Over at the Washington Free Beacon, Matt Continetti has a fine piece up on “The Obama Derecho.” He’s referring to the nasty storm that crippled the Washington, D.C., area a few days ago, and whose aftereffects are still being felt, but also to the long-term crippling effects of the Obama presidency — a gift that will keep on giving long after the Emperor Hussein is turned out of office:
Safe to say most Washingtonians had never heard of a “derecho” before June 29, when one of these speedy and destructive windstorms ploughed through the capital, leaving behind dead bodies and battered homes and more than a million households without power. Now the storm is over, and one can expect this obscure meteorological term to pass just as swiftly into everyday speech. Exotic, vaguely menacing, and evoking senseless, abrupt calamity, “derecho” is an especially apt description of America in the age of Obama.
Like the homeowners in Fairfax County, Va., picking up felled tree branches and putting in insurance claims, Americans across the country are still recovering from the Obama derecho that struck the nation from 2009 to 2010. The damage from that whirlwind has been ugly. The cost has been enormous. And another one may form at any moment.
Continetti’s story is a handy clip-n-save (with links aplenty) aide memoire to the ongoing disaster being wrought by the Punahou Kid and his coterie of Alinskyite radicals, including the ineffable Jake Lingle (f you don’t get the reference, please click here), and the Iranian-born Valerie Jarrett. Just as during the Clinton era, when the scandals came so fast and furious that no one could remember them all, Barry is betting that the American people won’t be able to keep track of his various enormities — so do yourself a favor and bookmark Matt’s story for future reference. You’re going to need it.
Be afraid. Be very afraid
Here at PJ, my colleague Ron Radosh has an illuminating essay about the nature of socialism. I’ve always found it amusing how lefties twist and turn and squirm whenever we try to slap the S-word on them. They whine that they’re not really socialists, or that our definition of “socialist” is incorrect, or that there’s nothing wrong with socialism, or that we’re all socialists anyway — and hey, what about the military? Our friends across the aisle simply hate it when we call them what they are, because to name something is to begin to understand it.
But, whatever name they’ve currently using, they’re still dangerous. They’re only halfway through the process of “fundamental transformation” at the moment, secure in the knowledge that even should Obama lose in November, their termites are well-positioned in the bureaucracy and the federal judiciary and will continue to bore away unobserved and obstructed. As Ron warns:
If Barack Obama wins a second term, I fear our once great country will move further down the road to authoritarian statism, discarding of the fundamentals of our Constitution, and an erosion of the heart of our nation. So let us get out the message, put aside our dissatisfaction with the Romney campaign, and do what we must to defeat Barack Obama come election day.
There’s no “fear” about it; our once-great country is already moving down that path, and there’s a real question whether it can detour in time. As David Kahane and others have noted, the Left plays the long game:
It really is amazing. In just four or five short decades – they seem short to us because we always take the long view – your entire world has been turned upside down, and you have acquiesced, and sometimes celebrated, at each step of the way. Sure, we were there, leading the parade, cheering, lofting signs, waving placards, engaging in a mighty mutual orgy of self-congratulation as we applauded this or that “historic” moment. Naturally, we never told you that our definition of words like “historic” and “unprecedented” was simply “audacious,” “brazen,” or even “ridiculous,” since we never in our wildest and most perfervid dreams ever believed you’d actually fall for half the “social change” we were selling you, but you did. And here we are.
The Left won’t really mind if Obama loses and neither, one suspects, will he. After all, he’s got a lifetime pension and a limitless capacity to rake in the dough via speaking fees, books, etc., ahead of him. It’s highly unlikely that he’ll just shut up and go away. The taxpayers will continue to support him in the style to which he’s become accustomed (and which he obviously thinks is his rightful due) and someone else will rise to take his place. The question is whether Mitt Romney understands this — and, alas, right now the jury is still very much out on the subject.
So think of the D.C. derecho as a kind of omen for an Obama administration already rich in them. As the poster says: You have been warned.
Think about it.
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