This Saturday is Hobby Lobby Appreciation Day. Why do we need to have a Hobby Lobby Appreciation Day? Because that company, which is owned by the Green family of Oklahoma, finds itself under assault from the US government.
Why? Are they mobsters? Did they traffic in drugs or sponsor terrorism? Did they cheat on their taxes or declare themselves a sovereign state? Are they building an arsenal of weapons or menacing people around them?
No. They’re entirely law-abiding citizens who have built businesses through hard work, offering great service and quality merchandise that people want to buy. Their crime is that they do not believe they should be forced to pay for something that violates their religious beliefs, but which is otherwise widely available if their employees want to buy those things for themselves. That’s their crime. The Obama government is trying to put them under its jackboot.
Why? Because of the man who was just re-elected President of the United States.
In his latest column, Fred Barnes doesn’t quite get that. But he’s getting there.
It was support by the Senate “gang of six” for $1.2 trillion in taxes—a third more than Mr. Obama had agreed to—that prompted him to up the ante with Mr. Boehner. The president feared the political embarrassment of being outbid on taxes by a rump Senate group that included three Republicans. His sudden demand for more tax revenues snuffed out any chance of a deal with Republicans.
Mr. Obama’s post-Thanksgiving insistence on new concessions by Republicans had the same effect. He wanted a new stimulus of $50 billion the first year and $25 billion in the subsequent years, another housing-finance program and still-higher taxes. Negotiations soon petered out, leading to the scaled-backed legislation that cleared Congress on Tuesday.
It was not a happy ending for Mr. Obama or Republicans. The president barred significant spending cuts in the stopgap bill, further alienating Republicans and worsening the poisonous political climate in Washington as he begins his second term.
This is a bigger problem than Mr. Obama may imagine. The most important issues—the debt ceiling, entitlement reform, tax reform, government spending, the $110 billion sequester—now must be dealt with in an atmosphere that is hardly conducive to bipartisanship and compromise.
The essence of bipartisan deals is win-win: Both sides are satisfied, even if not elated. Mr. Obama’s approach is that he alone gets to win. The approach worked, more or less, on the fiscal-cliff deal, but it won’t produce the larger bipartisan agreements that Mr. Obama now needs. And he’ll miss the opportunities that other presidents seized, to their own benefit and the country’s.
Read the whole thing. It’s informative about the recent past and the spending, Second Amendment and immigration battles to come.
The most important line is this one:
“Mr. Obama’s approach is that he alone gets to win.”
There’s a word for that. The sooner his opponents figure him out and stop thinking of him as an amateur or an empty suit — because he knows exactly what he is doing, and is better at it than most realize — the better.
He can be stalled for two years and his hold on Congress can be broken next year, but only if he is exposed.
People can take this however they want, but the man is simply not great man of history material, and the Republic would be much getter off, and Mr. Obama would be much better off, if people would finally stop thinking of him in those terms. As it is, he’s going to go down as a demagogue, because right now he is using the unquestioned media support to be such.
You know, Americans may not have long memories, but the historians actually are going to compare what he said on any given issue with what he actually did, and then the question must be answered–did he or did he not engage in demagogic behavior inherently damaging to the idea of a self-governing republic? And since eventually the issues of our times will fade, and they thus won’t have a stake in them, the historians will, as best as the profession can (realizing revision always occurs, because if nothing else a grad student has to always make his name, and it will ever be thus), come to an answer. Myself, I think what I think–Barack Obama and the media behind him have made an unfortunate singular advance to there one day being a Principate in the United States. Not irreversible, but an unfortunate singular advance.
And as a sidenote on the “greatness” part–people think his race will make him noteworthy in history. And it will. He is the first non-Northern European descended (well, partially) man to be President of the United States. That is noteworthy. Just as ancient Rome eventually had Senators and Emperors who came from outside Italy. They were also noteworthy.
Name one.
Maximinus Thrax.
Constantine I (the Great), was born in what is today Nis, Serbia.
Obama is truly evil – and at the same time, he is a puppet of those still more evil than he is.
You are making a classic error in judging Obama. The man is definitely singular in the historical sense. No one else except perhaps FDR comes close.
Read more Stanley Kurtz. Then go read some Bill Ayers. Get a good view into what Obama is about to do to America.
Because if he succeeds (and he is so far), it is beyond historic.
Those of you who don’t get this and who judge Obama by your conventional view points are making a huge mistake.
Barack Obama = Huey Long with a dash of Herbert Marcuse plus a dash of Edward Said
Nothing complicated — not to be underestimated, certainly, but hardly an enigma.
There was a movie once, with Broderick Crawford, called “All the King’s Men” (I think) that reminds me of these times. I wonder who will be the first to break with Obama publicly?
Hitler with big ears.
Barack Obama is the reincarnation of Benito Mussolini – Barackito Obamalini.
GMTA!
Barack Obama may be Anthony Fremont come to life.
Obama is Papa Doc Duvalier. He would love to declare himself President for Life and do away with the Constitution altogether. As would his small c communist followers, including those on our Supreme Court…supposedly the very people at the top of our governmental pyramid sworn to protect it…and us.
He outmaneuvered the dim-witted Republicans in order to gut our military and install confiscatory fiscal policies, has maneuvered our Supreme Court into a position of giving their imprimatur on forced purchase of goods and services mandated by the iron fist of government, and has weakened our borders while running guns to drug cartels.
All the while, he has maintained an iron fist over our information stream, with mass media, Hollywood and academia providing complete cover for his authoritarian and brutish tactics.
If that doesn’t sound like tyranny first in its infancy and now in full bloom…consider yourself brain dead or a co-conspiratorial traitor in favor of tyranny.
How Obama’s Signature looks like… Haha Must see. http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/9uqIi3/www.gay3ty.com/obamas-signature/
Barack Obama is Barack Obama. He resembles a great many in history who became monsters to overcompensate for the smallness of their characters. The Napoleon complex doesn’t apply only to the short of physical stature (such as Stalin, for example), but to anyone who perceives himself as lacking some essential trait they associate with — not even greatness, but adequacy.
How did Obama win? He wanted $1.6 Trillion in new taxes and got $600 billion — $200 billion less than Boehner offered. Not only that, the House can now veto any new taxes because they have been decoupled from spending. This was a tactical Republican victory which, if they continue to play smart poker, they can turn it into a strategic victory if the kamikazi corps can sit down and shut up.
Obama cares only about Obama and nothing else;
he cannot tolerate being blamed, nor can he take or admit to fault for his actions no matter who or how many people get hurt.
He is an ideological radical who is insane, and growing more so with each passing day.
He all too easily can have a complete meltdown emotionally/mentally and then truly become capable of anything.
He sees himself as a politcal Godfather, a Kingpin, and a god-king over the world whose very desires can change things no matter what is in opposition.
The government is at open war on the Bill of Rights.
Congress has lost the power of the purse and no longer represents anything but their own vested interests. The rule of law is gone.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable.”
I Love My God,Family and Country. but I beleve We Are In Distress..
FEAR is how tyrants always control. When that is gone, you become dangerous because fearless patriots will overwhelm them and they know it. If We the People Can truly not show Fear ,and Stand up to there Threats..I think we can Push them Back.
Obama sucks.
Got it?