We’re All Just Renters Now

You might think you own…

But you don’t in the mind of liberals, Democrats, the Supreme Court or the federal government.

The original concept of the United States under the Founders was that it would be a group of states mostly populated by yeoman farmers along with small scale business owners and service providers plus a handful of religious communities living pretty much their own lifestyles. Each man would be his own master, like a little lord. Most, if not all, adult males would own their own property or aspire to. Property owners had the exclusive right to vote in some places. It was kind of a “having skin in the game” approach.

In that construct, the individual is powerful. The individual has primacy. Government serves the individual and is devolved to the state or county level while minimalized at the federal level and when individual and government come into conflict, the individual should win out. The approach is to err on the side of the individual. In fact, local government would be made up of those individuals, rather than a faction of professional bureaucrats and politicians. That was the theory, anyway.

That was the theory, I should say. Of course no battle plan survives its first encounter with the enemy — just ask the farmers of western Pennsylvania, c. 1791.

Individual power has been eroding for centuries. One might start with the Whiskey Rebellion. It certainly took a turn for the worst with the Civil War. It’s been noted that it was there that the United “States” became the “United States,” that the agglomeration became the unitary; the needs and desires of the federal government overrode the powers of the individual states.

After a few post-Civil War decades, with some starts and stops with Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson restarted the centralizing machinery. Once Franklin Roosevelt was installed, the die was set.

We are no longer masters of our world. We are viewed as serving the government. We provide its room and board. We are subject to its interests. When the individual comes into conflict with the government, the government wins. The government has to win.

An irresistible government increases its power daily, hourly, all at the expense of individual liberty.

Land owners are no longer able to determine what they want to do with their land. Dozens of agencies (and third-party activists conducting lawfare) claw at the land owner, overseeing everything he does. Examining every detail: determining what can and can’t be built, grown, tended to, stored, modified, etc.; thwarting attempts to improve it, make it profitable. You don’t own your land. You might pay taxes on it but it is controlled by someone else. You can’t will it to someone without being relieved of a portion of it. In reality you’re really just a tenant. And you best behave or you could be forced to give up that land.

Businessmen find themselves filling out numerous forms at all levels of government; subject to diktats, licenses and inspections from all levels of government near and far concerning employees, finances, operation, practices, performance, materials, services and products. Erring even once can produce devastating, even fatal penalties though most of the encumbrances are niggling; rather of the parasite tick living off the host variety. But a hundred ticks can bring down even the strongest animal.

And government-empowered third-party activists find businesses to be a fruitful feeding ground.

This is not new. Thomas Jefferson wrote of King George III in the Declaration of Independence: “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.”

It’s as true today as it was in 1776. Seemingly most everything in the Declaration of Independence is applicable in these times. Have we come full circle?

We are, in essence, now just fleeting passengers on the ship called United States. We occupy a room or two and when we pass away, someone else will occupy that space. We don’t own it, can’t will it to our children or chosen ones without the ship’s crew’s approval. Our ability to decorate it or make it ours is severely curtailed by the ship’s crew and even some of the louder, bossier, better organized passengers. We do not decide, they decide.

Or perhaps we occupy a location on a bench in the galley called United States. We galley slaves row our oar and as long as we row the government tolerates us and provides us with some food or “benefits.” Disrupt that routine and the eye of authority opens onto you. It does not blink and does not think twice about punishing you. You are its subject. Submit or be tossed overboard.

That we might own our own boat and go our own way, supporting ourselves and our family and friends without the big government ship or its crew is inconceivable to the galley master. “Why it would be chaos! Think of all those ships polluting the ocean, getting in the way, what would be the point? Think of all those galley slaves who don’t have a boat of their own — it just wouldn’t be fair. If not everyone can have a boat then no one can have a boat. And the boats must be equal, as well. No one can have a better boat, that wouldn’t be fair either.”

When King Barry famously said “You didn’t build that” he could have also said, “You don’t own that.” (For a little fun go to the Wiki page for ‘You didn’t build that’ and read all the sophistries trying to argue that Obama didn’t say what he, the greatest communicator evuh!, clearly said.)

The Arrogance of King Barry

Our peripatetic president, King Barry I, has gone “on safari” as they used to say in quaint Victorian era and Edwardian books. He’s in Africa and while in Kenya, despite being warned ahead of time not to broach the subject,  made his displeasure with the natives known concerning their failure to make the U.S. homosexual agenda a top national priority of Kenya. “This is a big deal to me,” his majesty intoned (could he be laying the groundwork for coming out of the closet himself??? Inquiring minds want to know!).

