MADDOG10's Blog

In all the noise caused by the Obama administration’s direct assault on the  right of every person to keep and bear arms, the essence of the issue has been  drowned out. The president and his big-government colleagues want you to believe  that only the government can keep you free and safe, so to them, the essence of  this debate is about obedience to law.

To those who have killed innocents among us, obedience to law is the last of  their thoughts. And to those who believe that the Constitution means what it  says, the essence of this debate is not about the law; it is about personal  liberty in a free society. It is the exercise of this particular personal  liberty – the freedom to defend yourself when the police cannot or will not and  the freedom to use weapons to repel tyrants if they take over the government –  that the big-government crowd fears the most.

Government compels, restrains and takes. Thomas Jefferson understood that  when he wrote that our liberties are unalienable and endowed by our Creator, and  the only reason we have formed governments is to engage them to protect our  liberties. We enacted the Constitution as the supreme law of the land to  restrain the government. Yet somewhere along the way, government got the idea  that it can more easily protect the freedom of us all from the abuses of a few  by curtailing the freedom of us all. I know that sounds ridiculous, but that’s  where we are today.

The anti-Second Amendment crowd cannot point to a single incident in which  curtailing the freedom of law-abiding Americans has stopped criminals or crazies  from killing. It is obvious that criminals don’t care what the law says because  they think they can get away with their violations of it. And those unfortunates  who are deranged don’t recognize any restraint on their own behavior, as they  cannot mentally distinguish right from wrong and cannot be expected to do so in  the future, no matter what the law says.

When the Second Amendment was written and added to the Constitution, the use  of guns in America was common. At the same time, King George III – whom we had  just defeated and who was contemplating another war against us, which he would  start in 1812 – no doubt ardently wished that he had stripped his colonists of  their right to self-defense so as to subdue their use of violence to secede from  Great Britain. That act of secession, the American Revolution, was largely  successful because close to half of the colonists were armed and did not fear  the use of weaponry.

If the king and the Parliament had enacted and enforced laws that told them  who among the colonists owned guns or that limited the power of the colonists’  guns or the amount of ammunition they could possess, our Founding Fathers would  have been hanged for treason. One of the secrets of the Revolution – one not  taught in public schools today – is that the colonists actually had superior  firepower to the king. The British soldiers had standard-issue muskets, which  propelled a steel ball or several of them about 50 yards from the shooter. But  the colonists had the long gun – sometimes called the Kentucky or the Tennessee  – which propelled a single steel ball about 200 yards, nearly four times as far  as the British could shoot. Is it any wonder that by Yorktown in 1781, the king  and the Parliament had lost enough men and treasure to surrender?

The lesson here is that free people cannot remain free by permitting the  government – even a popularly elected one that they can unelect – to take their  freedoms away. The anti-freedom crowd in the government desperately wants to  convey the impression that it is doing something to protect us. So it  unconstitutionally and foolishly seeks, via burdensome and intrusive  registration laws, laws restricting the strength of weapons and the quantity and  quality of ammunition and, the latest trick, laws that impose financial  liability on law-abiding manufacturers and sellers for the criminal behavior of  some users, to make it so burdensome to own a gun that the ordinary folks who  want one will give up their efforts to obtain one.

We cannot let ourselves fall down this slippery slope. The right to  self-defense is a natural individual right that pre-exists the government. It  cannot morally or constitutionally be taken away absent individual consent or  due process. Kings and tyrants have taken this right away. We cannot let a  popular majority take it away, for the tyranny of the majority can be as  destructive to freedom as the tyranny of a madman.

We all know the children’s parable of the “Emperor Who Had No Clothes,” don’t  we? The tale of the self-important ruler so vain that when his vapid,  sycophantic court suggested he order up the most luxurious, expensive robe ever  designed, made of the sheerest, most diaphanous fabric ever known, almost  invisible but to the more educated, cultivated eyes. The emperor happily  agreed.

Actually, there was no such fabric. But the designers counted on his  incredible vanity, and when they went through the motions of trying this  unprecedented “garment” on the naked emperor and raving about how handsome he  looked in it, he exultantly proclaimed he’d parade through his kingdom, proudly  showing off his new sartorial splendor. 

And suddenly, the whole massive crowd could admit that they saw no finery  either, and that the emperor was indeed … naked.

It’s a funny story, of course, and quite pertinent today. But I think it  needs to be made more contemporary, so we get its possible meaning for our  society and see if there are obvious parallels. So …

Once upon a time , there was an emperor, self-proclaimed though not elected  to that office by his people. He held sway, incredibly, over a mighty nation  called America – previously a democratic republic in which the people governed  themselves. He accomplished this by “executive decisions,” largely ignoring the  restrictions of the country’s constitution, by appointing unelected “czars” to  positions of power, by hypnotizing the media into slavish acceptance of his  every word and deed, promising minority groups everything they wanted at  taxpayer expense, and forcing gigantic unaffordable national obligations down  the throats of a mind-numbed Congress … all purposely designed to give him  unbridled power no previous president ever dreamed of, or wanted.

Before most of the citizenry quite realized what was happening, he  “fundamentally transformed” the country into a socialist dictatorship, ruled by  an emperor. Himself.

Even he was surprised at how easily he did this, as was his fawning court.  While piling impossible assignments on a hapless, hopelessly divided Congress,  he played golf and took incredibly lavish vacations, always transported by the  most expensive, state-of-the-art giant airplane, dubbed “Emperor I.” A slight  majority of the people, hating to even entertain the idea they’d been deceived,  kept telling each other the emperor was doing “his best,” though mounting  unpayable debt and insane borrowing was driving the nation into bankruptcy and  ruin.

Soon, the mighty regent, fairly intoxicated with his unlimited power, asked  his court to devise a new impossible task for his slaves – a “sequester” – a  deadline by which the Congress either gave him even greater power to tax and  spend trillions of dollars however he chose, or he would have the power to hack  and cut away programs that weakened the military (for which he had no regard,  though he was its “commander in chief”), and hurt many innocent people who he  thought would then turn to him as their savior.

Once the deadline was reached, and he felt he had won a great victory, he  gave his minions a new assignment. Since he had earlier promised the “most  transparent administration in history,” he asked creative people to fashion new  garments for him to wear, befitting his ascendancy to near divine status. And  fittingly, the designers garbed him in such diaphanous, gauzy, sheer fabrics  that they were virtually invisible.

At his first public appearance, to the shock and anger of the emperor, a  young lad named Bob said loudly, where millions heard him, “The emperor is  naked! He’s lying to us! Why is he doing this?”

And rather than being shocked into silence, increasing numbers of previous  supporters began yelling questions at the startled, suddenly embarrassed  ruler.

“Why are you keeping all your early school, passport and travel records  sealed permanently, so that we can never know how you came to this position? And  whether you are actually, legally entitled to rule over us this way?”

“Your Highness, since no hospital in this country claims you were born there,  why do you not produce an actual birth certificate or some verifiable proof of  your citizenship, as the Constitution demands? What’s with your Social Security  and Selective Service numbers, that first belonged to other people?”

And immediately another voice cried out, “Yeah, you told us on national TV  you were putting a copy of your birth certificate on the White House website,  making fun of anybody who doubted you. But when we went there to look, we found  a photoshopped creation, a fraud, not a copy of anything! Just something you  had somebody make up! You think we’re too dumb to notice, or afraid to do  anything about it! Why are you doing this to us, to our country?”

The emperor cringed, momentarily unable to respond. He tried to look  imperial, but he looked down and saw that he had indeed become transparent. The  citizens, even some of his guilty co-conspirators, were seeing right through  him. They began to edge away from him, hoping to melt into the growingly  hostile crowd.

“Yeah, Emp,” yelled a big truck driver, “how come you appointed so many  actual Communists and socialists to powerful positions? You tryin’ to make us a  socialist country? You don’t like a ‘we the people’ kind of government?”

An emboldened Catholic priest called out, “Why can’t you leave marriage  alone? Why do you try to force people of faith to give in to your perverted  ‘evolving’ ideology? Didn’t you claim to be a Christian? Have you actually read  more than a few verses of the Bible?”

Sweating and nervous, looking smaller and trying to cover his private parts,  the naked man intoned, “I am not a dictator. I’m not really an emperor … I’m the  president.”

At that, realizing they’d been duped, even swindled and lied to, the massive  crowd began to chant angrily, “The TRUTH! THE TRUTH! TELL US THE TRUTH!”

Unable or unwilling to do what they asked, the small naked man made his way  into the crowd – and disappeared.

On March 4, despite hundreds of Coloradans flooding the State Capitol in  Denver and honking horns on the streets that encircle the building all day long,  and the presence of 25 county sheriffs opposed to seven Democratic  gun-control proposals, the measures all passed the Colorado House along  party-line votes. Democrats currently control both houses of the Colorado  legislature, as well as the governor’s office. Legislators’ testimony during the  hearings was replete with smug, ignorant sanctimony, blithering idiocy and  outright lies.

The Democrat members of the Colorado legislature have shown themselves to  be enemies of the Constitution of the United States of America and the people of  the state of Colorado. What occurred in Colorado on that day was nothing  short of a disgusting outrage and a chilling precursor of things to come.

Two factors regarding this development are particularly distressing. The  first is the revelation that the Colorado legislature is lousy with knee-jerk  dullards who operate at the level of those who suspend grade-school children  from school for possessing napkins and toaster pastries that bear rudimentary  resemblance to firearms. As has become clear in recent weeks, many are  themselves from the ranks of low-information voters with scant knowledge of the  Constitution, or progressive zealots who seek to abolish same.

The second factor is the influence of President Barack Hussein Obama writ  large on the whole affair. As we know, Vice President Biden personally leaned on  Colorado legislators last month in an effort to tip the national conversation on  gun rights in progressives’ favor. Thus, with sanction from the White House  itself, these legislators forged ahead with what they wanted – not what was  legal or popular – in typical autocratic progressive fashion.

Colorado voters are now anxiously wondering what the position of their chief  public executive, John Hickenlooper, will be. Considering the Democratic  governor once called Obama a “rock star,” I wouldn’t hold out too much hope for  his doing the right thing.

When I escaped New York for Colorado years ago, I certainly did not expect it  to become ground zero for the assault on the Second Amendment, and the idea that  the state in which I live is essentially being ruled from afar by a radical  Marxist is quite worrisome. If the people of Colorado, a state with a tradition  of rugged individualism and liberty, do not rebound fiercely as a result of this  obscenity, then the state will indeed become California (a long-held fear of  many natives and transplants alike) in very short order.

The stark difference between what Colorado was and what it is rapidly  becoming is easier to see here than other states, since Colorado’s heritage and  history more resemble that of Texas than New York or California. Given that, I  pray it has become clear to Coloradans that they must now undertake a wholesale  eradication of progressive policy from the governance of their state.

It is no secret among conservatives that for the last several years, Colorado  has been a chief target of one high-profile progressive billionaire and former  Nazi collaborator (George Soros) through his various radical astroturf political  organizations. With this aid, and through the aforementioned methods, the White  House effectively subverted Colorado’s legislative processes and is ruling by  proxy, while maintaining the illusion of legitimate due process.

What concerns me most about the developments in Colorado and other states  vis-à-vis firearms laws is that this progression has brought us that much closer  to law-enforcement officials showing up at citizens’ homes and demanding their  guns. Raised in the same environment as the rest of us, many peace officers  won’t realize that they are operating well outside of the law.

And that’s when things will have the potential to get really ugly.

On Jan. 6, 2013, Nathan Haddad, a former Army staff sergeant and decorated  combat veteran, was selling some gun magazines when he was arrested for  violating a new New York state law prohibiting possession of magazines that hold  more than 10 rounds. Haddad was charged with five felonies.

The officers who arrested Haddad, and those prosecuting him have shown  themselves to be enemies of the Constitution and the people of the United States  of America. Officials who enforce immoral laws are no better than Hitler’s  Gestapo. Where, pray tell, do they plan to draw the line at what unlawful  decrees they will and will not uphold?

Very soon, we are likely to hear of an individual who, upon being contacted  by law enforcement, winds up in a firefight with them over their enforcement of  newly implemented gun-control measures. Law-enforcement officers may be wounded  or killed, as might our citizen. If arrested, he or she will be a political  prisoner. This will be the final nail in the coffin for legal firearms  ownership in America, as the government and the press will capitalize upon this  event (and perhaps similar others) to prove once and for all that all gun  owners are potential psycho cop killers.

Why does the government (and the Obama administration in particular) want  Americans’ firearms? Because they know that they are already guilty of  prosecutable crimes and are planning many more. They know that they represent  precisely why America’s founders put the Second Amendment in the Constitution in  the first place, and that they already merit being removed by force of arms.  They simply want to disarm Americans before a preponderance of us come to that  realization and respond accordingly.

Hugo Chavez was reported dead Tuesday. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer  Communist dictator. Chavez understood that technology, and specifically  controlling technology through politics, is power. To that end, he  announced his intent to fundamentally transform his nation. He then proceeded to  do so while holding Venezuela’s economy hostage, nationalizing major  infrastructure and industry while making incursions into regional banking.  Through it all, he treated his critics and opponents with such brutality that  several times his opposition rose up against him. Once, those opponents even  managed a brief coup that saw the swearing in of a new president, only to be put  down by legions of adoring, loyal sycophants who were content to allow Chavez to  run their lives.

Does this sound at all familiar yet? 

In 2002, Chavez’ goons shot 19 protesters who demanded the president’s  resignation. A coup was attempted, but Chavez was rescued by Army forces loyal  to him. A few months later, various business, political and labor organizations  attempted a strike to break Chavez’ hold on the state-run oil industry. They  failed. Two years later, in response to a referendum asking whether Chavez  should immediately step down, Venezuelans voted overwhelmingly to keep Chavez in  office. Four months later, Chavez signed an agreement strengthening his ties to  Cuba’s Communist dictatorship.

In 2006, Chavez called then-president George W. Bush “the devil” in a speech  in the U.N., muttering something about smelling brimstone where Bush had been  standing. That December he was again re-elected to a six-year term (a term he  lengthened with his new constitution back in 1999). Feeling invincible after  winning with yet another healthy majority of the vote, Chavez publicly announced  his intention to transform his Bolivarian republic into a socialist regime.

In 2007, Chavez was granted “sweeping powers to legislate by decree,”  officially making him the nation’s dictator. He immediately nationalized the  country’s major electric and communications companies and ordered the takeover  of foreign oil interests. Despite some voter pushback to his initiatives, Chavez  ordered the nationalization of the country’s cement industry the following year.  He then announced his intention to nationalize the Bank of Venezuela.

Also in 2008, Chavez ordered the United States ambassador out of the country.  In 2009, he won voter approval to eliminate term limits. Venezuela’s dictator  was poised to remain in office for as long as he liked. But in 2010, Chavez lost  his supermajority in Venezuela’s congress. He was granted another 18 months’  dictatorial powers by the outgoing lawmakers. Despite repeated health problems,  he won yet another six-year term in 2012. Only his death finally unseated  him.

The story of Hugo Chavez is one that parallels Barack Hussein Obama’s  disastrous but popular rule over the American people. Obama, too, ran as a  candidate of the people. Obama, too, announced his intention to “fundamentally  transform” the United States – a nation of which his racist wife was never proud  before her husband’s rise to power. Once elected, Obama proceeded to implement  policies that have done nothing but harm this nation’s economy.

Whether it was standing in the way of the Keystone pipeline or vilifying business owners at every turn,  Obama’s economic outlook has been clearly socialist and clearly harmful. He  nationalized a sixth to a seventh of the United States economy with Obamacare,  all while lying about how much the plan would cost and how much control  the plan would exert over individuals’ medical decisions. He proclaimed that  “you didn’t build that” in a sneering declaration of contempt for individual  effort.

Then it got scary.

Eric Holder recently made a breathtaking admission. A  president who never met a drone strike he could not condone now sits poised to  use drones to kill American citizens on American soil without due process. The  very thing liberals called ridiculous, the very threat they dismissed as  conservative hand-wringing over the impossible, is now a reality. Obama’s rogue  Justice Department, which refuses to prosecute blacks because Holder is a racist, believes Obama  can kill anyone, anytime, anywhere.

