By MacPundit

Today’s Democratic Party is not the party of JFK

There was a time not too long ago when President John F. Kennedy—JFK—was the Democrat’s King Arthur of Camelot. Like Barack Obama, he was idolized by the party devotees. Like Barack Obama, he knew how to deliver a speech well. But that is where the similarities end. In almost all other respects, these men could not be more different.

By even the most rigid standards John F. Kennedy was a legitimate American war hero, and while Mr. Obama’s lack of military service should not be held against him, JFK was also a self-avowed American patriot. His personal history, his grasp of American History, his love of country, were all apparent and, often, eloquently expressed in his speeches and his writings. Additionally, Kennedy always sought to unite us.

Barack Obama cannot make such claims. After almost six years into his presidency, his words, his actions, and his general behavior and demeanor, continue to cause millions of Americans to question his intentions as well as his belief in American Exceptionalism. By the same ageless standards we and other nations have always used, our current president does not appear to be a patriot. Instead, his motives are all too often, suspect. At the very least, he does not rally or inspire the people to be proud of their American heritage and their citizenship. Studies by many credible, non-partisan organizations have declared him to be one of the most polarizing presidents in US History—if not the most. Of course many of us did not need the studies to know that.

Have Democrats forgotten JFK? Yes, I think they have, conveniently. President Obama as well as other current Democrat leaders are far to the left of President Kennedy. When compared to Obama, Kennedy would be a Republican. Did I just hear an outcry from some of you Democrats? If so, I’ll bet it’s from the far-left radicals who have taken control of the Democratic Party—a party that JFK would not recognize were he here today. But don’t take my word for it, let’s look at some things that JFK himself said.

“We must know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty.”

JFK welcomed and encouraged diverse views and debate. Obama seems to be forever annoyed by both. It has become a standard practice of his and his administration to denigrate and mock those with opposing views or anyone who criticizes Mr. Obama. Beyond public denigration and mocking, Mr. Obama regularly attempts to suppress media access to his administration. These practices have become so persistent that even left-leaning media outlets are now voicing their disapproval. Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter James Risen had this to say:

“A lot of people still think this is some kind of game or signal or spin,” he told [Maureen] Dowd. “They don’t want to believe that Obama wants to crack down on the press and whistle-blowers. But he does. He’s the greatest enemy to press freedom in a generation.”

As to the Bill of Rights, unlike JFK who confirmed and protected it, Obama seems to view it as an impediment to his audacious intention to “… fundamentally transform the United States of America.” Thankfully, the Supreme Court has done its job by at least preventing him from becoming an absolute dictator. The top court has ruled against President Obama, unanimously, 20 times during the five and a half years of his presidency.

His own court appointees ruled against him in many cases, as well as in some non-unanimous decisions.

“I believe in an America where the free enterprise system flourishes for all other systems to see and admire – where no businessman lacks either competition or credit – and where no monopoly, no racketeer, no government bureaucracy can put him out of a business that he built up with his own initiative.”

Kennedy was a strong advocate of the free enterprise system. While he believed in common sense government regulation, he opposed big government overregulation that would put a business owner “… out of a business that he built up with his own initiative.” What did Obama have to say about American business and its entrepreneurs? “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” (See more on that topic here.)

“Every dollar released from taxation that is spared or invested will help create a new job and a new salary.”

That was President Kennedy’s view on taxation and job creation, and his actions mirrored his rhetoric.

What about President Obama? Well on his very long list of broken promises is this rather infamous one:

“I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”

Not only did he break that promise, he seems to have more new tax “tricks” up his sleeve than a professional magician has card tricks. Politicians are expert at disguising new taxes and Obama is a master at it. Kennedy’s tax cuts helped to create jobs and grow the economy; Obama’s tax increases and overbearing regulations on business have given us the slowest, weakest, and longest recovery from a recession in seventy years.

“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.”