It seems that the Kenyan rubes are no better than their bigoted American counterparts in their shockingly backward attitudes towards gays, homosexual marriage and forcing every bakery to bake a cake in celebration of gay marriage. Apparently, the Kenyans view their gays as odd, dysfunctional, unworthy of lionization and not that big of a deal when considering all the other problems the country is faced with — hunger, health, water, crazed Muslims filtering in from unstable neighbors, attempting to grow out of a medieval economy, etc.

So King Barry, noting himself to be an African-America in America, felt the need to lecture the heathen on the true religion along with the proper care and feeding of said homosexuals.

However, the uppity Kenyan president. Uhuru Kenyatta, told King Barry to mind his own beeswax.

And much rejoicing was heard…

Barack Obama Superstar

Further proof that Obama slept through his college classes.

Last week, The One, the smartest man to ever occupy the White House!, fretted to an interviewer (foreign press, natch!), that the one thing that had frustrated him most was his inability to curtail murders, those caused by guns, that is. He’s been “stymied” by malevolent forces, don’t ya know.

Once again, one’s first response to one of these thought pieces from Dear Leader is, “Is he serious?”

That evil and bad things are a part of life has long been accepted. It’s an immutable law.

The earliest of ancient literature confronts the topic. The roots of philosophy are, well, rooted in the question of good and evil, among other things. Whole religions are practically built around the question. A mildly broadly-educated college grad would know these things.

That evil and misfortune are part of life is so foundational that debates over permanently excising them are considered utopian. They are part and parcel of the human condition.

But not for our King Barry. Call him nothing if not ambitious. He thinks he can remove those bad thoughts and bad actors from mankind once and for all by his sheer magnificence. If only someone else had thought to banish bad things we’d all be so much better off now.

But then, no leader ever before has been of The One’s caliber. Not even that Jesus fellow or that Buddha dude. Maybe Mohammed could move a mountain but Barack Obama Superstar takes on far bigger challenges, like eliminating gun shootings (and making everything free, but that’s another story).

This latest Obama tempest was in relation to his desire to confiscate guns from the American public. Or as he calls it “common sense” gun laws. You might have noticed that a Democratic politician cannot say ‘gun laws’ without putting the phrase ‘common sense’ in front of them (often followed by the hoary ‘Every industrialized nation… [has disarmed its population]’ which isn’t exactly true since the Swiss are heavily armed). The “common sense” phrasing was poll-tested to appeal to soccer moms and transgendered folks. If Obama said he wanted to confiscate guns there’d be serious pushback so it’s best to… uh… be less than truthful about your intentions.

Au Revoir, Post-Racial Society

Eh, we hardly knew, ye. So much for that “post-racial society” we were promised if only we’d elect Barack Obama president in 2008.

If this story is true we are entering a period that will make the practice of segregation look like a walk in the park.

Liberals will try to paint this “database” as some kind of helpful tool. Yeah, judging everyone and everything they do by the color of their skin will be helpful.

You get to the post-racial society by NOT judging people by the color of their skin; not even allowing the possibility of skin color to ever enter the equation.

But somehow we are now flying at warp speed in the opposite direction. A government program seeks to make skin color the single most important identifying factor of its citizens — in seemingly everything they do.

There’s simply no possible way this ends up as anything less than an unmitigated disaster and the worst is, well, almost unthinkable.

I’ve read a number of histories of Nazi Germany. I’ve always been fascinated by the process wherein a nation goes insane; walks right into a burning pyre or into the ocean. Liberal insanity has been trying to drag the United States in those directions for decades but under Dear Leader resistance has weakened precipitously. We seem to now be incapable of rescuing ourselves as we see ludicrous example after ludicrous example but can’t stop the momentum.

One of the Nazis’ favorite tactics was to simply deny doing what they were clearly doing. Anyone who pressed them on it would be attacked as some kind of fomenter of hatred, etc., and a public storm of indignation/denigration whipped up against that person(s).

Another strategy was to disrupt or try to take over the meetings and events of people they saw as insufficiently supportive of them.

Sound familiar?

Look no further than the weekend’s Netroots event in Arizona for a prima facie example of cultural and political fascism at work. When they put a tombstone on western civilization’s grave, don’t say we weren’t warned or were blindsided.

If a hapless Martin O’Malley can’t stand up to a bunch of infantile event disruptors, how’s he going to fare against Vladimir Putin, Iranian mullahs, ISIS terrorists, Chinese hegemonists, Euroweenies, deranged Norks, U.N. kleptocrats and the millions of national and thousands of international grievance-mongers and shakedown artists?

Oh, but I bet Martin O’Malley, when not spending half of his verbal output apologizing for his mere existence, can drop a ton of bricks on Republicans, Tea Party folks and random conservatives. Yeah, that’s who he views as the real enemy. He and most every liberal out there.

Barack Obama and his ilk have the mentality and racial obsession of Ku Klux Klan members. But, in their view, it’s for the good and everybody else thinks the same way. Of course, the Klan dunderheads say the same thing.

Why Does Our President So Openly Lie?

I’ve often wondered on that question. Barack Obama often seems to have the maturity of a nine-year-old. He says things because he wants them to be true or he thinks they should be true or because he thinks they are true simply because he said them.

I’m not counting his famously fallacious history and pronouncements such as Dear Leader claiming he was the first to brew alcohol “in the White House since George Washington,” as lies. On those he doesn’t know any better and they aren’t purposeful. For the record, the White House had not yet been built when Washington was president (and the capital was based in Philadelphia at that time). I’m looking at the purely mendacious.

Early Tuesday morning, when he announced the “Historic” agreement with Iran, he proceeded to list a load of malarkey that would refill the Augean stables.

This agreement, he intoned in his goofy stilted delivery, came from a “position of strength” and if the Iranians did cheat on the agreement, sanctions would immediately “snap back into place;” “the international community will be able to verify that the Islamic Republic of Iran will not develop a nuclear weapon;” “Iran will also get rid of 98 percent of its stockpile of enriched uranium;” and, the grandest pantload imaginable, “Every pathway to a nuclear weapon is cut off.”

Well, maybe this is the bigger howler: “Inspectors will have 24/7 access to Iran’s nuclear facilities.”

Those aren’t all the details by any means but a full fisking is unwarranted.

The deal that Obama talked about sounded great.

The problem, little of what he said was true. Within an hour, even CBS Radio, no anti-Obama attack dog there, was poking holes in what the president said.

Digging a little deeper we find that inspectors won’t have 24/7 access to facilities nor will they get unimpeded access to the military nuclear facilities.

I’ve scanned the agreement and have yet to find anything about a 98% reduction in enriched uranium. The agreement is very clear on the Iranians getting to keep 300 kg of lower-level enriched uranium along with some stocks of higher-level enriched uranium.

There’s a lot of detail about Iran being able to keep “researching” enrichment and replacing inferior centrifuges with better ones. That seems counterproductive. Why does Iran need to “research” anything? Why does it need centrifuges if it is getting out of the bomb-building business? If it is serious about the “energy” goal of its program it can hire experienced international firms to provide it with energy reactor-level fuel at a decent price (far cheaper than this charade is costing them).

On the inspection front, does Obama really think the Iranians are going to do their serious military bomb-building work out in the open where inspectors can see it? Without full access to all facilities, the agreement is worthless.

But perhaps I worry too much. The One assures us that Iran will be prevented from using the weapon it’s not supposed to develop because of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

I feel so much safer knowing a piece of paper will shield me from the searing heat and radiation of a nuclear weapon.

Seriously, reading Obama’s view of the agreement and what the apparent reality of it is, one begins to wonder if he has a severe comprehension problem. Maybe he’s just reflecting what his negotiators told him and he has no idea what’s in the agreement?

Or is he just bald-faced lying to America; perhaps under some kind of delusion that we won’t ever figure out the actual details of the deal? At least until the first mushroom cloud appears somewhere and O is safely ensconced as president of Harvard or U.N. Secretary General or just a world citizen travelling the globe in the search for problems only he can solve.

O said something that might indicate he doesn’t actually have a grip on reality: “Consider what happens in a world without this deal. Without this deal, there is no scenario where the world joins us in sanctioning Iran until it completely dismantles its nuclear program.” Is Dear leader referring to the coalition that is currently in place to do just that? A coalition where hawkish French belittle a gullible panty-waist Obama for trusting the Iranians? That coalition? The Coalition of the apparently Nonexisting?

Our Glorious Leader continues: “Nothing we know about the Iranian government suggests that it would simply capitulate under that kind of pressure and the world would not support an effort to permanently sanction Iran into submission.” Wait, so these tough Iranians won’t capitulate under worldwide pressure, which you insist will fail anyway allowing the Iranians to do whatever they want, but they are eager to sign a document giving you everything you want? Did O even comprehend the sentence he had delivered before that?

People, he is not very smart. He thinks you aren’t smart either.

Obama grew up in and has lived all his adult life in an atmosphere where he was ceaselessly patronized and told how smart he was. He is never questioned and whatever half-assed effort he puts out is praised to the hilt.