Remember that this takes place against a landscape in which Obama is trying  to take your firearms from you. State governments are beating Obama to the  punch. In New York, all modern semi-automatic firearms are effectively banned,  and ammunition sales will be subject to background checks that will establish de  facto lists of gun owners. Other states are poised to follow New York’s lead.  Meanwhile, walking gaffe machine Joe Biden continues to tell Americans  ridiculous, dangerous, illegal things he thinks they should do with the  double-barreled shotguns that gibbering idiot would grudgingly allow them.

Remember, too, that Obama’s Department of Homeland Security – which has  classified anyone who might vote against Obama as a potential domestic terrorist  – has just purchased 2,700 armored vehicles and is stockpiling more than a billion rounds of hollow-point  ammunition. Make no mistake: These vehicles and this ammo have no military  application. They exist solely for domestic pacification,which by the way, You paid for.

Seeing any parallels yet?

A dictator who wants to transform his nation into a socialist utopia. A  dictator who deals with opposition with autocratic finality. A dictator who is  not afraid to turn military weapons on his own people. A dictator who wants  broad fiat powers to enact whatever changes he desires, whenever he wants them.  A dictator who enjoys popular support despite his repeated failures. Do these  words describe Hugo Chavez or Barack Hussein Obama? There’s no way to tell the  difference, is there?

The only good news is that one of them is roasting in Hell.

• Tuesday, March 5, 2013

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

With $6 trillion down the drain, you might think that wild, drunken spending  of other people’s money that we do not have is President Obama’s  single greatest talent. Turns out there is something else he is even better  at.

That would be the hysterical, doom-and-gloom fear mongering we have witnessed  these past few weeks over comparatively small cuts to the federal  government.

Mr. Obama’s terroristic threats have been  amply noted everywhere. Planes will fall from the skies, starvation in the  streets, teachers will be sent home.

What is truly astonishing here is not all of the reckless and dire  predictions he has made. Nor is it that already many of his predictions have  proved to be demonstrably false. And nor is it even that he has so clearly  orchestrated a widespread and deceitful campaign to punish Americans with real  pain over the cuts to the federal government their lawmakers have allowed to happen.

What is truly astonishing and breathtaking here is that all of this doom and  gloom Mr. Obama has predicted is precisely  what he wants for this country.

Impossible, you say. No way that someone who seems as hopeful and likable as  Barack Obama could wish such misery on this  country. But that is the only explanation for the president’s response to last  week’s Republican bill to give him broad authority to restructure the cuts in a  way to minimize the pain and disruption.

Someone truly concerned about the impact of the “draconian” cuts to the monstrous federal government would have leaped  for such authority and found ways to spare as many people as possible.

What did Mr. Obama do? He announced his  opposition to the bill and maniacally threatened to veto it if it came across  his desk.

That’s right, you, the American voter, have become Mr.  Obama’s voodoo doll, and he is jabbing you all over with sharp pins and  placing demonic hexes on you right now as you read this. This is gonna hurt and  you are going to feel it!

He wants you to feel writhing pain and he wants you to associate that pain  with the leaner government espoused by his  political opponents — as well as the majority of American voters.

In four short years, Obama has gone from  hopeful orator promising a bright new future to economic terrorist, a spending  jihadist. He is willing to wreck the economy and inflict dire pain on you all  because he is gambling that by trimming the federal government, you will feel pain. And if  you feel that pain, you will blame Republicans.

So much for the new kind of politics he promised us.

Even when you write as often as I do, you can’t really keep up with all the  zaniness that passes for the news today.  But I can’t help trying.

For instance, there were only three senators who voted against confirming  John Kerry, who not only lied about his service and his injuries in Vietnam, but  then lied about throwing away his medals.  He not only kept his medals, but had  them framed on the wall of his Senate office.  It was other people’s medals he  tossed for the benefit of the cameras.  In any case, I thought it was worth  looking into, and I discovered that the three senators who had the courage of  their convictions, and deserved to be lauded, were John Cornyn, James Inhofe and  Ted Cruz.

Let me first state so that there is no confusion, I respect the members of  the military.  After all, the main order of business for the federal government  is not, as liberals insist, funding green energy companies, handing out free  stuff in exchange for votes or promoting abortions and same-sex marriages.   Instead, it is to protect the nation, and it’s the military that handles that  end of things.  That being said, I do not believe it provides veterans with a  lifetime pass from criticism.  I actually heard a senator state that Chuck Hagel  should not have had to face such tough questions at his confirmation hearing  because he had not only served in the military, but had been wounded in  combat.

Just because people have served – some more honorably than others—is no  guarantee that they will be anything special once they return to civilian life.   After all, Charles Rangel, John Murtha, Colin Powell, David Petraeus, John  McCain, Daniel Inouye and Ted Kennedy, along with Chuck Hagel, have not only  been shown to have feet of clay, but in some cases have shown themselves to be  covered in muck all the way to the top of their heads.

Proof that liberals aren’t really concerned with gun violence is that they  keep yammering about the size of magazines, but have said nothing about taking  on the urban gangs responsible for most of the murders in America.  Their  hypocrisy is even more apparent when you realize that every city whose streets  are bloody because of the hands-off approach politicians take with these punks  is saddled with a liberal mayor.

It’s apparent that when the same people who wish to disarm law-abiding  Americans turn a blind eye to the black and Hispanic gangs that terrorize their  communities, they adopt a hands-off approach to guns only when they regard them  as tools of the criminal trade.

In the aftermath of Chris Kyle, the former Navy SEAL super sniper, and his  friend being murdered at a Texas shooting range, Dan Parker wrote to say he  assumed that, henceforth, the Democrats would designate shooting ranges as  gun-free zones.  And I say, “Why wouldn’t they?”  After all, they had already  designated an Army base, Fort Hood, a gun-free-zone, thus making it available to  Maj. Hasan for target practice.

The funniest thing to come out of the gun debate was the photo of Barack  Obama allegedly skeet shooting at Camp David.  Even I, who haven’t fired a rifle  since my days in the ROTC, know that you don’t hold a rifle that high up on your  shoulder, and you certainly don’t aim it straight-on when skeet shooting, as if  your target were Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity.  Skeets, as we all know, are  airborne.  Firing at the angle shown in the photo, the only thing Obama would  have hit was the poor schmuck working the skeet release.  You would think that  Team Obama would do a better job of it even if they were merely Photoshopping  the picture in order to show that Obama’s trumped-up war on guns was nothing  personal.

As you may have heard, it has been announced that the FBI is looking into  allegations that Sen. Robert Menendez has engaged in sexual activity with  under-age Dominican prostitutes.  He denies it, insisting it’s a tissue of lies  concocted by a cabal of right-wingers.

As Americans, we are supposed to believe he’s innocent until proven guilty.   And I’m sure that those who park their common sense at the curb will give him  the benefit of the doubt.  But not I.  For one thing, why else would anyone go  there as often as he has, except to do nasty things he can’t get away with  closer to home?  For another, when is the last time there’s been a rumor about a  politician engaged in unsavory sexual activity that hasn’t been proven true?

Just a partial list – a very partial list limited to those you’ve probably  heard of – includes Anthony Weiner, David Wu, Eric Massa, David Petraeus, John  Ensign, John Edwards, Ted and Jack Kennedy, Chris Dodd, Newt Gingrich, Larry  Craig, Mark Foley, Gary Condit, Strom Thurmond, Mel Reynolds, Henry Hyde, Gary  Hart, Wayne Hayes, Jesse Jackson, Wilbur Mills, FDR, Warren G. Harding and even  Alexander Hamilton.

For good measure, there was President James Buchanan and Franklin Pierce’s  V.P., William Rufus King, a couple whom Andrew Jackson, not the most politically  correct man in the world, jokingly referred to as Miss Nancy and Aunt Fancy.

Finally, if there has ever been a person in our lifetime who best exemplified  what it means to be a devout liberal, it is probably Jane Fonda, whose actual  birth name was Lady Jane Seymour Fonda.  Not only did she go out of her way to  lend aid and comfort to our enemy in Vietnam – (“Hanoi Jane,” you must agree, is  a lot catchier than Lady Jane Seymour Fonda) – but her personal hypocrisy is of  Olympian proportions.

Just recently, I discovered that she was the third choice to star in “The  Exorcist.”  The first, Audrey Hepburn, agreed to play the role that eventually  went to Ellen Burstyn, but only if it were shot in Italy, where she was then  living.  Next was Anne Bancroft, who turned down the role only because she had  just discovered she was pregnant.

It was at that point, after two of the best actresses in the world had passed  with regrets, that it was offered to Fonda.  She turned it down by phoning the  head of Warner Brothers and demanding to know why he would want to make “a piece  of capitalist rip-off bulls–t like this.”

To grasp the full, self-aggrandizing impact of that statement, you have to  keep in mind that this self-anointed moral arbiter had already starred in  “Barbarella,” the execrable sex fantasy directed by her first husband, Roger  Vadim, and would soon go on to make millions of dollars with a series of silly  exercise DVDs she peddled with the sort of single-mindedness usually reserved to  used car salesmen, televangelists and Bill O’Reilly.

It wasn’t until some years later that she hit the trifecta of liberal  hypocrisy when she tied the knot with billionaire goofball capitalist Ted  Turner.

If you own a company, sell a product or provide a service, or if you know  someone – preferably someone dedicated to conservatism – who owns a company,  sells a product or provides a service, who would be willing to consider  sponsoring my show, please contact me at BurtPrelutsky@aol.com, and I will be  happy to answer any and all questions.

Is it possible that Obama’s arrogance, personal pettiness, sanctimoniousness  and egotism (for starters) could finally be his unraveling? Even the liberal  media are starting to notice, but will it last?

Up to this point, they’ve dutifully played along with his Alinskyite tactics  – converting the office of the presidency into a headquarters for community  organizing at a federal level and a position to organize and fund a perpetual  campaign against his political opponents instead of governing.

But perhaps his willingness to hurt the country to make political points,  which until recently they’d overlooked, has finally gotten their attention –  with his brazen lies about the sequester cuts and his release of dangerous  criminal illegals onto the streets. I’ll not be Pollyannaish in hoping for a  sustained liberal-media blowback toward Obama, but these matters have at least  caught their attention and inched ever so slightly forward from the back burner.  That’s something to build on.

<snip>y from his re-election and from a string of triumphs in his negotiations  with Republicans, Obama calculated he could continue to be as dictatorial and  unreasonable as he had been and even ratchet it up a notch and get away with it.  He knew he was lying when he said Republicans were currently causing the  sequestration because they wouldn’t agree to more tax increases. He was the one  primarily responsible for the impasse because he had already gotten his tax  increases and was still refusing to play ball on the spending and entitlements  side – the only side that can make a difference in solving our debt crisis – as  he always has.

The media didn’t call him on that, as flagrantly dishonest as it was. Why  should they have? They rarely had before, and they support his quest to punish  the successful. Loyalty to the truth hasn’t been enough to motivate them to  behave like true journalists and just report the news fairly.

