We Have Taken Our Country Back

On the eve of a historic midterm election upheaval, President Barack Obama tried to walk back his gratuitous slap at Americans who oppose his radical progressive agenda. “I probably should have used the word ‘opponents’ instead of ‘enemies’ to describe political adversaries,” Obama admitted Monday. “Probably”?

Here is an ironclad certainty: It’s too little too late for the antagonist-in-chief to paper over two years of relentless Democratic incivility and hate toward his domestic “enemies.” Voters have spoken: They’ve had enough. Enough of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner’s rhetorical abuse. Enough of his feints at bipartisanship. Whatever the final tally, this week’s turnover in Congress is a GOP mandate for legislative pugilism, not peace. Voters have had enough of big government meddlers “getting things done.” They are sending fresh blood to the nation’s Capitol to get things undone.

Just two short years ago, Obama campaigned as the transcendent unifier. “Young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled, Americans have sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of red states and blue states,” he proclaimed. “We have been and always will be the United States of America.”

It’s been an Us vs. Them freefall ever since.

“We don’t mind the Republicans joining us,” Obama taunted a few weeks ago. “They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.”

“They’re counting on young people staying home and union members staying home and black folks staying home,” the fear-mongering agent of hope and change jeered on the campaign trail last month.

“You would think they’d be saying thank you,” he sneered last April, when millions turned out for the nationwide Tax Day tea party protests.

“I want them just to get out of the way” and “don’t do a lot of talking,” he scoffed in response to prescient critics of the federal trillion-dollar stimulus boondoggle.

In addition to labeling GOP opponents of his open-borders policies “enemies” who needed to be “punished” by Latino voters, Obama accused them — that is, us — of lacking patriotism. “Those aren’t the kinds of folks who represent our core American values,” he told viewers of the Spanish-language network Univision.

Democratic leaders have taken their cue from Team Obama’s persistent politics of polarization.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer called vocal citizens who protested the federal health care takeover bill during the town hall revolts of 2009 “un-American,” too. Remember? “These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views — but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American,” Pelosi and Hoyer blasted in an op-ed piece for USA Today last summer. “Drowning out the facts is how we failed at this task for decades.”

This from the woman who called for a vengeful government investigation of grassroots opponents of the Ground Zero mosque.
Obama’s pal Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida, whom the president hailed as an “outstanding” member of Congress, accused Republicans of wanting elderly people to “die quickly” and of presiding over a “holocaust in America.” Vice President Joe Biden hailed Grayson as a “guy who doesn’t back away from a fight, and doesn’t back down from what he believes in” and told him at a fundraiser: “We owe you one, buddy.” No mention of Grayson’s smear of a female Federal Reserve adviser as a “K Street whore.”

In California, entrenched incumbent jerk Pete Stark derided immigration enforcement activists at a town hall by asking: “Who are you going to kill today?” To an elderly constituent who opposed the health care bill, Stark retorted: “I wouldn’t dignify you by peeing on your leg. It wouldn’t be worth wasting the urine.”

As voters who have been maligned by the ruling majority as stupid, unwashed, racist, selfish and violent headed to the polls Tuesday, Democrats released “talking points” attacking Republican leaders who “are not willing to compromise.” But “no compromise” is exactly the message that un-American Americans delivered to Washington this campaign season:

No more compromising deals behind closed doors.

No more compromising bailouts in times of manufactured crisis.

No more compromising conservative principles for D.C. party elites.

No more compromising the American economy for left-wing special interests.

No more compromising transparency and ethics for bureaucratic self-preservation.

Let us be clear, in case it hasn’t fully sunk into the minds of Obama and the trash-talking Democrats yet: You can take your faux olive branch and shove it.

Thank you.

Tell me, where does the Constitution forbid the states to pass religious laws? Supreme Court opinions don’t count.

It doesn’t. I think its the first amendment that states the federal government shall not pass laws that promote or endorse any one religion over another (I paraphrased). It doesn’t say anything about States. Should a state do so, I imagine we would have a lawsuit sort of like the one the US Government has against the state of Arizona.

