attacks, but a low-level smear campaign is underway in social media such as Facebook. To be sure, this is no Kristallnacht for the Right, but it is clear that elements of the Left are going to get their hands bloody by using this tragedy for political gain in a way that Conservatives are incapable of doing.

The problem for the Right is that personal responsibility is one of its core values and it is difficult for us to blame a movement for the actions of one man. But the Left has no such qualms. The Left views people as incapable of free will and sees them instead as pawns used by greater forces and therefore fundamentally a victim. To a conservative a murderer is responsible for his actions and may pay for them with his life. A liberal sees that same murderer as an indictment of the society that bred and raised him, and believes that Society shares in some of the blame for his deed, if not all of it.

The same dynamic is in play now. Loughner is clearly crazy, as any man who cites such politically disparate books as Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto as inspirations – on top of rants about literacy, gold backed currency and conscience dreaming whatever that is. Loughner was not a member of any known political organization – unlike Obama fanatic Amy Bishop and Jacob J. Ward, both registered Democrats, or Norman Leboon, a man who threatened to kill another Jew in Congress, Eric Cantor. Leboon donated money to the Obama campaign, yet all these wackos who voted Democrat were quickly forgotten by the sympathetic press. The Right condoned this forgetfulness because it saw these people for what they were: nutjobs who were responsible for their own actions. Few on the Right would have blamed the Democratic party for their actions – and rightly so in my view.

But the Left has raced to use Loughner against the Right even though Giffords wasn’t liked by the Left. Giffords, aside from being a Jew, was a conservative Democrat, a member of the Blue Dogs who supported Gun Rights and a strong US foreign policy. Just two days before the shooting “BoyBlue” (it’s 2011: only cowards use fake names) wrote a scathing hit piece on DailyKos for Giffords’ vote against Nancy Pelosi for house minority leader. Following in Josef Stalin’s footsteps, when the Left’s short-memory interferes with its agenda, it has no trouble airbrushing history: Kos has deleted that post, evidently forgetting that on the Internet unlike the good old days of Pravda, everything lives forever.

Nothing stops the Left from a good story, even when the facts are inconvenient – such as the lack of evidence tying Loughner to any right-wing group. At this time we don’t know what the shooter’s motives were. Was Giffords targeted for being Jewish? If so garden variety anti-Semitism could be to blame. Giffords may have been targeted by the Arizona Tea Party for defeat, but the truth is that Giffords is far more conservative as a Democrat than many Republicans. If Tea Partiers were as violent as the Left believes, there are far more liberal Democrats who would have to be worried – but the Tea Partiers are about as dangerous as a roomful of bingo players, and Liberals know it deep down. But the facts won’t stop them from sticking to the fiction that they regularly spew out.

And where the Left’s hypocrisy is particularly blatant (and galling to the Right) is with Islam. Here we have a whole religion full of extremists acting on orders from others, geared especially towards violence, and even former President Bill Clinton refuses to call the religion on the carpet, choosing instead to attack a fat man in Boca Raton. Take the example of Ft Hood shooter Major Nidal Hasan. Hasan was in communication with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leader Anwar al-Awlaki, yet we were told time and time again not to jump to conclusions or blame Islam for the actions of one man.

So Liberals blame the Conservatives for the actions of a nutjob acting alone attacking a conservative Jewish politician, but does not blame Islam for the calm and deliberate actions of a man acting on behalf of self-described leaders of the religion (and its founder)?

Maybe they should try some of that conscience dreaming.

UPDATE: Make that a high level smear campaign. The Guardian – the Lefty newspaper that cannot blame Islam for acts committed in its name has no trouble with smearing the American Right. Given the Guardian’s love affair with Saddam Hussein, Islamic fascists and anti-Semites on the Left, it’s rather ironic to see the newspaper up in arms about a wounded Jew.

In a week the American political landscape will have changed – to what degree is impossible to tell. I suspect that regardless of the outcome, Obama and his supporters will spin it as a victory. They will trumpet each defeat of a Tea Party-backed candidate while completely ignoring the losses of Democrats. I suspect they will congratulate themselves for “limiting the damage” or “turning the tide” of the Republicans regardless how well the latter does. Politicians call such statements “spin”; the rest of us call them “lies”. So no matter what happens be prepared to be lied to over the next few weeks.