But we saw a hint of media dissatisfaction with Obama when reporter Chuck  Todd criticized Obama for “ceding the moral high ground” concerning the corrupt  influence of money in politics because his campaign arm, Organizing for Action,  has been “selling access to the president.”

Then veteran reporter Bob Woodward came forward to expose a second category  of lies from Obama on the sequestration. Even if some in the liberal media  turned on their former Watergate-famed icon, at least others called White House  press secretary Jay Carney’s hand over this.

It was now obvious that Obama was lying not just about the primary reasons  for the gridlock over the sequester cuts but about who authored the idea in the  first place. After Obama blatantly lied about this and sent out his minions to  do the same, the administration had to grudgingly concede that it had been his  idea. Even then, the administration tried to spin its way out of it by  misrepresenting that Republicans had agreed to revenue hikes as part of the  sequestration.

But amazingly, the spin doesn’t seem to be getting much traction for Obama  for a change. Perhaps it is because Obama went too far when, like a petulant  child, he showed he was willing to hurt the nation to get his way on the  sequestration and further damage Republicans.

He went way over the top, even for him, in his promises of gloom and doom  concerning essential services he falsely claimed would be cut. Education  Secretary Arne Duncan incorrectly claimed that schoolteachers were already being  laid off, which even the Washington Post wouldn’t let stand. Other liberal  outlets came forward to contradict Obama’s hysterical claim over pay cuts on  Capitol Hill. Even “Saturday Night Live” lampooned Obama’s absurd posturing on  the sequester cuts.

Journalist Byron York reported that Obama now seems “resigned to the  possibility that he cannot win the further tax increases he seeks, and that  after enlisting his entire administration in a campaign to frighten Americans  about sequestration, the cuts have become a reality that he has to acknowledge.”  Obama has now admitted that the cuts aren’t going to be apocalyptic as he  warned.

Obama has outdone himself with his administration’s unilateral release of  thousands of dangerous criminal illegal immigrants onto the streets of America  in order to leverage his sequester arguments and then sending Carney out to  grossly misrepresent the scope of this outrage.

I won’t hold my breath for a wholesale transformation of the liberal media’s  attitude toward Obama, but I’m encouraged to see anything at all in that  direction and that the political winds seem to be changing, even if slightly so  far, against Obama.

By Garth Kant

The Obama administration warned us it would be catastrophic. Sequestration  would mean the loss of police officers, firefighters, teachers, soldiers, air  control towers and shipyards…you name it.

Obama and House Speaker John Boehner failed to find an alternative to the  sequester during a last-ditch meeting today, so $85 billion in automatic  spending cuts are scheduled to begin to kick in at the end of the day.

Obama  again blamed Republicans, even though he originated the idea.

“I am not a dictator,” Obama said Friday. He says he can’t lock leaders in a  room to make a deal.

“So ultimately if Mitch McConnell or John Boehner say, ‘I have to catch a  plane,’ I can’t have Secret Service block the doorway,” he said.

“I know that this has been some of the conventional wisdom that’s been  floating around Washington that even though most people agree that I’m being  reasonable, that most people agree that I’m presenting a fair deal, the fact  that they don’t take it means that I should somehow do a Jedi mind-meld and  convince them” to agree on a deal, Obama said.

GOP  lawmakers cheered Boehner’s refusal to budge on tax increases.

“I think he realized the president of the United States was using him as a  tool for his own benefit and was not actually in a partnership with him, and he  also realized that we in the House were not happy with what was coming out of  those negotiations,” said Rep. Raúl R. Labrador, R-Idaho. “We were pretty blunt  with him and the entire leadership team that we have to feel like we have a plan  and a vision, and we’re following up on that plan and that vision.”

“The  discussion about revenue is over,” Boehner said. The speaker says the House  has already voted on two measures to replace the sequester and “shouldn’t have  to pass a third bill.”

Boehner urged Obama and Senate Democrats to present a plan to replace the  sequester that could pass the Democratic-led Senate.

In his new softer tone on the effects of the sequester, Obama says the nation  will survive it, though it would be painful for many people.

Now, even federal employees will begin to feel the pinch. A million, or more,  federal workers may be taking unpaid time off. The prospect of sequestration has  the  government sending furlough notices, effective in April.

An assistant U.S. attorney received a note which read, “This memorandum  notifies you that the Department of Justice (DOJ) proposes to furlough you no  earlier than 30 days from receipt of this notice.

“We recognize the difficult personal financial implications of any furlough,  no matter how limited its length. We will make every effort to keep you informed  as additional information regarding agency funding becomes available,” the  letter added.

The Social Security Administration sent a notice Thursday to its employees  saying it was seeking to “minimize the risk of furloughs,” including limiting  future hiring.

One person who’s not worried is New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He says the  United States could owe “an  infinite amount of money” and not default.

“We are spending money we don’t have,” Mr. Bloomberg explained. “It’s not  like your household. In your household, people are saying, ‘Oh, you can’t spend  money you don’t have.’ That is true for your household because nobody is going  to lend you an infinite amount of money. When it comes to the United States  federal government, people do seem willing to lend us an infinite amount of  money. … Our debt is so big and so many people own it that it’s preposterous to  think that they would stop selling us more. It’s the old story: If you owe the  bank $50,000, you got a problem. If you owe the bank $50 million, they got a  problem. And that’s a problem for the lenders. They can’t stop lending us more  money.”

Bloomberg also doesn’t think spending cuts are the answer.