JFK was an honest man and he saw the world as it was, not as he wished it to be. He once remarked that “I’m an idealist without illusions.” And unlike Obama, he didn’t con us. By now, it is well known by all objective and informed people that Barack Obama is a very dishonest man. The well-documented list of his false statements is rather astonishing as is the list of his broken promises. Call them misstatements if you are in denial, but I encourage you to visit PolitiFact.com as well as other non-partisan sources if you are actually unaware of the extent of Mr. Obama’s dishonesty. Only 22% of the Obama statements rated by PolitiFact are considered to be true. Even when we add the mostly true statements the total is still only 47%.

If you haven’t already, I also recommend that you read Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. Barack Obama once taught the “Rules” to eager young students and he is a master practitioner of them.

“The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.”

Kennedy said that the rights of man come from the hand of God. He was echoing the words of our founders. Yet Obama clearly believes that they come from the government. Frankly, I find it hard to understand why any free citizen would choose to give their government the power to choose which rights will be given to which citizens. In fact, our founding documents made it quite clear that our rights were bestowed on us at birth and that it was the job of government to make sure they were not taken away from us. Yet Mr. Obama and our liberal Democrat leaders think that they—hence the government—should be the ones to decide who has a right to what.

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

Need I even begin to comment on that one? The world has become exponentially more dangerous under Barack Obama. His stated foreign policy principle is “Don’t do stupid stuff.” Yet given the state of the world, he has done nothing but stupid stuff. Even Hillary Clinton, his former secretary of state, criticized him for this when she said that great nations need organizing principles and that “Don’t do stupid stuff.” is not an organizing principle. She also said that Obama’s failure to support the Syrian rebels led to the rise of ISIS. I rarely agree with Hillary Clinton, but I do this time. However, this is merely the tip of a very large and dangerous foreign-policy iceberg.

“And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”

Barack Obama’s beliefs and policies are antithetical to virtually everything that John F. Kennedy believed in and promoted. Obama is a hardcore, radical ideologue whose intention is to transform the United States of America into the kind of big government nation that our founders feared most. In little over five years, we have seen a massive transfer of power from the people to the federal government. It is no secret that Mr. Obama and his political machine buy votes through government handouts. As a result, he has successfully transformed America from a society based on individual self-reliance into an entitlement society. Instead of asking what they can do for their country, millions of Americans now ask what their country can do for them. In the process, Mr. Obama has added more debt in less than six years than all previous presidents combined. The results have been catastrophic.

Highly recommended: President Obama Tell All Videos.

The incompetence of our neo-monarchy

By Mark Steyn – a MacPundit favorite author.

It is a condition of my admission to this great land that I am not allowed to foment the overthrow of the United States government. Oh, I signed it airily enough, but you’d be surprised, as the years go by, how often the urge to foment starts to rise in one’s gullet. Fortunately, at least as far as constitutional government goes, the president of the United States is doing a grand job of overthrowing it all by himself.

On Thursday, he passed a new law at a press conference. George III never did that. But, having ordered America’s insurance companies to comply with Obamacare, the president announced that he is now ordering them not to comply with Obamacare. The legislative branch (as it’s still quaintly known) passed a law purporting to grandfather your existing health plan. The regulatory bureaucracy then interpreted the law so as to un-grandfather your health plan. So His Most Excellent Majesty has commanded that your health plan be de-un-grandfathered. That seems likely to work. The insurance industry had three years to prepare for the introduction of Obamacare. Now the King has given them six weeks to de-introduce Obamacare.

“I wonder if he has the legal authority to do this,” mused former Vermont governor Howard Dean. But he’s obviously some kind of right-wing wacko. Later that day, anxious to help him out, Congress offered to “pass” a “law” allowing people to keep their health plans. The same president who had unilaterally commanded that people be allowed to keep their health plans indignantly threatened to veto any such law to that effect: It only counts if he does it — geddit? As his court eunuchs at the Associated Press obligingly put it: “Obama Will Allow Old Plans.” It’s Barry’s world; we just live in it.

The reason for the benign Sovereign’s exercise of the Royal Prerogative is that millions of his subjects — or “folks,” as he prefers to call us, no fewer than 27 times during his press conference — have had their lives upended by Obamacare. Your traditional hard-core statist, surveying the mountain of human wreckage he has wrought, usually says, “Well, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.” But Obama is the first to order that his omelet be unscrambled and the eggs put back in their original shells. Is this even doable? No. That’s the point. When it doesn’t work, he’ll be able to give another press conference blaming the insurance companies, or the state commissioners, or George W. Bush . . .

The most telling line, the one that encapsulates the gulf between the boundless fantasies of the faculty-lounge utopian and the messiness of reality, was this: “What we’re also discovering is that insurance is complicated to buy.” Gee, thanks for sharing, genius. Maybe you should have thought of that before you governmentalized one-sixth of the economy. By “we,” the president means “I.” Out here in the ruder provinces of his decrepit realm, we “folks” are well aware of how complicated insurance is. What isn’t complicated in the Sultanate of Sclerosis? But, as with so many other things, Obama always gives the vague impression that routine features of humdrum human existence are entirely alien to him. Marie Antoinette, informed that the peasantry could no longer afford bread, is alleged to have responded, “Let them eat cake.” There is no evidence these words ever passed her lips, but certainly no one ever accused her of saying, “If you like your cake, you can keep your cake,” and then having to walk it back with “What we’re also discovering is that cake is complicated to buy.” That contribution to the annals of monarchical unworldliness had to await the reign of Queen Barry Antoinette, whose powdered wig seems to have slipped over his eyes.

Still, as historian Michael Beschloss pronounced the day after his election, he’s “probably the smartest guy ever to become president.” Naturally, Obama shares this assessment. As he assured us five years ago, “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors.” Well, apart from his signature health-care policy. That’s a mystery to him. “I was not informed directly that the website would not be working,” he told us. The buck stops with something called “the executive branch,” which is apparently nothing to do with him. As evidence that he was entirely out of the loop, he offered this:

Had I been I informed, I wouldn’t be going out saying, “Boy, this is going to be great.” You know, I’m accused of a lot of things, but I don’t think I’m stupid enough to go around saying, “This is going to be like shopping on Amazon or Travelocity,” a week before the website opens, if I thought that it wasn’t going to work.

Ooooo-kay. So, if I follow correctly, the smartest president ever is not smart enough to ensure that his website works; he’s not smart enough to inquire of others as to whether his website works; he’s not smart enough to check that his website works before he goes out and tells people what a great website experience they’re in for. But he is smart enough to know that he’s not stupid enough to go around bragging about how well it works if he’d already been informed that it doesn’t work. So he’s smart enough to know that if he’d known what he didn’t know he’d know enough not to let it be known that he knew nothing. The country’s in the very best of hands.

Michael Beschloss is right: This is what it means to be smart in a neo-monarchical America. Obama spake, and it shall be so. And, if it turns out not to be so, why pick on him? He talks a good Royal Proclamation; why get hung up on details?

Until October 1, Obama had never done anything — not run a gas station, or a doughnut stand — other than let himself be wafted onward and upward to the next do-nothing gig. Even in his first term, he didn’t really do: Starting with the 2009 trillion-dollar stimulus, he ran a money-no-object government that was all money and no objects; he spent and spent, and left no trace. Some things he massively expanded (food stamps, Social Security disability) and other things he massively diminished (effective foreign policy), but all were, so to speak, preexisting conditions. Obamacare is the first thing Obama has actually done, and, if you’re the person it’s being done to, it’s not pretty.

The president promised to “fundamentally transform” America. Certainly, other men have succeeded in transforming settled, free societies: Pierre Trudeau did in Canada four decades ago, and so, in post-war Britain, did the less charismatic Clement Attlee. And, if you subscribe to their particular philosophy, their transformations were effected very efficiently. But Obama is an incompetent, so “fundamentally transformed” is a euphemism for “wrecked beyond repair.” As a socialist, he makes a good socialite.

