Saturday night at a Nashville fundraiser, former President Bill Clinton and his VP, Al Gore, were together again, pressing hard for health care.

The assembled group of diners spent roughly $600,000.00 for the honor of spending the evening with their idols, who took the chance to push the alleged importance of a national health care system.  Gore spouted his usual platitudes, specifically that the country has a “moral duty” to pass Obama’s unpopular health reforms, but it was Bill Clinton who brought the issue home – at least for Democrats.

“We need to pass a bill this year,” Clinton said, “Doing nothing is not only the worst thing we can do for the economy, it’s the worst thing we can do for the country. It’s also the worst thing we can do for the Democrats.”

Let’s set aside the fact that no one has suggested we “do nothing.”  We’ll ignore the truth: that the opposition party has come up with a multitude of ideas geared toward fixing the current system rather than scrapping it and starting over with a massive, unsustainable bureaucracy.  Let’s just focus on the fact that Bill thinks that a failure to pass health care before the end of the year would be bad for Dems.

In one sense, he’s right.  If the Dems fail to get Obamacare this year, 2010 will get ugly.  If Democrat wonks like Charlie Cook are even halfway correct in suggesting that the party may lose 20+ seats in next year’s election, there is no way that moderate Dems will tackle such a third rail issue while campaigning.  Their failure to pass it will look like tremendous weakness, showcasing an inability to achieve their number one goal even as they hold the Presidency and overwhelming majorities in Congress.  The far left base, already displeased with what it incorrectly views as rampant Presidential and Congressional centrism, will be furious.

On the other hand, it’s becoming less and less likely that the Dems have any real chance of passing the unpopular public option unless they do so without any bipartisan support.  If they do, the damage to their party will be far, far worse.

The nuclear option, called “reconciliation,” is the go-it-alone Democrat plan to ram a neutered health care bill down the throats of a nation now 80% opposed to it.  It’s already receiving serious consideration, and when Congress reconvenes, it may be put into action.  Make no mistake, if they do it, it will decimate the Democratic Party. 

Sure, the far left will love it.  No one is arguing that.  The base will be ecstatic.  However, Obama’s support among moderates and independents is already plummeting.  If he leads the fight for reconciliation, he will lose them, and the loss of that support will bury the party for the foreseeable future.

If Obama was smart, he’d scrap the House and Senate plans, take a deep breath, and start over.  This time, he could actually try for the bipartisan involvement he likes to pretend he worked for the first time.  Mind you, the resulting plan would still be bloated and unnecessary, but he could claim a massive win and, just maybe, save his party from the impending disaster of the 2010 elections.

Obama’s problem is that he won’t do it.  He can’t.  His ego won’t allow it.  If there is one problem we’ve seen from this President, time and time again, it’s that he can’t separate himself from the issues he champions.  In Barack’s White House, any defeat seems to be taken as a personal slap in the face.

So, he’ll lock his party into a collision course with next year’s elections, hoping that there’s enough of the old Obama charm left to save his party’s skin.

If the Dems are planning on taking that route, they’d better hope the polls are wrong.

- Robert Laurie

 

Over the last few days, Ted Kennedy’s death has, of course, brought up the Chappaquiddick incident.  We are told that we should view the death of Mary Jo Kopechne as a “terrible mistake” that led Teddy to change his ways.  According to Kennedy’s fans, Mary Jo’s drowning was a turning point in a grief-stricken life, and a terrible burden which the Senator would spend the rest of his life trying to work off.

As usual with the Kennedy family, the facts don’t support the claims.

At 11:15, July 17th 1969, Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne left a party together.  Teddy was driving.  Their car went off a narrow bridge, flipped over, and sank to the bottom of the bay, landing on its roof.  Ted got out, and swam to the surface.  Mary Jo did not.

After that, things get hazy as the facts about Kennedy’s subsequent actions seem to come almost solely from his own testimony.  Ted claims that he dove back down several times, but was unable to get Kopechne out of the submerged vehicle.  So, what did he do?

Did He:
A: Get to a phone and call for help?
B:  Run to the well-lit home of Pierre Malm (135 meters from the accident) to get help?
C: Call the police?
D: None of the above

Of course, it’s D.  Ted took a break, relaxing in the tall grass by the bay for an unspecified amount of time. 

After regaining his composure, he walked all the way back to the party he’d left with Mary Jo, passing four homes on the way.  Once he got to the house, he asked two of his buddies, Joseph Gargan and Paul Markham, to return to the accident with him, where they could help him dive some more. 

They agreed, though both later claimed that they’d insisted the whole time that Kennedy should report the accident to the authorities.  Ted refused, and the three of them went into the water in an effort save Kopechne.  When that failed, an exhausted Ted Kennedy decided to swim across the 500 meter channel and return to his Edgartown hotel.  Still not interested in reporting the accident, he went to sleep. 

According to Kennedy’s testimony “I almost tossed and turned and walked around that room … I had not given up hope all night long that, by some miracle, Mary Jo would have escaped from the car.”

That’s right, he almost tossed and turned. 

Or, was it the noisy shenanigans next door?  You see, at 2:55 that morning, he called the front desk and complained that rowdy party-goers were keeping him up.

At 7:30 the next morning, he still had not called police, and was talking to a fellow guest about the exciting finish to a sailboat race the previous day.

