If you click this link, you can see a vid of Sean Hannity interviewing Glenn Beck. Hannity is a Tea Party Conservative, and Glenn Beck is a Tea Party Libertarian/Conservative. As you would expect, 95% of the interview consists of them expressing their opposition to contraception and gay marriage.

That is, you *would* expect that if *you* happen to be an ignorant liberal/progressive leftist/moderate establishment Republican who believes that the “far right” is obsessed with those issues. The actual number of times contraception and gay marriage come up in the interview: Zero. Zip. Nada.

Conservatives are simply not as obsessed with these issues as the left makes them out to be. In fact, almost always these issues are brought up by liberal journalists or liberal politicians (but I repeat myself); like George Stephanopoulus setting the table for the eventual “Mitt Romney wants to outlaw tampons” meme by bringing up contraception… out of nowhere… during a Republican debate in 2012.

Tea Party Conservatives aren’t obsessed with contraception or gay marriage. Leftist progressives are.

(more…)

As if Oberlin‘s 2013 race hoax wasn’t enough, now we have the Vassar bias hoax:

Reports of bias incidents at Vassar College that involved hateful messages left on students’ doors were actually elaborate hoaxes — and the perpetrator is none other than the student member of the Bias Incident Response Team…

This fall semester at the liberal arts college in New York saw a curiously high number of bias incident reports…The task force had one student member…who is transgendered and was also a vice president of the Vassar Student Association (VSA)…

The DC has learned that one of the perpetrators was none other than [that student].

Via Ace, who goes along with Damn Dirty Rino in suggesting that Münchausen syndrome may be at play.

I’ve made my own assumption that the student must be politically “progressive”; if it’s incorrect, let us know in the comments.

John Hayward at Human Events reviews all three. Here’s the state of play:

• Persecution of lesbian NJ server still a hoax
• Knockout Game still all too real
• and the World Health Organization (WHO) still muddying the waters about people who self-inflict HIV, as there have indeed been some cases (just nothing like half of all new HIV cases in Greece, as the WHO had originally told people).

As to the Knockout Game, Hayward links Thomas Sowell, who says:

The New York authorities describe a recent series of such attacks and, because Jews have been singled out in these attacks, are considering prosecuting these assaults as “hate crimes.” …this “knockout game” has been played for years by young black gangs in other cities and other states, against people besides Jews — the victims being either whites in general or people of Asian ancestry. Attacks of this sort have been rampant in St. Louis. But they have also occurred in Massachusetts, Wisconsin and elsewhere. In Illinois the game has often been called “Polar Bear Hunting” by the young thugs, presumably because the targets are white…

“White Girl Bleed A Lot”…a book by Colin Flaherty…documents both the racial attacks across the nation and the media attempts to cover them up, as well as the local political and police officials who try to say that race had nothing to do with these attacks. Chapter 2 of the 2013 edition is titled, “The Knockout Game, St. Louis Style.” So this is nothing new, however new it may be to some in New York, thanks to the media’s political correctness.

Sounds like a ‘social phenomenon’, to me. At any rate, many of the attacks are on video (and/or documented in police reports) and, as such, are facts that can’t be wished away.

From Mona Charen’s new column:

Remember President Barack Obama’s mother? …The moving and infuriating story was a staple on the 2008 campaign trail. His mother had insurance, he explained, but when she came down with cancer, her insurance company claimed her disease was a “pre-existing condition” and refused to pay…In a debate with Sen. John McCain, Obama said: “For my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they’re saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment, there’s something fundamentally wrong about that.”

There would be, if it had been true. But when New York Times reporter Janny Scott researched the issue for her biography of the president’s mother, she discovered letters proving beyond doubt that Cigna never denied Stanley Ann Dunham coverage for her disease. The dispute was over a disability plan…

The White House did not deny Scott’s account, but shrugged it off…

The Dunham tale was meant to personify the hundreds of thousands — or millions — of Americans who were “dumped” by insurance companies when they became sick. This is an invented tale, and might have been rebutted by the insurance industry if they hadn’t gotten into bed with Obama in 2010 in return for millions of coerced new customers…

There’s more; RTWT.

Charen touches on a great point: The insurance companies are at fault, but not for the Left’s mythical reasons. The real fault is that Obamacare is based on coercion: forcing people to do business with the insurance companies, when people might choose not to. That is immoral. Obama was wrong to propose it, the Democrats were wrong to impose it, and the insurance companies were wrong to go along with it.

A thief takes your car. You know each other, so the next day, he drives up – in your car – to apologize for the inconvenience he’s caused you. He doesn’t return your car; he drives off in it again.

Was his apology sincere? Of course not. Had he been sincere, he would give back your car. He just wanted to blunt your well-justified anger, which could inconvenience him in the future. He hoped to manipulate your good nature.

Have no fear, kids: President Obama is here to show us how it’s done.

President Obama said Thursday that he is “sorry” that some Americans are losing their current health insurance plans as a result of the Affordable Care Act, despite his promise that no one would have to give up a health plan they liked.

“I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me,” he told NBC News in an exclusive interview at the White House.

“We’ve got to work hard to make sure that they know we hear them and we are going to do everything we can to deal with folks who find themselves in a tough position as a consequence of this.”

Here are a few of the things Obama *didn’t* say, any of which would have made it a sincere apology:

• I admit Obamacare was a huge mistake, and I’ve asked Congress to repeal it.
• I admit Obamacare was a mistake, and I’m letting Republicans write the bill now to solve its huge flaws.
• To give people immediate relief, I’ve agreed to delay Obamacare by six months.
• I’m not delaying Obamacare; but, to give people immediate relief, I’ve signed an order that will re-grandfather all plans that existed as of Oct 1, 2013.

But he said none of them. His “apology” was geared to one purpose only: trying to gain a few points in opinion polls for Barack Hussein Obama.

RELATED:

• Young people Just Say No to Obamacare. As well they should; it rips them off.
• By driving doctors to retire and squeezing out small practices, Obamacare is increasing the doctor shortage.
• Even The New Republic admits that Obamacare kicks people off of good plans, pushing them into worse plans with higher costs and less doctor access.
• Even the Washington Post agrees that people’s cancellations should not be blamed on the insurance companies.
• Obama was lying about Obamacare’s impacts on people as recently as Sep. 26, 2013.

Well covered on Ace and HotAir, but I can’t let this pass without note.

Recently on November 4, President Obama said:

If you had one of these plans before the ACA came into law, and you really liked that plan, what we said was, you could keep it *if* it hasn’t changed since the law was passed.

The emphasis is Obama’s, in his delivery; here is the clip.

The rules/mandates/costs of the ACA are such that it is nearly impossible for any plan to not be changed by it. But Obama has an even greater problem: what he said in the past, dozens if not hundreds of times in public speeches, had no “If…” qualifier and was much more like this example (from 2009, quoted previously):

No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, *period*. If you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan, *period*. No one will take it away, *no matter what*.

Emphasis was probably also in Obama’s original delivery, but just to keep things easy, let’s say that I’ve added it.

So, let’s see. First Obama lied about whether people could keep their plans under Obamacare. (And he lied about most people seeing cost reductions – rather than the reality of cost increases – and about much more.) And now, Obama is lying about his lies (claiming he had always said something different).

Lies require intent to deceive; otherwise they are only mistakes. Obama has lied, because (1) the White House knew people would lose their plans at least as far back as 2010, and (2) unless Obama is mentally incompetent, he must know today that he didn’t put in those “If…” qualifiers when he was out stumping for Obamacare.

Will the Left swallow Obama’s new lie? Probably, along the lines of Orwell’s _1984_, where the devotees of Ingsoc (English Socialism) believe The Party’s newly-invented claim to have raised the chocolate ration when they’d actually cut it (page 51 of the old Signet paperback).

But the Left is not America. Will America swallow it?

RELATED: Obama’s approval rating is a point lower than Bush’s was at this same time in their presidencies (1st week of November in their fifth years).

And if you want a glimpse into America’s future under nationalized health, here it is: Venezuela’s health care system is collapsing.

A pithy, logical column from Kyle Smith. Key ideas:

Bulls–t is airy, meaningless drivel, the stuff that campaigns are made of. Or it’s a misleading oversimplification with hidden qualifiers. Not only do we forgive bulls–t, we like it…

This week was something new…

Some 10 million Americans are going to lose their health insurance as a direct result of the Affordable Care Act. [But] On June 15, 2009, Obama said, in one of hundreds of similar statements, “No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”

This wasn’t just bulls–t. This was a lie…

What Obama said wasn’t true and that’s all there is to it. To the American public, he is a different man…Obama has rebranded himself as a liar…He will carry this new label to his grave.

UPDATE (well, more a REMINDER): Per NBC News, the Obama administration knew at least as early as 2010 that 67% to 80% of Americans who buy health coverage themselves would not be allowed to keep their plans. And that doesn’t count Americans who are losing their employer-sponsored plans, job hours or jobs because their employers simply can’t afford Obamacare’s pricey coverage mandates.

The administration lies about its pricey coverage mandates now, via Orwellian language. It claims to have made insurance companies “offer more benefits” (NBC’s phrasing). What it has really done is deny companies the ability to tailor plans to consumers’ needs, and deny the consumer the opportunity to buy a plan that is affordably tailored.

UPDATES via The Economic Collapse blog:

• A partial (but still lengthy) list of employers who have cut work hours or jobs, because of Obamacare.
• According to CBS, Americans losing their health plans due to Obamacare far outnumber Americans who have signed up for Obamacare.
• Doctors don’t like Obamacare; in New York, fully 77% of doctors either know they’ll be refusing Obamacare patients, or are undecided.

UPDATE: Even Anderson Cooper wore his ‘concerned face’ last week on hearing that the Obama administration has told insurance companies to stay quiet about what is really going on.

Via HotAir, just a reminder: “If you like your plan, you can keep it.”

In Minnesota alone, at least 140,000 can’t keep their plan.

UPDATE: Fine columns on all this from Mark Steyn, Larry Kudlow, Charles Krauthammer.

UPDATE: From The Burning Platform (via ZH):

I am (finally) completely speechless:

Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from The Ranch)

UPDATE (yea, it’s been a whole two minutes):
Come to think of it, it’s not the first time I’ve been left speechless by a House member…

UP-UPDATE: Here’s one along similar lines: Perhaps the new line from the Statists could be that the health insurance policies aren’t new…they’re just changed … see? it’s not different, it’s the same, just changed

…but then again, perhaps this is what they’re hearing when we try to explain to them that it is different:

First, the facts.

• October 16: U.S. national debt is $16,747,370,534,090.62.
• Then they raise the debt ceiling.
• October 18, at 3pm: U.S. debt is at $17,075,590,107,963.57.

That’s a $300+ billion increase, in two days. It’ll continue (albeit, at a slower pace). It moves the U.S. mathematically closer to its coming default, and the added interest will cost taxpayers (especially if interest rates rise in the future).

Now, here’s what Obama said during the shutdown. October 3:

I want to spend a little time on this. It’s something called raising the debt ceiling. And it’s got a lousy name, so a lot of people end up thinking, I don’t know, I don’t think we should raise our debt ceiling, because it sounds like we’re raising our debt. But that’s not what this is about.

It doesn’t cost taxpayers a single dime. It doesn’t grow our deficits by a single dime…it’s not something that raises our debt.

Or, October 8:

…it’s called raising the debt ceiling, I think a lot of Americans think it’s raising our debt. It is not raising our debt. This does not add a dime to our debt.

‘Nuff said.

Via Zero Hedge. Squirming under the Socratic questioning of interviewer Jan Helfeld, Sen. Reid argues here that because the U.S. tax system is cumbersome (having people self-report, having deductions, often using civil penalties rather than criminal, etc.), it’s somehow “voluntary”; that is, somehow not based on the government taking your money under a threat of force:

I’ve commented before on how the government has changed its methods over the years for calculating the economic stats, to make itself look better.

For example, consumer price inflation has been running about 8-9% per year under the 1980 method. I don’t claim the 1980 method is right; but the government claims only 1% CP inflation from its newer methods, and that number violates many people’s first-hand experience of rising prices and declining living standards.

Or with unemployment: by 1930s methods, it has been running 15-20%, which means we are already in the Great Depression 2.0. Again, I don’t view the older method as sacred; but that number fits many people’s experience better (as they have been forced into permanent unemployment, part-time work, etc.) than the government’s claim of 7.4% unemployment.

The people who change the statistical methods always have excellent-sounding reasons. There’s just one problem. Their changes always run in one direction, to make the government look better.

Somehow, they never adopt changes that could make things look worse. The latest example is GDP (Gross Domestic Product). Last week, the government published new data from new formulas for calculating GDP.

Guess what? The changes make the government look better. Suddenly, America’s GDP is supposed to be $550 billion higher. Which improves America’s debt-to-GDP ratio magically; that is, even though nothing has changed in reality.

But some of the changes they made are unreal, almost too silly to believe. The first ZH link above provides neutral-sounding descriptions from Bloomberg. Peter Schiff gave clearer and more colorful descriptions, in a preview back in April: (more…)

At times, certain spokespeople for leftism will assert notions which are so unreal that I must stop to ponder: Are they cynical, that is, people who knowingly spread lies in a quest to gain power through manipulation of the unwary?

Or are they self-deluded and mentally ‘flexible’, Orwell-style, such that they do believe what they are saying – at least in the moment of saying it?

The latest example is Detroit. Its decades of decline are, of course, due in large measure to its decades of uninterrupted rule by left-liberals, as mentioned here.

In reaction, a wave of left-liberals on TV have claimed that Detroit failed because of…(wait for it)…conservatives, Republicans, and small-government policies. For examples, see here (Sally Kohn), here (Ed Schultz) and here (Melissa Harris-Perry with Howard Dean).

So, which is it? Do they lie knowingly? Or are they “that” deluded?

Sally Kohn’s example is instructive for other reasons. She worries that conservatives will “try to use Detroit falsely as an example to push more austerity.”

Think about what she’s saying. She obviously wants the opposite of “austerity”, which word she means as a pejorative for tight government spending and balanced budgets. It follows that she prefers loose government spending and unbalanced budgets, the very factors that have mathematically bankrupted Detroit.

In other words, her solution to Detroit’s decline and bankruptcy is, moar profligacy. Thus proving that, for left-liberals, it is never never ever a good time to reduce government spending.

UPDATE: Commentor BL mentions the possibility that people could be deluded from mis-education. I can accept that answer for younger leftists. It’s problematic for the older ones, because for older people, mis-education is a choice.

I’ve seen the Establishment media get certain things wrong on the Zimmerman case, repeatedly. Especially on racial aspects, and it is time to call out two of them.

First, the alleged “racial profiling”. As the New York Times put it:

The case began in the small city of Sanford as a routine homicide but soon evolved into a civil rights cause examining racial profiling and its consequences…

…said Benjamin Todd Jealous, president of the N.A.A.C.P. “…we will not rest until racial profiling in all its forms is outlawed.”

Problem: The Zimmerman case has virtually nothing to do with racial profiling.

1. Zimmerman wasn’t police; nothing he did was official.
2. Zimmerman didn’t profile: he described Martin’s race (as “black”) just because a police dispatcher directly asked him to. Finally,
3. If anyone profiled, it may have been Trayvon Martin, who allegedly profiled the Hispanic, neighborhood-patrolling Zimmerman as a white threat (a “creepy-ass cracker”).

Next, about Zimmerman’s race. I think race is a thoroughly stupid way to classify human beings. But, I don’t rule the world. As many know, Zimmerman’s mother is Peruvian and “Spanish was the primary language at home”. Per the same article, the family itself wanted to downplay all racial angles when all of this broke, but… clearly, they didn’t get their way. So, why does the Establishment media never simply describe Zimmerman as Hispanic?

Zimmerman is as Hispanic as President Obama is African-American (namely half, including parentage, cultural heritage/exposure, and choice of identity). Yet CNN and The New York Times weirdly call him “white Hispanic” (no hyphen), while others have used the bizarre – and possibly insulting – circumlocution “Zimmerman identifies himself as Hispanic”. Imagine if they called Obama “white Black”, or said “Obama identifies himself as African-American”. They never would, no matter how much Joe Biden wants them to.

Exit curiosity: If Zimmerman’s parents’ races were switched – so that he were almost the same person he is, in genetics and appearance, but happened to have a Peruvian last name – Would he have still been put on trial? Was anti-German bias at work?

FROM THE COMMENTS: In Baltimore, police investigate claims that black youths chased and beat a Hispanic man, shouting “This is for Trayvon.”

It’s difficult to say more until the claims pan out, but I’ll ask this: Obama chose to reinforce, rather than to correct, a painfully one-sided view of the Zimmerman-Martin case. Has his doing so already led to (more) tragedy? Also linked from the comments: numerous threats on the Zimmerman jurors.