But on he staggers, with a wave of his scepter, delaying this, staying that, exempting the other, according to his regal whim and internal polling. The omniscient beneficent Sovereign will now graciously “allow” us “folks” to keep all those junk plans from bad-apple insurers. Yet even the wisest King cannot reign forever, and what will happen decades down the road were someone less benign — perhaps even (shudder) a Republican — to ascend the throne and wield these mighty powers?

Hey, relax: If you like your constitution, you can keep your constitution. Period. And your existing amendments. Well, most of them — except for the junk ones . . .

— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is the author of After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. © 2013 Mark Steyn

Dear Mr. President,

You are my 13^th president and even though too many of them turned out to be less than advertised, for the first time in my life, I am genuinely concerned for the future of our great country. You see, even our worst presidents did not divide our people as you do every day in speeches full of dishonest remarks about your opponents. Here are a few examples:

You said Republicans “… believe that prosperity comes from the top down, so that if we spend trillions more on tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, that that will somehow unleash jobs and economic growth.” Let’s break it down:

1. Republicans do not believe that prosperity comes from the top down. You simply made that up. In fact, they always say that our wealth comes from a strong, working middle class.
2. When you accused them of wanting to “… spend trillions more on tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans,” you knew they never asked for tax cuts—that they actually oppose tax increases on anyone. You also know that to oppose a tax increase is not the same as giving someone a tax cut. You wanted to raise taxes and when you did not get your tax raise, you called it a tax cut. So if you don’t raise my taxes, I am getting a tax cut? That’s flimflam stuff and it only works on people who don’t know any better. Of course you know that and, apparently, you don’t want them to know any better.
3. But it gets worse. In the phrase, “… spend trillions more on tax cuts” you are saying that when the government actually does give someone a tax cut, the government is spending money. You used the word “spend” to describe a tax cut. How can the government spend money it never got in the first place? Or do you think the money people earn through their hard work really doesn’t belong to them—that it all belongs to the government from the moment they get their paycheck? So any money Americans earn and don’t hand over to the government, is a tax cut? You are confusing America with Communist China, Mr. President.

Remarkably, it gets even worse. When you actually do spend hard-working taxpayer’s money to the benefit of your political supporters—like teacher’s unions—you don’t call it spending, you call it an “investment.” To quote the great economist Thomas Sowell, “You can say anything if you have your own private language.”

And you don’t stop there. Another sleight-of-hand of yours is how you intentionally try to confuse us even further. I’ll let Thomas Sowell explain this part:

“… let’s go back to the notion of “spending” money on ‘the wealthiest Americans.’ The people he is talking about are not the wealthiest Americans. Income is not wealth — and the whole tax controversy is about income taxes. Wealth is what you have accumulated, and wealth is not taxed, except when you die and the government collects an inheritance tax from your heirs.

“People over 65 years of age have far more wealth than people in their thirties and forties — but lower incomes. If Obama wants to talk about raising income taxes, let him talk about it, but claiming that he wants to tax “the wealthiest Americans” is a lie and an emotional distraction for propaganda purposes.”

Your supporters like to tell us how smart you are. I agree with them; I think you were given a pretty good brain. But I have also noticed that they never try to tell us that you are an honest person—a man of high character. Yet I have no doubt they would tell us those things if they were true. After all, they tell us so many things that are not true. As Martin Luther King often said, character really does matter. Sadly, Mr. President, you don’t seem to agree.

Respectfully,

MacPundit
www.barackobamafile.com

P.S. Due to the division in our country and the angry and vile speech coming from the Left, I feel it wise to use my pen name instead of my actual name. Sadly, you, our president, are responsible for much of that.

(emailed to the President on September 3, 2012)