In the wake of Mel Martinez’s decision to resign from the United States Senate, Governor Charlie Crist could do no better than to appoint his accomplished predecesor to fill the seat for the remainder of Martinez’s term.

This would give the articulate conservative a larger platform to address the issues of the day.   And for fifteen months, the Sunshine State would be represented by a man who served it well for eight years.

In her column today, Peggy Noonan takes issue with attempts  by the President and his team to denigrate and discredit those who dare to speak out in opposition to Democratic efforts to overhaul our health care system:

All of this is unnecessarily and unhelpfully divisive and provocative. They are mocking and menacing concerned citizens. This only makes a hot situation hotter. Is this what the president wants? It couldn’t be. But then in an odd way he sometimes seems not to have fully absorbed the awesome stature of his office. You really, if you’re president, can’t call an individual American stupid, if for no other reason than that you’re too big. You cannot allow your allies to call people protesting a health-care plan “extremists” and “right wing,” or bought, or Nazi-like, either. They’re citizens. They’re concerned. They deserve respect.

You’d like someone practicing that new kind of politics might show some respect for his ideological adversaries, but, well, that’s not what they’re taught in Chicago where the President and his minions got his political education.

Oh, and, as with anything by this columnist who embodies the qualities of the far-sighted goddess of wisdom and just warfare, just read the whole thing.

Since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has no evidence whatsoever to back up her claim that protesters have been carrying “swastikas and symbols like that” to townhall meetings on health care as evidence of their political affiliation or sympathies, it appears she’s projecting her image of what she thinks these protesters her onto reality.  She just assumes that those protesting Democratic policies would carry such symbols.

Does she really paint her adversaries with such a broad brush, believing them akin to Nazis while at the same time the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, whose job it is to keep Democrats in the majority and thus Mrs. Pelosi as Speaker has been whining that Rush is calling them Nazis!  Talk about pots calling kettles black.

Basically, we’ve got a leading Democrat who ascribes fascist sympathies to her political opponents.  She is one prejudiced lady.

And once again, why can’t a Democrat accept that there is legitimate — and passionate — opposition to her policies?  Why must must she dismiss those who speak out as “astroturf”?  Can anyone point to any evidence of her recent Republican predecessors, Dennis Hastert or Newt Gingrich, so portraying their political opponents while in office?

(Via Gateway Pundit who has more, including actual footage of protesters pasting the swastika on their placards.)

UPDATE/FROM THE COMMENTS:  One of my critics contends that yes, indeed there were swastikas at some of the rallies.  And he’s right.  Only problem for his argument is that the protesters had signs showing that Nazi-appropriated symbol with a slash through it–to indicate opposition (or the actual word “No,” also to indicate opposition.

Given that the Speaker was comparing the protesters, as James Taranto’s observation below indicates, to Nazis, I have tweaked the post slightly to show my intent with the expression, “no evidence whatsoever.”

Let’s review her words again: “I think they’re AstroTurf. You be the judge. They’re carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care.” Who carries swastikas? Nazis. Pelosi did not complain that the protesters were comparing ObamaCare to Nazism; she insinuated that they are Nazis.

The most charitable thing that can be said about the speaker’s comment is that it was no better than the speech she was criticizing. She likened her political opponents to Nazis, just as a handful of them had done to their opponents.

In the 1990s when I lived in Arlington, Virginia and served on that county’s Republican committee, I would regularly attend meetings of the Democratic-controlled County Board and express my concerns about their tax increases and meddlesome policies.  On occasion, I would talk to the vaious Board members in person.

Once when I ran into Democratic Board Member James B. “Jim” Hunter, III walking through the hallway on his way to the meeting.  I approached him and in a rather confrontational manner, urged him to vote against the meals tax increase which he and his colleagues on the all-Democratic Board were considering.  Given the manner of my approach, I was stunned (and humbled) by his courteous response.  He showed more respect for me than I did for him, looking right at me, listening (without interrupting) to my spiel, then thanking me for expressing my opinion.  He reached his hand out to shake mine.

