Absolutely shameless ...

Obama and the Democrats have reached a new low. 

They are hyping that Republicans are planning to impeach Obama. 

They’re sending the message that all you Democrats and independents better come out and vote in November to keep your Democrat Senators and Representatives or the mean old Republicans will impeach your President. After all those great things he's done for the common man – and as the first black U.S. President – are you going to sit back and let those woman-hating, teacher hating, gay hating religious gun-toting fanatic redneck racists destroy his legacy? 

And did we mention that he’s black? All you black people out there – remember that. They’re getting ready to lynch your man Obama. Don’t you be sitting on your ass when it’s time to vote. Vote early, vote often, because if you don’t vote a lot, well, Democrats could lose this election. Then, as Joe Biden said, those Republicans will be coming “to put y’all back in chains.” 

Young people – wake up!  Get pissed off again. If Obama goes, so does your hope of a fatter paycheck from your minimum wage job. You’ll have to pay for your own birth control. Abortions will be illegal and women will die. Pot won’t be legalized. Plus, you’ll get no relief from the $100 grand you blew on college loans while mastering your mellow and perfecting your tan. You’ll actually have to pay that loan back.  Maybe live in your parents' basement forever. No way, José!

Speaking of José, you Latinos, our brown brothers and sisters – especially those of you here “without documentation” living in the shadows – just think what will happen if Republicans impeach President Obama.  Police and the national guard will go house to house to round you up and send you back to whatever Hell-hole you came from. They’ll track down your grandparents and parents who smuggled you here and send them back, too. Everybody will have to get a national identity card, but of course you can’t because you don’t have any documents. Everybody will have to speak English. So you’re screwed. You won’t be able to get a driver’s license. You won’t be able to work.  You won’t get any benefits.  You won’t be able to vote anymore.  You need Obama to protect you and your relatives trying to get here!  Madre de Dios!

Yep, this is what Obama and the Democrats are saying will happen if the Republicans retake control of the Senate:  the Republicans will impeach President Obama and roll-back all of his accomplishments. 

This is helping the DNC fire up the base and raise millions in new campaign money. 

Democrats and Obama should be ashamed of themselves. They know there’s absolutely no Republican plan to impeach Obama. No Republican leaders in either the House or Senate have said anything about impeaching Obama, except to point out that the rumor started and has been pushed by Democrats for purely political and fundraising reasons.  

So why are Democrats and Obama pushing this false narrative? Why are they saying there’s a real threat of impeachment when there is none?

The simple reason is that they’re scared.  And they have good reason to be.

The majority of voters don’t think Obama’s done a good job; they also think he’s incapable of handling the job, in fact. Those are two different things, neither good. Add to that his apparent and highly public disdain for doing his job, and his lack of leadership on important issues here and abroad, and it gets worse.  

He’s obviously a lame duck milking the perks of the office while ignoring its responsibilities.

Even his pals in the media are getting tired of his relentless self-indulgence. They’re starting to ask serious questions of his spokespuppets, about where he is, what he’s doing, and why he doesn’t seem to be addressing serious problems like the debacle at our southern border. 

That’s not good for him, or the Democrats in general.

Then there are the scandals. The mainstream media may not be covering them so much, but the public is still getting the news that a lot of bad stuff is going on with the IRS, the VA, and ObamaCare – all of which have come to a head on his watch. And he’s done nothing. No heads have rolled.  

So Obama and the Democrats are ripping a page out of the old Clinton-era playbook. Back then, Republicans got sucked into a stupid and ham-handed effort to impeach Bill Clinton, in spite of overwhelming public opinion against impeachment. 

We all know what happened. Bill Clinton got impeached. And Republicans got hammered in the next election cycle. Democrats won control because Republicans went too far.

Obama and Democrats are hoping to use the same dynamics to save their bacon this time. Except Republicans aren’t calling for impeachment; if anything they are dismissing it completely.

Talk about “phony scandals” … Obama and Democrats have made this one up from whole cloth. They're daring, actually hoping, Republicans take the bait.  

There's even talk among Democrats of Obama issuing an Executive Order intentionally designed to provoke Republicans into calling for his impeachment; maybe granting blanket amnesty to all illegal immigrants, past and present. I wouldn't put it past the Democrats to try something like that. It wouldn't be the first time.  

It’s all clearly an act of desperation. Republicans – if they are smart, and sometimes that’s open to question – should continue to ridicule the idea of impeaching Obama. 

Until after the mid-term elections. Then, if they do get control of the House and Senate, and public opinion supports it, then – and only then – they can decide whether to pursue impeachment. 

Chances are, even if Republicans win control, they won’t move to impeach.

Not that Obama shouldn’t be impeached, but because it’s not worth it. 

His time's almost up, anyway.  

God protect us from the "well-intentioned ..."

If you fool enough people by appealing to their better nature – their desire to be compassionate and generous – you can gain broad public support for just about anything.  

It makes no difference how cynical your objectives are. Or how laughably shallow you are yourself. Americans are suckers for heart-tugging images of dirty, snotty-nosed kids, down-and-out junkies, single mothers, the unemployed, the disabled, the destitute, and just about anybody in tears.    

To bend this to your advantage, all you need to do is appear equally heartbroken by what you see. If you promise to make things better, to stop the suffering, Americans will stand with you. Nobody wants to be accused of being heartless and cruel to those in need.    

It’s one of our most admirable traits as a nation. Americans as a whole will open their hearts and their checkbooks to alleviate suffering not just here, but almost anywhere in the world. 

Unfortunately, our good nature is also one of our greatest weaknesses. 

Americans’ desire to help, to be generous, to be compassionate, has been exploited by cynical politicians and special interest groups for their own purposes for decades. They know that if they can craft the right imagery that breaks our hearts they can more easily manipulate us.     

The Democrats and their allies in Hollywood and the press have been especially adept at this. They know that this is no longer the Age of Reason, but the Age of Emotion. Feelings trump facts. Perceptions equal reality. Rational analysis loses to impassioned pleas. Closing one’s eyes to what’s right or wrong – or even illegal or illegal – is justified by claiming higher “moral” and “ethical” values. Laws selectively deemed “unjust” can be ignored with impunity. 

The pitch is always to show some compassion. Don’t be so heartless. Don’t be selfish. How can you not want to help? Isn’t this what America is all about? How can you live with yourself? Put yourself in their place – wouldn’t you do the same? What’s the big deal? Where’s the harm?

What they’re really saying is this: Don’t question; just give us what we want. 

Forget about the law. Forget about who will pay for what we want. Forget about the long-term consequences. Forget about actually solving the problem. Just give us what we want. 

And don’t pay attention to the details. 

Right now the cause du jour is what to do about all the illegal immigrants flooding into our country. But there’s also the problem of what to do with all the illegal immigrants already here. 

Carefully consider what’s really happening. Watch how this is being covered. You’ll see how Democrats, immigrant-rights (??) groups and the general press are setting this up to make us all feel so guilty and compassionate that we’ll ignore the facts.

So we’re seeing the dirty, snotty-nosed kids in donated t-shirts. The teenage girls. The pregnant women. We’re hearing stories of how they came here to escape the violence and terror in their homeland. How some of the women may have been sexually abused while traveling here. We’re seeing footage of crowded, makeshift shelters with kids, teenagers and pregnant women sleeping on the floor. Then we’re seeing crowds of angry people with hateful signs jeering at the buses trying to carry these poor souls to other shelters.    

How awful. It would be truly sad if it weren’t so manufactured to play on our sympathies. 

Not that it isn’t sad that these people are in bad shape. They are. The kids in particular have a host of infections, lice and other nasties that need medical treatment. And who doesn’t feel sorry for the pregnant women?

Until you realize one thing: None of this had to happen.

We could have made it next to impossible to enter our southern border illegally. Other countries far less sophisticated than us have done it. So could we. For about the same money Obama now wants to spend on housing, feeding, treating, and providing lawyers for the latest wave, we could have secured our borders with walls, more Border Patrol, and more sophisticated technology. 

But we didn’t. Because special interests really don’t want us to. They want things to continue to spiral out of control until the rest of us simply are overwhelmed and give up. So on one hand they want to promote the human tragedy on our borders to pull at our heartstrings; on the other they want to make it seem like there’s absolutely nothing we can do about all the illegals here already. Might as well just roll over and grant them all amnesty – what’s the alternative?   

None of this is new. Pregnant women know that if they deliver their child on US soil, it becomes an American citizen, no matter how the mother got into the US. This is an age-old tactic illegals all know well.  Once that baby’s here, then it’s pretty much a done deal that mom gets to stay, then dad, then siblings, cousins, grandparents, aunts, uncles, in-laws, etc. That’s also why they are sending their kids here hoping they get to stay and be anchors to bring over everybody else.     

What is new, however, is that this latest tsunami of illegals can be directly attributed to the message this administration has sent out that if you get here you can stay here. Plus, we’ll take care of you. Not those specific words, but by refusing to prosecute illegals and by essentially granting citizenship to the children of illegals. Free healthcare is another big attraction; illegals know they can’t be refused free medical care at any emergency room in this country.   

A lot of otherwise decent, well-intentioned people are being intentionally misled about what is actually happening on the border. These illegals aren’t escaping violence in their homeland; a recent poll among them showed almost all of them believed that getting here means they can stay here. Nor are they – as Obama said recently – the best and the brightest. And honestly, most of the illegals already here weren’t the best and brightest either. 

The reality is that these people are intentionally breaking our laws. When they get away with that, they are gaming the system to avoid deportation or criminal penalties and to receive benefits they haven’t earned nor contributed toward. They are driving up our education and healthcare costs. They are not contributing “vitality” to our society as some claim. They are driving down wages among our own minorities and poor. In many cases, they are taking their earnings here and sending those back to their home countries instead of putting it back into our economy. 

    

There’s nothing in it for us. The well-intentioned – yet hopelessly clueless – need to step aside this time around and not get sucked into this artificial passion play. 

What we’re seeing today is a carefully scripted play on our emotions. That’s probably the thing that infuriates me most. These people didn’t have to come here. They weren’t forced to leave their homelands to survive.  They were intentionally lured here. All for show. 

I am sorry for their suffering. I am sad for their situation. But I am not responsible. Nor am I willing to house, clothe, feed and support them now that they’re here, or pay for lawyers to argue for them in hearings they never plan to attend. 

This one is Obama’s and the Democrats’ from start to finish. They caused it. They own it.

And you can be absolutely certain their motives were not well-intentioned.    

The public is not listening ...

And the media is at a loss as to what to do. 

The media’s generally been in the tank for Obama for years, carrying water for him on practically everything. They’ve promoted the “phony scandals” tactic, the “war on women” nonsense, and the “income inequality” silliness for him. They’ve lied or shaded the truth through meat-cleaver editing to hide the real facts from the American public. They’ve promoted everything he’s wanted them to promote, leaving their objectivity – and integrity – at the door. 

They’ve downplayed his childish petulance, his divisiveness, his failure at governing here and lack of leadership on the world stage, his wanton disregard for the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and even his snooping on members of their own profession. 

They’ve functioned as unflinching propagandists for Obama and his administration.  And that’s being kind.  In truth, Obama’s been their superfly pimp and they’ve been his bitches.  He’s told them what to do and they’ve done it, not matter how repulsive or degrading, including defending him when he’s clearly and demonstrably been lying to the public, and to them. 

They’ve done an exceptional job of keeping Obama afloat since he’s been in office. Through the multiple fiascos – auto bailouts, shovel-ready jobs, cash-for-clunkers, green energy failures, ObamaCare, Benghazi, IRS targeting, and decisions to make and enforce laws as he alone deems necessary – they’ve always been there for him.  Putting a smiley face on bad news.  Inventing rationalizations.  Pooh-poohing or using ad hominem attacks to diminish his critics.  Giving unequal airtime to misleading, off-topic drivel from partisan nitwits like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to muddy the waters.  And of course, simply burying the facts. 

As hard as they’ve worked to further Obama’s misinformation – always relying on the public’s inability to separate fact from fiction, and, to be candid, the media’s belief that the American public simply isn’t that smart – their hard work is starting to unravel. 

A big part of the American public is not buying what they’re selling anymore.  A major reason is Obama himself. It’s hard to cover for a guy who just doesn’t care. 

The public is starting to see Obama for who he really is – a petty tyrant who is in way over his head. He’s incompetent on domestic as well as foreign issues.  He’s also lazy and self-indulgent to a fault – he thinks nothing of using Air Force One as a private jet for him and his family to visit exotic places around the world. 

