SILENCING PESKY OPPOSITION, PART 2

Norm Eisen, the Obamite Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform, feels that criticism of the "stimulus" plan is inconceivable. He therefore intends to crush dissent by "all persons...exerting influence on the process." (h/t Ed Morrissey) That means you and me.

The full quote is here. (Did a screen capture in case it gets memory-holed.) Read it and weep, people:

“First, we will expand the restriction on oral communications to cover all persons, not just federally registered lobbyists. For the first time, we will reach contacts not only by registered lobbyists but also by unregistered ones, as well as anyone else exerting influence on the process. We concluded this was necessary under the unique circumstances of the stimulus program.

“Second, we will focus the restriction on oral communications to target the scenario where concerns about merit-based decision-making are greatest—after competitive grant applications are submitted and before awards are made. Once such applications are on file, the competition should be strictly on the merits. To that end, comments (unless initiated by an agency official) must be in writing and will be posted on the Internet for every American to see.

“Third, we will continue to require immediate internet disclosure of all other communications with registered lobbyists. If registered lobbyists have conversations or meetings before an application is filed, a form must be completed and posted to each agency’s website documenting the contact.”

Next, the Obamites will surely be outlawing other forms of criticism, no matter how well founded. Do you object to cap-n-trade, the abomination that even members of The One Party (uh, I mean Democrats) recognize as a "great big tax" that has already proven ineffective in Europe? Obamite reeducation camp for you.

Norm, be happy! Together with The Telegraph, you're in the running for the 2009 PPPAPP, in the correct speech category!

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE GETS THE BETTER OF AN OBAMA SUPPORTER...

...and he is calling for his former idol's resignation. Check out a May 29 article by Ted Rall, who formerly called for a death sentence for George Bush in May 2008 (h/t JammieWearingFool).

Rall's summary of Obama's betrayals, stupidies, lies and other dangerous acts is remarkably complete. One quote from Rall's article says it all - for the rest, go to the article itself:

Obama has revealed himself. He is a monster, and he should remove himself from power.

Trouble is, being a monster and having enough insight to remove oneself from power are two mutually exclusive things. His intent is to drag down into the abyss, though he and the Obamites see this as progress.

Progress, that is, for the elect few, but regression for the endless multitudes.

So the question remains, what do we do now?

PROSPERITY, SOCIALIST-STYLE

This picture from the "bad old days" (i.e. Communist Czechoslovakia) almost brought sentimental tears to my eyes. I remember people (including my mother) going out and standing in line for hours on the strength of a rumor (!) that such-and-such a store will have meat available. At times, people would start staking out their positions in front of the store in the wee hours and get relief from other family members, friends or neighbors in the early morning.



Just thought I would remind my fellow Americans what socialism is really all about...

SILENCING PESKY OPPOSITION

Obamites, take note! Here is a valuable lesson to be learned from the Brits, via Phil Hendren, aka Dizzy.

British Members of Parliament (MPs) have had their troubles of late, in no small measure due to The Telegraph’s recent revelations of widespread improprieties in MPs’ expense accounts. For the first time in 300 years, the Speaker of the House of Commons has resigned, and several other MPs are planning to stand down as well.

Let me say that politicians ought to be monitored closely, so in that, I am with The Telegraph. But perhaps I should also add that that a legislator’s resignation in the wake of revelations of bad behavior is a very good idea (mother Pelosi, brother Frank, childe Barack, clown prince Joey et al, take note!).

Then came trouble. (It always does...) Given the tendency of the media to ratchet up the pressure to insane levels, the situation soon turned into a witch hunt.

Then came more trouble – someone fired back. Nadine Dorries, a Mid Bedfordshire Tory, addressed the witch-hunt atmosphere in the blog portion of her website. Among others, she apparently voiced her concern that the merciless pressure might drive some MPs to suicide (has happened before, actually). She also reportedly alleged that The Telegraph might have a hidden agenda: smear MPs in the traditional parties, driving voters toward the United Kingdom Independent Party (UKIP).

