That he feels the need to say this aloud is of itself quite telling, but what galls me most — his special pleading here aside — is that we know for a fact that he doesn’t believe he either can or should be constrained by that “flawed document” that the framers put in place to do just that.
— As he’s made clear with respect to the Appointment’s Clause; the Takings Clause; the First Amendment’s protection for religious liberty; his refusal to defend certain duly passed laws, while using his Justice Department to sue several states to keep them from enforcing their own laws (and existing federal law); his using Executive branch dictates to circumvent Congress — be they in the service of backdoor amnesty or carbon taxes or gun control; his failure to deliver his budget in the time the law requires; his desire to see the Commerce Clause expanded to allow government mandates on private commerce; his refusal to defend our borders; his going to war without any outside discussion or approval by Congress; and now, his anti-federalist assault on the Second Amendment, which has included pressure from the VP and out of state lobbyists to convince various state Democrats that failure to vote with the national party against the wishes of your constituency will be considered an act seditious to the national party and its cause, and will be dealt with accordingly.
Obama is a demagogue and a liar. Hell, even his name is a lie.
That so many people were fooled by him not once but twice means only that they aren’t particularly bright, not that he isn’t who I’ve been saying he is since he first broke onto the national scene: a Marxist who was polished for public office by a former domestic terrorist so as to act as a Trojan Horse virus that unleashes all of the poison progressives have spent years insinuating into law and the larger culture and its institutions.
He is the protege of Frank Marshall Davis, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and Ayers and Dohrne. He was taught by Piven and Alinsky and Said, among others (including critical race theorists), and did his graduate work as a street organizer and Cooper Union socialist activist. He has been conditioned to believe the US is the world’s most offensive bully, that it was born in genocide, expanded through colonialism, enriched through slavery, and entrenched as a superpower by wars of aggression — its citizens held captive by an economic system that is at once coarse and systemically “unfair.” He is a transnational progressive who deplores state sovereignty, hates wealth not born of “public service,” and wishes to re-set not only relations with Russia, but the whole of the global RISK board.
Honestly: what did you fucking expect would happen? That, because he won a national election, he must necessarily love his country and at heart be a “good man”?
Yeah. How’s that working out for you?
(h/t JHo)
And as to the deepest of his insults toward us he cares not a jot. “Here,” he says, “have another! Now it’s time for me to get to another fundraiser.”
This is like Google’s “Don’t be evil.” motto. If you have to say it, and you have to be reminded of it, that’s evidence of a serious problem.
But, Jeff, other than those few failings listed above, he’s doing a hell of a job!
As in, “Where are we going and why are we in this basket?”
I forget who on the board I stole that from, but it’s my current favorite.
At least he recognizes there are constraints.
But don’t forget that he’s being saying this same shit for years. Charter of negative liberties, indeed.
Althouse has figured him out, even if she doesn’t say that his philosophy bothers her.
Brilliant, Jeff.
You’ve been on fire these past few days – bravo.
At least he recognizes there are constraints.
This simply doesn’t compute to constraints imposed by the Constitution, at least under ordinary uses of the term “recognizes”. He may recognize he’s compelled (constrained) to pay lip service to constraints believed by others in order to escape those constraints believed by others, but how does escaping the constraints held by others, as an object, imply a recognition to abide by them in the practice of adherence to his oath of office?
He often violates the “I’m not a bimbo” rule of PR.
You’ve been on fire these past few days
So has the Republic.
No coincidence, that.
He has been conditioned to believe the US is the world’s most offensive bully, that it was born in genocide, expanded through colonialism, enriched through slavery, and entrenched as a superpower by wars of aggression — its citizens held captive by an economic system that is at once coarse and systemically “unfair.”
If you’re running for mayor against an incumbent, your campaign must necessarily be a litany of How The City Sucks, regardless of whether the incumbent is at fault—and regardless of whether you actually have a problem with the items on the list.
The idea is to convince people that The Current Regime needs to go and that you ought to be the replacement.
Progressives want to oust the Constitutional Republic from office, so they must necessarily decry everything that Americans might like about our country: the Founders were misogynistic racist slaveholders, the Constitution is outdated and unjust, our efforts to promote democracy abroad are only cynical imperialistic ploys, patriotism is jingoism, and our prosperity is theft.
It is not necessary for the progressives to believe a word of this; they just need to wield the complaints as a weapon to dislodge and upend the current system.