I would never again approach that good man in a confrontational manner.

In subsequent years, as I remained active in the Arlington County Republican Committee and various civic organizations (I was a member of the Arlington County Commission for the Arts) I got to know him better, still asking him tough questions but with the same courtesy he had showed me.  (He taught me a lesson, that good man did.)

Once when he spoke to the Arlington Gay and Lesbian Alliance, he responded to my question as he always did, with respect.  He thanked me for speaking out, then addressed my concerns.  (I thanked him for his civil response.)  After the public portion of the meeting, we chatted amicably during the sorical hour, with him placing his left hand on my back and shaking my extended right hand with his and said,  “Dan, we’ll have to agree to disagree.”

Other Republicans reported a similar reaction when they met with that good man to discuss their differences with the Board.

When he died, enough members of the County Republican Committee attended his funeral to make a quorum.

Obviously Barack Obama Democrats have not learned from their late partisan from the one part of Virginia which was briefly part of the District of Columbia.  Instead of trashing Republicans who raise their concerns with elected officials as tools of special interest or of maleficent corporations and dismissing our concerns, they should show us the same respect Jim Hunter showed to his political opponents. (more…)

As I read their latest headline, I recalled all the gloomy articles on the economy when, during the better half of the Bush Administration (before the election o a Democratic Congress), businesses were expanding and creating jobs.  And in those dark and difficult days, the media tried to pooh-pooh the economy.

Today, however, with a bold new leader in the White House, a man with vision and charisma and lacking an (R) after his name, the lede is fewer job losses expected, with “reporting” that focuses more on forecasts of an imminent recovery than on the details of the continuing downturn.  Back then, it was forecasts of an imminent downturn.

It took the election of a Democratic Congress to make that imminent downturn real.

Guess that glow cast by Obama’s presences furthers the desperate seeking of silver linings.

Allahpundit gets at the essence of the Democrats’ angst:

Let me remind you again: They can pass any bill they want any time they want. Conservatives can scream their heads off at these things and there’s not an ounce of good it’ll do if Democrats are united. This whole partisan “war” Obama and Axelrod have concocted is kabuki theater against an enemy they’ve already (momentarily) defeated; it’s the Blue Dogs’ fear that they’ll be thrown out of office if they vote for this travesty that’s put the left in the predicament they’re in.

Emphasis added.

While the Democrats may rant and rave about those repugnant Republicans, the real issue is that they can’t hold their own party together.

And despite controlling all the levers of power, Democrats (and their allies on left-wing blogs), as Amity Shlaes noted back in May, seem angrier than ever.  Basically, the issue is more psychological than political, they need a target upon which to spew their venom.  And since they’ve long hated Republicans, why take down the target now that the GOP is out of power?

I mean, think about this for a second, they’ve elected a charismatic guy President who manages to get his mug on TV more often than most of his predecessors.  Much of the media leans left and gives their viewpoint favorable coverage.   With congressional majorities, they have more elected officials with more ready access to local media than do Republicans.  And they have Health Care for American Now (HCAN), an outfit with a $40 million budget to promote the Democrats’ proposed health care overhaul.

And yet, despite all these resources as their disposal, Americans disapprove of the President’s performance on health care. It’s not just one poll.  Via Glenn, we learn, “Polls from National Public Radio, Wall Street Journal/NBC News, The Washington Post, Gallup, and Pew all show that the American people do not support President Barack Obama’s health care plan.”

What went wrong? With a party led by a man adept at organizing, they can’t control public opinion, so they demonize adversaries and labeling concerned citizens as tools of corporate interests: (more…)

Left Wing Blogger Created Obama’s (Fake) Birth Certificate.

(H/t:  Michelle Malkin’s Buzzworthy.)

Now, Ma’am Boxer crticizes those who want to “change Congress:”  Barbara Boxer Objects to Town Hall Protesters Attire, Says Protests Are Designed to Enact Change.