Since Dorries’s website and blog are operated by The Telegraph Group, The Telegraph found it easy to answer MP Dorries’s allegations. They immediately shut down the blog portion of her website, citing their acceptable user policy.

That’s where The Telegraph and I part ways. The idea of shutting up someone who criticizes you is so monumentally stupid, so profoundly reactionary, so totalitarian in nature that anyone who does it is automatically gets entered in the running for my much sought-after annual Pol Pot Prize for Absolutely Progressive Procedures, or PPPAPP. (BTW, the PPPAPP is known the world over as the dictator’s Nobel/Pulitzer.)

But if silencing the opposition is your thing, this is how it’s done. So I say again: Obamites, take note and learn from The Telegraph!

DO AS I SAY...

Obama's do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do hijinks have ample precedent, of course. All false messiahs I know of have suffered from that attitude. Here is just an example from one of his spiritual predecessors.



This a poster from the early Communist era in Czechoslovakia. It says: "Comrades, it's time to put an end to boozing."

Uncle Joe, to use Winston Churchill's nickname, was of course a boozer par excellence.

HOWL SEX FOR FREEDOM!

The British have this handy thing called an Antisocial Behavior Order (ASBO) that you can use to oppress anyone you wish. Wikipedia defines it as follows:

An anti-social behaviour order is an Order of the Court which tells an individual over 10 years old how they must not behave. Under 10s can be given a BASBO (for "baby ASBO"). An Order can contain only negative prohibitions. It cannot contain a positive obligation. To obtain an ASBO a two-stage test must be satisfied by the applicant authority (see s.1(1) Crime and Disorder Act 1998). The first is that the defendant has committed acts causing or likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress (emphasis mine) within six months of the date of issue of the summons. The second is that an order is necessary to protect persons from further anti-social behaviour.

The neat thing is that you, the victim, get to define what is "harassment, alarm or distress." Just ask the hapless Britisher Caroline Cartwright who had once been slapped with an ASBO for being loud in bed (see Brendan O'Neill's May 11 article in Reason Online). Poor Caroline, having been loud in bed once too many times, was finally hauled off to a dungeon for "excessively noisy sex" because neighbors had complained and because of the ASBO in her dark past.

This, in spite of the ASBO law's provision that (Wikipedia again) "...each prohibited act must be an act preparatory to a criminal offence rather than the offence itself."

It is hard to see, from my perspective, how howling during sex is "preparatory to a criminal offense," but that's where the arbitrary "harassment, alarm or distress" business comes in. You say that it's preparatory to a criminal offense, therefore it is.

I cannot help but wonder if the Brits had learned this from our universities and HR departments, or vice versa. Either way, this is stupidity far down the slippery slope into Orwell's nightmares.

BRITISH DOCS DECIDE TO SPREAD GLOBAL WARMING PANIC, TOO

Just as the gentle zephyrs of reality have begun to blow out the cobwebs from the dank precincts of climate change temples, British medicos have decided to throw themselves into the fray and plug up the gaps against this noxious draft.

Louise Gray, the environment correspondent over at The Telegraph, reported on May 14 that a study conducted by the University College London and published in the Lancet had concluded that:

"…the problems caused by climate change such as food shortages, heat waves and increased threat of tropical diseases such as malaria will kill billions of people (emphasis mine)…”

that

"Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st Century"

and that

"Effects of climate change will affect most populations in the next decades and put the lives of and well-being of billions of people at increased risk."

There is a litany of the usual horrors. Global temperatures will climb by more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. People in poor countries will suffer the most but more prosperous ones will also be affected. There will be disease, starvation, mass migration, wars. There will also be – and somebody call out the social workers please! – a "psychosocial" effect on health, with patients requiring counseling over the fear of global warming and its effects.