They don’t hate the country because they think it’s racist/imperialist/unfair. They hate it because they’re not in charge.
it was born in genocide, expanded through colonialism, enriched through slavery, and entrenched as a superpower by wars of aggression
So what exactly is your preferred historical narrative?
“So what exactly is your preferred historical narrative?”
The truth?
Which is not actually the same thing as “Pravda”, believe it or not.
QED, baby. And the debt and tax serfs turned this over in their minds, murmured, nodded, and shuffled away.
What a concise non-answer.
sdferr,
I didn’t say he pays attention to them; I said he recognizes them. Like a guy who blows a stoplight even though he sees the red light…
Dalek, take your Obama worship elsewhere, okay? Your kind is sickening, on a good day.
At least conservatives fought against President Bush on a few of his initiatives.
Obama worshipers, not so much.
You say right JohnInFirestone, and I’d thought to make allowances for that. Yet somehow I think genuine recognition entails adherence to, going a little beyond the simple distinction “pays attention to” and “recognizes”, if only on account of the solemnity of the oath.
That it was born by a revolution against centralized control, that it expanded through constraints on such controls and a promotion of liberty and opportunity that saw some of the most remarkable advances in history come from a free, industrious people imbued with a solid work ethic, that it transitioned from a country that had allowed slaves to one that has spent billions of dollars fighting racism and poverty, either real or perceived — and yet some leftist shitheads still take a dump on it every time they can.
This actually has nothing to do with our problematic president.
You can’t wish away slavery and colonialism, and I was simply wondering in what conservative alt history can these processes be made morally neutral or positive, when its apparently heresy to believe that they had a powerful effect on the world we live in.
Slavery and colonialism?
Obama actually said one true thing, though I’m sure it was accidental: “There doesn’t have to be a conflict between protecting our citizens and protecting our Second Amendment rights.” We have 20 years of studies showing a link between lawful gun ownership and lower rates of crime. We have evidence in front of our eyes every single day showing that those cities with the tightest gun restrictions are completely dysfunctional urban battlefields. I’m not sure why Democrats insist on this sort of Science Denial, but it doesn’t reflect well on them.
Obama’s Ball-Washer sez: “So what exactly is your preferred historical narrative?”
I think I’ll go with the idea of a nation conceived in liberty, which flourished by the efforts of millions of free people doing their best to improve the lives of themselves, their families, and their communities on their own terms. A nation that took advantage of the paradox that a million people working selfishly for their own advantage can actually improve the lives of their neighbors far more than any program of compulsory sacrifice could dream of. A nation that has its share of flaws, but has, on the whole, contributed far more to the advancement of humankind than any nation in history.
But hey — you just keep flogging that “my great-great granddad was really mean to your great-great granddad, and so I’m GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY for all eternity, never mind all the good that the rest of my family has accomplished before and since” narrative, and see where it takes you.
Pablo, I don’t know who you’re quoting*, but I’m sure he’s totally RAAAAACIST!
* (of course I know who you’re quoting.)
…its apparently heresy to believe that they had a powerful effect on the world we live in.
Heresy? Apparent to whom?
In my circles, it’s taken as axiomatic that slavery and colonialism have been the default condition of mankind for as long as we’ve possessed the tools to make such things possible. Until very recently, it was the norm for one group to invade the territory of their neighbors whenever the opportunity presented itself. When they didn’t conquer and keep that territory for themselves, they pillaged it, taking any valuable goods they could carry, burning the rest, and making slaves of the defeated.
Of course ten thousand years of this behavior is going to have a profound effect on the world we live in! If there were to be heresy, it would be to believe otherwise! What’s remarkable about the Enlightenment, and our system of government that flowed from that Enlightenment, is its rejection of those historical norms, and its embrace of individual liberty as a foundational value. “We hold these truths to be self-evident” was written at a point in history when damn few people anywhere thought there was anything self-evident at all about them.
The fact that you know nothing of the history of mankind, and purposefully overlook the remarkable successes that we’ve made to overcome thousands of years of the strong ruling over the weak as a matter of course, really goes a long way toward explaining your failure to recognize the myriad truths that this community has watched sail over your head. I do hope — not just for your sake, but for the common good — that you avail yourself of some books on history and anthropology that haven’t been written by leftist progressives serving an anti-liberty agenda. It would do everyone a lot of good.
