Disrupting the Narrative of the New Left, its allies in Academia, Hollywood and the Establishment Media, and examining with honesty the goals of cultural Marxism and the dangers of reactionary and abusive political correctness.
THE NARRATIVE AND POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
“Threats to freedom of speech, writing and action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen.”-George Orwell
Just when when we thought that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid couldn't get any more pathetic and disgusting, he has proven once again that there is virtually nothing he won't say in order to smear an opponent. It doesn't matter if he is running directly against the opponent or whether, in this case, the target of his lies and innuendo is the GOP nominee for President of the United States.
"His poor father must be so embarrassed about his son," Reid said, in reference to George Romney's standard-setting decision to turn over 12 years of tax returns when he ran for president in the late 1960s.
Saying he had "no problem with somebody being really, really
wealthy," Reid sat up in his chair a bit before stirring the pot
further. A month or so ago, he said, a person who had invested with Bain
Capital called his office.
"Harry, he didn't pay any taxes for 10 years," Reid recounted the person as saying.
"He didn't pay taxes for 10 years! Now, do I know that that's true?
Well, I'm not certain," said Reid. "But obviously he can't release those
tax returns. How would it look?
"You guys have said his wealth is $250 million," Reid went on. "Not a
chance in the world. It's a lot more than that. I mean, you do pretty
well if you don't pay taxes for 10 years when you're making millions and
millions of dollars."
Naturally, as is the case with all baseless accusations and smear tactics, Reid would not reveal the name of the mysterious Bain investor. Huffington Post did point this out in the piece and also conceded:
Tellingly, neither Reid nor his office would reveal who the investor
was, making it impossible to verify if the accusation is true. And as
his quote makes clear, he's uncertain if the information is accurate.
The Romney campaign's press secretary, Andrea Saul, has previously denied rumors that Romney didn't pay "any taxes at all."
The average person might think that if Reid can't or won't back up his claim and even admits that he doesn't know if it's valid then responsible journalists would refrain from running the article. But of course, this is Huffington Post.
Romney's campaign adviser Kevin Madden told Huffington Post that Governor Romney had "gone
above and beyond the disclosure requirements by releasing two years of
personal tax returns in addition to the hundreds of pages of personal
financial disclosure documents he has provided to the FEC and made
public."
Madden added that it was "troubling and disappointing that Senator
Reid would cite Governor Romney's father, George, as part of a personal
attack against the governor. We have many substantive disagreements with
the senator and his policies, but using insults about a father-son
relationship is a step too far."
Allahpundit highlights the obvious weakness of this narrative:
Mitt Romney, who’s been running for political office for 20 years now,
decided he’d gamble those prospects and risk time in a federal pen for
tax evasion in order to save a few million dollars that he doesn’t need. And he made this decision year after year, for 10 years. Exit question via Philip Klein: “How would ‘a person who had invested with Bain Capital’ know about Romney’s personal tax returns anyway?”
I've pointed out on Twitter that the only people who have a right to see the Romney tax returns - the IRS - have already seen them. And as far as anyone knows, there have never been any problems with them. Does anybody who isn't completely Kool-aid intoxicated think that Mitt Romney would actually run for the highest office in the land - twice! - while knowing that he has legal issues regarding his taxes lurking in the shadows? Of course not. But a man with an absolutely clean record might, which is what we have with Romney. He is correct in not handing even a minor victory to the Obama campaign by giving in to their blatant intimidation. They are the ones who are desperate and the more they squeal about it the worse it looks for them.
And as for Harry Reid...The Senate that he controls hasn't produced a federal budget (which it's supposed to do annually) since April 29, 2009. So who knows HOW taxpayer money is being wasted. Gee, thanks Harry Reid!
“And, I care about the long term debt
of the country a lot. Remember me, I’m the only guy that gave you four
surplus budgets out of the eight I sent.”
Of course, the fabled "Clinton surpluses" remain one of the great myths of the 1990sbut that's beside the point. What's significant about the Obama campaign tapping Clinton to give the nominating speech at the guaranteed trainwreck of a convention in Charlotte is that Obama now knows that he has no chance of winning over moderates and independents on his own. Even with Slick Willie's help it's a longshot but clearly the only shot left to take.