At 8:00 am, Gargan and Markham showed up at the inn, and the trio got into an argument.  Kennedy testified that his friends wanted to know why he hadn’t called the cops.   He said he was thinking “about my own thoughts and feelings as I swam across that channel … that somehow when they arrived in the morning that they were going to say that Mary Jo was still alive.”

No such news came, and the three men boarded the ferry back to Chappaquiddick Island, where Kennedy found a pay phone and began calling other friends for advice.  He never alerted the police.

Earlier that morning however, the car and Mary Jo Kopechne’s body were found by a pair of fishermen.  A police diver, John Farrar, was sent down to the wreck to remove the body.  At the inquest he testified that he found Mary Jo’s body crumpled up in one corner of the vehicle, where an air pocket had formed. 

He believed that she had “lived for at least two hours down there.”  His assertion was reiterated by Mary Jo’s mortician, who said the woman had died of asphyxiation, not drowning.

Kennedy plead guilty to a single charge of “leaving the scene of an accident” and was sentenced to a two-month incarceration.   The sentence was suspended due what the prosecutor called Kennedy’s “character and prior reputation.”

That was that.  Kennedy went on to become the third longest-serving Senator in US history, and claimed that the tragedy of Kopechne’s death inspired him to work tirelessly to redeem himself.

Ed Klein, a close Kennedy friend, and former editor of Newsweek and the New York Times Magazine painted a different picture in a recent NPR interview.

So, next time someone tells you what a wonderful man he was, how full of compassion, remorse, and spirit he was, remind them of this.  Remind them of Mary Jo Kopechne, down there in the dark, desperately clinging to life, while Kennedy was back at the hotel complaining about how he couldn’t sleep.

Remind them that, for the rest of his life, it was something he liked to joke about.

- Robert Laurie

Obama’s week on the vineyard, spent golfing and enjoying a 30 million dollar mansion, has apprently been too stressful.  This was according to White House spokesman Bill Burton, who is perhaps most famous for his constant refusal to answer Megyn Kelly’s questions when interviewed on Fox News.

Burton said that the notion of the president enjoying a news-free vacation week was “wishful thinking,” and went on to joke that Obama needs a ”break from his vacation.”

As a result of all the stress, Obama will extend his vacation by a weekend, which he will spend at Camp David.

When asked about the matter, Burton said “As I recall, the previous president [took] quite a bit of vacation himself, and I don’t think anyone bemoaned that.”

Huh.  Really, Mr. Burton?  You don’t think anyone bemoaned that?  Your ceaseless denial of reality is always so impressive.

- Robert Laurie

Cindy Sheehan, the famous anti-war protester who used to set up camp outside George Bush’s Crawford Ranch, is at it again.  This time she’s on Martha’s Vineyard, and the war that’s got her all riled up has a new Commander In Chief.

“The reason I am here is because … even though the facade has changed in Washington D.C., the policies are still the same,”  Sheehan said.  “We are here to make the wars unpopular again.”

She also claims that the President, despite his anti-war rhetoric, has escalated the situation in Afghanistan and has failed to leave Iraq.  Apparently, the racist, illegal, war of oppression and oil theft now belongs to Obama.

When we last saw Sheehan, she was presented as a lone-wolf crusader, the bereaved leader of a grass roots movement battling the tyranny of US imperialism.  Now, she’s presented as…well…OK, she’s not presented at all.  The major media outlets, which have continually proven themselves to be willing participants in the Obama agenda, have chosen to remain mum on the subject.

Once again, now that Obama’s been elected, dissent is no longer the highest form of patriotism.  Someone get a memo to Sheehan.

- Robert Laurie

Greenpeace leader Gerd Leipold has, for years, been running around the world telling us that the polar ice sheet is melting.  In fact, he claims it’s shrinking at a rate of 50 cubic meters per second, and will be completely dissolved by 2030.

Better make that “used to claim,” because during an interview on the BBC news show “Hardtalk” he was forced to admit that it was all made up.  It was, he said, a way of “emotionalizing issues” that concern Greenpeace.  The line of questioning stemmed from a July 15th press release, in which the organization made its annual claim regarding the vanishing polar ice cap.  In the piece, Leipold said that by 2030, we would be looking at an “ice free” North Pole.

What does he say now? Well, after spending a few minutes trying to dodge the question, he replied, “I don’t think it will be melting by 2030. … That may have been a mistake.”

Strange.  It seems that, since they had all that scientific data to back up their claims, such a “mistake” would have been impossible. 

Unless of course, the science was bogus. 

Greenpeace wouldn’t do that, would they?

- Robert Laurie

All you un-American protesters out there had better watch it, because the Commander In Chief has a new ally to add to his health care “coalition of the willing.”   These days, if you’re speaking out against the house plan, you’re speaking out against God. 

The all powerful force for good, God, who Democrats constantly remind us did not create the Earth, humans, and the rest of the Universe, wants us to pass Obama’s medical plan.  He does not exist when anti-abortion folks use him as a reason to overturn Roe vs. Wade, nor does he exist where the concept of intelligent design is concerned.  However, now that the President needs him, he does exist to promote socialized medicine.

Claiming that “We are God’s Partners in matters life and death” