The ‘Tom Thumb’ Presidency
Media headlines refer to the “most expansive gun-control agenda in a generation.” But compared to what the gun grabbers were proposing back in the 1970s and ’80s, Obama’s milquetoast ideas are cotton candy as opposed to five-alarm chile. There was serious talk to ban handguns back then, and it took all the power and influence of the NRA and Second Amendment advocates to stop it.
The NRA is making a big deal about going after these new regs, calling their effort the “fight of the century” (the “Mother of all Battles?”). What they won’t tell you is that they will defeat all congressional attempts at gun control and do it with one hand tied behind their backs. The culture has shifted dramatically — even since 1994 when a string of high-profile murders by criminals using assault weapons led to the original ban. The right to bear arms is more firmly ensconced in the public consciousness than ever before, and even if congressional proposals to require a background check on all gun purchases passed — a dubious supposition — it would be watered down and made virtually meaningless.
What all this bibble-babble from Obama reveals is a presidency afflicted with Tom Thumb Syndrome — a small man, with little or no imagination, pushing small ideas and trying to pass them off as transformational changes. As a candidate for re-election, President Obama did not run on any big ideas, or advocate massive change. His “investment” proposals consisted of throwing more money at the same cronies he funded during his first term — teachers, unions, “green” technology companies — while baiting the envious and paranoid voter with promises to sock it to the rich. It was a singularly small-minded campaign, unworthy even of a liberal.
His ideas to reduce the deficit and address the national debt are similarly timid. The GOP might be a little crazy about wanting to shut down the government, but when faced with a president who doesn’t think we have a spending problem, one can sympathize with their madness. At least Republicans are thinking big — too big for many but far better than the president’s denial of reality. At least the GOP is giving us a baseline for cuts in spending. The president prefers to imagine he can draw most of his deficit-reduction package by closing loopholes and reforming the tax system — once again, going after the “rich.”
It is indicative of the dearth of ideas and lack of recognition of what must be done that have characterized the Obama administration since 2010. Aside from the year and a half it took to pass Obamacare and the financial reform legislation — both signed into law while the Democrats owned a massive majority in the House and Senate — there has been nothing worthy of the label “transformational” emanating from the Obama White House. It has been one minor-league play after another. Climate change legislation? Given up and even EPA regs on making carbon dioxide a poisonous gas put on hold. A promise for second-term action not serious. Card check? No way, no how. Immigration reform? It’s coming, said Obama pre-election. If it does come, it is guaranteed not to be comprehensive or fix much of anything.
Surely Republican opposition has had something to do with these failures. But Bill Clinton also served during a time of hyperpartisanship and outright GOP hatred for the president and he managed to work with the Republican House to pass welfare reform — the most significant piece of social legislation in a generation. George W. Bush was considered illegitimate by most Democrats but managed to work with the opposition to pass education reform and prescription drug legislation.
It can be done — if a president thinks big and works hard to accomplish his goals. But this president prefers style over substance, atmospherics over real accomplishment. Thus, his plan to reduce gun violence and protect children will do neither because he lacks the boldness and clarity of mission to address the underlying causes of the violence that actually might make a difference.
Reforming our mental health codes and recognizing the role that guns can play in self-defense might go against the grain of his ideology. But because he is wedded so strongly to his beliefs, he must put on a dog and pony show with children as props to stage a meaningless press extravaganza that featured a lot of sound and fury about dealing with gun violence while signifying absolutely nothing.
Also read:
Considering that Republicans lost on Obama Care, the elections, taxes, spending, Benghazi, and pretty much every other issue, I don’t see why they are so confident that gun control won’t happen.
Of couse you don’t….just keep wearing those blinders,dude…..I recall seeing a political cartoon years ago by Thomas Nast (real political junkies will recognize the name) the subject of which was President U.S. Grant…..2 panels titled “A giant among pygmies….a pygmy among giants”…with the appropriately sized human figures in each panel…..so let it be with Barokeydoke…..a legend in his own mind
Jeremy has a point. We’re counting on help from long lost blue dogs and unicorns. I hear the unicorns went home.
No Jeremy, the Republicans didn’t lose on any of that, that. The People lost on all counts and, unless you are a Media Matters troll and not really human, you are a loser, too. Sometimes the last person to recognize a loss is the biggest loser. I would say you would be a giant in that area.
No, Jim. I think Jeremy is just fed up with a spineless GOP. Conservatives handed the GOP the House in 2010 and have been punished by the elites for it ever since. The people and our constitutional republic will keep losing if we don’t dump the crooks and cowards and offer an alternatve to the bipaetisan cess pool. The biggest demograhic in the country is the Fed Up Paety. That includes people of all colors and incomes.
I didn’t notice. Who was the fed up party’s candidate last fall? Now that all the fed ups helped us get the Communist re-elected, all of the fed-ups are just as big of losers as us unprincipled types who tried to get the only viable alternative elected. The Republicans may not be our favorite guys, but at least they were in the game and only the Republican candidate had a snowball’s chance in hell of beating the Communists. I say that was a possibility worth pursuing, so I went for it. I wish you and Jeremy had gone for it too. Then maybe we would be arguing about how much to cut the spending instead of whether we even need to do it. The lesser of two evils is always preferable to the greater of two evils.
Actually,Now that I’ve pondered the actions he takes on most issues I would classify him a Fabian Socialist,the difference being that they believe tyranny should be voted on and not forced at the barrel of a gun.The road leads to the same Dystopia but the median has less actual blood on it.
BTW Rick, Only because of” Heller vs DC” is he not pursuing more hostile actions on gun control,not some benevolent spirit on his part.Quit apologizing for this jerk.
We lost and continue to lose because we don’t understand what is coming at us.
For the lard left everything they do is political. From Rush’s human shield kids writing letters about guns to “it was all George Bush’s fault” to no budget for four years, “class warfare,”its all political. Nothing else matters.
Political gain for them and political destruction for us is alllll they care about.
We need to understand that,plan for it and work around it. Once we do we can reverse the trend.
Methinks this scribe has missed the mark about this president – as have a lot of people. He’s on stage (presser – another stupid speech – signing ceremony etc) with his little dog and pony show distracting us all – and it appears to be working very nicely for him – all the while his minions (AKA Fed workers) are behind the scenes quietly transforming America. Rather the reverse of The Wizard of Oz.
Like I’ve always said about this president – don’t listen to what he says he’s going to do – watch what he does.
Total agreement, Paleo. ObamaRx is wildly succeeding in furthering dependency and destroying the US dollar while the boot lickers (when they aren’t licking worse) in the Lamestream Media keep the attention of uninformed voters focused elsewhere.
Reverse Wizard of Oz.
Excellent Paleo. The Tin Man is busy tearing the heart out of a health care system that could have been fixed with a few sutures. The Cowardly Lion instills fear by pointing to the evil of Republicans, NRA, and AGW deniers, etc. While the Strawman’s efforts in education at every level will ensure that Americas ‘brains’ will invariably fall somewhere between an advanced society and that of a third world dictatorship.
Meanwhile, Dorothy is busy scanning the Shopping Channels for a deal on Red Shoes.
And Moran is very much part of the dog and pony show.
How, exactly, is Moran a part of Obama’s dog and pony show? Please explain.
Perhaps you haven’t read Moran’s articles before. He’s been accused of being a RINO (or worse) – and not without good evidence. Read the article again if you need to – pay particular attention to where he takes some jabs and light body-blows to republicans in the middle portions – keeping in mind this is supposed to be about Feckless Won and not republicans. He’s berating republicans and conservatives for voicing opposing opinions to these executive orders. Moran’s message sings out to me “Nothing to see here Folks – Move along”. At best he fails to see its one big battle – not many smaller ones. At worst he’s attempting to help the ‘hope and change’ efforts of Obummer and Co. Its often hard for me to tell which side Moran on – and I’m not sure he knows for sure. Its a style Moran has used for many of his articles.
I quit reading Moran a while ago, but he is useful because he often generates a good comments section, like tday.
Moran is part of that social liberally, fiscally conservative tribe of Republicans that call themselves “moderates”. In reality he is nothing more than a fiscally conservative Democrat. In other words, a blue dog Democrat afraid of being found out. He uses the moderate wing of the GOP as cover.
“pushing small ideas and trying to pass them off as transformational changes.”
Yes, that’s what it looks like on the outside. But on the inside, with Islamisation,uncontrolled spending, Obamacare, progressivism, destruction of free enterprise, food stamp dependency etc etc he is fundamentally transforming America to become powerless and therefore meaningless.
Gun grabbing is what gets your attention, but in reality the Obama regime is just as much after the first. By signing the on to the “Istanbul process’ resolution 16/18, the Obama- Clinton cabal signed away America’s free speech rights.
Mainly Obama is just recycling Benito Mussolini.
Excellent, Feral.
That’s what Obama is, a little Mussolini. But Mussolini loved his country, and Obama despises his country. Too bad Mussolini lived so long ago that only the elderly remember him.
Mussolini’s rise to power is a good example of the way our country is moving. I wonder how many Italians were sorry that they supported Mussolini in his early days. Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism” has a great summary of Mussolini’s rise and fall and the idiot types who supported him.
Mussolini II is enthroned in Albany, NY complete with his unwed mistress.
He does seem stuck on that 1930′s European totalitarian socialist model: big government, big corporation (public and private), big labor. Stalin destroyed middle class farmers, the last resistance. Obama has targeted small banks, small business and the middle class. But the big labor thing is so out of date, it’s going backwards. The gun grabbing is not working out either. He said there would be resistance, but nobody had any idea how much. Expect him to double down on stupid.
Well at least El Duce made the trains run on time. Most of the time Obama can’t even show up to his appointed press conferences on time.
Surely Obama knows how things ended for Mussolini
I agree that it looks like he doesn’t have any real chance of getting any significant anti gun legislation passed, but every time I entertain that thought I am quickly reminded of what I often heard on PJTV leading up to the election when we thought it was in the bag.
“That’s great kid, but don’t get cocky.”
Overconfidence leads to weakness and we need to beware of that trap. Even if we have the battle in Washington all but won, we still need to deliver strong rebuttals to the misinformation in the media. If we continue to allow the lies to be spouted, more and more people will begin to believe them. We may still win this battle, but the next one may not be so easy. I had rather err on the side of caution and sound a little paranoid than get overconfident and let the MSM get enough rhetoric into the minds of the less informed that we end up losing the next round that is sure to come.
I too think it would be wrong not to recognize that the desired fundamental Transformation is occurring out of sight. In my areas of expertise it is going after the Hearts and Minds via education to make social justice and the primacy of the Common Good the drivers of daily behavior. At a noncognitive unconscious emotional level that is supposed to then guide adult behavior of future voters.
http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/now-its-head-heart-and-hands-to-get-us-to-environmental-social-and-economic-justice/ lays out the very specific intent to turn all education, including higher ed, into social justice education. Create a compelling need to take action even if it requires constant false repetitions of our real history. Create the type of Heaven on Earth mentality that has provoked so much past tragedy. People as a means to an end to be monitored and molded as needed. Using Big Data according to repeated National Academy of Sciences reports over the past two years. We even get referred to as “socio-technical systems.” I wish I was kidding.
Those are not the aspirations of a Tom Thumb presidency.
Bingo -what is happening under the radar to government education is more than concerning. Bill Ayers and other leftists are providing input / implementing Common Core and I’m just learning about CSOPE (a quick search on it will show the worldview slant the resources used for this program is “ETA hand2mind”), if this is happening in TX, where else? I would have expected this in IL but TX???
Are readers here familiar with CSCOPE? Is it in your district? Thoughts?
The reason, POTUS is successful driving his agenda is the dumbing down of the electorate and the fusion between the Democrat Media Complex (H/T Breitbart) and this Administration. Pat Caddell is the only democrat who frequently calls out the media and states they have become an enemy of the American people.
The focus on guns and away from the crushing debt / spending / devaluation of the $ is just another trick and the GOP establishment falls for it everytime the Left yells “squirrel”
The electorate has indeed been dumbed down. Obamas reelection is proof of that. How anyone can continue support of a party one oF whose leaders says to find out what’s in the bill, you must pass it boggles my mind. It is very discouraging to see the uninformed and under-educated win again and again.
The brilliant Pee-losi also said that having a boatload of people receiving unemployment insurance was a great “stimulus” to the economy.
She probably thinks 17 million more people on food stamps since 2009 is a great stimulus as well.
You’re right, the profoundly depressing thing in all this is that the country is now so dumb, the media so bent, that these morons get a pass on this crap.
Yes. This is indeed the most discouraging thing. That we voted for him a second time just shows that most of us are just not paying attention, IMHO.
Thanks for posting this:
“It is very discouraging to see the uninformed and under-educated win again and again.”
Agreed, and what discourages me even more is that these very voters are a growing majority which can be led around by their noses with that mantra of, “Yes! I! Can!”…..they’re nouveau arrivistes like Michele jetting off with a White House Boeing-load of her claque to Spain. These Old Europeans must’ve been rolling their eyes.
But, what could these Spaniards do?….they desperately want our cash, as do the rest of these old Europeans, so they keep smiling, smiling, then it’s “Americans out!” after our check has cleared. That’s off topic, but definitely related. [..that's 'cheque', I know...I know...]
What we need here is a narrower and more mature voting source/base….some of these we have now are simply uneducable, and merely raising the voting age to 29 won’t change that aspect, but it might at least provide us with a more experienced voting base if not better educated. [...that's "educated", old school, folks...] Right now, we’re witnessing the tipping point downwards into that “great leveling” which is Socialism with an increasing Muslim element. Look at England and France. [...leaning off topic again because all of this is so very interconnected, but definitely relevant...]
Dear Readers, even the Great Society was never quite as threatening as the emerging social revolution we’re going through right now, with homosexual “marriages” and illegitimate children being seeded, incubated, delivered, and then growing up with that “entitlement” habit.
Remember all of this interconnection, folks; see how we have such a Sisyphean task ahead of us?
Texans may not have adopted the Common Core but the assessments they use, especially the new STAAR, are driven by Texas’ previous adoption of OBE. That’s what CSCOPE is about as well, aligning assessment with curriculum to change the values, attitudes, and beliefs of the students. It’s also why Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe of Understanding by Design have been spending so much time in Texas doing professional development of teachers.
http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/embrace-and-seize-technologys-potential-to-capture-the-hearts-and-minds-of-todays-students/ is one of two posts I wrote to explain to Texans their classrooms reflect the Common Core implementation. This is because it is assessments that drive instruction, not content standards.
References to Hands and Mind and Hearts and Mind are all about educating the Whole Child. The push is for physical activity like projects or community service. The Heart reference is to social and emotional learning and changing the child affectively. That July 28, 2012 Positive School Climate executive order included Texas and Virginia. All states.
Also in May 2008 a large number of Texas school supers signed a document called “Creating a New Vision for Public Education in Texas” to make sure that Texas went along with the classroom theories designed to achieve Equity Education and education fit for a democracy (that would be an economic democracy of the sort John Dewey envisioned).
Texas is also determined to implement digital literacy ASAP. In my most recent post I explain that this Cyberlearning initiative is being pushed precisely because digital literacy promotes the use of a tool and is visual and actually weakens most students. And that the profs are pushing it for precisely that reason. Apart from the megamillions that will flow to tech and broadband companies.
Rick Perry only thinks he has protected Texans. Unfortunately all the publicity on not participating in the Common Core may be allowing this Equity, Transformative education juggernaut to proceed apace without scrutiny.
Texas also has Saul Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation operating in most urban areas under the name the Alliance Network. Based in the schools and churches, it provides a tremendous base for community organizing. Also Alliance puts the school board members and supers through its “training.”
Beware. Those are just the dangers off the top of my head.
Thank you for your response, the digital age can bring good and bad, by pushing content digitally, it is easy to change and update without parental knowledge. I like to read the textbooks my kids are using, for example, how a history book portrays Woodrow Wilson, FDR and Reagan tells me all I need to know to determine if it is objective or slanted. I believe there are grassroots organizations trying to expose CSOPE in Texas and I wish them success. There is major global influence in the Common Core approach as well. The more I learn about what is happening, the more concerned I become…too many are asleep at the wheel, especially the GOP in DC and at the State level who seem to think this is just a liberal administration. Texans and other states must wake up.
The latest version of the DSM can technically make it easy to declare anyone insane. The definitions are now so broad with so many syndromes, conditions, etc., that if you went for a mental review to be allowed to own guns and you had an upset stomach the shrink could use its effect on your answers to not only deny you but put you on meds. If you were merely rightly angry and offended about the whole process the police might be waiting for you after the interview.
It’s not just the shrinks really but your regular doctor. They have been asking questions about guns already and sometimes even about family members. Many already act as spies and under Obamacare and these “common sense” mental health regs, it will be far worse.
While I agree that Obama is a tiny man, he’s cunning and his handlers even more so. They do things that seem like they will be innocuous, until the deed is done and you read the fine print. Obamacare was like that: while many of us saw the danger most did not, until it was law of the land. Note it was also phased in over years and not all at once. That wasn’t to set the system up, but to turn up the heat slowly so the frog didn’t jump out in revolt but boiled without realizing. The same is happening with guns and our basic liberties.
I’d certainly be leery of getting “evaluated” by any individual who held the ever elaborating categories of mental illness in the DSM as useful or meaningful information.
I think they keep making stuff up (didn’t being too happy, “excessive euphoria” make it in to the last version of the DSM?) for purposes of getting paid, insurance coverage.
An acquaintance of mine who is a shrink once told me: “The crazy ones are not the ones in my office doing therapy. The crazy ones are the ones running around out there refusing to seek the help they need.” Something to keep in mind.
Something to keep in mind is most of those ‘therapists’ think most of us should be on their couches. Best way to screw up a perfectly good mind is to give them ‘therapy’. My younger sister is the perfect example. It took her 10 years to finally admit that the therapist was doing more harm than good. I subscribe to the theory that a well patient doesn’t help make the mortgage payment.
It’ll never happen here. These changes are just small change.
Right, right:
http://www.therightscoop.com/west-point-think-tank-warns-of-violent-far-right-groups/
Folks like Moran are at best unwittingly attempting to convince the frogs there is no problem, when there is most definitely a problem.
“insignificance has become the new normal at the White House.”
Very insightful comment … roughly translated, it means that Obama (though a king), is now officially a king without a country. America is here to stay; America is prospering and will continue to prosper because the reigns of the WH are not Obamas (as he thinks); they are God’s now.
I guess Feckless Won can quit blaming G.W. Bush now eh?
Chuck Hagel at Defense is no small thing. Brennan at CIA is no small thing, either. And Kerry at State? Good Lord.
Obama doesn’t have to trash the Constitution to do enormous damage to the country. All he has to do is make the “right” appointments to his Cabinet.
And hang on for his Supreme Court appointments. We can get through four more years of Obama. Can we survive as much as twenty five years of a liberal court? And I don’t mean just liberal, but actively liberal. That, my friends, is the real danger.
I don’t think the American people will tolerate a liberal-majority Supreme Court for 25 years. Nine people will not be able to herd us like sheep.
For some time now Obama and his sudden rise from utter obscurity to massive power has reminded me of a character in a popular novel written by a very popular author back in the 1950s. This fictional character quickly became a major threat to all mankind before being “neutralized” by his intellectual opposition.
I finally realized who the fictional character was that Obama resembled.
So I am asking PJM readers if they can come to the same conclusion as I did.
I won’t reveal who I think Obama resembles, or why, until I receive some comments, so please do so.
I think Obama’s meteoric rise and ruthless use of power was an event that could not have been predicted (which is a hint to the name of the fictional book character), but in Obama’s case, it could only have taken place after the passing of the greatest generation of World War-II patriotic veterans.
#10 – The Mule, in Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation”?
Yes, Fast Eddie, you are absolutely correct. I think the analogy of Obama and the Mule is striking. The Mule appeared in the 3rd book of Asimov’s original Foundation Trilogy, which was titled the “Second Foundation”.
I think Obama closely fits the Mule in that Obama’s appearance was an aberration that – like the Mule – could not have been predicted by the mathematics of Hari Seldon’s psychohistorians – nor by the bulls**t that passes these days for political “expertise”. Apparently not even the leaders of the Democratic Party know how it really happened.
Everything came together perfectly for Obama, as the Communist-dominated media, and the Communist-dominated colleges, and the Communist dominated Democratic Party were finally able to break into the open as Obama organized a racial and cultural coalition that guaranteed his victory – twice.
This was only able to take place after the last of the old patriotic war veterans were slipping quietly into history. Otherwise, I believe that even those who were Democrats would have prevented our current Mule from taking power – and God knows where he is still planning to take this country.
Look for the earlier classics:
Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann “Klein Zaches, genannt Zinnober”
I read it in Russian translation in my youth, and was under great impression. It is quite possible that Azimov was also influenced by it.
As I recall, the Democratic candidate for Senator in Illinois took his wife to a kinky sex club. When this broke at the last hour, a little known fellow with the funny name of Obama was put up to run. Something like this.
Actually, not quite right. Obama was running against Ryan (was it?) and losing. And losing very well indeed. If I’m not mistaken, the Tribune sued to open up the divorce court papers and that was the end of Ryan. As a matter of fact, the Republicans drafted Alan Keyes to run at the last moment and he was trounced. By the way, who do you think worked for the Tribune at one time? His election campaign manager then and now.
Since I posted my original comment about The Mule, and then my reply to Fast Eddie, I decided to check Wikipedia to see if there was any mention of the Mule.
Sure enough, there is not only a mention, but an excellent article under THE MULE. In fact the Wikipedia article enlarges on the simularities I mentioned between Obama and Asimov’s The Mule character, and its discussion is actually uncanny in how Obama resembles the character both physically and psychologically.
I don’t see it – Obama’s not an aberration but a figure who resides squarely at and as a result of 50 years of counter-culture that has morphed into race, class and gender-based political correctness.
If I had to borrow from SF I’d say Paul Atreides. Paul came to lead a group that turned out to be phenomenally competent but were marginalized rats in the walls and that history’s failures – turns out every 10,000 year old institution were morons compared to Paul and the Fremen. This is a favorite fantasy in pop culture story-telling and a meme loved in the real world by losers, particularly black American activists.
When left to literature it’s a fun theme and it’s everywhere. All the Harry Potter main characters, though kids, are pretty much smarter than all the adults who actually built the institution those kids live in. Tarzan lives with apes and is derided early on but comes to speak a dozen languages and pretty much the most powerful force on the entire continent.
In the real world it’s a mistake to closely identify with losers and rebels. Real life is full of unhappy endings, and I don’t want to live with apes to invoke a Pyrrhic victory or wait for my tattoos to lead the way, or a Messiah.
Another characteristic of the Mule was that he was sterile, and therefore was unable to pass along those characteristics that made him so invulnerable. So there was no way for anyone to continue his rule following his eventual demise.
We should be so lucky.
The commentors have Obozo figured out better than the author. Essentially, a steady chipping away of tradition and law. Not inconsequential I would say.
“A small man, with little or no imagination, pushing small ideas and trying to pass them off as transformational changes.”
…as opposed to the Republican leadership which is a GROUP of men, with little or no imagination and unable to push even small ideas?
I imagine I feel just like some Romans in the second and third century.
The Republicans have good ideas. But for some reason they have been utterly unable to communicate them. They need a simple “elevator speech” (60 seconds of less) for why free market capitalism and small government is good for EVERYONE. And they need to repeat it convincingly and with sincerity on EVERY possible occasion. If they cannot do this, they will never win.
SB – BS, Boehner does not have any good ideas other than let him spend the money rather than the Democrats. The Republicans have controlled the House for two years now and what do they have to show for it? Zip, nada, nothing.
“I’d be embarrassed if I still considered myself a Republican.”
Yes – Boehner is void of ideas. The trouble with congress is in the way it operates – how it cajoles votes from both sides of the isle to get things done. The fight now is for the increasingly smaller table scraps once known as pork. The pig cannot continue to provide enough bacon for these congressmen to buy and sell votes. No pork? No vote! So nothing much gets done unless these rats sneak in some pork like they did with the Sandy relief money. They should be ashamed – but they aren’t. And that is troubling.
Too true, Over. Tea Party members have been threatened, smeared and offered bribes by the GOP Poliboro. Never a word of thanks for Sarah Palin, she was shunned from the convention. Now why would we want to take over such a corrupt party with its toxic bagage? We have to say “Enough!” like the battered wife who finally accepts that the jerk will never change. The survival of our constitutional republic is at stake. Like the Sons of Liberty we won’t know the outcome until we step up to the challenge.
What did you really think Republicans could have done over the last two years? They can’t pass any law without the Democrat controlled Senate to go along with it. What chance do they have with that? Even if they pass a bill and the Senate actually passes it, they still have to get Obama to sign it into law. What bill could they have ever passed that was going to get that far? If Obama vetoes the miracle bill that actually sneaks out of the Senate, then the Republicans will need a two-thirds majority vote to override his veto. Where will they ever get the votes to pull that one off? Republicans control 1/2 of 1/3 of the government and the Democrats control everything else. What do you think Boehner is not doing that you think any other Republican could do in this circumstance? If we had elected Mitt Romney instead of the skinny Communist, you might have a more reasonable complaint about what the Republicans don’t accomplish. Why don’t more of “The People” understand how “The People’s” government is set up in “The People’s” Constitution? I feel like a broken record trying to explain this Middle School stuff to folks on this site. Open your damned eyes and discover who your enemy is before you lose what is left of your freedoms people. Do “The People” actually think they can mount any kind of a revolution when they don’t even know their enemy? Or, if you are actually just a Media Matters troll, then STFU will more than do it for you!
Small minded? I don’t think so. He has separated the big business class from the Tea Party whackos.
I don’t know if your characterization of the Tea Party as “whackos” is your feeling or sarcasm but it is telling how much real power this “little man”, his cabal of leftist apparatchiks and the media jackals have. The Tea Party protests were a spontaneous protest by normal, hard working Americans against the soft (and not so soft) tyranny of an oppressive, corrupt and coercive government. Now the tea party types are widely disparaged as racist, violent, ignorant haters when they are anything but. It is the problem that T.S. Eliot labeled as the “the pagans owning the most valuable advertising space”
Excellent points. I imagine that as Adolf Hitler (another powerful “little” man) gained power, many Germans similarly did not believe he had staying power.
tran, Of course the Tea Party Hobbits were never with big business and Rick Santelli raised the outcry against the bail out corruption. The Tea Party has kept a low profile of late, yet the Marxists and the GOP elite take every opportunity to smear us. The idiot Todd Akin won the MO primary when two Tea Party candidates split that vote, yet even Republican pundits called him the Tea Party guy. They all fear the Tea Party because it stands for real reform and that is a threat to the massive bipartisan scam in DC/Wall St.
Does not know his political enemy and will therefore never confront his enemy.
The puppeteers whispered into one of Obama’s oversized ears to appear reasonable, go Forward! steadily and quietly, and let the bureaucrats do the dirty work so that the Fundamental Transformation can take root without anyone even noticing. As the author points out the EPA is on hold. They are not abolished now are they? Tomorrow the signal is quietly given and they are not on hold. Then what?
Sorry to say it Mr. Moran and Dr. Krauthammer but I believe that you are being snookered.
Exactly. obama is merely the puppet, the public face for people who want to destroy our way of life. He is not calling the shots. His job is to go out and lie to the stupid, the uninformed, and the useful idiots.
Well said, Yooper.
Considering Obama’s life-long concern with race, Muslim rings of power, commies, diversity and quota hires, one has to ask oneself why he wanted to be President.
The reason why this gun list is so desultory is that without a racial angle Obama becomes bored. In truth there is a racial angle but the fact that whites only commit, for example, 3% of gun violence in NYC heightens Obama’s boredom to a state of invisibility. It runs contrary to the absurd world views of the first man to be elected President in America on pure political correctness. Kill 40 people in a week and that’s fine – it’s really whitey and his New Jim Crow anyway. Kill them all at once and hit the panic button and then call out whitey (conservatives) all the same.
In Obama’s world, morality runs in direct proportion to the darkness of one’s skin and the size of one’s wallet. In other words, he’s a walking talking freak born of a stereotype factory. As Thomas Sowell has written, Obama is incapable of learning because he already knows the world is one that consists of the Fremen and the Harkonnens and Obama’s is Paul.
Our founding fathers were rather sophisticated men, bred on literature and history. Obama was bred on second-rate cartoons and racial myths of plantation masters with iPhones.
Which makes him Idi Amin or Robert Mugabe with better media handlers
Very well said.
The reason why this gun list is so desultory is that without a racial angle Obama becomes bored.
Absolutely.
Which is why the Henry Louis Gates affair early in his 1st term where he gleefully rushed to judgment that “the Cambridge police acted stupidly” so animated him.
And the daily black on black gun carnage in his adopted home city of Chicago does not.
A news item reports that some 440 school-age children were shot in Chicago last year.
And the majority of them were black. Obummer seems to have no problem with that. Probably because most of the perps are also black. There is no way for him to make racial ‘hay’ from that. If he really cared about kids regardless of color he’d ensure the large cities got portable body scanners that can detect guns that are concealed. That technology is easily portable in police cars. We have the technology but don’t look for Obummer and the democrats to expend political capitol on helping a class of people who are not only low information but likely will never vote. Rahm is interested in the ‘problem’ only as it affects his reelection down the road. Talk about a lost generation. Shot up and killed with regularity and nobody sees the profit in stopping it.
The other side would say: “The root cause of black-on-black crime is poverty, which is the result of decades of oppression by white people, and racism which continues to deny black males economic opportunity today.” One of the tragedies of this country is that no one took Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s (D Ma) 1965 on the black family to heart. http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/webid-meynihan.htm
I have to strongly disagree about the portable body scanners. What about the fourth amendment? Looking under someone’s clothes without a specific warrant is most definitely unreasonable search and seizure. Using body scanners to reduce crime is illegitimate for the same reason banning guns would be, infringement on basic rights.
Uh, SB, what families? 78% of all black children born in 2011 were bastards. Black people are apparently creating the poverty they live with and the violent conditions their children are subjected to. And please don’t force me to explain to you what a bastard child is. I have spent my whole life being told that poverty is the cause of all black evil. Why is the white on white murder rate among poor whites so much lower than for blacks? I am not their problem because seven generations ago there were slaves in this country. There were slaves in most countries on this planet back then and they weren’t all black people, either. So spare me the tired leftist diatribe on race relations. You aren’t doing black people any good by making up excuses for them so that they can continue to ignore the problems that are destroying them. Your government won’t fix their problems with anything they are doing either.
Obama has one general goal in his political life: marginalize and de-institutionalize the power and supposed global historic and current racism of white people.
He could do a better job if he convinced whites to celebrate vulgar and sociopathic “music” as the centerpiece of white culture and thrown in a default mode of blame, excuses and self-pity. That’d kill white culture for sure – if there was such a thing as white culture. Look what it’s done for black Americans, who do in fact have a culture based on race, and suppose everyone does in a classic case of projection and global mind-reading.
Obama doesn’t like or have any use for white people. He considers them flawed and sinful. Of course this is in direct contravention to his views that race conveys nothing.
What do you expect from a politically correct moron but self-contradiction, hypocrisy and ignorance. Watch his Hampton U speech from 2007 – if that’s not racial hate speech and incitement there is no such thing.
Perhaps a good counterpoint would be to have Obama’s half-whiteness emphasized at every opportunity. Note that that’s rarely if ever mentioned. There’s some hypocrisy for you.
cf: pasted here from Google:
“President Obama calls African-Americans a ‘mongrel people’
thehill.com/…/111611-obama-calls-african-americans-a-mongrel-people-
… telling daytime talk show hosts that African-Americans are “sort of a mongrel people. … we can disagree without being disagreeable,’” Obama said.”…..
But, since I’ve pasted that here, it may make me a “racist” because I’m White Man and making that reference.
[...as a side note, I mentioned snarkily in a post at the ABAJournal website in the context of the tragedy of the Aaron Swartz suicide, that any woman with the name of "Ortiz" is in a good position to claim life tenure at just about anything she wanted. That got me labeled "racist" instantly, and when I tried to amplify that later by including a reference to Rep. Issa also questioning her "throwing the book" at Swartz, I was banned completely from even searching at the ABAJournal website. Food for thought.]
Lo, Dear Readers….such is the penetration of “political correctness” today.
So…Mr. Moran wants to lull conservatives back to sleep, instead of capitalizing on the current – and justified- outrage. Instead of re-directing that energy towards political activism, let’s just go back to sleep and forget about it.
It’s not that big a deal, after all. Just a couple of new laws. Nothing to worry about…
Which ignores how most dictatorships and tyrants come into being. Most of them did it legally. From Hitler to Chavez. What Stalin and Lenin did to the Russians was legal. What Mao did to the Chinese people was legal. What Idi and Pol did to their people was legal.
What Obama is doing is legal, so why so serious?
I’m sorry, Mr. Moran…but you can’t be taken seriously. Unless this most recent article is satire. If so, it was wonderfully done.
No Warren, it’s not satire. It’s plagiarism…….shocking as that may seem. John Boehner actually wrote it.
“…a small man, with little or no imagination, pushing small ideas and trying to pass them off as transformational changes. ”
I don’t agree. This claim is the mirror image of those left-wingers who keep trying to reassure Middle America and the Jews that Obama really is a “moderate.”
Obama is not a man of limited imagination. Obama is a man of limited clout in Congress.
Obama hasn’t been more transformational; NOT because he’s small-bore, but simply because the GOP controlled the House of Representatives and even moderate Dems in the Senate like Max Baucus frustrated Obama’s agenda.
Compare with FDR’s second term, in which the Senate had 69 Dems to only 25 Republicans; and the House of Representatives had 313 Dems to 117 Republicans. If Obama had the kind of majorities in Congress that FDR had, there would have been a lot more left-wing transformation enacted.
Obama has grand ideas which exactly parrot the failed grand ideas of some of the 20th century’s most brutal dictators and mass assassins.
It was 4 years and 4 days ago that he said…”We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”
He is a very small man who, when he isn’t grandiosely reflecting on all consuming power and dispensing with those pesky other branches of government and those niggling little things called “states’ rights”, when he isn’t golfing or vacationing, he is first, last and always a Community Organizer.
A reasonable man in a broke country would forgo the $170 million inauguration festivities beginning tomorrow. The past few days, Obama has been holding private get togethers in our White House to pre-reward some of his biggest donors, his “benefactors”, prior to the week of official parties.
I also see Obama’s executive orders as milquetoast, even impotent.
Krauthammer is spot on that those EO’s are useless & an appearance of motion.
I don’t agree that “No one has proposed taking anyone’s guns”,
Crazy Joey and more than a few democrat Senators would dearly love to disarm the population, not so much in the interests of saving lives as the fact that a disarmed population is essential to the full blown fruition of the Statist wet dream.
Senator Dianne Feinstein is on record in 1995 proposing disarming the population. (She currently chairs the Senate Intelligence (!) committee & these days often comes across as more than a little addled.)
DiFi herself has “carried” for a long time, even as a concealed carrier.
Apparently, her 1995 recommendations are only for the hoi polloi…
Mr. and Mrs. America, turn ‘em all in
Barack “they cling to guns or religion” Obama would NEVER do what the state of New York has already done. Never. What a preposterous notion.
My fear is that he will sign the UN Small Arms Treaty in March.
Frightening indeed.
“How does the ATT (and the Programme of Action that undergirds it) propose to enforce this anti-gun agenda?
Section III, Paragraphs 7 and 8 of the Programme of Action mandate that if a member state cannot get rid of privately owned small arms legislatively, then the control of “customs, police, intelligence, and arms control” will be placed under the power of a board of UN bureaucrats operating out of the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs.
This provision includes the deployment of UN peacekeeping forces in a member state to seize and destroy “weapons stockpiles.”