Obama has already touted Clinton’s success at surviving the Republican’s surge in 1994, but at the very least what will follow for the next two years will be a curbing of Obama’s leftist agenda. The problem for Obama is he is no Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton was a governor of a Southern state who took office as a moderate after years of moderate policies. The presidency is the first executive experience Obama has had, and rose to the top propelled by a combination of hard Left ideals, liberal racial guilt, and the Peter Principle. Contrary to what Republicans may have thought at the time, it was relatively easy for Clinton to move to the Right to dodge much of their Contract for America. It will be impossible for Obama to do the same because what Obama considers the Right is to the left of center for the majority of voters. Hanging around like-minded liberals for your career will skew your perspective, and from Obama’s performance in office so far it’s clear that the man doesn’t understand the American political landscape as much as he believes.

That is why I believe a replay of the political dynamics of 1994-96 is unlikely in 2010-12. Add in the fundamental fact that History never repeats itself in the way we think and is nearly impossible that Obama will repeat Clinton’s success at re-election.

That isn’t to say that Obama won’t be re-elected. In fact at this point I would have to say that if his re-election were being held next Tuesday, he would likely eek out a victory. Granted, he would squeeze out a win against an amorphous generic Republican opponent, but 21 months is simply not enough time for all but the gravest doubters among independents and Democrats to give up the figure they elected to office in 2008. After all, they didn’t elect a man to office – they elected a symbol, and symbols take a long time to die.

The next 15 months will be Obama’s acid test. He will be forced to govern, instead of mailing it in from a golf course while a Leftist Congress does his work for him. Blaming George Bush will gain even less traction than it does today, although it is likely that he will try to turn the Republicans into a scapegoat. The problem with the latter strategy is that the Republicans will have some power and will be able to enact legislation that forces Obama to act. Some of this legislation will be tempered by a more left-wing Senate than the expected Republican-controlled House, but Obama will be forced to make decisions on legislation that he does not support. And Obama has shown the inability to be decisive – a remarkable deficit in a modern leader.

Governing will be made even harder by the fact that the Democrats who survive the election will have done so in spite of Obama, not because of him. Obama’s political capital deficit is nowhere near as large as the deficit he has created in the federal budget, but it’s significant. Democratic politicians will bear the brunt of his unpopularity this election, and won’t own him any favors for when the time comes for his re-election campaign – which starts in earnest in just over a year or so.

That completely ignores the opinion of my elderly neighbor, a god-fearing woman who had Obama pictures hanging throughout her house. I spoke to her over the weekend. The Obama pictures have been taken down and what remains are the bitter words of a former Obama supporter who regrets her vote and hopes to live long enough to vote him out of office. Are former supporters like her rare in the landscape? Perhaps, but I would guess that they are more numerous than minority listeners of NPR.

10/27/2010 UPDATE:
It’s worth remembering how we got to where we are today. In her piece Elections Have Consequences Debbie Hamilton reminds us “Obama’s demise is his own doing. Obama’s presidency and policies are the reason for the TEA party and the return to the Constitution by Republicans, some Democrats, and some Independents.” Yep. The political landscape would have been vastly different had Obama governed in a bi-partisan way. But he was never a bi-partisan thinker. It’s difficult to take your opponent seriously if you never listen to his ideas or put yourself in her shoes. Obama never had the intellectual capacity to do that – and still doesn’t judging by his recent statements.

The Democrats are going to get beaten badly in November. Not just because the economy is ailing. And not just because Obama over-read his mandate in governing too far left. But because a comeuppance is due the arrogant elites whose undisguised contempt for the great unwashed prevents them from conceding a modicum of serious thought to those who dare oppose them.

Krauthammer shows his genius once again. I’m also surprised that the WaPo would print it. Perhaps it’s because he’s been associated with the paper for so long – they picked him up while he was associated with the Mondale campaign (whom I voted for in 1984 – in the interest of full disclosure).

I doubt the paper would hire someone like him now.

This little chart says it all:

Let’s see… Republicans were responsible for FY 2007 Budget, the Democrats were responsible for FY 2008 and later, having taken over Congress in the 2006 election.

Read the rest at the Washington Examiner.

I’m glad I played a role in getting this guy elected.

Link.

Nondiscrimination laws should be applied equally among all citizens, including those who happen to be white. The need for inclusiveness in our society is undeniable and irreversible, both in our markets and in our communities. Our government should be in the business of enabling opportunity for all, not in picking winners. It can do so by ensuring that artificial distinctions such as race do not determine outcomes.

I’m not sure what it is about Democratic presidents being unable to keep their mouths shut after they leave office. Reagan never gave his opinions about events after his time in office, and neither did Ford. George HW Bush only surfaces from retirement to push for aid projects in Haiti and elsewhere. George W. Bush has disappeared completely, leaving the defense of his legacy to Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Dana Perino.

But Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter just can’t keep their traps closed. Throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s Carter ran his own shadow diplomacy, continuing his failed presidency by undermining Clinton and Bush administration efforts in North Korea, Syria, Iran, Venezuela and elsewhere. Clinton himself has emerged as Obama’s champion ever since Obama neutered Hillary in the 2008 Democratic primaries. On the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing, Clinton has even continued to use the terror attack against domestic opposition, just as he did 15 years ago.

What I find particularly disturbing is the ease in which Clinton uses an attack like Oklahoma City to smear anyone who disagrees with him and by association, the Democratic party, in order to silence them. Contrast this approach to that taken by Obama and the Democrats towards the Muslim world. In his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo in June 2009, Obama said, “The enduring faith of over a billion people is so much bigger than the narrow hatred of a few. Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism—it is an important part of promoting peace.” Clinton himself has bristled at people identifying “the forces of radicalism and terror” with Islam.

Yet Clinton has no difficulty with lumping in Timothy McVeigh – whose actions, lest we not forget, were motivated by Clinton’s heavy-handed siege of the Branch Davidian complex in Waco Texas two years before – with anyone who disagrees with the government today. ”But remember, words have consequences as much as actions do, and what we advocate, commensurate with our position and responsibility, we have to take responsibility for. We owe that to Oklahoma City.” No, we owe the victims of Oklahoma City a fair accounting of why they died, and their deaths had nothing to do with the grassroots tea party movements of today.

Yet while Clinton, Obama and the mainstream press have no problem linking every politically motivated incident with their political opponents, they have not held Muslims to the same standards. Even during his own administration that averaged over one terrorist attack a year perpetrated by a Muslim, Clinton and his administration never dared equated the actions of the radicals with the broader religion they claimed to be acting in the name of.

January 25, 1993, four days after Clinton was inaugurated, Mir Aimal Kansi, a Pakistani national, fires an AK-47 into cars outside of CIA Headquarters, killing 2.
February 26, 1993, first World Trade Center bombings by a conspiracy of 5 groups: Jamaat Al-Fuqra’/Gamaat Islamiya/Hamas/Islamic Jihad/National Islamic Front.
June 1993, a plot hatched by Omar Abdel-Rahman to bomb New York landmarks including the Lincoln Tunnel and UN Headquarters was foiled. March 1, 1994, Rashid Baz guns down a Hasidic seminary student in Brooklyn.
October 27, 1994, Clinton speaks to the Jordanian parliament in Amman, stating “We respect Islam” and careful to separate the actions of Islamic radicals from the religion itself.
November 7, 1995, 5 Americans die in bombing in Riyadh Saudi Arabia.
June 25, 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Dharan Saudi Arabia by Hizballah, kills 19 American servicemen, a Saudi and wounds over 200.
February 24, 1997 Ali Abu Kamal kills a Danish tourist and wounds several others in the Empire State Observation Deck.
February 23, 1998 Osama Bin Laden issues his “fatwa” demanding all Muslims “kill the Americans and their allies—civilians and military—[for it] is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it…”
August 7, 1998 al-Qaeda bombs American embassies in Nairobi Kenya and Dar es Salaam Tanzania, killing 225 and wounding more than 4000.
September 21, 1998 President Clinton affirms the peaceful nature of Islam and separates it from the actions of a few in his speech to the 53rd UN General Assembly, stating “A quarter of the world’s population is Muslim—from Africa to Middle East to Asia and to the United States, where Islam is one of our fastest growing faiths. There are over 1,200 mosques and Islamic centers in the United States, and the number is rapidly increasing. The six million Americans who worship there will tell you there is no inherent clash between Islam and America. Americans respect and honor Islam.”
September 23, 1999 Deputy Secretary of State Ronald E Neuman says in a Georgetown University speech that there there is “no inherent conflict between Islam and the West.”
December 14, 1999 Ahmed Ressam is arrested and confesses to planning to bomb Los Angeles International Airport as part of the 2000 Millennium Bombing conspiracy.
March 17, 2000, Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeline Albright in remarks to the American-Iranian Council states unequivocally that there is “no inherent conflict between Islam and the United States.”
October 12, 2000 USS Cole is attacked while in the port of Aden, killing 17 sailors and injuring 39.

Around the Muslim world there are madrassas and mosques brainwashing tens of thousands in the duty of Muslims to kill Americans and Jews. Newspapers and state-owned press in Muslim nations regularly print and broadcast anti-Semitic and anti-American messages. What do we call these nations like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia? Allies and friends.

But a fat man in Boca Raton and a bunch of well-educated citizens worried about government interference in their lives and massive debts their children and grandchildren will be responsible for, who are these people called? Enemies and racists.

Clinton, Obama and the Democrats need to treat their own family, friends and neighbors with the same respect they treat Muslims abroad. Instead of demonizing Tea Party members, they should listen to them. Just as the liberals wonder “what have we done to make Muslims hate us,” they should ask themselves “what have we done to make Tea Partiers protest against us.” If it’s good enough for the “religion of peace” it should be good enough for the party of tea.

Norman Leboon, the man arrested for threatening to kill Congressman Eric Cantor (R-Va) and his family, donated twice to Obama’s presidential campaign. This comes a month after Amy Bishop shot and killed three faculty members at the University of Alabama – Huntsville. Bishop was fanatical about Obama to the point where she was off-putting according to her family. While the media is scrutinizing Tea Party rosters for radicals, these guys are out there making the news.

4/2/2010 UPDATE: One of the indicted Hutaree militia leaders is a registered Democrat. It shouldn’t come as a surprise. Most opposing the civil rights movement in the South fifty years ago were Democrats.

Jacob J. Ward is a registered Democrat who voted in the 2004 and 2008 elections.

As an observer of politics for most of my 40+ years, I’ve seen some weird things. Watching John Dean testify during the Watergate hearings was pretty strange, as was the testimony of a pilot who flew guns to the Contras during the Iran-Contra affair 13 years later. And don’t get me started about Clinton’s interview under oath when he argued the meaning of the word “is.”  But in those decades I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as downright bizarre as the past weeks’ ramming through of health care legislation.

I’m not alone. Here’s what one friend said:

I don’t think I’ve ever been more disappointed in our government than right now. If you need a new car you don’t buy a car that you know has a ton of problems (under the guise of fixing those problems later), and that’s what I feel we did with this reform… Its sad that our politicians are so blinded by their own ego and sense of accomplishment that they don’t see that most of us don’t want this reform. Fix the economy, get people employed, go after Wall St. robber barons…don’t make back room deals with big pharma and celebrate blindly.

Another wrote:

There are just too many fundamental flaws in our legislative process for a reform bill like this to ever really make much of a difference (other than cost us more money).

We have witnessed the President, aided by the House and Senate majority leaders, push through a broad set of far-reaching laws in complete disregard of public opinion. When he lacked the 60 votes in the Senate, Obama threatened to use reconciliation to get what he wanted. When reconciliation looked problematic, the idea of  “Deem and Pass” was floated to make reconciliation look more palatable. Obama made any deal he needed to push through his health care plan – promising anything to anyone in order to secure its passage.

Had the “pro-life” Democrats not sold their votes for 40 pieces of silver, would he have used Deem and Pass? Given the so-called (and aptly named) “Slaughter Solution” I believe he would have. If Deem and Pass had been blocked, I’m sure he, Pelosi, and Reid would have found some other way to push the measure through. At this point I can’t imagine anything stopping Obama. Given his Chicago pals I’m sure there were already plans made that were illegal or, using the PC euphemism, “extra-legal.” Luckily for the Republic those plans weren’t necessary; nuking the law into being with reconciliation was enough.

So here we are, a new day with a new health care plan in place. The liberal media outlets such as CNN, MSNBC and NPR have been singing hosannas since yesterday morning. There are few references to the cost of the plan, and fewer to the public outcry. Republican opposition is mentioned in passing when it’s mentioned at all. Fox News stands alone for pointing out the blatant lies underlying the budget gimmickry that makes the plan appear to cut the deficit when in actuality it will add to it.

The fact that not a single Republican voted for the plan is truly noteworthy. Nancy Pelosi said that the people who opposed Obamacare today were the same people that opposed Medicare 40 years ago, yet back then 13 Republican senators out of 32, and 70 out of 140 Republican congressmen voted for the plan.  Even the Iraq War was supported by 29 out of 50 Democratic senators, and 82 out of 209 Democratic congressmen. If there has been a more partisan vote on an important piece of legislation in the history of the House or Senate, I can’t think of it.

The ramifications of this vote are going to be felt for the next year, not just by the people – both of my friends mentioned above are independents and one voted for Obama – and not just by the Republicans. Don’t forget that 34 Democrats in the House voted “No.” The only way I see these guys surviving is with the help of the Tea Party or the Republican party boss’s in their districts keeping their hot-headed unknowns from running.

Playing hard ball politics is one thing, but what has happened over the past two months goes beyond sports analogies. Obama declared war on the majority of Americans who opposed this bill and on the laws put into place to keep the majority party from abusing its power. As someone who opposed the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton and who doesn’t take the threat lightly, I believe that what President Obama has done may not be an impeachable offense, it sure does raise the specter of the subject. Obama has pushed the limits of his power beyond what Nixon did (it wasn’t the crime that got Nixon it was the cover-up afterward); one would have to go back to Franklin D. Roosevelt to find a president who pushed the constitutional boundaries of the Oval Office as far as our current commander in chief. Since Obama sees himself in the as FDR reincarnated I don’t believe the similarities are unintentional.  Who knows? If the Supreme Court strikes down the health care plan, unlikely as that may happen, would Obama attempt to pack the court or perhaps find cause to remove one of the conservative members from the bench? The fact that Clarence Thomas’s wife has appeared in the news recently for launching a Tea Party may be the beginning of something much bigger and even uglier than what we have seen so far this year.

It wouldn’t be so bad if Obama and his Chicago thugs were as vicious in foreign policy as they are when it comes to domestic politics. Unfortunately Obama and his crew are as supine and weak when it comes to American enemies abroad as they are ruthless and tough domestically. Iran continues developing nuclear weapons, and America does nothing. The thugocracy continues running its own little drug export-funded jail in Burma, and the American administration is silent. North Korea bleats and gets a cookie. China and Russia continue funding human rights abusing regimes from Cuba to the Sudan, and we apologize for inconveniencing them and press plastic reset buttons.  The only time the administration shows its teeth abroad is to our friends like the UK, Honduras, Colombia and most recently Israel. Obama would rather have a photo-op with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez than the elected prime minister of America’s best and some say only ally in the Middle East.

Imagine the fury unleashed over the past two weeks over the health care plan being aimed at Iran over its nuclear weapons program, or China for its protection of Sudan, Burma and North Korea, or the Palestinians for their continued anti-Semitic and anti-American propaganda.  Instead we get apologies and Hillary Clinton going door to door begging for UN sanctions “that bite” or “don’t bite” or what-have-you. Those apologies will come in handy after a few hundred thousand Jews are vaporized in Israel by nuclear tipped missiles launched from Iran made in North Korea using Russian and Chinese nuclear weapons know how.