Back in June, Howard Portnoy wrote an article in which he noted that Clinton has a tendency to go off message (because he can!) when discussing Obama. Portnoy states:
I don’t profess to have an answer myself, but I have assembled a list of
clues that may shed light on the method behind “Slick Willie’s”
madness. For one thing, there is the bitterness that occurred between
the Obama campaign and Clinton’s wife’s campaign during the race for the
2008 Democratic nomination. This antipathy culminated in January 2008
with accusations of racism leveled against Clinton by the Obama camp.
Back in December 2010 Portnoy had written about Clinton's hilarious upstaging of Obama at an official White House press briefing in which Obama literally surrendered the lecturn to the former POTUS. Obama is notoriously reluctant to submit to questions from the press but it was rather amazing to witness Clinton settle right back into the groove as if he'd never left the White House.
The most recent occurrence happened a couple of months ago when Clinton veered sharply off message regarding Romney's record at Bain Capital. Can Clinton control himself long enough to do his best for Obama? And even if he does, there's another problem looming for the speech, as noted at Huffington Post:
The NFL is starting its regular season on that very night, featuring a
marquee matchup between the Super Bowl champion New York football
Giants and their division rival the Dallas Cowboys. The final night of a
national political convention (Thursday) is when the candidate speaks.
The night before, Wednesday, is typically when the candidate's name is
placed into nomination, meaning that Bill Clinton will be up against the
NFL's opening night.
Not good.
The whole point of having Bill Clinton give the nominating speech for
Obama is to pull in moderates, independents, and blue collar white guys
in places like Ohio and Pennsylvania who remember the great Clinton
economy of the 90s. Millions of TV viewers across the nation will
obviously choose football over a political convention on that night...
including me.
So...how will it all turn out? We'll just have to wait and see. But in the meantime, here's a song that gives a satisfying hint of the desperation that the Obama campaign is feeling as they tacitly acknowledge that they are in over their heads.
Here is an excellent article by Steve McCann for American Thinker in which he discusses the Obama strategy of exploiting pre-existing tensions between segments of the Republican base. This strategy is crucial to Obama's chances of success because he can't run a winning campaign by discussing his own record. So he must hope that he can trick enough voters into thinking that they're better off retaining him in the White House than giving Mitt Romney a chance.
Although McCann doesn't go into it, I believe that Democrat strategy earlier in the year was to subtly encourage division among Republicans in order to prolong the primaries and leave the GOP hopelessly divided all the way to the August convention in Tampa. There was ample evidence of Democrat support for various "anti-Romney" candidates, such as Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, in the hopes that the one candidate the Dems truly feared - Mitt Romney - would be waylaid and prevented from gaining the nomination.
There can be no doubt that the Democrats preferred running against a GOP nominee who could be easily demonized on a variety of issues. A Gingrich with his political baggage and tendency to make controversial (no matter how correct they might be) comments that can be manipulated by the Establishment Media to Obama's benefit; or a Santorum with his staunchly Catholic beliefs that would make him a target of homosexual activists and other Church-hating Democrat constituencies.
Not only did the Democrats not get the kind of GOP nominee that they wanted but the real primary battles actually ended at least two months earlier than anticipated. So instead of having the luxury of fundraising and building up political infrastructure while Republicans knifed each other over and over again, Obama and the Democrats have had to deal with Romney for a much longer period. And with the economy in a shambles and facing a man who knows exactly how to turn things around (because that's what he made a fortune doing in his private career), including rescuing the Olympics, the going has not been particularly smooth for Obama and his Kool-aid cadre.
Hence, the return to a tactic that has already failed once: Disrupt the GOP and hope that "the base" abandons Romney on election day. This is something that has some potential given the short-sighted attitude of some members of "the base" who insist that electing Romney won't be any better for the country than re-electing Obama. This ridiculous, chicken-little pessimism, as McCann points out, is based in part on some oft-repeated fallacies that tend to suppress GOP voter enthusiasm by making the national situation appear hopeless.