Guess, in her world view, only Democrats are allowed to promote change.

Hilarious. 

Kids and dogs are often smarter than adults.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Reprinted in full:

Hi Ms. Douglas & Secretary Napolitano (since you are reading these, too):

I figured I would save you the trouble and send you an email right now so you can put me on your “Healthcare Enemies List” right away.  No fuss, no muss, no fishy-ness.

You see, I have read the legislation… I do know what HR 3200 says… I’m not being paid to protest, as a matter of fact my industry is supporting healthcare reform!   But I will continue to stand up against the Gestapo-like tactics of President Obama against those to oppose him for legitimate policy issues.

How dare you ask for my neighbors or my readers to inform on me.  This is an outrage better suited in the former Soviet Union, Syria or Iran.

You should be ashamed of yourselves.

-Bruce Carroll (aka – GayPatriot)
Charlotte, North Carolina
www.gaypatriot.org

There she goes again. It seems all Ma’am Boxer need do to make a fool of herself is open her mouth. No wonder she’s not planning on holding any meetings with the people she was elected to represent in the United States Senate.

Just watch the clip that Nick linked and let me know if you believe Ma’am’s claim about silencing Republican protesters by reminding them that Ronald Reagan came from California. That one just doesn’t pass the smell test. If you have evidence proving me wrong (and Ma’am right), please provide it.

So, if she’s going to denounce protesters today whose goal (as she puts it) is “to hurt our President and to change the Congress,” I’m sure we’ll find ample video footage of her denouncing those protesting George W. Bush and his policies during the first eight years of the current decade.  And taking issue with efforts of her own party to “change Congress” in 2006 and 2008.  I mean, weren’t some of her allies then trying to “hurt our president” and change Congress?

Now,  if Ma’am claims the protesters are too well-dressed to be sincere, let me show her a few pictures from protests in her own jurisdiction, i.e., California (taking at the April 15 Tea Parties in Santa Monica and Van Nuys).   Since they’re not wearing suits and ties, will she now take these protesters seriously?

(If Ma’am is interested, I could send her more pictures of her constituents protesting in T-shirts and jeans — or similar attire.   And if my California readers have pictures of Golden State protests where people are dressed in similar attire, send them here, maybe we’ll make a collage and take it to Ma’am’s office so she can learn a little about the folks she’s supposed to be representing.)

(H/t–my blogging nephew and not the one who has to wait a few years before he’s reading for Disneyland.  Mitchell e-mailed me a link to Ed Morrissey’s post and I had read his missive before seeing Nick’s post.)

I haven’t had a chance to read the entirity of President Obama’s comments in Wakarusa, Indiana, yesterday, but I did come upon this chilling note:

We will pass reform by the end of this year because the American people need it.

(emphasis added)

No, not because we want it, but because The One believes we need it, and we’re going to get it, whether we like it or not, if He has His way.

The arrogance of this man is incredible.

Now, I understand, that if a guy’s elected saying he’s going to do something, he kind of has an obligation to try to get it done, and I can’t really fault him for trying. But Obama knows as well as we do that he put forth an image of himself as being a moderate and centrist who would never take over and Stalinze the entire health care industry (not to mention the auto industry and banking industry, and I could go on…) Not to mention that at this point, 52% of voters think his idea is a turkey.

The pomposity displayed by this man who famously said to the faces of (also-elected, mind you) Republican Congressmen, “I won, [so] I will trump you.” Is as staggering as the media’s aversion to point it out.

This is only punctuated more by what he said yesterday to MSNBC after his talk in Indiana:

I think at some point, some time in September, we are just going to have to make an assessment.

The “assessment” to which he’s referring is whether or not to even bother working with Republicans in ramming through his take-over.

Fun, sometimes, to go back in time (only 10 months ago, almost to the date) when the LA Times pilloried W as being “Bush the arrogant” for, among other things, having

“embarked on the most profound expansion of the federal government’s role in the private economy since the Depression.”