UPDATE: I didn’t know about “watermelon lean”. After a commentor mentioned it a couple times, I googled around and stumbled across this year-old post at American Thinker, “What the Media Choose Not to Know about Trayvon”. It’s fascinating. It shows Martin as part of “urban America’s lost boy culture”, a culture which commits crime in disproportion to its numbers, and which the GayPatriot blog has perhaps touched on, indirectly before.

I’ve avoided weighing in on the George Zimmerman trial, out of deference to the judicial process. But now the jury has spoken: George Zimmerman is not even guilty of a lesser charge such as assault, child abuse or manslaughter; still less is he guilty of any degree of murder. It’s official.

My sympathy, and I’m sure all of our prayers and sympathies, continue to go out to Trayvon Martin’s family for the tragic loss of their son and brother.

But I believe they “lost him”, so to speak, before his lethal encounter with Zimmerman. On the total weight of evidence, I believe that Martin was an aggressor, and I agree with the jury that it would have been wrong to send Zimmerman to prison, on the strong possibility (if not likelihood) that Zimmerman acted in reasonable self-defense.

I want to go beyond what Kurt and Roger L. Simon have said about President Obama. He didn’t just besmirch his office by taking public sides in a painful criminal matter where the utmost caution was needed. And he didn’t just lose politically (by taking the side that lost on trial), nor win politically (by revving up his base). No, it’s worse than that. Obama has lost morally by saying things in this matter that, in all likelihood, are morally wrong.

The latest would be Obama’s call to “honor” Travyon Martin:

President Obama called on the nation to honor Trayvon Martin a day after George Zimmerman was acquitted of his murder by asking “ourselves if we’re doing all we can to stem the tide of gun violence.”

…Obama said in a statement on Sunday…”We should ask ourselves if we’re doing all we can to stem the tide of gun violence that claims too many lives across this country on a daily basis. We should ask ourselves, as individuals and as a society, how we can prevent future tragedies like this. As citizens, that’s a job for all of us. That’s the way to honor Trayvon Martin.”

Let’s be clear. Just as the weight of evidence suggests that Zimmerman acted in self-defense, so it also suggests that Travyon Martin used excessive physical force, acting in illegal, criminal aggression. (Otherwise, how could Zimmerman’s action have been self-defense – objectively?)

Physical aggression, especially that which threatens another’s life to the point where he may be justified in taking drastic action, is morally wrong. And self-defense, IF it is genuinely called for, is morally right. And “honor” ought to be given, if at all, to the person, philosophy or action which is in the right.

I really don’t believe that either party should be “honored” here. But, if one of them absolutely had to be, wouldn’t it be Zimmerman? Certainly not because he killed; but because he was – on the weight of the evidence, and as now officially determined by a jury – likely reasonable to have killed, under the law and circumstances; likely the party who was more in the right.

That President O’Pander ignores the moral implications of what the jury found (after their intensive study of the matter), and even presents the opposite to people as that which is good and true, is typical.

Tragically, it is also divisive beyond words, a terrible injury to our nation. Why? Because it sends many people in the wrong direction – with their emotions and their sense of injury inflamed, on behalf of that which is likely wrong. Honoring the wrong does not bring healing – especially in racial matters.

Over at PJMedia, Roger L. Simon has a piece with the catchy title “Obama Big Loser in Zimmerman Trial.”  Simon writes:

By injecting himself in a minor Florida criminal case by implying Martin could be his son, the president of the United States — a onetime law lecturer, of all things — disgraced himself and his office, made a mockery of our legal system and exacerbated racial tensions in our country, making them worse than they have been in years. This is the work of a reactionary, someone who consciously/unconsciously wants to push our nation back to the 1950s.

 It is also the work of a narcissist who thinks of himself first, of his image, not of black, white or any other kind of people. It’s no accident that race relations in our country have gone backwards during his stewardship.

It’s a clever premise, and in ideal world, it should be true, but in the world we live in, the one where Obama got re-elected, I suspect it doesn’t hurt Obama one bit.

These are just a few quick thoughts on my part, so they won’t be fully fleshed-out, but as I see it, Obama got most of what he wanted from the Zimmerman trial.   Zimmerman wasn’t convicted, but as far as Obama and Holder are concerned, that only would have been the icing on their toxic cake.

