{"id":360141,"date":"2010-02-24T21:28:47","date_gmt":"2010-02-25T02:28:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/papundits.wordpress.com\/?p=31676"},"modified":"2010-02-24T21:28:47","modified_gmt":"2010-02-25T02:28:47","slug":"obama%e2%80%99s-evil-trap-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/360141","title":{"rendered":"Obama\u2019s Evil Trap + More"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_31677\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"width: 226px\"><a href=\"http:\/\/papundits.files.wordpress.com\/2010\/02\/the-docisin_2010-02-24.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-31677   \" style=\"margin-left:5px;margin-right:5px;\" title=\"Doctor Obama\" src=\"http:\/\/papundits.files.wordpress.com\/2010\/02\/the-docisin_2010-02-24.jpg?w=216&#038;h=254\" alt=\"\" width=\"216\" height=\"254\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">The health care summit is an &quot;evil&quot; trap<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong><a rel=\"tag\" href=\"http:\/\/patriotpost.us\/\" >The Patriot Post<\/a> Chronicle<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2>The Foundation<\/h2>\n<p>&#8220;Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.&#8221; &#8211;James  Madison<\/p>\n<h2>Editorial Exegesis<\/h2>\n<p>&#8220;A mere three days before President Obama&#8217;s supposedly bipartisan  health-care summit, the White House [Monday] released a new blueprint  that Democrats say they will ram through Congress with or without  Republican support. So after election defeats in Virginia, New Jersey  and even Massachusetts, and amid overwhelming public opposition,  Democrats have decided to give the voters what they don&#8217;t want anyway.  Ah, the glory of &#8216;progressive&#8217; governance and democratic consent. &#8216;The  President&#8217;s Proposal,&#8217; as the 11-page White House document is headlined,  is in one sense a notable achievement: It manages to take the worst of  both the House and Senate bills and combine them into something more  destructive. It includes more taxes, more subsidies and even less cost  control than the Senate bill. And it purports to fix the  special-interest favors in the Senate bill not by eliminating them &#8212;  but by expanding them to everyone. &#8230; The larger political message of  this new proposal is that Mr. Obama and Democrats have no intention of \u00a0\u00a0  &#8230; \u00a0 \u00a0<span id=\"more-31676\"><\/span> compromising on an incremental reform, or of listening to Republican, or  any other, ideas on health care. They want what they want, and they&#8217;re  going to play by Chicago Rules and try to dragoon it into law on a  narrow partisan vote via Congressional rules that have never been used  for such a major change in national policy. If you want to know why  Democratic Washington is &#8216;ungovernable,&#8217; this is it.&#8221; &#8211;<a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424052748704454304575081391789004352.html\" >The  Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/p>\n<h2>Insight<\/h2>\n<p>&#8220;The state tends to expand in proportion to its means of existence  and to live beyond its means, and these are, in the last analysis,  nothing but the substance of the people. Woe to the people that cannot  limit the sphere of action of the state! Freedom, private enterprise,  wealth, happiness, independence, personal dignity, all vanish.&#8221; &#8211;French  economist Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;People unfit for freedom &#8212; who cannot do much with it &#8212; are hungry  for power. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a &#8216;have&#8217; type of  self. It says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my  capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a &#8216;have  not&#8217; type of self.&#8221; &#8211;writer and philosopher Eric Hoffer (1902-1983)<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into  politicians.&#8221; &#8211;British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)<\/p>\n<h2>Upright<\/h2>\n<p>&#8220;Offering &#8216;comprehensive&#8217; reform usually means years of arguing and  horse-trading among pressure groups to get anything done. By the time  all the special interests are appeased or bought off, the resulting  elephantine legislation typically looks nothing like what was intended.  In short, big-government medicine usually doesn&#8217;t work on big-government  sickness. If President Obama wants &#8216;comprehensive&#8217; change, it would be  better simply not to spend any more money we don&#8217;t have.&#8221; &#8211;historian  Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;[Barack Obama failed to sell a health care reform plan to American  voters] because the utter implausibility of its central promise &#8212;  expanded coverage at lower cost &#8212; led voters to conclude that it would  lead ultimately to more government, more taxes and more debt.&#8221;  &#8211;columnist Charles Krauthammer<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t ever let anyone tell you that history doesn&#8217;t repeat. For 70  years, liberals have been spinning the yarn that FDR&#8217;s New Deal, despite  all the evidence that it exacerbated and prolonged the Great  Depression, quickened our economic recovery. Indeed, I remember  scratching my head when one of my college history professors in the  1970s tried to convince us of that theory and its corollary &#8212; an even  better howler &#8212; that FDR was actually a conservative, because if he  hadn&#8217;t implemented his socialist programs, the republic would have died  right there.&#8221; &#8211;columnist David Limbaugh<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is a perfect snapshot of the West at twilight. On the one hand,  governments of developed nations microregulate every aspect of your  life in the interests of &#8216;keeping you safe.&#8217; &#8230; On the other hand, when  it comes to &#8216;keeping you safe&#8217; from real threats, such as a millenarian  theocracy that claims universal jurisdiction, America and its allies do  nothing. &#8230; It is now certain that Tehran will get its nukes, and very  soon. This is the biggest abdication of responsibility by the Western  powers since the 1930s.&#8221; &#8211;columnist Mark Steyn<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In the early aftermath of the suicidal pilot&#8217;s attack [in Austin],  there was no evidence that Stack belonged to a Tea Party organization.  In any case, no law-abiding Tea Party group would ever condone what he  did. But it didn&#8217;t stop the haters from immediately smearing advocates  of limited government. And it&#8217;s just the latest in a long line of  calculated attempts to paint the vast majority of peaceful Tea Party  activists as terrorist threats to civil society. &#8230; The smear  merchants, of course, are simply following Rahm Emanuel&#8217;s advice to  exploit every crisis.&#8221; &#8211;columnist Michelle Malkin<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Why should we capitalists go green? To do so is simply to exchange  our technological, industrial, and energy superiority for a lie. &#8230;  Capitalism is about progressing via the ingenuity and excellence of  minds unfettered by government regulations and interference. But  environmentalism based on the man-made global warming theory is about  regressing from the advances that unfettered minds have made. It&#8217;s also  about pushing the government to regulate and interfere at every step  along the way.&#8221; &#8211;columnist AWR Hawkins<\/p>\n<div><a href=\"http:\/\/papundits.files.wordpress.com\/2010\/02\/obamaatwaterloo_2010-02-24-cartoon.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-31678\" title=\"ObamaAtWaterloo_2010-02-24-cartoon\" src=\"http:\/\/papundits.files.wordpress.com\/2010\/02\/obamaatwaterloo_2010-02-24-cartoon.jpg?w=475&#038;h=329\" alt=\"Obama at Waterloo\" width=\"475\" height=\"329\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<h2>The Demo-gogues<\/h2>\n<p>The definition of chutzpah: &#8220;After a decade of profligacy, the  American people are tired of politicians who talk the talk but don&#8217;t  walk the walk when it comes to fiscal responsibility. It&#8217;s easy to get  up in front of the cameras and rant against exploding deficits. What&#8217;s  hard is actually getting deficits under control. But that&#8217;s what we must  do. Like families across the country, we have to take responsibility  for every dollar we spend.&#8221; &#8211;Barack Obama<\/p>\n<p>Taxes are going up: &#8220;Everything&#8217;s on the table. That&#8217;s how this thing  is going to work.&#8221; &#8211;Barack Obama after creating a deficit commission  on whether he would raise taxes on families earning less than $250,000 a  year<\/p>\n<p>Shut up, he explained: &#8220;They should stop crying about reconciliation  as if it&#8217;s never been done before.&#8221; &#8211;Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid  (D-NV) (<em>It&#8217;s never been done on a bill of this magnitude before.<\/em>)<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So I do believe that there is more fertile soil today than when we  first took this up.&#8221; &#8211;House Democrat Whip James Clyburn, of South  Carolina, weighing in not on all those &#8220;shovel ready&#8221; supposed  job-starting projects of the &#8220;stimulus&#8221; but on the Demo plan for the  government takeover of U.S. medical care.<\/p>\n<p>You don&#8217;t say: &#8220;Health care has been knocking me around pretty good.&#8221;  &#8211;Barack Obama, who still hasn&#8217;t learned his lesson<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of being knocked around: &#8220;Men, when they&#8217;re out of work,  tend to become abusive.&#8221; &#8211;Harry Reid (<em>&#8220;Many observers have  speculated that Reid is likely to lose his job at the end of the current  term. &#8230; Is something going to happen to Mrs. Reid if Nevadans don&#8217;t  re-elect this senator?&#8221; &#8211;Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto<\/em>)<\/p>\n<p>Non sequitur: &#8220;We have countries like China, which don&#8217;t have to go  through the democratic processes that we do, that order factories to  move to deal with their air pollution.&#8221; &#8211;Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM), urging  his fellow senators to pass cap-n-tax<\/p>\n<p>Ax not what your country can do for you&#8230; &#8220;[A]s a condition of  receiving access to Title I funds we will <strong>ax<\/strong> all states  to put in place a plan to adopt and certify standards that are college  and career ready in reading and math.&#8221; &#8211;the eloquent orator Barack  Obama, emphasis added, because yes, he did say &#8220;ax&#8221; &#8212; see the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=aogWFrW1PyU\" >video<\/a> (<em>We  guess Harry Reid was right.<\/em>)<\/p>\n<p><!-- [ADV|PromoNews] --><\/p>\n<h2>Dezinformatsia<\/h2>\n<p>The BIG Lie: &#8220;Democrats and Republicans agree that Republicans are  picking up seats in the mid-term elections. What the White House can do  &#8212; what they&#8217;re trying to do &#8212; is to achieve a health care bill. People  still want that.&#8221; &#8211;ABC&#8217;s George Stephanopoulos<\/p>\n<p>Willing accomplices: &#8220;White House adjusts strategy on Republicans &#8212;  The Obama administration aims to put members of the GOP on the spot,  forcing them to compromise on issues or be portrayed as  obstructionists.&#8221; &#8211;Los Angeles Times headline and sub-headline<\/p>\n<p>Sympathetic stories: &#8220;Big fanfare this week. The Obama administration  fanned out across the country, &#8216;the stimulus worked.&#8217; The president  made speeches, sounded a little frustrated that people don&#8217;t get it, at  least polls show, that they don&#8217;t understand there were tax cuts and  things like that. What did they do wrong? They&#8217;re playing defense on  what was one of their major accomplishments. What did the White House,  the president do wrong in explaining, presenting and selling it?&#8221;  &#8211;ABC&#8217;s Terry Moran (<em>He lied through his teeth about all of it,  that&#8217;s what.<\/em>)<\/p>\n<p>Supreme arrogance: &#8220;In trying to explain our political paralysis,  analysts cite President Obama&#8217;s tactical missteps, the obstinacy of  congressional Republicans, rising partisanship in Washington, and the  Senate filibuster, which has devolved into a super-majority threshold  for important legislation. These are large factors to be sure, but that  list neglects what may be the biggest culprit of all: the childishness,  ignorance, and growing incoherence of the public at large.&#8221; &#8211;Newsweek&#8217;s  Jacob Weisberg, revealing what the elitists think of the American  people<\/p>\n<p>The innocent media: &#8220;When a news executive goes out there and states a  crazy accusation like that &#8230; it only ends up probably hurting what  they&#8217;re trying to do, but &#8230; it only denigrates all of us&#8230;. And, I&#8217;m  sorry, there are certain news organizations out here whose agenda is to  undermine the 90 percent of journalists who are just simply trying to  cover stories out there.&#8221; &#8211;MSNBC&#8217;S Chuck Todd reacting to Fox News  Washington managing editor Bill Sammon&#8217;s statement that &#8220;the mainstream  media hates the Tea Party movement almost as much as it hates Sarah  Palin.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Newspulper Headlines:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>We Blame Global Warming: &#8220;Snowballing Problems Hurting Vancouver  Games&#8221; &#8211;Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n<p>Bee All That You Can Bee: &#8220;Robots and Bees to Beat the Taliban&#8221;  &#8211;Sunday Times (London)<\/p>\n<p>Questions Nobody Is Asking: &#8220;Is Obama Too Thoughtful?&#8221;  &#8211;TheDailyBeast.com<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s Always in the Last Place You Look: &#8220;Flaws Found in Recovery Act  Spending Records&#8221; &#8211;ExecutiveGov.com<\/p>\n<p>Bottom Stories of the Day: &#8220;Al Gore Slams Exxon&#8217;s &#8216;Lies&#8217; as Advocates  Seek to Regain Momentum&#8221; &#8211;Hill Web site<\/p>\n<p>(Thanks to <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/best_of_the_web_today.html\" >The Wall  Street Journal&#8217;s James Taranto<\/a>)<\/p>\n<h2>Village Idiots<\/h2>\n<p>On health care: &#8220;My hope is that the country understands that we need  to do this.&#8221; &#8211;First Lady Michelle Obama (<em>And we all know what &#8220;we&#8221;  means when spoken by an Obama &#8212; government. Government &#8220;needs&#8221; to  expand its power.<\/em>)<\/p>\n<p>RINO lecture: &#8220;I would caution my Republican friends that [Obama has]  three years to go, and in that three years the American people are  going to want to see some progress and not just claims that this guy is  out of office and we&#8217;re going to do everything to destroy him or that  somehow he is a &#8217;socialist&#8217; taking over the country. Have we so lost our  faith in this country that we think one person, one man can be can  suddenly change our entire system? That&#8217;s kind of absurd.&#8221; &#8211;retired  Gen. Colin Powell<\/p>\n<p>Disdain: &#8220;The Tea Baggers, they&#8217;re not a movement, they&#8217;re a cult&#8230;.  Cults tend to populate from within, encouraging members to have huge  broods of children and to give them strange names, like Moonbeam, and  Trig.&#8221; &#8211;HBO&#8217;s Bill Maher, who probably will support Jerry &#8220;Moonbeam&#8221;  Brown for California governor and who ignores the Obama-worship cult to  which he bends his knee<\/p>\n<p><!-- [ADV|NationalParksPuzzle] --><\/p>\n<h2>Short Cuts<\/h2>\n<p>&#8220;The president says he doesn&#8217;t want to make a theatrical production  of it, but since the president himself is a theatrical production, it&#8217;s  difficult to see how the great health care summit can be anything but.  Mr. Obama is fond of saying how he wants his presidency to be  &#8216;transparent,&#8217; and he&#8217;s making it easy to see through what he and the  Democrats are doing. The Democratic task at hand is to animate a corpse  with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and who wants to volunteer for that?  But Mr. Obama is determined to prop it up for a vote.&#8221; &#8211;Washington  Times editor emeritus Wesley Pruden<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Secretary of State Clinton dared Iran on Monday to let her hold a  town hall meeting in Tehran. That&#8217;s telling &#8216;em. If the ayatollahs had a  sense of humor, they&#8217;d call her bluff.&#8221; &#8211;columnist Mark Steyn<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Remember that great scene from the Oscar-robbed classic &#8216;The Blues  Brothers&#8217;? Jake and Elwood (John Belushi and Dan Akroyd) are finally  cornered by Jake&#8217;s former fianc\u00e9e (Carrie Fisher). Jake left her at the  altar with 300 guests and the best Romanian caterers in the state  waiting. &#8216;You betrayed me!&#8217; she exclaims. &#8216;No I didn&#8217;t. Honest,&#8217; Jake  explains. &#8216;I ran out of gas. I, I had a flat tire. I didn&#8217;t have enough  money for cab fare. My tux didn&#8217;t come back from the cleaners. An old  friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an  earthquake! A terrible flood! Locusts! IT WASN&#8217;T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO  GOD!&#8217; This is pretty much how Democrats sound these days. None of their  problems are their fault. &#8230; Coming soon: A terrible flood! Locusts!  Anything and everything to avoid admitting their problems are their own  fault.&#8221; &#8211;columnist Jonah Goldberg<\/p>\n<p>Read more excellent articles at <a rel=\"tag\" href=\"http:\/\/patriotpost.us\/\" >The Patriot Post<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Filed under: <a href='http:\/\/papundits.wordpress.com\/category\/politics\/democrats\/barry-soetoro-aka-barack-hussein-obama\/'>Barry Soetoro (aka Barack Hussein Obama)<\/a>, <a href='http:\/\/papundits.wordpress.com\/category\/politics\/conniving-politicians\/'>Conniving Politicians<\/a>, <a href='http:\/\/papundits.wordpress.com\/category\/politics\/democrats\/demo-gogues-democrats-politics\/'>Demo-gogues<\/a>, <a href='http:\/\/papundits.wordpress.com\/category\/politics\/democrats\/'>Democrats<\/a>, <a href='http:\/\/papundits.wordpress.com\/category\/politics\/liberals\/'>Liberals<\/a>, <a href='http:\/\/papundits.wordpress.com\/category\/politics\/marxists\/'>Marxists<\/a>, <a href='http:\/\/papundits.wordpress.com\/category\/news-and-views\/'>News and Views<\/a>, <a href='http:\/\/papundits.wordpress.com\/category\/politics\/political-prostitutes\/'>Political Prostitutes<\/a>, <a href='http:\/\/papundits.wordpress.com\/category\/politics\/politicians-for-the-destruction-of-america\/'>Politicians for the Destruction of America<\/a> Tagged: <a href='http:\/\/papundits.wordpress.com\/tag\/annie\/'>Annie<\/a>, <a href='http:\/\/papundits.wordpress.com\/tag\/obamacare-catastrophe\/'>ObamaCare Catastrophe<\/a>, <a href='http:\/\/papundits.wordpress.com\/tag\/the-patriot-post\/'>The Patriot Post<\/a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/feeds.wordpress.com\/1.0\/gocomments\/papundits.wordpress.com\/31676\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.wordpress.com\/1.0\/comments\/papundits.wordpress.com\/31676\/\" \/><\/a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/feeds.wordpress.com\/1.0\/godelicious\/papundits.wordpress.com\/31676\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.wordpress.com\/1.0\/delicious\/papundits.wordpress.com\/31676\/\" \/><\/a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/feeds.wordpress.com\/1.0\/gostumble\/papundits.wordpress.com\/31676\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.wordpress.com\/1.0\/stumble\/papundits.wordpress.com\/31676\/\" \/><\/a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/feeds.wordpress.com\/1.0\/godigg\/papundits.wordpress.com\/31676\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.wordpress.com\/1.0\/digg\/papundits.wordpress.com\/31676\/\" \/><\/a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/feeds.wordpress.com\/1.0\/goreddit\/papundits.wordpress.com\/31676\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.wordpress.com\/1.0\/reddit\/papundits.wordpress.com\/31676\/\" \/><\/a> <img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/stats.wordpress.com\/b.gif?host=papundits.wordpress.com&#038;blog=174708&#038;post=31676&#038;subd=papundits&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The health care summit is an &quot;evil&quot; trap The Patriot Post Chronicle The Foundation &#8220;Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.&#8221; &#8211;James Madison Editorial Exegesis &#8220;A mere three days before President Obama&#8217;s supposedly bipartisan health-care summit, the White House [Monday] released a new blueprint that Democrats say they will ram through Congress with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4200,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-360141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4200"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}