Really?

I’ve searched, but cannot find any instance where the Times‘ editorial board offered such an assessment of BHO. If anybody knows of such, please pass it along in the comments.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

Dan, this insane virago you have representing you in the Senate is beyond the pale. I happened to be in the gym lockerroom yesterday at the precise moment this disrespectful and shameless shrew categoriezed and insulted basically anybody who dares speak his mind in a public forum before a supporter of Stalinized health care on MSNBC (yes, natch, at my gym, they have MSNBC on the TV in the lockerroom). I wanted to blog it yesterday, but just saw the link someone put up today:

One might ask this termagant: “Ma’am [Senator], do the people you categorize as ‘well-dressed’ people who are only trying to ‘hurt our president’ have any legitimacy in their complaints about your plan whatsoever? Should their argument be given any weight or credence? Or should we just ignore them?”

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

As I may flesh this notion out in a further post, I’m including it in the “Random Thoughts” category.

After reading the news and blogs last night and this morning in my Kettleman City hotel (due a late start last night from San Francisco (allowing me to spend more time with my Mom & nephew) and bad traffic in and around San Jose, I decided to overnight in the Central Valley) and listening to the President’s speech earlier today in the Hoosier State, I had this sense yet again that Obama has long since lost the chance to unite the nation.

His speech sounded more like campaign boilerplate than a presidential address.

It seems he constantly sees his job as defeating his political foes (often the “straw men” in his speeches of whom you have heard tell)-which is not a very presidential attitude to have, since those supposed foes are your constituents.

From the outset of his Administration, Obama has not surrounded himself with political partisans, accustomed to an “us v. them” universe as opposed to think tank types, accustomed to design policies designed to serve society at large–and to building a broad consensus for said policies.   As Michael Barone obseved, “Most of Obama’s top White House staffers are politics operatives, not policy wonks. ”

Just three days after he took office as President of the United States, in a bipartisan meeting with congressional leaders, Obama responded to Republican concerns about the cost of his “so-called stimulus” and his so-called “tax credit” for people who don’t pay income taxes, by saying, “I won. So I think on that one, I trump you.“*

Yeah, but all those people in that room all won their resspective elections.  And Obama won, in large part, by promising a “net spending cut” and reassuring voters in the middle that the change he was proposing was not all that drastic.

In any case, it was that very confrontational– and very unpresidential–attitude which has come to define the succeeding six months of his Administration–and has prevented him from becoming the unifying figure his supporters assured us he would be.

* (more…)

Just called the offices of my Senator, Ma’am Barbara Boxer and my Congressman Henry Waxman, to see if they were holding public meetings on the various Obama initiatives which Democrats are attempting to push through Congress.

While Waxman has one meeting scheduled on climate change on Friday, August 21, when I tried to register online, I found that the event was already full, with a waiting list of 86.   Ma’am’s LA office said there were no event planned in LA and was not aware of any public meetings elsewhere in the state.

If you live in California, I suggest you call up Ma’am’s office and ask why she doesn’t want to meet the people she was elected to represent in Washington.   Her contact information is here.

Vanity Fair - July 29, 2008:

Los Angeles poster & Internet sensation – Spring/Summer 2009:

If you are in the mainstream media or their liberal/progressive lickspittles, then:  One of these is art, the other is horrible.  One is satire, one is racism.  One is free speech, the other is disrespectful.  One is high-larious, the other is dangerous.

I’ll let my intelligent readers make up their own minds…

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Listening to his speech while going through e-mail and thought I heard just that.

Freudian slip?  Malfunctioning teleprompter?

Can you imagine how the editorialists at the New York Times and the left-leaning pundits on the Sunday TV new talk shows would lecture any Republican, elected or editorializing himself, who, during the Bush years, had said that those publicly protesting the Iraq War were just astroturf demonstrators, 1960s retreads who did not represent any grassroots movement.