As suggested in this great article by Karen McQuillan at American Thinker, Obama and Holder are masters at using race and division to advance their agenda.  And when this incident occurred, Obama was showing some softening of support among black voters who were not faring well in the Obama economy.  McQuillan writes:

Once the president of the United States weighed in, Zimmerman had a target on his back.  An ounce of election advantage to our privileged, Ivy League president versus the ruination of a Hispanic man’s life — it was an easy choice for Obama.  Obama’s great appeal to voters in 2008 was his self-presentation as a black man without animus or grievance, eager to move the country beyond divisions of all sorts — black and white, red and blue.  In reality, Obama is obsessed with divisions — race, class, gender — and is expert at fueling war between us, to his political advantage.

Obama has used accusations of racism before, to rally his troops and attack his political opponents.  Opposition to ObamaCare?  Racist.  Opposition to big government?  Racist.  His core liberal supporters like this stuff, and the other voters give him a pass on this, as on everything.  The election analysts were predicting that even black turnout could dip in 2012.  Obama moved from racial slurs on opposition groups to attacking a particular individual citizen.  Zimmerman was sacrificed.

The death of Trayvon Martin was a tragedy. Not just for his family, or for any one community, but for America. I know this case has elicited strong passions. And in the wake of the verdict, I know those passions may be running even higher. But we are a nation of laws, and a jury has spoken. I now ask every American to respect the call for calm reflection from two parents who lost their young son. And as we do, we should ask ourselves if we’re doing all we can to widen the circle of compassion and understanding in our own communities. We should ask ourselves if we’re doing all we can to stem the tide of gun violence that claims too many lives across this country on a daily basis. We should ask ourselves, as individuals and as a society, how we can prevent future tragedies like this. As citizens, that’s a job for all of us. That’s the way to honor Trayvon Martin.

Libtards lust for power in order to control the sheeple according to their current, faddish view of “correctness.” They are prideful and lash out with the politics of personal destruction against those who stand in their way. Their wrath is both verbalized and implanted by way of insidious actions meant to undermine their opposition. They have lying tongues. They scheme and devise wicked plots. They sow discord. They plant festering mischief. They twist the context to fit their version of the truth and justify their lies. They refuse to practice circumspection and correct their errors in any sense of obedience to promoting a better solution.

A number of conservative commentators and writers have been speculating for some time how long it will be from the time it is implemented until Obamacare collapses under the weight of its own poorly-conceived structure.  I think few have anticipated the situation we’ve been witnessing in the past two weeks, where first the administration announces that businesses won’t have to comply with the “employer mandate” until January 2015, and more recently, that the administration won’t be investigating eligibility for Obamacare subsidies, thereby opening the door to massive fraud and abuse.

Although the reasons that the Obama administration is making these changes are cynically transparent to anyone who realizes that the Democrats don’t want to lose big in the 2014 election cycle when voters will have a chance to express their displeasure with Obamacare at the ballot box once again, the more interesting question at the moment concerns the meaning and implications of the administration’s latest maneuvers for its ability to enact policies and govern going forward.

I think some people believe the public is paying closer attention to all this than is most likely the case, but that doesn’t mean I’m not enjoying the triumphalism and mockery of the administration’s opponents.  After the last election, it’s refreshing to see the administration increasingly on the defensive over the actions it has taken with regard to its signature piece of legislation.  Even better is getting to watch the likes of Dick Durbin (D-IL) admit that the disastrous bill “needs changes and improvements.”

But beyond getting to see and hear the bill’s defenders feel the heat, it is gratifying to see pieces like this one speculating that the Republicans in Congress may wise up enough about the administration’s actions to finally kill “immigration reform”:

“They have shown no respect for traditional Constitutional separation of powers,” Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., told National Review‘s John Fund about the impact of the Obamacare delays on the immigration debate, “and that makes it difficult to pass laws where the fear is that they will simply ignore the parts they don’t like.”

Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, who is on the House Judiciary Committee and had been a member of a bipartisan group working on immigration reform, echoed Roe’s concerns on Meet the Press. “In fact, if you look at this Obamacare debacle that they have right now, this administration is actually deciding when and where to actually enforce the law. And that’s what some of us in the House are concerned about. If you give to this administration the authority to decide when they’re going to enforce the law, how they’re going to enforce the law … what’s going to happen is that we’re going to give legalization to 11 million people and Janet Napolitano is going to come to Congress and tell us that the border is already secure and nothing else needs to happen.”

Even the Wall Street Journal is writing about the administration’s actions in language reminiscent of that we saw with the rise of the Tea Party four years ago:

President Obama’s decision last week to suspend the employer mandate of the Affordable Care Act may be welcome relief to businesses affected by this provision, but it raises grave concerns about his understanding of the role of the executive in our system of government

Article II, Section 3, of the Constitution states that the president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” This is a duty, not a discretionary power. While the president does have substantial discretion about how to enforce a law, he has no discretion about whether to do so.

This matter—the limits of executive power—has deep historical roots. During the period of royal absolutism, English monarchs asserted a right to dispense with parliamentary statutes they disliked. King James II’s use of the prerogative was a key grievance that lead to the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The very first provision of the English Bill of Rights of 1689—the most important precursor to the U.S. Constitution—declared that “the pretended power of suspending of laws, or the execution of laws, by regal authority, without consent of parliament, is illegal.”

Needless to say we can certainly hope that this lively piece by Tony Katz on Townhall.com is more than just a humorous reflection on the administration’s latest foibles:

For years the Right has said that the Obama Administration was thuggish, was hell bent on revenge, and was vindictive.

The IRS scandal was perhaps the tipping point. At first, The Left tried claimed that not just conservative and tea party groups, but progressives as well had been targeted. But, as the Inspector General’s report showed, that was not the case. Obama’s minions attacked Americans who disagreed with him. The Left knows they voted for hate.

Obama is not the man (messiah) they thought he was. The Left was blinded by his skin color and duped by mainstream media.

But now they know he lies. And now they know he surrounds himself with sycophants, ready and willing to lie for him, in poetry and prose.

Lets not let them ever forget it.

When I wrote my first post on liberalism as more of a social phenomenon than an intellectual one, I imagined a series of posts dealing with many different implications of that idea.  So far I’ve written three other posts in the series on topics ranging from slogans to leftist intolerance and political changers to the so-called “wealth gap.”

One big topic that I haven’t explored yet–even though I’ve meant to do so since the start of the series–is the way in which liberal ideas are perpetuated on social media and elsewhere through the use of simple-minded memes.  As I considered the idea of social liberalism, one point which came to mind is that so many liberal memes might seem catchy at first glance,  but they are either responses to outlandish straw men, or they make no sense whatsoever when subjected to even the slightest bit of scrutiny.

At Legal Insurrection, Professor Jacobson has written a few posts about the role of the leftist site Upworthy in promulgating memes of both sorts, including a post this past Tuesday on the high cost of low-information voters.  And he’s not the only one to recognize the importance of simple-minded memes for the left.  For example, this post at Breitbart.com takes the idea one step further to reflect on the significance of LOLcats in politics.

What interests me at the moment, though, is that there is a whole class of liberal memes which go beyond the simple-minded to the downright pernicious: they promulgate leftist thinking in a way that seems ironic or clever or humorous, even as they blatantly acknowledge the darker goals of leftist ideology.   I stumbled across a prime example of one such meme on Facebook about two months ago when an acquaintance “shared” a meme which had been promoted by the Facebook group “Being Liberal” back in December 2011.  I’ve pasted the image below.

We’re all familiar with the common liberal tropes about “beating swords into plowshares” and the frequent lament heard on the left that “if we spent on education or social programs what we spent on the military” somehow all of society’s ills would disappear.   This meme takes that same tack, but uses “irony” to take it one step further by suggesting that the government can use the military to “win the hearts and minds of the population” and put the “locals to work” working on infrastructure politics.

By supposedly employing “irony” to make its point, therefore, it moves from the simple-minded lament about spending more on education and social programs into the territory of the pernicious by endorsing the use of the military as a means of social control.  The person who posts or re-posts the idea can feign ignorance of the pernicious implications by saying that the meme isn’t “serious” or that it is “just making a point through irony,” but it’s a point which betrays the left’s ignorance of the way free people and free markets operate.  The point of the meme is unmistakable:  all good comes through government, and we ought to use the force of government to establish a planned economy.