“Listen, I’ve worked now in government for 11 years,” he said. “One of the  problems is the definition of ‘waste.’ You think the programs that I want are  waste. And I think the problems that you want are waste. It’s not like somebody  is taking wheelbarrows full of dollar bills and throwing them out the window.  It’s a question of definition, what is ‘waste’ and what is not. Everything we  have was put in by Congress, signed by the president. There was a reason for it,  or a constituency for it. Most of the tax breaks are designed to encourage or  discourage economic activity. There’s a reason for it.”

The economic storm clouds began gathering well before the sequester.

Americans’ personal income made  the biggest drop in January in 20 years. While the administration warned of  dire consequences for the government if the sequestration’s 2.2 percent budget  cut goes into effect, ordinary Americans lost 3.6 percent of their incomes in  the first month of the year, compared to the last month of 2012. That’s a loss  of $505.5 billion dollars to Americans’ wallets.

The Commerce Department claims that if you don’t count such factors as  December dividends to shareholders, income actually increased 0.3 percent in  January. But many companies paid early dividends to avoid upcoming tax hikes.  Additionally, the payroll tax cut expired in January, causing most workers to  pay 2 percent more in taxes this year.

Consumer spending, which accounts for about two-thirds of the U.S. economy,  also suffered in January. Spending increased $18.2 billion, or 0.2 percent.  Chris Christopher, Jr. of IHS Global Insight, calls that “anemic” and pointed to  weak retail sales. He blames the payroll tax cut, saying it “hurt many Americans  where it counts – in their pocket books.”

The nation’s largest retailer, Walmart, blames slow sales on higher payroll  taxes, delays in income tax-refund processing and higher gas prices.

Another sign troubles are bigger than the sequester, the Commerce  Department reports the economy grew at a 0.1 percent rate from October  through December, less than forecast.

Something keeping the U.S. stock market from falling may be little change in  inflation. Over the past 12 months prices rose 1.2, the smallest year-to-year  gain since October 2009. The rate compares with the central bank’s goal of 2  percent. Excluding food and energy costs, prices climbed 1.3 percent in January  from the same month in 2012, the smallest year-to-year gain since April  2011.

On Tuesday, Federal  Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke strongly defended the central bank’s monetary  policy before a Senate committee, saying there’s little risk of a spike in  inflation in the near term.

Criticizing that policy, Sen. Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, called  Bernanke the biggest dove since World War II.

“You called me a dove, well maybe in some respects I am, but on the other  hand my inflation record is the best of any Federal Reserve chairman in the  postwar period – or at least one of the best,” Bernanke said, citing the 2  percent average inflation rate.

But Bernanke hedged his bet and warned the sequester could threaten the  economy. “The Congress and the administration should consider replacing the  sharp, frontloaded spending cuts required by the sequestration, with policies  that reduce the federal deficit more gradually in the near term but more  substantially in the longer run,” Bernanke said.

Bernanke found more blame elsewhere. “High unemployment has substantial  costs, including not only the hardship faced by the unemployed and their  families, but also the harm done to the vitality and productive potential of our  economy as a whole,” Bernanke said.

And  WND reported the real unemployment rate for December 2012 is closer to 23  percent, not the 7.8 percent reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Commodities expert Jim Rogers, who once managed money with George Soros,  says Bernanke has it all wrong and that his monetary policy is merely  throwing fake money after bad debts.

In his most recent book, Street Smarts, Rogers says Bernanke “knows little  about economics or finance, he has no idea how markets work, and the only thing  he truly understands about currency is how to print it.”

He says Bernanke misread the crisis, and that’s why the economy is stagnant.  Rogers believes the financial crisis was about subprime mortgage borrowers and  European governments not being able to pay their bills. But he says Bernanke has  treated it like a liquidity crisis, flooding the system with cash. That’s led to  an economy without growth, and dogged by the prospect of inflation.

I know why this man is president, but I do not know why he remains  president.

Barack Obama was elected the first time and then was re-elected.

You tell me: How do we explain the man in the Oval Office who is dead set to  grant virtual blanket amnesty to millions of illegal aliens in this country, who  is seemingly dedicated to disarming American citizens, making it virtually  impossible for them to have access to firearms for personal protection and whose  administration, under the guise of “sequestration” to save money, releases into  the general population thousands of illegals from detention with plans to  release thousands more.

The Homeland Security Department released more than 2,000 illegals, and the  plan is to release another 3,000. The figures came from internal documents  reviewed by the Associated Press.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that when the administration was first  confronted with reports of the release, it denied the White House knew anything  about it.

They lie, and everyone swears to it.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano also hedged, then admitted she  regretted the way it was done. She actually told NBC she was surprised  to learn of the action. She actually tried to shift blame to “career officials  in the field” – as though she has no responsibility for the people who work  under her.

To make the lying and blame shifting worse, it was reported that an official  was forced to resign but the next day, it was shown that that hadn’t happened,  either.

The New York Post reported that ICE spokesman Brian Hale said the number  released was only several hundred.

What was that I said about liars?

Truth be known, I don’t care whether it was 10, 20, 200 or 2,000,  none of them should have been released, no matter what the supposed  reason.

Who are these people? Why were they being detained? What laws had they  broken, in addition to the fact that they were in this country illegally? Where  are they? What are they doing? If we don’t have the money to pay for their  detention, how do we have the money to track them to be certain they don’t  commit any crimes?

Does anyone in the government care?

Does Obama care?

Not that anyone would know.

What a sad and infuriating farce made worse by government criticism of how AP  reported the story.