Disagree with them we did, but we didn’t deny the sincerity of their concerns.

And yet, that’s how all too many Obama supporters, even some in the White House, and in their MSNBC echo chamber, have reacted to those protesting the President’s health care plans.  Now, to be sure, some of those protestors have gone a little too far in expressing their opinion.  It’s one thing to chant slogans and wave placards outside an elected official’s town hall meeting.*  It’s quite another to do so during the forum, drowning out the voices of others.

We should not do to them what we believe they’re doing to the country–pushing their ideas on us without a fair hearing.

Why is it, first citizens attending tea parties to protest excessive government spending, now with citizens attending additional tea parties and gatherings at elected officials’ townhalls to take issue with Democratic health care plans, that Democrats (and their defenders) must needs call them astroturfing, saying they are not grassroots protesters. Instead, those on the left contend this anti-big government movement has been ginned up by “evil” insurance companies?

As if left-wingers had a monopoly on legitimate grassroots’ protest.

Perhaps, their attempts to discredit us is a sign of intellectual laziness–that they don’t want to consider criticism of their proposals.  Or maybe it’s a sign they’re losing the debate.

Oh, and, one more thing–if they don’t think the protests against the President’s health care plan are legitimate, what do they make of the raft of opinion polls indicating growing opposition to a his proposed health care overhaul and to most of the components of the various Democratic plans?

**FROM THE COMMENTS:  Reader Sue offers a correction, saying it’s not just conservatives whose concerns they are dismissing and maligning:

Wrong Gp, it is not conservatives concerns. There are just as many Democrat voters protesting as well. We too read the bill and have not fallen for the crap they have been spewing. The people that attend Tea party’s are of ALL political persuasions.

* (more…)

Communications Director for the White House Office of Health Reform Linda Douglass bemoans in her rebuttal (awkwardly and without explanation entitled “Facts Are Stubborn Things”…what does that even mean?!) to the video I posted yesterday that the president’s words about the Stalinization of health care were (all together now) “taken out of context” but then provides no context to make her point.

I had a great idea this morning when I saw this pathetic attempt at hand-waving by the White House: If they’re bitching about Obama being taken out of context, why not just show the context? If the White House wasn’t willing to do so, one could probably presume it’s because the “context” is even more damning. Well, one would be right:

Facts may be stubborn, but the man’s words are even more so, eh, Ms. Douglass?

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

OH, ONE MORE THING: I forgot to mention (the lies sometimes fly by so fast, I have a hard time keeping up), that, although she may not find it to be within her job description, does the GentleCommunicationsDirectorLady wish to explain the “context” in which Barney Frank (at about 1:11) and Congresswoman Jan Schwakowsky (starting at 1:17, and whose support for the Stalinization of health care only grows more emphatic as her segment continues) both offer basically their full-throated endorsement of a government take-over of the health care industry? Considering the president has farmed out the actual writing of and direction for HIS health care proposal to Congress, perhaps they’re the ones who sholud also be asked to clarify their own statements (as if it weren’t clear already).

As a refresher, here’s that video again:

They do seem to wanting to keep running against the former President.   Guess it’s easier to run against Bush’s image than for Obama’s agenda.

To those of you on the left slapped those 01/20/09 stickers on their cars and others once so eager for W’s last day in office, let me remind you that that day has come and gone.  George W. Bush is no longer in office.  Your guy has taken his place.

You don’t need to bash that Republican any more.  He’s gone home to his “village” in Texas just as you wanted him to.

But, wait, maybe this wasn’t about politics.  Maybe you do “need” to bash someone.  And W remains a convenient target, just like the former Governor of some state up north.  Far north.

ADDENDUM:  Mark Steyn wonders, “So why not blame Bush for the horrors of the Obama presidency?”  That smart Canadian cites Jacob Weisberg who wrote that the incumbent “molded his [foreign policy] approach around his predecessor’s errors.”  So, if Obama does something wrong, it’s really Bush’s fault.