All I have to say about most of what goes on in this country politically is that I don’t really like the way it “has to be”. There’s all this talk of changing the system, but the real problem is that most politicians are self serving people who work to make constituents happy so they can generate campaign funding to stay in office. (I’d like to mention Meg Whitman spent $140 million dollars of her own money on her losing bid… that’s madness!). They push their own agendas. That being said, from where I stand 90% of criticisms towards the current administration are a direct result of a Republican stalemate. Long winded filibusters and refusal to cooperate has led to most of our problems. The solution from the right isn’t bipartisan, it’s “lets run them out of office so they can’t do ANY thing!”. It’s disheartening. I voted libertarian.

Even worse is the overall climate. Nobody talks nice or is professional. It’s all “Nancy Pelosi is Satan” and “Obama has death panels”. It’s madness, and I feel like we’re all screwed. Don’t even get me started on Boehner.

The one consolation to all of this is going to see just how much the Tea Party is willing to play nicely with the rest of the Republicans.

I’m putting my money on not much.

The Tea Party did literally nothing but cost the Republicans seats in Congress. The Tea Partiers that won seats came from districts/states that were going to go Republican anyway (see Alaska’s Murkowski vs. Miller). Republicans, if they had nominated better candidates, would have easily won in Delaware and Nevada. Probably could have won in Colorado too. If the Tea Party movement had any positive impact, it would have been as a base motivator. When it came to the actual candidates, most of them weren’t that good. Rand Paul’s cool though; he’s part of the libertarian branch of the Tea Party though.

I am so glad that Palin’s handpicked Tea Partier lost to Deal in the Georgia Gubernatorial primary. I don’t necessarily like Deal, but I generally prefer him to some Palin backed moron.

Actually, the Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment binds the states as well. The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits states from “depriving citizens of life, liberty or property without due process of law.” The Supreme Court 50-60 years ago decided that freedom of speech and religion are part of the “due process of law,” so states have to allow free speech. If you are confused as to how free speech or religion is a “process of law,” everyone else is too. The ruling was undoubtedly objective-driven.

There’s all this talk of changing the system, but the real problem is that most politicians are self serving people who work to make constituents happy so they can generate campaign funding to stay in office. (I’d like to mention Meg Whitman spent $140 million dollars of her own money on her losing bid… that’s madness!).
To be fair, wealthy, self-funded candidates like Meg Whitman, Jerry Brown, Rick Snyder, Rick Scott, Mark Neumann and Bill Haslam are the least likely to care about pleasing contributors, because they don’t need outside funding to stay in office. This is the rare instance where money prevents corruption, rather than corrupts.

Probably because Privileges or Immunities had been completely neutered around 1880.

Rand Paul doesn’t really seem that libertarian. Fiscally, maybe, but he’s got a pretty strong socially conservative bent.

Zepp, your punctuation is too good.

I love how the son of rugged, individualist libertarian Ron Paul got elected with daddy’s name.

He also had the best skeleton in his closet ever. Making a girl get high and pray to “Aqua-Buddha” is so much cooler than being gay or an alcoholic or a murderer or whatever other lame shit most politicians don’t want getting out.

Most people still count him as part of the libertarian portion of the Tea Party. When it comes to his socially conservative bent, I think that’s because he just says to hell with government; right or wrong, many people classify libertarians as right wing. The only position of his that I know which might be considered not libertarian would be abortion, but even in the Libertarian Party that’s a highly contentious issue.

I think he opposes same-sex marriage and decriminalization/legalization of marijuana.

EDIT: Ah, he personally opposes gay marriage, but thinks it should be left up to states to decide. When it comes to marijuana policy, who the hell knows? His quotations don’t make that much sense, taken as a whole, and he’s said some of them were misquoted.

Given the whole Aqua Buddha story, I think we can say that, at the very least, the man has dabbled in cannabis.

Well, yeah, but Obama admitted to using marijuana and even cocaine, then said the question of marijuana decriminalization/legalization was a “non-starter.” American politicians are more hypocritically asinine than usual on the subject of drug policy.

such guys, win.

i’d also like to point out that iowa has gay marriage