The editor of the Lancet huffed that doctors have been "silent for too long about the importance of climate change to the future of health services.” He pointed out that the threat is urgent and immediate, and that it requires – you guessed it – “an unprecedented response by Government and international organizations." (Read: "give the Gore crowd a free hand to pursue their lunatic schemes, at your expense.")

Doctors around the world are being urged to become advocates by encouraging a "low carbon lifestyle," and world governments are enjoined to “cut emissions and invest in helping poorer countries to adapt to climate change so that deaths are minimised.”

Talk about a desperate move. One could quip that the dying beast of the enviro-fascism is at its most dangerous, digging ever deeper to find more devious ways to panic people into submission.

I do wish that the doctors, whom I (used to) respect greatly, had continued their silence and stuck to science which, all claims to the contrary, isn’t in. In fact, it’s not anywhere near us.

As the hapless Pen Hadow and his traveling gong show had just learned, to their dismay.

SINGLE-PAYER HEALTH CARE

We all keep thinking that it's coming, and it may well be that the Obamite juggernaut will ram it through. But, as so many sober folks have pointed out (e.g. David Gibberman's article at American Thinker), the best way to go about reform is to think about it first, using all available evidence, and then and only then act.

It might seem intuitively obvious, but we have tons of evidence on how well a centralized system works. The USSR, which was a regime at least as organizationally complex as the USA, had one for 80-some years, and the data are freely available. I offer, for instance, Diane Rowland's and Alexandre V. Telyukov's Soviet Healthcare from Two Perspectives at Health Affairs, which is an in-depth analysis of the system, its structure, its functioning and its financial and human costs. It is a real tale of woe. Among the many tidbits it offers:

"The Soviet maternal mortality rate is over six times the U.S. rate, indicating problems (emphasis mine) with quality of care in maternity hospitals."

Indicating problems, indeed. If this were not so tragic, I would laugh.

These "problem indicators," on a grand scale, are the kind of thing that we can expect if the Obamite health care plan is implemented. But because a single-payer system is basically a single HMO for the whole country, heavily centralized and run by faceless bureaucrats, we the people will have about as much recourse as Soviet citizens did.

Just thought I would mention that...

The Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act

A food fight has developed between Wired Online and California Representative Linda Sanchez (D), who has sponsored H.R. 1966, a.k.a. the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act. H.R. 1966 is purportedly designed to prevent cyberbullying of the kind that had driven 13 year-old Megan Meier to suicide. Wired writer David Kravets states that H.R. 1966 “goes way beyond youth cyberbullying…[and] seemingly outlaws logging onto the internet.” In other words, censorship. In her HuffPo response, Rep Sanchez insists that “Congress has no interest in censoring speech, and it will not do so if it passes this bill.”

Under any other administration, I would have said that this is a there-oughta-be-a-law overreaction. Megan Meier’s suicide is tragic, and her persecutress’ behavior inexcusable. But is this really another epidemic requiring prompt government action?

Under this administration, however…

We have already seen that the Obama administration sees freedom of expression (speech, bumper stickers, ideologically diverse radio and Internet, tea parties, etc.), indeed civil rights in general, as a major threat – not to the Republic, mind you, but to The One and The One Party. And Congress has proved to be Obama's willing handmaiden in undercutting the Constitution. So Rep. Sanchez' reassurance that Congress does not want to censor speech sounds a little too much like Obama's claims that he doesn't want to run the banks or GM. (Hint: they do, and he does...)

In my view, H.R. 1966 has major implications for our constitutional rights. Now, its language may not specifically state what David Kravets reads in it, but the resolution itself is a kind of ideological earmark. It alerts the community organizers and other eager-beaver manipulators among us to yet another potential venue for expanding their control. If H.R. 1966 does not pass, the idea will sit and fester, eventually reappearing in different garb. If it is passed, it will quickly experience mission creep to encompass anything and everything that the gauleiters of The One Party find objectionable.

So, bravo, David Kravets. Keep fighting the good fight.