The Facebook page for “Being Liberal” attributes this meme to one of its readers named Terry Sebolt who wrote in and said (with the disingenuousness common on the left): “”Those were my words, but not my pic. Feel free to put it anywhere you want. I meant every word of it, and hope people enjoy the irony, regardless of credit. It was a throw away line…”

The claim may be spurious, though, as I did some internet searching and the earliest example I could find for the meme online was this appearance on Twitter from August 9, 2011.  I’ve posted a screenshot of the image below.

Regardless of the authorship, though, the claim is intended to make a point by shocking, even though those who quote the statement will try to distance themselves from its actual implications.  Those implications, though, tell us a great amount about the worldview of the left.

What’s even more amazing in the case of the person I know who re-posted this meme is that she is an immigrant from eastern Europe with a PhD in a scientific field from an American university.   She often refers to the bad days growing up in her country under a brutal dictator when everyone was suffering.  And so she moves to the U.S. and spends time in universities and decides that she’s a “liberal” and approvingly re-posts that “ironic” image.  If that’s not an example of a socially-promulgated disorder, then I’m not sure what would be.

Most of you will get the likely reason in one guess:

Yes, it’s “Jon Corzine” (don’t say Democrat! don’t say Democrat!!! it won’t matter, if nobody ever points it out!!!1!), formerly of Goldman-Sachs and MF Global.

At this time, the 767-word news article that I’ve linked to never gets around to mentioning that “Jon Corzine” is a top Democrat. It lists his political involvement simply as “former New Jersey governor”, omitting not only his party, but also his powerful roles as a Democrat Senator and as one of Obama’s very top fund-raisers and (formerly) advisors.

At this time, the article’s photo caption has even (wrongly) put an “(R)” after Corzine’s name. The caption reads:

Reuters/Reuters – Former MF Global CEO Jon Corzine (R) receives help with his notes from his legal counsel as he testifies before a House Financial Services Committee Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee…

Bias, anyone?

From The Comments: John points out that the (R) would of course be defended as the photographic “right”. But even allowing that, Corzine is not the guy on the right; he’s the guy in the center (of three people in a rapidly-receding perspective). The point is that somebody at Reuters is fine with allowing people to think that Corzine is something other than a top Democrat.

When I put up my first post on social liberalism several weeks ago, I envisioned a series of posts that would discuss many of the implications of the fact that modern liberalism is more a social phenomenon than an intellectual one.  I’ve done that in part, but have until now neglected to mention one of the largest implications of all, namely that most modern liberals make easy targets for propagandists of all stripes because their political identity is driven more by their feelings than by the facts, and so they rarely exert critical judgement over the memes and narratives of the moment.

Quite to the contrary:  to exert critical judgement is automatically to invite suspicion, because it means asking difficult questions, seeking facts, pointing out fallacies, noting inconsistencies, all of which make modern liberals profoundly uncomfortable because those sorts of activities advertise the questioner’s willingness to dissent from the orthodoxy.

Neo-Neocon wrote a great post many years ago where she quoted Milan Kundera’s Book of Laughter and Forgetting on the power of “Circle Dancing”:

Circle dancing is magic. It speaks to us through the millennia from the depths of human memory. Madame Raphael had cut the picture out of the magazine and would stare at it and dream. She too longed to dance in a ring. All her life she had looked for a group of people she could hold hands with and dance with in a ring. First she looked for them in the Methodist Church (her father was a religious fanatic), then in the Communist Party, then among the Trotskyites, then in the anti-abortion movement (A child has a right to life!), then in the pro-abortion movement (A woman has a right to her body!); she looked for them among the Marxists, the psychoanalysts, and the structuralists; she looked for them in Lenin, Zen Buddhism, Mao Tse-tung, yogis, the nouveau roman, Brechtian theater, the theater of panic; and finally she hoped she could at least become one with her students, which meant she always forced them to think and say exactly what she thought and said, and together they formed a single body and a single soul, a single ring and a single dance.

To question is to step outside the  circle, to resist the lure of the dance.  And so the memes and narratives proliferate, pushed on by those who “feel moved” by them and are too afraid to question them.

Among the many liberals I know, this week’s meme is a viral video about “the wealth gap.”  I first noticed a college acquaintance (and an enthusiastic Elizabeth Warren supporter) mention it on Facebook on Sunday, and have noticed at least three other references to it by others since then.  The video is only 6 minutes and 24 seconds long, but if you’re like me, after about three minutes, it will seem like it is going on forever.

I’ve recorded some of my thoughts below the fold.

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