First fallacy: a majority of the American people are now dependent on government, so they will always vote for whoever promises to support them. The facts: a recent Heritage Foundation
study found that as of January 2012, 67.3 million Americans were
dependent on government (21.8% of the total population). While this is
an extraordinarily high number it is up only 7 million since 1994. By
adding in those employed by government the total rises to 89.2 million
or 28.6% of the population. However, this is not a monolithic voting
bloc as a recent survey indicated a majority of federal government employees would vote against Obama.
Second fallacy: nearly 47% of Americans do not pay any income tax so they do not care about raising taxes or spending and will always vote for
the Democrats. The facts: this statistic is rooted in the recessionary
year 2009 and varies based on filing status -- e.g. 47% of those filing
single paid no income taxes but only 38% of joint filers paid no income
taxes. Further, in 2009 income tax receipts accounted for just 44% of
all government revenue; payroll taxes
accounted for 42% and are paid by all working citizens -- as are sales,
excise and effectively corporate taxes. When factoring in payroll taxes, 86%
of all Americans pay taxes. All citizens therefore need jobs and
economic growth, not higher taxes, unlike the policies being pursued by
Barack Obama.
Third fallacy:
there has been such an increase in voter fraud my vote really doesn't
matter. Today, there are approximately 207 million Americans eligible
to vote. Less than 150 million or 70% are registered to vote. In the
2008 election 146 million were registered to vote (71% of eligible
voters); 131 million voted in the presidential election. There were
approximately 15.2 million people registered who did not vote. Of that
number, 74% (11.2 million) were white, 12.3% (1.8 million) were
Hispanic. By age group, nearly 40% were in the 25-44 categories. The
primary reasons given for not voting: 1) not interested or did not like
the candidates: 26.3%; and 2) too busy or forgot to vote: 20.1%. Over
7.0 million who bothered to register did not vote using these two
excuses.
Among
those eligible but not registered, which amounted to nearly 59 million
in 2008, 67.4 % were white (65% of total U.S. population) and 20.7% were
of Hispanic origin (16.3% of total U.S. population). Nearly 40% of
those choosing not to register were in the 25-44 age groups. Further,
the primary combined excuse proffered for not registering was: not
interested in the election and my vote would not make a difference:
50%. That amounts to 29.5 million potential voters; Barack Obama won
the election by 9.5 million votes.
Recent polls continue to show
that 40% of Americans identify themselves as conservative; only 21% as
liberal. Of the remaining 39% who identify as moderate, it would be
safe to assume that these citizens are equally split between the two
ideologies, thus at least 60% of Americans lean conservative and 40%
liberal. Accordingly, any substantive additional turnout, registration
and voting would be skewed toward electing the more conservative
candidate. Additionally, any attempt at voter fraud would be
overwhelmed by these higher numbers.
So for all those who believe - sincerely or cynically - that the future is hopeless and that casting a vote for Mitt Romney in November is a waste of your time, it should be clear that this is not only false but a deliberate attempt at deception on the part of the Democrats. Since the "hopey changey thing" has been exposed as a hideous fraud perpetrated on the American people by Obama and his followers, Obama has nothing left to offer but...fear itself.
It's been over a week since Barack Obama delivered his off-prompture speech in Virginia in which he took some deliberate shots at the free-enterprise, entrepreneurial spirit of America and turned it into a punchline. Normally I would have simply created a link to the excellent article below but Charles Krauthammer does such a magnificent job of refuting Obama that I wanted to make it available in its entirety on this site because I think it's that important. Below the article is the Romney campaign's rapid first response. But first, please have a look at the video below in which Bill Whittle gives his own views on what it is about Obama that makes him so out of touch - and indeed hostile - when it comes to mainstream Americans.
DID THE STATE MAKE YOU GREAT? By Charles Krauthammer, Published: July 19
"If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen."
— Barack Obama, Roanoke, Va., July 13
And who might that somebody else be? Government, says Obama.
It built the roads you drive on. It provided the teacher who inspired
you. It “created the Internet.” It represents the embodiment of “we’re
in this together” social solidarity that, in Obama’s view, is the
essential origin of individual and national achievement.
To say
that all individuals are embedded in and the product of society is
banal. Obama rises above banality by means of fallacy: equating society
with government, the collectivity with the state. Of course we are
shaped by our milieu. But the most formative, most important influence
on the individual is not government. It is civil society, those elements
of the collectivity that lie outside government: family, neighborhood,
church, Rotary club, PTA, the voluntary associations that Tocqueville
understood to be the genius of America and source of its energy and
freedom.
Moreover, the greatest threat to a robust, autonomous
civil society is the ever-growing Leviathan state and those like Obama
who see it as the ultimate expression of the collective.
Obama
compounds the fallacy by declaring the state to be the font of
entrepreneurial success. How so? It created the infrastructure — roads,
bridges, schools, Internet — off which we all thrive.
Absurd. We
don’t credit the Swiss postal service with the Special Theory of
Relativity because it transmitted Einstein’s manuscript to the Annalen der Physik. Everyone drives the roads, goes to school, uses the mails. So did Steve Jobs. Yet only he created the Mac and the iPad.
Obama’s
infrastructure argument is easily refuted by what is essentially a
controlled social experiment. Roads and schools are the constant. What’s
variable is the energy, enterprise, risk-taking, hard work and genius
of the individual. It is therefore precisely those individual
characteristics, not the communal utilities, that account for the
different outcomes.
The ultimate Obama fallacy, however, is the
conceit that belief in the value of infrastructure — and willingness to
invest in its creation and maintenance — is what divides liberals from
conservatives.
More nonsense. Infrastructure is not a liberal
idea, nor is it particularly new. The Via Appia was built 2,300 years
ago. The Romans built aqueducts, too. And sewers. Since forever,
infrastructure has been consensually understood to be a core function of
government.
The argument between left and right is about what you do beyond
infrastructure. It’s about transfer payments and redistributionist
taxation, about geometrically expanding entitlements, about tax breaks
and subsidies to induce actions pleasing to central planners. It’s about
free contraceptives for privileged students and welfare without work
— the latest Obama entitlement-by-decree that would fatally undermine
the great bipartisan welfare reform of 1996. It’s about endless
government handouts that, ironically, are crowding out necessary
spending on, yes, infrastructure.
What divides liberals and conservatives is not roads and bridges but Julia’s world,
an Obama campaign creation that may be the most self-revealing parody
of liberalism ever conceived. It’s a series of cartoon illustrations in
which a fictional Julia is swaddled and subsidized throughout her life
by an all- giving government of bottomless pockets and “Queen for a Day”
magnanimity. At every stage, the state is there to provide — preschool
classes and cut-rate college loans, birth control and maternity care,
business loans and retirement. The only time she’s on her own is at her
grave site.
Julia’s world is totally atomized. It contains no
friends, no community and, of course, no spouse. Who needs one? She’s
married to the provider state.
Or to put it slightly differently,
the “Life of Julia” represents the paradigmatic Obama political
philosophy: citizen as orphan child. For the conservative, providing for
every need is the duty that government owes to actual orphan children.
Not to supposedly autonomous adults.
Beyond infrastructure, the
conservative sees the proper role of government as providing not
European-style universal entitlements but a firm safety net, meaning
Julia-like treatment for those who really cannot make it on their own -
those too young or too old, too mentally or physically impaired, to
provide for themselves. Limited government so conceived has two
indispensable advantages. It avoids inexorable European-style national
insolvency. And it avoids breeding debilitating individual dependency.
It encourages and celebrates character, independence, energy, hard work
as the foundations of a free society and a thriving economy — precisely
the virtues Obama discounts and devalues in his accounting of the
wealth of nations.
If you want to know why Obama is still competitive in the polls, THIS is it. When has a president ever gotten such preferential treatment, no matter what the issue? Obama's pathetic record should be destroying him. But that would require the media doing what it used to do: Scrutinize the incumbent's record rather than mitigating and promoting it! There are whole networks devoted to a 24-7 comprehensive defense of the Obama administration, it's policies, and it's many failures. Indeed, some are actively engaged in promoting the outrageous notion that merely questioning Obama is a sign of "racism."
What you are seeing here is the Establishment Media at work. How ironic that these sycophantic hypocrites claim to be professionals. They get paid for what they do but they are definitely not "professional" in their conduct. They are supposed to be reporters, not propagandists!