He is a spoiled brat. We elected a 13-year-old spoiled brat to the presidency.

Mr. President – negotiating from a “position of strength” is our leader telling their leader, “If you don’t give us what we want, the next sound you’ll hear will be half a dozen MOPs hitting half a dozen Iranian nuclear ‘research’ sites.” It’s not “pretty please… we can’t hold our coalition together forever, Mr. Mullah.”

The Iranian press, the appropriately named Farce News, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ayatollahs, Mullahs & Sons, Inc., seems to think they got everything they wanted without having to give up anything.

I wonder who’s more accurate?

Paging Carl Clausewitz…

I really wish someone would track down historian Michael Beschloss and ask him whether he sticks by his c.2008 claim that Barack Obama was probably the smartest president evuh!

If this tidbit at Hot Air is not taken out of context, this has to be the dumbest, most soporific, most infantile thing a sitting president has ever publicly uttered – “Ideologies are not defeated with guns, they are defeated by better ideas.”

A mildly intelligent fourth or fifth grader could poke so many holes in that one. Any serious reader of history could possibly laugh so hard they might rupture something.

Oh, and King Barry had the nerve to utter that specious silliness at a Pentagon press conference, in front of actual soldiers.

Of course, Dear Leader would probably respond after he had been brutally mocked and even late night comics began to make fun of him, with, “Well, one of those better ideas would be to have a better army! So there! I’m right! Nah-nah!”

Good King Barry

There’s a sweet, satisfying feeling one gets when one sees Barack Obama heckled by liberal activists for not being liberal enough for their taste.

It seems The One had some gay activists over to the White House the other day for a victory lap, fresh from making the country turn on a dime and proclaim that homosexual marriage is a grand and glorious thing and always was. Everyone knows that… except the worst bigots that ever lived, that is.

Dear Leader stood on the podium to remind all of his heroic exploits, breaching the defenses, slaying the dragon, rescuing the princesses and whatnot. He beamed waiting for the applause and cries of adulation that is typical of the usual Obama White House gathering.

But, instead of the angelic choirs singing “Gloria in excelsis,” someone started heckling him. Apparently the activists weren’t too happy that some homosexuals were being deported for a variety of reasons (some involving actual criminality). The lead heckler was a “transgendered” illegal alien (I’m not making that up). How he or she (it’s unclear what gender it was aiming at) got through security is unclear.

Becoming flustered, Glorious Leader clucked, “Shame, shame,” (one more and he would have earned a Gomer Pyle instead of his usual Steaming Pile). Shaming people is a bad thing if you are a Republican — it’s judgmental. Just ask Jeb Bush about that. Just a few weeks ago the liberals and their media flying monkeys were all over Bush for writing way back in the 1980s that single motherhood was not a good idea and that young, single ladies might want to keep their legs together lest they end up in a heap o’ trouble. That was then, this is now.

But shaming is an acceptable thing if you are a Democrat being heckled.

At being shamed, the crowd then began to boo the modern Robespierre. The mob he had unleashed had turned on him.

“Aht, aht, aht, we don’t do that!” he actually lectured them as if they were children. “Yes, Miss Obama,” they should have responded in unison. I wonder if he was wagging his finger when he said it?

Of course what he really meant is that they aren’t supposed to do that to each other. It’s fine if you’re doing it to a Republican, conservative, Christian or some other enemy of the state.

Then the Royal O complained that the ungrateful wretches had come to his house and eaten his food and drank his wine  and then had the gall to boo him rather than adore him, swear fealty to him and thank him for his enlightened munificence. You don’t get much more King John than that.

Congratulations, You Are the Return of Jimmy Carter

For some reason Obama flunkee Dan Pfeiffer thinks this extremely unflattering point/”accomplishment” is flattering to Obama – “Another accomplishment — Obama first President to have a Triple Crown winner since Carter.”

So, yes, congratulations, Mr. President, you have completed the return of what was considered the most failed presidency in decades, centuries, if not ever. You, sir, are unparalleled.

Oh, and how is the horse’s “accomplishment” (or that of his jockey, trainers and owners), that of Obama? Did he run the race? Was he onboard? Oy, yeah, Dear Leader provides us with all that is good…

But wait – doesn’t horse racing have jockeys and aren’t those kind of like “lawn jockeys,” which are a pinnacle of racism? Do you get the funny feeling that if a Republican had been the first to make Pfeiffer’s point, they’d be accused of being racist (and all of the Sunday morning political chat shows would go with that angle)? Just asking…