“You can’t wish away slavery and colonialism”
No one is “wishing away” anything, numbskull.
“What a concise non-answer.”
You don’t actually want an answer, which we understand fully as well as you do.
“In my circles, it’s taken as axiomatic that slavery and colonialism have been the default condition of mankind for as long as we’ve possessed the tools to make such things possible.”
Yes, and the only meaningful inroads against such have been made by the system that Dick Hunter and his ilk deride as “racist” at every opportunity. Likewise the subjugation of women and the poverty of the masses.
Meanwhile we’re just supposed to ignore what happened in Nazi Germany, the U.S.S.S.R., Cambodia, China, North Korea, and every other country where his preferred non-racist, non-slavery-supporting, worker’s paradise has ever been implemented.
You can’t wish away slavery and colonialism, and I was simply wondering in what conservative alt history can these processes be made morally neutral or positive, when its apparently heresy to believe that they had a powerful effect on the world we live in.
Zeus on a Zamboni, son. The history of every single nation on the earth is chock-full of awful things and good things, all mixed in together. Only a profoundly stupid idiot would look at just the bad stuff or just the good stuff and figure they had the measure of the country’s history.
Slavery was evil AND the Founders enshrined “all men are created equal” in our founding documents.
Our government was declaring liberty AND slaves were sold in Washington DC at the same time.
Here’s the thing: They were bitterly aware of the awful juxtaposition of those two things, even those who inherited slaves with their estates. It’s just that slavery and the wicked ideas about race that justified it were so deep-seated they didn’t know if such evil could ever be rooted out of the human heart.
Certainly not in their lifetimes. But they planted a time-bomb in the Constitution that eventually detonated as the Civil War. If it were not for the concepts of liberty in our founding documents, the tension between Slave and Free states never would have come to a head.
Are you such a moron that you don’t know that slavery has been the rule in human society, not the invention of Evil White Englishmen? Do you not know that where slavery was practiced, it just went on and on: no Civil War, no Emancipation Proclamation, no insistence that slavery is a profound insult to God and to Liberty and must be abolished?
Cripes, these kids who think that history began in 1980.
^ The antimatter of rhetoric, expertly crafted and thus naturally compelling to the fool, using lots of the terms of normal objectivity.
But it explodes when it touches reality. Reminds me of Barry claiming to be all constitutional because he’s a representative of the people.
— whose rights he’s destroying as part of that whole getting-things-done transparent bullshit … invented by the transparent lying Clintons, as it happens, to obscure their malfeasance.
Problematic, that. As is simply being a liar simply, Dalekhunter.
Notice how an oppression begins.
In my circles, it’s taken as axiomatic that slavery and colonialism have been the default condition of mankind for as long as we’ve possessed the tools to make such things possible. Until very recently, it was the norm for one group to invade the territory of their neighbors whenever the opportunity presented itself. When they didn’t conquer and keep that territory for themselves, they pillaged it, taking any valuable goods they could carry, burning the rest, and making slaves of the defeated.
Of course ten thousand years of this behavior is going to have a profound effect on the world we live in! If there were to be heresy, it would be to believe otherwise! What’s remarkable about the Enlightenment, and our system of government that flowed from that Enlightenment, is its rejection of those historical norms, and its embrace of individual liberty as a foundational value. “We hold these truths to be self-evident” was written at a point in history when damn few people anywhere thought there was anything self-evident at all about them.
The fact that you know nothing of the history of mankind, and purposefully overlook the remarkable successes that we’ve made to overcome thousands of years of the strong ruling over the weak as a matter of course, really goes a long way toward explaining your failure to recognize the myriad truths that this community has watched sail over your head. I do hope — not just for your sake, but for the common good — that you avail yourself of some books on history and anthropology that haven’t been written by leftist progressives serving an anti-liberty agenda. It would do everyone a lot of good.
This.
But that can’t happen again, geoffb, such is the nature of our time and furthermore, the reassurance of our inherently-protective POTUS, simply because he is that POTUS.
In this constitutional republic, he means.
It’s impossible here and so, for example, Dalekhunter’s insistence that bad shit happens should be ignored on its face.
Wait…
Pablo, I don’t know who you’re quoting*, but I’m sure he’s totally RAAAAACIST!
* (of course I know who you’re quoting.)
Ok I give. Who’s the quotee??
?