Unfortunately they’re going to take us with them.

Gotta love Michael Ramirez at TownHall.com...

I have been interested in politics for as long as I can remember. When I was in primary school I watched the Watergate Hearings and tried to understand what was going on. I didn’t understand exactly what was happening, but I knew that it was important.

Fast forward over thirty-five years. This time I know what is happening and recognize it’s importance, and maybe as a result I can’t watch with the same detachment I had when I was eight years old.

What is happening with Obama’s health care legislation is one of the most disgusting abuse of power events I can recall. For the past three months we have witnessed the legislative process built up over the Constitution’s 220 years shattered by the House, Senate and Executive Democratic leadership. First the Republican’s filibuster in the Senate survived by the election of Scott Brown. To get around that the Pelosi, Reid and Obama dusted off the nuclear option, reconciliation – a process that Sen. Robert Byrd, it’s designer, and Obama himself claimed should not be used to pass health care. Now Speaker Pelosi, apparently lacking the majority of house votes necessary to pass the bill in reconciliation, is threatening to use “Deem and Pass” – a maneuver that allows the bill to move forward without a vote.

As one political commentator on Fox News pointed out, why have a Congress if you are simply going to make laws without following the rules? Yes, reconciliation and even “deem and pass” have been used before, but on minor changes to bills and budgets, not the partisan $1 trillion government takeovers of the private sector. He felt that the whole health care mess was ripping at the very fabric of the legislative process.

It’s not uncommon for legislative bodies to do whatever it takes to please a leader. For example Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez demanded and eventually received the power he needed to turn Venezuela from a multi-party democratic state to a one-party communist state. Venezuela’s economy has gone from one of Latin America’s most vibrant to the zombie-like communist state the likes of which I thought we saw the last of when the Berlin Wall collapsed in 1989.

This is not to say that Obama is an American Hugo Chavez. As much as I detest and dislike our current president, I don’t see him as anywhere near as dangerous as Hugo Chavez. What I do see, however, is the President, along with the Speaker and Senate Majority Leader setting precedents that will be used in the future by others holding their positions who may have more in common with Chavez. By ignoring the limits today with health care, what will stop others from ignoring the limits of legislative power on declaring war, defaulting on debt, or making abortion or gay marriage illegal? What Obama, Reid and Pelosi are doing today is damaging the legislative process and making it easier for demagogues to use it in the future. In that respect today’s Congress is not very different from Venezuela’s National Constituent Assembly that voted in 1999 to revise the Venezuelan constitution to make it more to Chavez’s liking.

But there is one key difference between that 1999 assembly and America’s 2010 Congress: the National Assembly’s vote didn’t use parliamentary tricks to pass the law.

I wish a member of Congress would stand up under the dome and say “Madame Speaker, have you no shame?” What won’t Pelosi, Reid and Obama do to pass one of their prized pieces of legislation? It’s clear that they don’t care what happens to the legislative process as a result of ramming this bill through. Pelosi and Reid know they are on a death-march. It is likely that come November either or both will be out of a job. Obama’s position is safer – for now – and his executive authority will prevent Republicans from undoing this monstrosity until 2013 at the earliest.

There will come a time, though, when Democrats will regret the tear they have made in the fabric of our nation. It’s not unimaginable that we will see a Republican House, Senate and President sometime within the next decade. The legislative branch, one of the 3 equal branches of our government, will have weakened itself for what? A likely one term president who is more concerned with being an historical figure than with governing. And when that happens, the Democrats will have no choice but to sit on the sidelines and watch the Right run amok. Beyond that, though, lies the greater danger that an unknown demagogue will arise on the Left or the Right, and use Congress to rubber stamp his policies.

After all, that’s all that Venezuela’s National Assembly has become: a rubber stamp for Hugo Chavez’s whims.

And right today if she had the guts to say to Obama what she had said to Bush:

“The fact is that President Bush’s misguided economic policies have failed to create jobs. Since President Bush took office, the country has lost 3.2 million jobs, the worst record since President Hoover. And today we learned that in July nearly half a million people gave up looking for a job.”