At a time when most Americans are having trouble making ends meet, he and Michelle are tone deaf with taxpayer funded trips to Spain for shopping, extended vacations in Hawaii to celebrate her birthday, and trips to Africa for his kids’ adventures.  Air Force One costs about $180,000 an hour, so episodes like sending separate flights to ferry the Obama’s dog someplace, or flying Obama on one plane and Michelle and the kids on another to the same place are stupidly extravagant.   

One columnist recently said that it’s obvious now that Obama enjoys the perks of being President – the fame, ability to hang with celebrities, and first-class treatment – but not doing the job.  He doesn’t like negotiating, much less compromising, with grubby politicians in either party.  He doesn’t enjoy working with our allies abroad, much less confronting our enemies.  From the beginning, he’s demonstrated time and again that details bore him.

So he doesn’t bother anymore. He prefers being a rock star at fundraising events and using his media access to ridicule his critics with snappy one-liners.  So that’s what he does. 

He’s a modern day Nero – playing golf and hobnobbing with Hollywood and sports celebrities at fund raisers – while America and the world burns.

Because of his insatiable appetite for publicity, he’s everywhere.  Except at his job.  You can’t watch the national news on almost any channel without a clip of Obama surprising tourists somewhere, golfing, on some exotic vacation, or slamming his critics with snarky, smart-ass comments.  But how often anymore are there clips of Obama doing something meaningful? Solving a problem like the chaos at our southern border? 

His lack of interest in doing his real job and his general ineptitude is becoming impossible to hide from the American public.    

The American public is seeing crises all over the world and Obama does nothing. The economy – despite what media hacks keep telling them – is in shambles.  The market may be booming, but they just have to look at all their friends and neighbors, and perhaps themselves, to see how many are still out of work or working part time, and how their wages buy less and less all the time.   

The middle class is getting screwed, not by “income inequality” or a “war on women,” but by higher health insurance premiums, rising prices on practically everything and a stagnant economy Obama has failed to fix.  The middle class is watching Obama’s policies reward people who don’t want to work at the expense of people who do work.  They also see Obama’s policies favoring the ultra-rich and the politically connected, despite his constant claim to represent “the working man.” 

In short, they are seeing Obama as a fraud.  A failure.  A hypocrite. 

In a recent survey, a rather substantial majority of those polled chose Obama as the worst U.S. President in modern history.  Worse than Carter.  Worse than Nixon.  A majority also said he was incapable of doing the job of President. 

Now did they form those opinions solely from Fox and right-wing talk show hosts?   

Nope.  Obama managed to turn the public against him all by himself.     

His lackeys in the media must be beside themselves.         

Don't do that ...

Patient:  Doctor, it hurts when I do that.  What should I do? 

Doctor:  Don’t do that.

Some solutions really are that simple.  So why do so many people ignore those?

For example:    

If you don’t like the pay or benefits offered by your employer, don’t work there. 

If you don’t like the policies of a company, don’t buy their stuff.

If you don’t agree with what an organization does, don’t donate money to them.  

If you don’t like the views of a speaker, don’t go to their speech.   

If you don’t like the views of a performer, don’t buy their work. 

If you don’t like what an author writes, don’t buy their books. 

If you think eating meat is bad, don’t eat meat. 

If you think sugary soda is bad for you, don’t drink it. 

If you think fast food is crap, don’t eat it. 

Nobody forces you to work for someone, buy from certain companies, donate money to causes, go to speeches, buy works of people you don’t like, or eat or drink something. 

In case everybody has forgotten, this is a free country.  You have free will. You also have the freedom to not do a lot of things.  You’re not a slave, an indentured servant, and you always have choices. 

I bring this up now because it doesn’t seem to be common knowledge anymore.  By design. 

A certain segment of our society wants to grant themselves new rights at your expense.  There’s a hard sell on by this administration and the media to make us believe this is all for our own good and to demonize anyone who dares to oppose, or even question, this agenda. 

If you follow the mainstream media outlets closely it appears to be a coordinated effort.  What’s most notable is what’s being left out of the coverage – the actual details – that if brought to light would profoundly change the tone and meaning of the final story.  It’s so obvious that I can only think this is being done consciously. 

A near perfect example is the coverage of the Hobby Lobby story and the Supreme Court’s ruling.  Hobby Lobby only objected to paying for coverage of what they considered to be abortive birth control, such as the morning after pill. They had always provided coverage of 16 contraceptive methods for their employees – a point left on the editing room floor – and objected to covering only four post-conception contraceptive methods. They faced fines of up to $90,000 a day for not covering those four. 

The Supreme Court narrowly ruled that the government could not compel closely and privately held Hobby Lobby, founded on Christian principles, to violate their beliefs opposing abortion, given other avenues available for the government to provide those four contraceptive methods in question.  Also, the possible financial penalty on Hobby Lobby for exercising their beliefs was excessive. 

That was pretty much the opinion of the majority. 

Interesting how this was covered in the media.

Harry Reid was quick with a sound bite about how “five men” shouldn’t decide what women should be allowed to do. That was on all the national news broadcasts that night.  Pelosi claimed that this opened the door for corporations to limit access to medical procedures for their employees. 

CNN and others pushed the angle that – in effect – the conservative, Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court had ruled that religious nutjobs could use this decision to withhold vital contraceptive coverage for their female employees, putting those employees at great risk.  Further, these all-male right-wing justices were opposed in their ruling by the three female justices and one enlightened male justice. (The dissent from Ginsburg was more widely covered than the majority’s opinion.)

They also implied, again by omission, that Hobby Lobby was always opposed to providing contraceptive coverage to its female employees – which was a bald-faced lie.  Then they took the “war on women” narrative even further by speculating, completely without basis, that because of the Hobby Lobby decision other businesses that didn’t want to cover any contraception methods could now refuse to do so, using vague religious objections. 

So the media and their Democrat friends used a narrow ruling – completely out of context, and with reckless disregard for the facts – to continue the “war on women” (by conservatives and religious fanatics) narrative, in other words. 

Please remember what the actual facts were:  Hobby Lobby already had – and would continue to – pay to cover 16 of the 20 contraceptive methods required to be covered by the ACA.  It objected to paying for four post-conception methods only, which it opposed on religious grounds.  The court upheld their right to not be forced to pay for those methods.  It said nothing about what female employees of Hobby Lobby could do on their own, including deciding to work for someone else. 

Which brings me back to my original point. 

The media, Obama and the far left keep approaching problems from the wrong direction.  Rather than concede that people have free choices to vote with their wallets and their feet, they presume people are helpless pawns.

 “Something must be done …” is always their battle cry, when, in truth, if they simply stepped back most social issues would probably resolve themselves over time.  But when government gets involved they are certain to make a mess of things, for no apparent reason except to prove how important and powerful – and necessary – government is. 

That’s the real scandal.  Government has the Roto-Rooter touch – just about everything it touches turns to crap. Almost every time it inserts itself into decisions people could easily and logically make on their own, it makes matters worse.  All politicians really need to do is stay out of things. 

Nobody is forcing female employees who want all 20 contraceptive methods covered to stay at Hobby Lobby, or anyplace else for that matter, or not spend their own money for those.  They can always try to get a job somewhere else that has the benefits they want.

That’s the free market. 

But instead of recognizing that option, and letting market pressures drive employers to provide more benefits to attract the employees they want, government feels the need to interfere.

Why? The official line is to protect the health of female employees who would otherwise be at grave medical risk without free condoms, IUDs, and birth control pills.  Who knew? 

The truth is that liberal and Progressive politicians wanted to provide free birth control to just about everyone to appease their allies, plus build their street cred for supporting women (unlike those mean-spirited, sexist religious nuts in the Republican Party).  However, as usual, they wanted somebody else to pick up the tab. In this case, businesses.      

There’s no proof that free birth control was desperately needed, or that it was priced out of the reach of women.  If anything there was ample proof to the contrary:  most birth control is cheap, often about $10 a month, readily available, and for the poor Planned Parenthood dispensed birth control devices and pills for free.  

So the bigger story is not about access to birth control, Hobby Lobby or the mythical war on women.  It’s about how much government, far-left Democrats, and Progressives are doing to limit our freedoms and our ability to make our own decisions.  And how much the media is trying make these efforts appear to be increasing our choices and freedoms, when the exact opposite is true.

What we’re seeing is a relatively small group of the political establishment shaping a new, Orwellian reality where words and acts only mean what they want them to mean, not what they have always meant. And where, as Orwell put it in Animal Farm, all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. 

People do have free will. They do have choices.   Always keep that in mind. 

Even when those in the government and the media try to convince you that the choices they are making are actually your choices.  

They aren’t.