Having a powerful effect and remaining the case long after the problems were self-rectified, thanks to the very foundational documents of the nation that this buffoon feels are “constraining” him, are two entirely different things.
You’d think people who adopt “forward” as their slogan would get tired of reaching backward all the time to find something to gripe over.
Same as who I’m quoting above and linked.
An emission from DK merits no other.
Willatty, that would be Frederick Douglass.
sdferr, you flipped your bird.
yep, he got upended last night.
Ceiling cat involved in that?
T’was the DevilRays.
“Montana Governor Lies About the Constitution, Vetoes 2nd Amendment Protection Bill”.
Helping to not constrain Obama too much because …..???
What he seems to see/think that we have in place is a democracy not a constitutional republic. You’d think someone who sees himself as a “minority” would have more appreciation of the limits placed on government power and the ability of 51% to do as they will with the other 49%.
People who didn’t want ObamaCare, still don’t want it, and will never want it until the last generation that remembers what better-than-half-assed health care was like, is dead.
Somehow that didn’t constrain you, little god-king.
dalekhunter, would you mind elucidating me on the extent of your formal education? Major/college/grad school?
“Well, the government is us.”
Well if the government is “us,” then “we” are shredding the CFR, resetting the budget and the tax rates to zero, and demolishing 2/3rds of the federal buildings in Washington. It would be 3/3rds of the buildings, but we’re constrained by a system.
JHo: that gif is going to be haunting my nightmares tonight. Thanks, dude.
“The government is us.”
And so we enter into the murky realm of Magritte’s famous painting prominently labeled Ceci n’est pas un pipe, reminding us the image of a thing is not the thing. Mistakes are yet made, and ObaZma depends on it.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Except that it was a lie. He *doesn’t* recognize that he’s constrained by these agreements, he simply *says* that he is so you won’t watch too closely while he violates them.
It’s the Joe Isuzu ploy. TRUST US.
Ask yourself why he’s asking for that trust at all – so he can do the thing those constraints disallow. Because if he wasn’t doing that thing, it wouldn’t be a trust issue.
Besides, their entire administrative record is based on using new scandals to prevent old scandals from being resolved, and he asks for trust?
“I Am Constrained By A System That Our Founders Put In Place”
Is the damn it! at the end of that implied or inferred?
Joe Wilson had him pegged years ago. And was immediately shouted down by his own party. And then apologized. Apologized for telling the truth, of course.
Grant was in many respects a fairly mediocre meat and potatoes general. He beat Lee because unlike his more celebrated predecessors once he engaged Lee he kept the pressure on despite taking losses and forced Lee’s army to stay and fight beyond its endurance.
We have too many tactical genius types who are afraid of getting pinned down into a solid front by the enemy in the GOP. They get nothing much done because they fear risk. They have fancy footwork but won’t stand block and return the punches.
The GOP needs a simpler Grant like figure who will hold some ground and bloody the other side instead of running fancy retreats to conserve strength for some future engagement that will never come.
“needs a simpler Grant like figure who will hold some ground and bloody the other side ”
Rand Paul is currently running way ahead of the Little God King in Time Magazine’s annual poll of the most influential people.
http://time100.time.com/2013/03/28/time-100-poll/slide/the-results/
McCain and Romney are not on the list.
If I suggest Palin, will happy go into an orgiastic snow billy fit?
Asked and answered.
I Am Constrained By A System That Our Founders Put In Place
*cou-bullsh*t-gh*
Longer Obama:
“If the Republicans had a spine I would impeached because I have done so many things that prove that I don’t believe I Am Constrained By A System That Our Founders Put In Place.”
Palin is on the list right after Billy Mays
Fortunately for the spineless, there are enough Democrats in the Senate that they’ll never be put to the test.
Oh, I don’t know about that. I figure the GotCBH might have a little pop quiz in store.
Thanks for summoning the yellow peril, RI Red.
[…] sad and troubling that the points about Obama that Jeff Goldstein felt compelled to make again yesterday has to be made at all, but there are still so many Americans out there who, after five-plus years […]
It has been too shy and retiring since the subject turned from its all-consuming garriage obsession, cranky.
Happy, I agree that Willy Mays was a better all-round player than Sarah, but she’s got him in name-recognition.
Plus Billy Mays is pushing up daisies.
So’s Sarah Palin, politically speaking.
Fortunately, political careers, like Lazarus, can be resurrected.
Other political careers however refuse to stay decently dead and buried.