But of course, there are plenty of Kool-aid intoxicated Left-wing idiots running around these days, many of them in the Establishment Media. The lunacy even went so far as to suggest that Romney brought his own blacks to the convention to applaud him. Or that he deliberately provoked the loud booing in order to garner the sympathetic support of racist whites in a neo-Southern Strategy. It's all so absurd but so typical of the increasingly desperate Obama team and their allies.
The fact of the matter is that Obama and the Dems didn't really think Romney would have the courage and integrity to even face the mostly hostile crowd at the NAACP convention. And so when he went into the lion's den, as it were, they immediately began struggling to find a way to protect The Narrative: that as a white Republican Romney must be a racist. And the fact that Romney is the son of a courageous Michigan governor who marched with civil rights leaders in Detroit and was an ally of Martin Luther King only made it that much more difficult (and pathetic) for the Left to maintain their lies.
But perhaps the single biggest reason for the Left's collective panic attack and show of false (but corrosively divisive) bravado is because their great hero, Barack Obama, couldn't be bothered to even show up at all. Instead, he sent his court jester, Clueless Joe Biden, to perform for the crowd. A fool is always fun to watch but it hardly represents a serious show of respect. The country's first black president thinks that in a crucial election year the NAACP is only worth a visit from...Joe Biden?
How do we know that all this bravado is fake? Because if this had anything to do with reality then the Left would be mocking an appearance by an "old white guy" like Biden. Yet amazingly we're supposed to get the message that he's suddenly really cool! The NAACP just loves to listen the inane ramblings of a buffoon like Biden. Who needs Obama, right?
Perhaps if they had billed the event as a fundraiser instead of a convention Obama would have shown at least a little interest. But there was no money to be raised and no worry that black voters might not vote for him, so Obama decided he just couldn't find the time.
One of the enduring myths that the Left promotes about itself is that is based in large part on "empathy" and "tolerance" and "diversity." Naturally, they have mangled, mischaracterized and generally abused the very definitions of those words. George Orwell understood this phenomenon very well as he himself had been a Socialist most of his life.
Left-wingers claim to be more tolerant than Conservatives but what they apparently don't understand is that "tolerance" is not synonymous with "approval." In other words, "tolerance" is not required for those things of which we already approve. True tolerance refers to those things of which we do NOT approve. And so the opportunities for the so-called "tolerant" Left to practice what they preach would be at those moments when they are confronted by something, someone or some statement of which they disapprove. And therein lies the problem. Whenever Left-wingers see a statement of which they do not approve they don't demonstrate tolerance but rather go on the attack in the most vicious manner allowable by the law. And sometimes they go beyond the law if they think they can get away with it.
Approving same-sex marriage does not qualify as "tolerance." We don't "tolerate" things we approve. Tolerance would be to acknowledge and respect the fact that others have a valid objection to same-sex marriage. People can agree to disagree and that would be an example of genuine tolerance. But that's not what happens whenever Leftists go on the attack. And they compound the hypocrisy by bitterly complaining whenever THEY are on the receiving end of abuse.
Many of the "liberals" who wailed and wrung their hands over the loss of "civility" in the wake of the Tucson shootings would not be nearly as concerned if Gabrielle Giffords had been a member of the GOP. There would be no weeping and wailing. No calls for "civility." And "tolerance" would be more likely to be demanded for the shooter rather than empathy for the victims.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness of his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends. We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts: Samuel Adams, John Adams, John Hancock, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware: George Read, Caesar Rodney, Thomas McKean
Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
"If you are a family making less than $250,000 a year, your taxes will not go up. Period."
If the ACA (ObamaCare) had been honestly portrayed as the massive tax increase we now know that it is, it would never have been passed into law in the first place.
As Ben Shapiro points out, the Obama administration has now been hoisted on its own petard and forced to either admit the truth that the no-tax pledge was a lie; that the "penalty" was a tax all along or keep lying and denying what the Supreme Court has ruled. So guess which way Jack Lew goes? Yep, more lies in defense of THE lie.
The fact of the matter is that the only way the ACA is constitutional is as a tax. If it's not a tax, then it's not constitutional. And yet the Obama administration still won't admit that what they have done is a massive tax increase.This kind of cynicism perfectly illustrates the corruption at the heart of the Obama administration.
Also read about how Obama is determined to raise the price of health care for service members:
