Current Events - June 13, 2013

When Your W-2 Meets an AR-15
By Mark Steyn
When the IRS is accused of “targeting”, don’t assume they’re speaking metaphorically. From Politico:

As chairman of the House Homeland Security oversight subcommittee, [Jeff] Duncan (R-S.C.) toured a federal law enforcement facility in late May and noticed agents training with the semi-automatic weapons at a firing range. They identified themselves as IRS, he said.

“When I left there, it’s been bugging me for weeks now, why IRS agents are training with a semi-automatic rifle AR-15, which has stand-off capability,” Duncan told POLITICO. “Are Americans that much of a target that you need that kind of capability..?

“I think Americans raise eyebrows when you tell them that IRS agents are training with a type of weapon that has stand-off capability. It’s not like they’re carrying a sidearm and they knock on someone’s door and say, ‘You’re evading your taxes,’” Duncan said.

A bureaucracy is bad. A politicized bureaucracy is worse. A paramilitary politicized bureaucracy is nuts. And, in fact, evil. There is no reason in a civilized society why the Deputy Assistant Commissioner of Paperwork should have his own Seal Team Six. As I wrote in the magazine last year: 

By the way, I use the word “agents” rather than “officials” because, in the developed world, the paramilitarized bureaucracy is uniquely American. This is the only G7 government whose education minister has his own SWAT team — for policing student-loan compliance. The other day, the Gibson guitar company settled with the feds over an arcane infraction of a law on rare-wood importation — after their factories were twice raided by “agents” bearing automatic weapons. Like the man said, don’t bring a knife to a guitar fight. Do musical-instrument manufacturers have a particular reputation for violence?

The Gibson raid looks a little different in light of recent revelations. Oh, well. Could have been worse. Its chief executive – a Republican donor – might have been shot for “resisting arrest”, right?
Abolish the IRS. And no personal Delta Force for its successor.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/350933/when-your-w-2-meets-ar-15-mark-steyn

Obama ‘Strongly Objects’ to Religious Liberty Amendment

 The Obama Administration “strongly objects” to a proposed amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would have protected the religious rights of soldiers – including evangelical Christian service members who are facing growing hostility towards their religion.

The amendment was authored by Rep. John Fleming, R-La. It would have “required the Armed Forces to accommodate ‘actions and speech’ reflecting the conscience, moral, principles or religious beliefs of the member.”

The Obama Administration said the amendment would have a “significant adverse effect on good order, discipline, morale, and mission accomplishment.”

“With its statement, the White House is now endorsing military reprimands of members who keep a Bible on their desk or express a religious belief,” Fleming told Fox News. “This administration is aggressively hostile towards religious beliefs that it deems to be politically incorrect.”

Fleming introduced the amendment after a series of high-profile incidents involving attacks on religious liberty within the military- including an Air Force officer who was told to remove a Bible from his desk because it might give the impression he was endorsing a religion.

He said there are other reports of Christian service members and chaplains being punished for their faith.

• The Air Force censored a video created by a chaplain because it include the word “God.” The Air Force feared the word might offend Muslims and atheists.
• A service member received a “severe and possibly career-ending reprimand” for expressing his faith’s religious position about homosexuality in a personal religious blog.
• An enlisted service member received a career-ending punishment for sending personal invitations to his promotion party which mentioned that he would be providing Chick-fil-A sandwiches due to his respect for the Defense of Marriage Act.
• A senior military official at Fort Campbell sent out a lengthy email officially instructing officers to recognize “the religious right in America” as a “domestic hate group” akin to the KKK and Neo-Nazis because of its opposition to homosexual behavior.
• A chaplain was relieved of his command over a military chapel because, consistent with DOMA’s definition of marriage, he could not allow same-sex weddings to take place in the chapel.
• An enlisted service member was threatened and denied promotion by a senior NCO for expressing – during a personal conversation – his religious belief in support of traditional marriage.

Last month Coast Guard Rear Admiral William Lee told a National Day of Prayer audience that religious liberty was being threatened by Pentagon lawyers and service members are being told to hide their faith in Christ.

“Leaders like myself are feeling the constraints of rules and regulations and guidance issued by lawyers that put us in a tighter and tighter box regarding our constitutional right to express our religious faith,” he said.
Fleming said the purpose of his amendment is to clarify ambiguities in the Pentagon’s policies.

“The bottom line is the military is bending over backwards to remove – even in the case of chaplains – expressions of faith and conscience,” Fleming said.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, called the Obama Administration's edict a "chilling suppression of religious freedom."

"The Obama administration has joined forces with those who are attacking the religious freedoms of those who serve in our Armed Services," Perkins said. "The Administration's opposition to Rep. Fleming’s religious freedom amendment reveals that this administration has gone beyond accommodating the anti-Christian activists who want to remove any vestige of Christianity from the military, to aiding them by blocking this bipartisan measure."

More than 167,000 Americans have signed FRC petitions in the wake of religious liberty attacks within the military.

“The effects of this chilling suppression of religious freedom is driving faith underground in our military and will eventually drive it out," Perkins said. "This not only deprives those who serve of the benefits that flow from religious participation, but it undermines the moral foundation of the worlds most powerful military. This should concern everyone."

Fleming said his amendment, which has bipartisan support, would have protected the free speech rights of men and women in uniform.

But the White House said the change would limit the discretion of commanders to address “potentially problematic speech.”

“That is an outrageous position, but it’s what I’ve come to expect from an administration that is aggressively hostile toward religious beliefs that it deems politically incorrect,” Fleming said.

He said the president has at times shown hostility in general for expression of religious beliefs.

“Now that’s beginning to be reflected in the Pentagon itself,” he warned. “We need to protect the free speech of the brave warriors who fight to safeguard our liberties and I hope Congress will reject this blatant White House Attack on religious freedom.”

http://townhall.com/columnists/toddstarnes/2013/06/12/obama-strongly-objects-to-religious-liberty-amendment-n1618769/page/full

Obama Quietly Raises 'Carbon Price' as Costs to Climate Increase

Buried in a little-noticed rule on microwave ovens is a change in the U.S. government’s accounting for carbon emissions that could have wide-ranging implications for everything from power plants to the Keystone XL pipeline. 

The increase of the so-called social cost of carbon, to $38 a metric ton in 2015 from $23.80, adjusts the calculation the government uses to weigh costs and benefits of proposed regulations. The figure is meant to approximate losses from global warming such as flood damage and diminished crops. 

With the change, government actions that lead to cuts in emissions -- anything from new mileage standards to clean-energy loans -- will appear more valuable in its cost-benefit analyses. On the flip side, environmentalists urge that it be used to judge projects that could lead to more carbon pollution, such as TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone pipeline or coal-mining by companies such as Peabody Energy Corp. (BTU) on public lands, which would be viewed as more costly. 

“As we learn that climate damage is worse and worse, there is no direction they could go but up,” Laurie Johnson, chief economist for climate at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in an interview. Johnson says the administration should go further; she estimates the carbon cost could be as much as $266 a ton.

Public Comment

Even supporters questioned the way the administration slipped the policy out without first opening it for public comment. The change was buried in an afternoon announcement on May 31 about efficiency standards for microwave ovens, a rule not seen as groundbreaking. 

“This is a very strange way to make policy about something this important,” Frank Ackerman, an economist at Tufts University who published a book about the economics of global warming, said in an interview. The Obama administration “hasn’t always leveled with us about what is happening behind closed doors.”
Industry representatives are equally puzzled. 

“It’s a pretty important move. To do this without any outside participation is bizarre,” said Jeff Holmstead, a lawyer at Bracewell & Giuliani LLP (1222L) representing coal-dependent power producers and other industry groups. A legal challenge to the determination would be difficult, but could be tried by itself or in a challenge to a specific rulemaking that uses the cost, he said.

Leading Models

The administration first arrived at this calculation in 2010 using “leading expert models” and updated it “applying the same methods and assumptions,” Office of Management and Budget spokeswoman Ari Isaacman Astles said in an e-mail. 

The Economic Report of the President in March said the administration would update estimates “as new scientific and economic analysis become available.” 

The administration’s new carbon cost is key to a wide range of policies, which get subject to cost-benefit analysis in the rulemaking process or at OMB. Obama is considering more energy efficiency standards for everything from buildings to vending machines. 

In addition, the Environmental Protection Agency is late on issuing rules to cap greenhouse-gas emissions from new power plants, a standard that would preclude the construction of new coal-fired power plants that don’t have expensive carbon-capture technology. Lobbyists representing companies such as American Electric Power Co. (AEP) and Southern Co. (SO) have urged the EPA to scale back that plan. 

In each of these cases, the carbon costs would help determine if the administration would act, and how far to go.

Fuel Efficiency

For example, the administration’s vehicle fuel-efficiency standards would cost industry $350 billion over the next 40 years, while benefits in energy security, less congestion and lower pollution totaled $278 billion, according to a regulatory analysis using the prior carbon cost estimates cited in a paper by administration economists. It’s only by including the $177 billion in benefits from less carbon dioxide that the rules provide a net benefit to the country, according to the paper by Michael Greenstone, now an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

The government-wide assessment should be used by Obama in deciding whether to approve TransCanada (TRP)’s Keystone pipeline from the oil sands of Alberta to refiners along the Gulf of Mexico or by Interior Department in deciding leases for coal mining on public lands, according to environmental activists. 

According to the EPA, Keystone could lead to 935 million metric tons of carbon-dioxide emissions over 50 years, putting the cost according to this latest calculation at more than $37 billion. This calculation is under dispute, as the State Department says in its own analysis that the pipeline won’t lead to additional production of oil sands.

Keystone Challenge

“We recommend using monetized estimates of the social cost of the (greenhouse gas) emissions from a barrel of oil sands crude compared to average U.S. crude,” the EPA said in its submission to the State Department. It made a similar request in 2011, and the State Department didn’t include it in its draft assessment. 

And if Obama approves the pipeline, the higher carbon-cost estimate could to be a part of any lawsuit challenging the decision, according to Bill Snape, senior counsel for the Center for Biological Diversity.
“It won’t be a game changer, but it would help” in any legal challenge, he said. 

The increase in the estimate is being cheered by environmentalists as one small sign that President Barack Obama is going to make good on a pledge from his inaugural address to tackle global warming in the face of opposition from Republicans in Congress. 

“Four months ago, President Obama spoke of our obligation to combat climate change, saying failure to do so would betray our children and future generations,” filmmaker Robert Redford said in a statement released by NRDC yesterday. “I just hope he has the courage of his convictions.” 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-12/tougher-regulations-seen-from-obama-change-in-carbon-cost.html

Obama's Snooping Excludes Mosques, Missed Boston Bombers

Homeland Insecurity: The White House assures that tracking our every phone call and keystroke is to stop terrorists, and yet it won't snoop in mosques, where the terrorists are.

That's right, the government's sweeping surveillance of our most private communications excludes the jihad factories where homegrown terrorists are radicalized.

Since October 2011, mosques have been off-limits to FBI agents. No more surveillance or undercover string operations without high-level approval from a special oversight body at the Justice Department dubbed the Sensitive Operations Review Committee.

Who makes up this body, and how do they decide requests? Nobody knows; the names of the chairman, members and staff are kept secret.

We do know the panel was set up under pressure from Islamist groups who complained about FBI stings at mosques. Just months before the panel's formation, the Council on American-Islamic Relations teamed up with the ACLU to sue the FBI for allegedly violating the civil rights of Muslims in Los Angeles by hiring an undercover agent to infiltrate and monitor mosques there.

Before mosques were excluded from the otherwise wide domestic spy net the administration has cast, the FBI launched dozens of successful sting operations against homegrown jihadists — inside mosques — and disrupted dozens of plots against the homeland.

If only they were allowed to continue, perhaps the many victims of the Boston Marathon bombings would not have lost their lives and limbs. The FBI never canvassed Boston mosques until four days after the April 15 attacks, and it did not check out the radical Boston mosque where the Muslim bombers worshipped.
The bureau didn't even contact mosque leaders for help in identifying their images after those images were captured on closed-circuit TV cameras and cellphones.

One of the Muslim bombers made extremist outbursts during worship, yet because the mosque wasn't monitored, red flags didn't go off inside the FBI about his increasing radicalization before the attacks.
This is particularly disturbing in light of recent independent surveys of American mosques, which reveal some 80% of them preach violent jihad or distribute violent literature to worshippers.

What other five-alarm jihadists are counterterrorism officials missing right now, thanks to restrictions on monitoring the one area they should be monitoring?

 http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/061213-659753-all-intrusive-obama-terror-dragnet-excludes-mosques.htm#ixzz2W6zrCJIr

Time to End 'Government-by-Crisis'

Three years and 9,000 pages of legislation later, our economy has yet to see any benefits from the passing of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (Dodd-Frank). Originally hailed as the answer to our subprime mortgage crisis, Dodd-Frank has not only failed to resolve the issue of "Too Big to Fail" (for which it was originally intended), but also failed to deliver any of the savings claimed for it to consumers. What has this colossal piece of legislation done, you ask? Other than force the community bank and credit union industry into alarming rates of foreclosure, and increase bank fees across the board for consumers, not much.
So how exactly did this massive bill come to be law? Robert Kaiser, a 50-year veteran of the Washington Post, has the answer in his new book: An Act of Congress. The problem, he says, is Washington.
Although some have viewed Kaiser's reporting as a congratulation to Washington for "doing something," in fact, Kaiser's reportage paints a picture of the Dodd-Frank legislation as a prime example of what happens when you mix an economic crisis with political ambition and lobby power: bad policy. The mixture of what he describes as "politics-obsessed mediocrities who know little about the policy they're purportedly crafting and voting on" along with outcry for action in Washington following the subprime mortgage crisis, created the perfect ground for Dodd-Frank to blossom; an immaculate "policy window" ripe for Congress to seize upon.
Kaiser is also not the first in his field to insinuate such a notion. In 2010, the same year that Dodd-Frank was enacted, Professor Stephen Bainbridge (UCLA School of Law), suggested a similar hypothesis. In his research he compared Dodd-Frank to the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 (Sarbanes-Oxley), which was quickly enacted following the IT crisis in 1997. 

Bainbridge defines both Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes Oxley as "Bubble Acts," characterized by the following attributes: 

(1) enacted in response to a major negative economic event.

(2) It is enacted in a crisis environment.

(3) It is a response to a populist backlash against corporations and/or markets.

(4) It is adopted at the federal rather than state level.

(5) It transfers power from the states to the federal government.

(6) Interest groups that are strong at the federal level but weak at the Delaware [corporation mecca] level support it.

(7) Typically, it is not a novel proposal, but rather a longstanding agenda item of some powerful interest group.

(8) The empirical evidence cited in support of the proposal is, at best, mixed and often shows the proposal to be unwise.

The academic work of Stephen Bainbridge and the compelling new book by Robert Kaiser make an unanswerably strong case for the repeal of Dodd-Frank and a drastic change in Washington's legislative process away from "not letting a crisis go to waste," to move toward the deliberative process of what used to be known as "regular order." Voters, consumers, and the millions of Americans seeking jobs should demand that Washington scrap the massive Dodd-Frank regulatory scheme before it does any more damage to the recovery, and instead focus on the real problems facing American economy.

 http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/06/time_to_end_government-by-crisis.html#ixzz2W7OvlP8I

NSA's Real Targets?

 The punditocracy, both Obama supporters on the left and the useful idiots on the right, in an effort to convince those who worry about the NSA's data mining efforts and its indiscriminate collection of trillions of bits of information to just sit down and shut up, are either purposely hushing up a key factor or are utterly oblivious to the real danger this program represents.
The avowed purpose of the NSA's program is the same as the avowed purpose of any of our intelligence collection organs, which is the collection of information about the plans and capabilities of our nation's enemies. 


I can't imagine that there is any American who doesn't support that goal, with the usual caveats regarding the respect for the 4^th Amendment rights of U.S. citizens.

But, as I noted on these pages just a few days ago, the same people who will define the word "terrorist" will be the same ones who will be defining the word "enemy."  And as you will recall, Barack Obama is fond of using the word "enemy" to define his domestic opponents.  And the most venomous response to perceived "enemies" is the Obama/Axelrod/Jarret attacks on his political opponents.  In an August 2012 article at Townhall.com Ann Coulter described the serial abuse of sealed records and the use of innuendo that Obama used against not only Republicans, but Democrats who opposed him in primary elections.

Given the current ability of the NSA to collect unimaginable masses of date, and then given specifics regarding what phone numbers/names/addresses and other variables to concentrate their efforts on, is there any doubt, in anyone's mind that the damage that is potentially destructive to Obama's political enemies would be of the same magnitude as the Hiroshima or Nagasaki bombs?

Any military man, no matter which nation they defend, will all say the same thing.  Never plan on what you expect your enemy to do, but rather plan based on what they are capable of doing. 

Evidence indicates that Obama and his supporters are capable of destruction that would be considered the equivalent of carpet bombing by B-52's. 

His defenders, and the useful idiots who side with them, would probably ask "But how could he suggest to the NSA that they delve into records associated with only his political opponents?"  Normally this would be a valid question, if we had an honorable person in the White House. 

However, having a senior NSC staffer request any and all data on a particular individual, including the past five or ten years of traffic on the internet, phone records, tax records, sealed court records, and so on wouldn't exactly tax the capabilities of the NSA.  This would be particularly true if one of Obama's tame judges authorized it, as one did when one such judge authorized delving into the email accounts of James Rosen of FOX News.

Such attacks might not even be aimed at those who would be obvious Obama opponents.  They might be aimed at people like Governor Scott Walker, because Obama needs union support.  They might be aimed at others, such as Governor Nicky Haley or any governor of a right-to-work state.  If mindless Obama supporters were endangered in their own re-election campaigns, their opponents might be on the receiving end of an NSA "security" analysis.  If Obama wanted to insure that more of his mindless supporters were elected to Congress or the Senate, the same thing is possible.

Remember - it's not what you expect the enemy to do, it's what he is capable of doing.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/06/nsas_real_targets.html#ixzz2W7PZ0Ae5

Our Enemy, the Bureaucrat

America, home of the free... or not. Americans today, less free under surveillance by federal agencies, bullied by bureaucrats, and harassed for their beliefs by tax collectors (talk about contravening the Declaration of Independence). 

America today -- the long-dead Albert Jay Nock would recognize as a prediction come true (his). That's the America where the State is swallowing up society and government. Where federal bureaucrats have been outed as willing foot soldiers in President Obama's and the Democratic Party's war on traditional America and American liberties. Bureaucrats yoked to a cause for self-interest as much -- or more -- as ideology.

As Rush Limbaugh is wont to say, "Follow the money."

The Party of Big Government is the natural home for a large and growing class of Americans whose livelihoods depend on government paychecks; who see grassroots conservatives and libertarians as threats to their jobs. 2.1 million federal employees, full and part time, are on Uncle Sam's payroll (that excludes the military). Federal bureaucrats -- thanks to the IRS scandal -- are under the hot lights right now, but don't forget about state and local bureaucrats, whose stakes in big government are hefty (ask Wisconsin's Scott Walker and California taxpayers).

Follow the money. OpenSecrets.org provides this synopsis of government employee unions' political giving:

Since contract negotiations for these [public sector] workers are dependent not on private corporations, but on the size of government budgets, this is the one segment of the labor movement that can actually contribute directly to the people with ultimate responsibility for its livelihood. While their giving pattern matches that of other unions (which overwhelmingly support Democrats), public sector unions also concentrate contributions on members of Congress from both parties who sit on committees that deal with federal budgets and agencies.

OpenSecrets.org also offers a graph showing some public sector unions giving large amounts to "Outside Spending Groups." You can bet that Tea Party and conservative 501(c)(3)s and 501(c)(4)s -- those very groups the IRS acted to suppress -- were never intended to be recipients of public sector unions' largesse. (Here's another chart from OpenSecrets.org worth reviewing.)

Speaking of the IRS, Tim Carney at the Washington Examiner recently wrote:

In the past three election cycles, the Center for Responsive Politics' database shows about $474,000 in political donations by individuals listing "IRS" or "Internal Revenue Service" as their employer.

This money heavily favors Democrats: $247,000 to $145,000, with the rest going to political action committees. (Oddly, half of those GOP donations come from only two IRS employees, one in Houston and one in Annandale, Va.)
IRS employees also gave $67,000 to the PAC of the National Treasury Employees Union, which in turn gave more than 96 percent of its contributions to Democrats. Add the PAC cash to the individual donations and IRS employees favor Democrats 2-to-1.

The emerging grassroots movement for smaller government presents an existential peril to bureaucrats -- of which they are sharply aware. Public sector unions have been Democrat bastions for years, of course. What the Obama presidency has done is embolden federal worker bees to coordinate directly or indirectly with a president who wants hypergovernment. Barack Obama is a pro-growth president -- for Uncle Sam's bureaucrats.

Through the IRS scandal and the NSA phone records sweeps, federal bureaucrats are revealing themselves as enemies of the people; henchmen in Mr. Obama's grand plan to "transform" America, to amalgamate statist Europe and the banana republicanism of the late Hugo Chavez's Venezuela (with plenty of Chicago's corrupt, seedy mobster politics for extra muscle).

Lost in the shuffle of IRS abuses and NSA overreach is the EPA. As EPA Abuse.com reported last year:

But, we do not have to wait to decide that the Obama administration has "overstepped its authority" [on health care] -- a federal judge has already handed down a decision. In this case, healthcare is not at the center of the debate; the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is. The agency have been issuing regulations and finalizing rules with no "burden of justification."

The EPA has been a willing, egregious participant in Mr. Obama's anti-industry efforts, at times aggressively and flagrantly imposing itself in matters that exceed its mandate (see the EPA Abuse.com link for what happened in a Texas case).

And then there's the Eric Holder-led Justice Department. Are the New Black Panthers on the government payroll, by any chance? A-okay to go after a reporter, James Rosen, for doing his job, above board and ethically? Nah, the Justice Department isn't tied to Mr. Obama's statist goals. Just coincidence.

In 1935, Albert Jay Nock published a book titled: Our Enemy, the State, which has become a minor classic of political philosophy. Nock was considered a fringy libertarian at the time. Not any longer. Today, Nock is proving a prophet.

Nock's book is a must-read for friends of liberty. His analyses and insights were prescient. The convergence of Washington's political class (dominated by Democrats, left-wingers, and compliant establishment Republicans) and federal government bureaucracies wouldn't surprise Nock one iota.

The state, indeed, is proving with each new scandal and abuse of power to be our enemy, an enemy that's led and aided and abetted by a Democratic Party that decades ago grafted the Tammany Hall and Pendergast Machine models to the progressive-statist model. The fruits of that convergence are being borne now in ever more frightening episodes of big government abuses. Expect fresh revelations from other departments and agencies to come.

Mark Steyn wrote in his column last Saturday for National Review Online:

When the state has the power to know everything about everyone, the integrity of the civil service is the only bulwark against men like Holder. Instead, the ruling party and the non-partisan bureaucracy seem to be converging. In August 2010, President Obama began railing publicly against "groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity" (August 9th, a speech in Texas) and "shadowy groups with harmless-sounding names" (August 21st, radio address). And whaddayaknow, that self-same month the IRS obligingly issued its first BOLO (Be On the Look-Out) for groups with harmless-sounding names, like "tea party," "patriot," and "constitution."

It may be that the strange synchronicity between the president and the permanent bureaucracy is mere happenstance and not, as it might sound to the casual ear, the sinister merging of party and state. Either way, they need to be pried apart. When the state has the capability to know everything except the difference between right and wrong, it won't end well.

No "mere happenstance" here, Mark. Federal bureaucrats are a third column ensconced in every nook and cranny of the vast federal government, safeguarded by civil service laws, and supporting Mr. Obama's and the Democratic Party's politics via the exercise of their considerable powers. They are by interest and worldview simpatico with the Party of Big Government's aims. Good career moves for them, if nothing else. 

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/06/our_enemy_the_bureaucrat.html#ixzz2W7QrqyHj

Liberalism's Willing Executioners

Here at American Thinker last week, my friend Herb Meyer wrote a piece that's getting a lot of attention. He noted that as the Obama administration erupts into scandal, we look everywhere for a smoking gun leading back to the president. Don't bother, cautions Meyer. If you study history, you'll realize few such documents ever materialize. The example he cited has gotten much attention: "Very few people are aware of this, but there is no document -- not one -- linking Adolf Hitler to the Holocaust. Why not? Because Hitler didn't need to sign a document ordering the slaughter of six million Jews." All that Hitler needed to do, notes Meyer, was demonize his enemies and then hire thugs like Reinhard Heydrich, Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Eichmann, and Josef Goebbels to do the rest. They knew what he wanted, and then they handled the details.



Meyer carefully warned that Obama and his minions are in no way comparable to Hitler and his. "That's absurd," he writes. "I am merely pointing out that President Obama has been going about the business of demonizing his political enemies, and then hiring thugs to destroy them without regard to the law, in precisely the same way that Hitler and his fascists did it in Germany. This isn't an accusation; it's an observation."



I reiterate that caveat here. As Herb Meyer and I both know, it does a disservice to the horrific evil orchestrated by the Nazis when analogies to the Holocaust are misplaced or exaggerated. The analogy here, as Meyer says, is used merely to drive home a point that people will understand.



With that same caveat, I would like to pick up the analogy, because Meyer is indeed on to something that should worry us greatly, especially given the political psychology of American liberals.



A book came out in 1996 called Hitler's Willing Executioners, by Daniel Goldhagen. The book remains controversial with (rightly so) plenty of detractors. But Goldhagen's principal argument has merit -- namely, that Adolf Hitler himself never killed a single Jew; rather, it took countless thousands and millions of ordinary Germans to carry out -- to execute -- Hitler's plan. In this, Goldhagen was exactly right, and his observation ties back to Meyer's thesis and, more so, what I've long feared is happening with the American Left.



What Hitler and his minions did was thoroughly demonize their enemies, convincing the German masses that Jews and other despised groups were subhuman, untermenschen. A major factor in Hitler's political advancement was his amazing ability to fabricate an assortment of handy scapegoats for the nation's ills. He got away with blaming anyone but himself for whatever calamity or misfortune. As he did, his followers assented, nodding their heads and bleating like sheep.



What the American Left has done to its enemies is not entirely dissimilar, even while certainly not approaching the crass, deadly level of the Nazis. But whether it's Obama himself, or his campaign, or Media Matters or MoveOn.org or any number of left-wing groups and websites and publications and media outlets, the American Left has been merciless in thoroughly demonizing opponents. Liberals don't just politely disagree, or agree that people can disagree; no -- too often they caricature those who disagree as vile reprobates with no possible good intentions or reasoning for their positions. It's a very illiberal thing to do.



Take the Tea Party, for starters. Once they saw the Tea Party's effectiveness, especially after the 2010 midterm elections, liberals/"progressives" went on a rampage, smearing the wide swath of Tea Party members (whom they probably never met) as recalcitrant racists. It was a charge totally unfair and ludicrous. I know people in the Tea Party. I watched the group develop. They are absolutely not racists; they were driven completely by the fiscal madness of Obama and the Pelosi Democratic Congress in the first six months of Obama's presidency. But once liberals starting ramping up their crude caricature, with congressmen and NPR executives and respected left-wing journals of opinion like the New York Times leading the way, the liberal mob responded in kind. Tea Party members were labeled as the worst kind of "extremists."



The result was shocking to behold. Like wildfire, liberals/progressives everywhere were swept up, fuming with anger and fanning the flames. They mimicked the party line without any question whatsoever. They whipped themselves into an emotional frenzy, convinced with absolute righteousness that this insidious group of racists was trying to undermine the saintly, kindly Obama for no reason other than the color of his skin.



As conservatives, we saw from the outset that this was pure politics -- actually, pure political demagoguery. Conservative talk-shows played clips from select liberals (such as Chuck Schumer) admitting as much. We saw right through it. But liberals don't think that way. They aren't wired that way. They're incredibly emotional people who can be easily prodded by their party/ideological elite, especially with the spontaneity and instant communication of social media -- the new mother's milk of the liberal mob. They really are prone to fads and fashions and mass behavior in ways that conservatives plainly aren't. I've seen it again and again. Conservatives aren't perfect, and have their own quirks and vices, but they don't tend toward this kind of group thinking and collective action. For conservatives, the ability to think logically and independently, based upon beliefs and values deeper and timeless, and to not be seduced by what Pope Benedict XVI calls the "anonymous power" of the latest fads and fashions, is what makes them conservative to begin with.



And so, when word was out among the Left that the Tea Party was comprised of genuine evildoers, the wider liberal masses, whether at blogs and nonprofits and Facebook or working for the IRS not only responded; they retaliated. They acted naturally. They didn't need Obama to tell them what to do. Exactly as Herb Meyer says, there was never any need for a printed order from Obama.



Tea Party aside, the American Left is also viciously targeting those who dare to oppose gay marriage. Here, too, liberals/progressives refuse to agree to disagree. Those who stand for traditional marriage as people have understood it since the literal dawn of humanity are framed as awful people, as intolerant "haters," almost subhuman in their lack of compassion. They are a form of modern American untermesnchen, utterly despised -- contemptible. 



When an Oregon couple, a baker and his wife, declined to make a wedding cake for two members of the same sex, the apostles of tolerance and diversity went screaming mad, attacking the couple with profanities and threatening lawsuits -- with no respect at all for the couples' freedom. "You stupid bible thumping, hypocritical [expletive]," wrote one loving liberal in an email. "I hope your kids get really, really, sick and you go out of business." Another champion of compassion added: "Here's hoping you go out of business, you bigot. Enjoy hell."



Organizations trying to stop gay marriage -- that is, trying to stop the redefinition of marriage, and believe that children need a mom and a dad -- are being derided as "hate groups."



A near-tragic example happened with the Family Research Council, which was labeled a "hate group." I know people at the Family Research Council. They are good-hearted, classic social conservatives. Their social positions aren't different from where the Democratic Party stood for over a century.



But once an organization of "civil rights" liberals labeled the Family Research Council a "hate group," the charge went viral, and then, one fateful day last August, an enraged homosexual activist headed for the group's offices with an arsenal of bullets and weapons poorly concealed in Chick-fil-A bags. He was stopped only by an alert security guard, who was shot and injured.



This left-wing gay activist, convinced that the Family Research Council was promulgating "hate," was prompted to an act of attempted mass murder.



This example should be widely known. It isn't. Why not? Because the mainstream media hasn't made it a national issue. If this had been a conservative shooter targeting a liberal organization, with a conservative president in the White House, all of conservatism would be held complicit, and the media would demand the president condemn the action. There would be a national media campaign against "conservative extremism."



Speaking of Chick-fil-A, it, too, has been a target of leftist rage: boycotts, protests, pickets, mayors of big cities trying to ban the restaurant and describing its product as "hate chicken." Why? Simply because the CEO is against gay marriage, which not long ago was the position of Bill and Hillary Clinton and the entire Democratic Party.



Beyond Chick-fil-A, look at the Left's Occupy Wall Street brigades. Here again, there was no edict from Barack Obama or David Axelrod to organize these people. Nonetheless, plenty of incessant Obama demonization of "profits," corporate "jet-owners," nefarious "millionaires and billionaires," big banks, big oil, those not paying their "fair share," and, of course, the monsters on "Wall Street," did the trick. The "progressive" mob sprung into action. In no time, they were marching not only on Wall Street but on front lawns of corporate CEOs -- a very volatile situation.



And then there's the hideous charge that Republicans who oppose mandatory taxpayer funding of abortion somehow thus favor a "war on women." Sandra Fluke has become a liberal heroine for that cultural/political obscenity.



Enough said. On and on it goes. I could give countless examples, some of them personal. We all can. Any conservative can.



In sum, these leftists are Obama's and (more widely) liberalism's willing executioners. They obviously aren't literally executing people -- although that was indeed the literal intent of the Family Research Council gunman -- but they are executing what they believe is a glorious plan for the fundamental transformation of America. They are willingly executing Obama's agenda and their agenda. Any opponents are isolated as enemies and maligned in the most demeaning way. 



And what does this mean? Among other things, it means that liberals really do need to be damned careful about what they're doing here. There are seriously disturbing consequences to their systematic demonization of anyone who disagrees with them. This is becoming truly dangerous. Lives and careers will be destroyed.



Unfortunately, my warning will fall on deaf ears. Being driven by emotion to begin with, and then easily whipped into hysteria, liberals will reject my warning out of hand. After all, in their view, I'm defending the indefensible: vile racists and haters who are loathsome, have no dignity, and deserve to be ruined. On top of that, I'll be lucky if a hundred liberals even read this article and take it seriously.



In short, this country is in really bad shape. The America we knew is gone; it is over. This new breed of leftist is ascendant and angry, and changing the country and the culture in the process. The results are not pretty. Things are only going to get worse.

 http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/06/liberalisms_willing_executioners.html#ixzz2W7U6uJhF

Defending Those Without A Voice

I’ve seen many leftist comedians over the years in Las Vegas, most times they are fun and enjoyable, and they can even be entertaining. I enjoy listening to all sides, and working in newsrooms for many years allowed me to hear plenty of divergent opinions. It was in this spirit that I joined friends to see Bill Maher perform at The Pearl at The Palms on Saturday Night. I went with low expectations. I just didn’t know how low he would go.

You may recall the Republican candidate for vice-president in 2008, Sarah Palin has a special needs son. I have interviewed Palin about her son, and with a 27 year old special needs son of my own, we have a common bond. Politics aside, that bond is strong with all parents of special needs children. I drop off my son, Troy, at Opportunity Village in Las Vegas every day. It’s a work place for adults with special needs where they contribute to society. It is a marvelous charity and every time I am there I can feel the wonderful spirit of those who work within. Yes, I am passionate about this.

Maher chose to make a joke about Palin’s son, Trig and in the process he used the “R” word to describe this 5 year old special needs boy. Of course, since Trig is Palin’s son, he is a target of the left. Special needs be damned, there are jokes to be made by “caring compassionate” liberals. I was so disgusted and a bit surprised that I forgot the exact joke. Perhaps he saves this joke for live audiences only. The audience of more supposed compassionate, caring leftists loved the joke and roared with laughter.

The crowd reaction was perhaps the most disturbing part of all this, it also surprised me. While a joke about a 5 year old child with Down Syndrome is about as low as you can go, I don’t want comedians to be forced to be “politically correct” in their humor. Maher will say what he wants to say and he will always claim some sort of moral high road and friendly media will always give it to him. But that doesn’t mean I have to sit there and take it.

I was in the back of the room with friends (who got me my ticket and asked me to go – so no, I didn’t pay) and moved closer to the stage, but was still sitting a good ways back. At that point, Maher made a joke about Halliburton (you remember Halliburton, don’t you? Think way back to a decade ago) and still disgusted, I blurted out, “It’s 2013 Bill, you might want to update your material.” That was as much a comment on him using the “R” word as it was about him using old material. Supposed “progressives” are apparently comfortable living back in the day when the “R” word was used regularly on those with special needs. Maher heard me and responded back. Security approached me and asked me to be quiet—I gladly left The Pearl at The Palms. If they want to call it “kicked out,” I’ll go with that and wear it proudly, kicked out after I spoke up because I don’t like anybody treating people with special needs as targets.

By the way, I don’t think Maher minded my comments. Most comedians like some of that stuff when they are performing live. As a sports reporter, having done “live shots” in hostile territory I have been subjected to much worse and there was never security around.

My question today is the same one I had that night: I wonder if management at The Palms is comfortable with special needs children being used as targets for humor in their shows. Perhaps they are. So be it. They should be made to answer. If Palms management is comfortable with joke like these, I will gladly never return to their property.

I will also always be glad to stand up for those, who many times, have no voice.

http://www.ronfutrell.com/2013/06/11/defending-those-without-a-voice/