Meanwhile Obama used the number of half a million people giving up searching for jobs as proof that “we are climbing out of an economic hole.”

But Nancy doesn’t have guts – or convictions for that matter – so she didn’t take President Obama to task in the same way she had President Bush even when the job losses under Obama are far worse than under Bush: 8.4 million vs. 3.2 million. So Obama’s hole is almost 3x deeper.

Over the snowy weekend the Wife caught a few hours of the documentary Woodstock Revisited. I watched about as much of it as I could stomach given my feelings about hippies in general and the Baby Boom Generation in particular. Members of my Generation X, the generation that followed the Baby Boomers, have always lived in the shadow of their more numerous (and interesting at least according to the Media) elders – siblings and in many cases parents. While the Baby Boomers had The Graduate and Woodstock, Gen X’ers had John Hughes movies and Duran Duran. Yep we drew the short-stick pop culturally there.

The Woodstock Revisited movie ended with a crescendo, as if all along the purpose of the Baby Boomers was to do one thing: elect Barack Obama to the presidency. Those interviewed waxed poetically about the similarities between tripping on acid in the New York mud as teenagers and sipping lattes in the DC cold as AARP members. I’m serious, if you watch the documentary you would think that the culmination of the Hippie Ideals of the 1960s was to elect Barack Obama to the presidency. And here all these years I thought it was to fornicate freely, smoke dope and listen to 20 minute long drum solos.

That got me thinking. Was Students for a Democratic Society fighting to elect a black man president? I thought they were fighting to end capitalism and institute communism to join their brothers in the Soviet Union in creating an international workers paradise. The SDS despised liberal democrats like Barack Obama because they were part of “the System” and “the System” needed to be smashed. But Systems tend to be resilient, and in the 1970s the System had not been smashed, while the SDS discovered disco, cocaine, and in some cases, the warm, lucrative embrace of Academia.

Barack Obama isn’t a member of the Baby Boomers. At the time they were getting stoned and changing the world, he was playing with Legos in Indonesia. Obama was a nobody until 2000, so why had the Baby Boomers waited so long?

After all they had plenty of chances. Tom Hayden, a former SDS leader, was their man – yet the pinnacle of his career was marrying Hanoi Jane. Fonda herself never even attempted a career at politics after playing NVA ack-ack gunner in Hanoi. Abbie Hoffman? He got thrown off the stage at Woodstock by Pete Townsend in a brotherly display peace and love, that is if one’s brother is prone to stabbing one in the back with a guitar while shouting expletives. Jerry Brown? Ruined by his relationship with Linda Ronstadt or all the dope he smoked it’s difficult to say which. The closest the Boomers ever came to electing one of their own was John Kerry in 2004, and we all know how well that turned out.

So how could the Boomers claim credit for Obama? Because for the past 60 years everything has always been about them. Vietnam? About them. Civil Rights? Ditto. Disco? Yep. Reagan’s America? Wait… Clinton’s stained dresses? Well…

So maybe Obamacare’s death panels and medicare cuts for the care of the elderly isn’t such a bad idea after all. Hell, maybe the Democrats should institute a form of Logan’s Run: Hold another Woodstock for 60 year olds and spike the brown windowpane viagra and boniva with strychnine. That will hold down medical costs and provide jobs burying the dead.——-
The only thing more annoying than the Baby Boomer generation is the myth that there is such a thing as a generational voice.  I have sisters who are Boomers and were hippie-types, and their politics varies from the neo-socialism of liberation theology to Ayn Rand’s free market ideal. The whole idea that a group of people can agree on something simply because they happened to be born within a few years of each other in the same country isn’t borne out by history. The same generation that claims credit for electing Obama today placed Reagan in office not once but twice starting 29 years ago. The age profiles of the political parties are roughly the same. From a 2004 study:

In addition to its lead among older Americans (those age 65 and older), the Democratic party holds a clear edge among the early Baby Boomers ­ people in their middle 40s to late 50s. But younger Baby Boomers and those in Generation X (roughly ages 30-44) are somewhat more Republican… The parties are virtually even among the youngest cohort of citizens today.