Again, no definition of stockpile, but by that time it will be too late to make that argument.
In order to assist these blue-helmets and their disarmament overlords in their search and seizure of this ammunition, Section III, Paragraph 10 mandates that member states develop technology to improve the UN’s ability to detect stockpiles of ammo and arms”
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/item/14237-un-general-assembly-votes-unanimously-to-hammer-out-global-gun-control-treaty
Obummer can sign all the UN treaties he wishes to sign. Without the passage of said treaty by the Senate it carries all the weight of used toilet paper. And that worries me! Our politicians who all profess to have “We the People” in mind whenever they act seem to have forgotten who they work for.
In addition to being blatantly and impeachably unconstitutional, his proposal to ban magazines that hold over seven cartridges would effectively ban all handguns except revolvers. That is not an insignificant “infringement” on our right to have and to bear arms. This thesis is completely wrong and comprehends nothing of the Communist control we are all facing, I says. Rick Moran can sell this Communist Party hand puppet short at his own peril. We should all be ready for a fight to save each of our Constitutional rights.
“You see,” my colleague went on, “one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not? – Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
“But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked – if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
“They Thought They Were Free”
Milton Mayer 1966
http://www.amazon.com/They-Thought-Were-Free-Germans/dp/0226511928
The frog in the pot will jump out if the water your put him in his boiling. But slowly raise the heat and he won’t notice he is little by little being cooked….
Seems to be Obama the Venal has been quite large. Take what is considered as the new norms. All hail Caesar:
- Five years of trillion dollar deficits accepted without real protest
- A trillion dollar stimulus that did nothing and no one cared
- Government take over of healthcare which will eventually lead to single payer
- 17,000,000 apparently permanently added to the food stamp rolls
- Acceptable declining middle class wage cuts four consecutive years
- 1 in 2 in poverty or near poverty worthy of reelection
- Lost the “good war” in Afghanistan and few noticed
- 1-2% growth applauded as progress and recovery
- 14+% real unemployment and holding (yawn)
I would call the acceptance of all this and a shrug followed by another big win about as big as anything I’ve witnessed in my 52 years. Bonus points for convincing the majority it’s still Bush II’s fault and Republican obstruction.
That’s not Tom Thumb but Titan. Someone said Rome of 2nd or 3rd century? Perhaps, but I think we’re past that and now awaiting the Visigoths.
- Government take over of healthcare which will eventually lead to single payer (the grandfather of Obamacare nominated by the “opposition party” to “oppose” Obama)
Just a little improvement to your list.
Huh? I haven’t heard about any of that. Can’t be true. You’re just saying that because you are one of those mean Republicans who wants to take food out of children’s mouths and push Granny off a cliff. Well, anyway, even if it is true, it can’t be serious since no one is upset about it. Okay. Uh huh. Well. So, anyway, what do you think about Manti T’eo?
Another troll. Sheesh.
Yet burried within all the hype and vanilla was a little ditty that, while mentioned, went, for the most part, unnoticed.
“President Obama announced this week, by executive order, that his healthcare program known as ObamaCare will play a key role in controlling guns.
President Obama says his ObamaCare law gives doctors the right to question patients about guns in their homes and report that information to the government.”
Not a small idea, a tiny one.
But with Major Reprocussions once implimented.
Really ?
If a doctor is dumb enough to exercise that particular “right”, I have a “right” to tell him to go pound sand.
This was part of Obama’s “official” recommendations on Wednesday.
17. Release a letter to health care providers clarifying that no federal law prohibits them from reporting threats of violence to law enforcement authorities.
Tom Thumb presidency? Nah – he’s the middle finger presidency.
You win.
These 23 so called executive orders issued on Wednesday, although lacking teeth, certainly do contribute to the destabilization agenda essential to the demise of liberties enshrined in the Constitution, which demise is essential to the emergence of full blown Statism.
As have previous “bypass the process” orders of this President, such as unilaterally granting amnesty to certain classes of individuals in this country illegally and asserting executive privilege to stop those embarrassing inquiries into Fast & Furious.
I do have a “look over my shoulder” and what will they pull next? feeling about our national government (not as “federal” as it used to be) these days.
Who better than the by now familiar ex-KGB guy to lay out the process?
Really, you need to decide if Obama is a Tom Thumb or a Hitler. Or is his simultaneous complete insignificance and evil grandeur one of those theological mysteries that can only be understood by the eyes of faith?
I shouldn’t abuse the theologians. What you guys really sound like is any number of editorials in the Daily Worker. High brow leftists worried about logical consistency when they spoke to each other in private; but in propaganda for the masses, no invective was too stupid so long as it riled up the troops. So in PJ Media, Obama can be a criminal mastermind and yet also a mere puppet—I guess you figure he can’t be calling the shots himself because everybody knows blacks aren’t very smart (not that we’re racists). The actions of his government are contemptible in scale and yet he is overturning the American republic from top to bottom and bringing the political or literal apocalypse. His ideas are tremendous novelties and yet at the same time are just the same old Liberal nostrums. etc.
Harrison’s here to slap us on the wrist from his (imagined) on high aerie.
Elitists like him give me the heebie jeebies.
And a headache.
(over and out)
I used to hear that same dichotomy from the Left about Bush:
1. Bush is an idiot;
2. Bush is a moron;
3. Bush conspired to cause the 9-11 attack to happen so he could build an oil pipeline in Afghanistan;
4. Bush stole the 2004 election;
You have to be pretty clever to figure out a vast conspiracy to have the 9-11 attack happen without anyone being the wiser.
And you have to be pretty clever to steal a national election.
As for Obama, I’ve already said that this article is way off base.
It’s an unfair comparison to try to compare Obama–who has to deal with a House of Representatives controlled by the opposition party–against FDR or LBJ, who didn’t have that problem. (In fact, their Congresses were little more than rubber stamps for anything they wanted to get done.)
I was going to mention this but, since you did, ditto that, sinz54.
Obama only has to succeed at his two biggest ideas – which will spawn an avalanche of regulations and burdens on citizens.
1. Fully implement Obamacare – with the inevitable “public option” – and healthcare will be fully socialized
2. Continue to run up debt and spending to the point that everyone will eventually be compelled to pay onerous taxes of innumerable forms (fees, VAT, income, sales, etc) that will shift more power to Washington while addressing Obama’s boogieman – reducing income inequality
The rest of the little stuff – side shows to keep the conversation away from the big ideas.
Obama’s an empty suit.
He bullies. He lies. He defrauds tax payers to get their money. He’s a Lance Armstrong act-alike. Obama’s couldn’t come up with an original thought if his life depended on it.
99% of Obama’s ideas came from watching the political thriller, “24″. The Drones, the Executive Orders, the moles. Most everything Obama’s people have thought up, they didn’t think up; every good idea they’ve ever had came from intense studying of TV show, “24.
If the Republican Party wonders why the Democrats are always one step ahead, it’s because Obama spies were embedded in Romney’s campaign, among other places. One recent spy came public who was caught infiltrating the Hannity staff.
Of course, the ultimate mole is Obama himself. Tony Almeida, where are you when your country needs you?
Have any staff from Obama’s re-election campaign admitted that they got their ideas from “24″?
Or is that just something you made up?
Because a lot of Obama’s staffers have come forward to talk about how they ran the campaign–and they never mentioned “24″.
“Crazies? Check. Mental patients? Check. Felons? Check. Um…how about Republicans? Never mind. Back to finding racists hiding under the bed…”
This is something that SHOULD be looked at carefully, but not for the reasons the Kenyan thinks, and it’ll never happen on Holder’s watch. Back when the “Insta-Check” system was put into place, BATFE administratively — and without legislative authority — expanded the categories of those who would be denied to include anyone ever arrested on a charge of domestic violence.
Please read that last part again carefully, and note that it does not contain words like “prosecuted” or “convicted” or “sentenced.” One need merely have been arrested to be on the “deny” list.
Without a conviction or resolution to that charge then the record of arrest can be expunged, just like a felony charge. I know I had some felony charges that were thrown out of court but there was still the arrest record, they can be expunged usually for free. So if you are arrested and not convicted you need to get your record expunged and you may properly reply that you have not been convicted of that charge!
“I don’t know about you, but the gruel in my gulag is really tasty!!” Rick Moran
obozo, our clown in chief, will be remembered as smaller than an ant, and even less positive, but history will have him being reviled for his positions, his policies and his hatred of this country.
Anyone see the GAO report of 1/17/13 stating that with this economic dunce’s policies, the ones that the media touted as being balance, because obozo said it was, that we are headed to the UNSUSTAINABLE FISCAL path. In other words, for the libs/dems/low information voters–you know the ones that told us on Kimmel how terrific the inauguration was, we are broke.
But have no fear, obozo has his life time armed security, pension and nice home in Hawaii to suck up your last pennies while he lives large on the hog, spreading the wealth, and that sucking sound is the money going to him.
Clint Eastwood exposed Obama better than anybody else, and I was stunned how the Republican establishment ignored Eastwood on that.
The GOP elite are just a faction of the crony capitalist big government project. They aren’t all that unhappy with Obama, maybe jealous. Clint is an annoyance but they really hate Rand Paul, Sarah Palin, etc., who threaten to dismantle the whole rotten enterprise.
I guess the only difference would be that the Democrat alternative was well known to be a person you could not influence to do anything to eliminate the crony capitalism that you feel is our eventual down fall. You only had enough information to guess that Romney would be so intransigent. How is the rejection of Mitt Romney working out for everyone so far? For that matter, how is all that trickle up poverty working out for everyone so far? We had better get our sights trained on the actual enemy pretty soon, I say.
Section 1.e of his executive order released Wednesday adds State, Treasury, Interior, Agriculture, Energy, and Veterans Affairs. It reads: “For purposes of this memorandum, ‘Federal law enforcement agencies’ means the Departments of State, the Treasury, Defense, Justice, the Interior, Agriculture, Energy, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security, and such other agencies and offices that regularly recover firearms in the course of their criminal investigations as the President may designate.”
So the point of this article is that Obama is totally powerless and totally harmless. Sounds good, but who would believe it?
It’s an example of the political tactic of “Let’s throw anything we’ve got against the wall and hope that something sticks.”
Perhaps some conservatives will be motivated by contempt for Obama’s allegedly limited mind.
While other conservatives will be motivated by fear of Obama’s alleged cleverness and left-wing ideas.
Whatever.
Tom ThumbThimblerig presidencyTSA pulling nude body scanners from airports
http://www.myfoxboston.com/story/20625937/2013/01/18/tsa-scrapping-body-scanners
Of course…elections are soon coming up…even *100 Ballots in the Back Seat* (and felon voting favorite) Al Franken claims that he doesn’t like Barack’s stance against gun ownership…
In my view, TSA scanners were something desperately campaigning democrats didn’t want to have to defend, so POOF! they’re gone…well, at least until elections are over.
So, a small man with small minded ideas you say, nothing to worry about, right? Why, then, does it feel like he succeeds at every step to subvert liberty, worsen the situation of the nation, and enslave ever more people to the federal government?
Someone said these actions were “milquetoast”. Exactly, that’s what they are supposed to look like. Just fluff, move along.
Two things bother me. One is the aggregation of all records and information on myself and you, into every government bureaucracy. The second is the linkage to 0bamacare. Long term the idea is to make it impossible for anyone to pass a background check.
Ever complained to your doctor about stress, or depression, or difficulty sleeping? Ever taken Lunesta, Vicoden, Paxil, Xanax? Sorry, you are too much a risk. Are you a vet having nightmares or other distress? Sorry, no firearms for you. Arrested for PI 30 years ago as a teenager? Sorry, too much a risk.
This is where he’s going.
“4. Direct the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.”
Well, maybe Holder can review how those “individuals prohibited from having a gun,” such as Mexican gang members, got all those assault rifles through “Fast and Furious?” That would be a refreshing start. Who knew that one of the biggest dealers in illegal arms was the Federal Government? I can’t think of any other people who willingly sold literally thousands of assault rifles to known criminals. Strange how that worked out.
Bathhouse Barry—our very own half-wit version of Mussolini.