And nice try, Madame Sanchez! We, the People, are watching closely.

OY, THAT BIG MOTHER JUST CAN'T KEEP IT SHUT!

Big Mother hath spoken again, this time through the mouth of Little Rosie Gottemoeller of – you guessed it – the Obamite State Department. Israel, we are told, is called upon to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which would give the Obamites and other Jew-hating entities to pressure the Jewish state to give up its alleged nukes. This, presumably, so the long-suffering and eminently aggrieved Iranians can be encouraged to do the same.

Different year, same moronism. When dealing with two parties, of which one is intransigent and the other willing to work with you, you focus your pressure on the latter because your feelings won’t be hurt quite so much through constant rejection. Sooner or later, you will wear down the responsible party and give the uncivilized brats what they want. Classical examples, the Munich dictates of 1938 and the Paris peace talks of 1965-1973.) And guess what? They’ll want more, and your politeness will have mattered not at all. If anything, you will be derided as a stupid weakling.

Which is what the image of the United States is getting to be nowadays.

WANTED: A SILVER TONGUE!

In a smart editorial published in Jewish World Review today, Caroline Glick reviews the dismal state of Israeli-American relations. This, on top of the report that Rahm Emanuel, at the behest of the White House, is threatening Israel with no help vis-à-vis “kill-the-Jews” Iran and its nuclear program unless Israel gets busy engaging the Iranian ‘kill-the-Jews” proxies in Arab lands surrounding Israel.

Caroline Glick makes a good point, though. Given the de facto hostile attitude of the Obama administration toward the Jewish state, Israel must take its message directly to the American people. (Funny, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty used to do the same thing by transmitting directly to the people then in Communist bondage, over the strenuous objections of their tyrannical governments.)

My impression is that Americans continue to feel a great deal of solidarity with Israel, and tend to understand the dangers well, so this is potentially a winning strategy. Trouble, is, where to find such a great communicator? In the early years of Israel's existence, there was Abba Eban, of blessed memory. But who can perform the same function for the Jewish state today? I confess that I don’t know, but we’d better find him or her soon.

Well, anyway, here’s a first cut at a job description: statesmanlike, multilingual, thoroughly steeped in history, brilliant extemporaneous speaker, superb writer, tireless, willing to travel at a moment’s notice, willing to endure endless abuse and heckling with unlimited grace, willing to face injury or even death in the name of his or her convictions.

Any ideas?

Any takers?

BIG MOTHER SPEAKETH AGAIN...

...and as always, it maketh little sense.

The Washington Times reports that Speaker Pelosi wants to prevent federal investigators from investigating questionable doings by members of Congress. She has reportedly invoked the Separation of Powers clause in the Constitution as Her justification.

Now, call me crazy (many do, so don't feel bad!), but I always thought that the Separation of Powers clause was to make government more accountable and to keep any portion of government from accumulating too much power. To cite the U. S. Constitution Online Website:

"The Separation of Powers devised by the framers of the Constitution was designed to do one primary thing: to prevent the majority from ruling with an iron fist. Based on their experience, the framers shied away from giving any branch of the new government too much power. The separation of powers provides a system of shared power known as Checks and Balances."

To those of us who (a) have lived in totalitarian countries and (b) take Orwell seriously because he knew what he was talking about, this sounds very much like some people wanting to be a little more equal than others.

Pelosi's gambit should be very disturbing news to anyone who thinks democracy cannot afford to die.

IF YOU'RE AN INTELLECTUAL, YOU MUST PROMOTE GOOD GOVERNANCE THROUGH CLASS HATRED

Duch, the former Khmer Rouge commander of the notorious Tuol Sleng prison, explained last week that his underlings were taught class hatred that allowed them to kill their enemies. He said that "...we educated people [must] have a firm class stand and then [teach]...them to be strict about [interrogating]...and also...how to smash people and to keep them from escaping."

I find that this is very useful knowledge for any well-educated person or persons trying to control the masses.