The very idea of generational similarity was created by marketing departments and journalists looking to create stereotypes and oversimplifications so that they could sell stuff to and stories about millions of people. But the theory breaks down as soon as you look at the data; people are just more complicated than that.

So while I may treasure my 80’s music while my son listens to the crap that passes for music today on his iPod, the truth is that this concept of generations has been overblown – especially when it comes to politics. The elderly hippies from Woodstock Revisited might be patting themselves on the back for electing Obama, but my youngest sister, the Randian who went through her hippie phase that same year, is cursing them.

I am a dedicated Nipponophile having lived in Japan for a good chunk of the 1990s and received my degree in political science with a concentration on East Asian politics. One of the many exciting bits of Japanese history is the Bushido warrior code of the Samurai and the part ritual suicide or seppuku played in it. In case you’ve forgotten seppuku is suicide in which the suicide uses a long knife called the tanto to splay out his guts, followed by a swordsman lopping off the suicide’s head.

I’m reminded of this act reading the polls that categorically and emphatically state the American public’s opposition to Obamacare. The Democrat’s shoving it down the throats of Americans is now bleeding over into the attitudes of Americans towards the party, making the election of 2010 appear likely to be a repeat of 1994 when the Republicans swept the Democrats out of power in all but the office of the presidency.

The Democrats themselves know this. Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA), a conservative Democrat and former Republican official of the Reagan administration, is expected to do what John Kerry did in authorizing the war in Iraq: vote for cloture, allowing the Obamacare bill to avoid death by filibuster – then vote against it when a simple majority of 50 is needed. Other conservative Democrats like Sen. Ben Nelson (D-VA) and Sen. Mary Landrieu are expected to do the same. They can allow the bill to become law and claim to their constituents that they voted against the legislation. It didn’t work for Kerry (“I voted for the bill before I voted against it”) and it likely won’t work for these senators.

Defying public opinion by forcing “reform” that the American people clearly don’t want will have a price, and the Democrats in the House – all of whom are up for reelection in 2010 – and at least 5 incumbent Dems who are facing uphill reelection battles, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, will pay that price. Given Obama’s failure to save John Corzine’s governorship in New Jersey, it’s unlikely that any popularity the president has left (it too is sinking) will save them. Nor will any benefits of Obamacare, since the majority of the program doesn’t kick in until 2014. The Republicans already have a game plan laid out for them thanks to the Democrats. Running against something, especially when that something is as unpopular as Obamacare, is much easier than supporting it.

So why are the Democrats committing suicide? Here’s where the ritual of seppuku is instructive.

The ritual is designed to be as solemn and scripted as a wedding to offer no escape once started. It is a series of small steps, the site selection, the layout of the tanto or wakizashi (short sword) on the ceremonial table ending in the cutting of the head by the kaishakunin - “assistant” or swordsman. Like a wedding, once the ritual is started it is very difficult to stop because of the series of small steps and the sacredness bestowed upon each. In a wedding, the “I do” reflects the point of no return; in seppuku the swordsman’s blade can come at any time – even before the suicide touches the knife or sword! Merely reaching for the blade can be considered enough for the kaishakunin to strike, technically making the suicide a murder, although not in the eyes of the believers in bushido.

Obama has led the Democrats to the room, and set them down in front of the tanto in a way that Republican leaders like Michael Steel or Karl Rove could never have done. Obama is willing to sacrifice the Democrats because he doesn’t face reelection until 2012 – giving him plenty of time to convince the American people that he is smarter than they are and that he knows what is best for them. Obama sees himself as being destined to make History, and part of that History is to “reform healthcare” – whether or not the system is reformed or not. Now the Democrats have withdrawn their hands from their kimonos, grasped the tanto, and are gripping it ready to rip themselves to pieces an instant before the Public’s blade falls on their necks.

Of course the Public can’t lop off their heads for another 11 months, which leaves the party to suffer a long while before the American people can strike. I expect a lot of blood during the coming year – and whimpering too.