Ah yes, kill the messenger.

If and when any one of those criminals confronts an American citizen,  threatening their safety or the security of their possessions or breaks any law,  it will be a travesty of justice. Barack Obama, Janet Napolitano and all their  immigration bureaucrats will responsible for the consequences and should be held  personally, legally responsible.

Don’t hold your breath.

We are confronted with Barack Obama, the man in the Oval Office whose family  enjoys the protection of the Secret Service and whose children go to an  expensive private school that has armed guards on duty, who does not want the  average American citizen to enjoy the security of similar protection against  criminals.

Those people released by Obama’s administration are criminals. They pose  potential danger to innocent American citizens, and yet Obama hasn’t had the  decency to address the American public about the situation.

He just ignores it.

One wonders how the people of Arizona, California, Texas and Georgia feel  about their states being the places where these criminals have been set  free.

One wonders how ranchers in those states, already at the mercy of illegals  tramping across their properties and committing felonies, feel now that there  are even more illegals out there and they, American citizens, are their  potential victims.

It must be particularly irksome that their own president and his  administration are behind this travesty and who also want to disarm them.

Whether the illegals are disarmed is moot. They already flout our laws – why  should they care about doing the “right” thing? It doesn’t matter to the  American government. We let them in, give them freebies, forgive their  transgressions and release them to do it all over again.

Break the law, run guns or drugs or people. Rob, steal, assault, destroy  property and put the fear of God into law-abiding American citizens.

And they essentially get a free pass.

Yet we have people like John McCain, a senator from Arizona, a state  particularly hard hit by the crimes of illegals, who espouses amnesty, even if  it’s called a pathway to citizenship.

The only people who should be on a citizenship pathway are those who  follow the law to become American citizens the legal way.

Obama and Napolitano aren’t the only insane ones in Washington. So too, are  McCain and all the others in Congress who are anxious for the possibility of  votes and power.

Every one of them, from top to bottom, should be tossed out of office – but  not before facing impeachment and perhaps jail time with no parole.

It’s only fair.

• "What Democrats Hide:"Find out what the democrats don't want you to know. Read this now.  OnePoliticalPlaza.com

In an effort to remove the hot-potato issue of excessive government spending  from the 2012 presidential campaign, and calling the bluff of congressional  Republicans who always seem to favor domestic spending cuts but increased  military spending, President Obama suggested the concept of “sequester” in late  2011.

His idea was to reduce the rate of increased spending by 2 percent across the  board – on domestic and military spending. To his surprise, the Republicans went  along with this. They did so either because they lacked the political fortitude  and the political will to designate specifically the unconstitutional and  pork-barrel federal spending projects to be cut, or because they thought that  with the debt of the federal government then approaching $15 trillion (it is now  $16.6 trillion and growing), any reductions in spending money the government  doesn’t have are preferred to no reductions. So, instead of enacting a budget,  and instead of recognizing that much of its spending is simply not authorized by  the Constitution, Congress enacted the so-called sequester legislation, and the  president signed it into law.

Nevertheless, even if these sequesters do kick in, the feds will spend  more in 2013 than they spent in 2012. That’s because the sequesters are not  cuts to spending; rather, they are reductions in planned increases in spending.  The reductions amount to about 2 cents for every planned dollar of increased  spending for every federal department.

Judge  Neapolitan’s brand new book explains how the government is taking your  constitutional freedoms and how you can fight back: “The Freedom Answer  Book”

The question remains: What part of each federal department (Justice, Defense,  Homeland Security, Agriculture, etc.) will suffer these reduced increases? Here  is where this sequester experiment gets dicey.

The president – who once championed the idea of sequesters and even  threatened to veto any congressional effort to dismantle them – now has decided  he can’t live without that additional 2 percent to spend. So, he has gone about  the country trying to scare the daylights out of people: Prisoners will be  released from federal prisons, soldiers won’t have enough bullets in their  weapons, we will need to endure five-hour waiting lines at the airports, Social  Security checks will be late, and similar nonsense.

If the fears Obama predicts do come to pass, we will have only him to blame.  Remember, the sequesters only cut planned increases in spending. Suppose the  president planned to hire 100 more soldiers for the Army and agents for the TSA  and air traffic controllers for the FAA. Is the president required to hire only  98 of them? Well, under the law, he has a choice. He can hire all 100 and cut  back elsewhere, or he can make do on 98 percent of what he has determined are  the government’s additional needs. But he cannot just intentionally release  prisoners or weaken the military or inflict maddening delays on the flying  public in order to make his fearful warnings come to pass.

His job is to uphold the Constitution, to make the executive branch of the  federal government work. The president has taken an oath to “faithfully execute”  his office. The words of the oath are prescribed in the Constitution. The word  “faithfully” requires him to enforce the laws whether or not he agrees with  them. It also requires him to enforce the laws in such a manner that they make  sense – so that the federal government basically performs the services we have  grown to expect of it.

I know, we have grown to expect more of the federal government than the  founders dreamed, and far more than we can possibly pay for and infinitely more  than the Constitution authorizes. But that’s the good thing about these  sequesters: They will force the president to prioritize.

If he prioritizes so that we stay free and safe, so that the government does  what we basically have paid it to do, he’ll be doing his job and saving us a  tiny bit of cash. But if the president enforces the laws so that they hurt  rather than work well just so he can say “I told you so” rather than “I’ll work  with you,” then he will be inviting his own political misery or even his own  impeachment. And we will have sunk deeper into the abyss of fear, division and  red ink that already engulfs us.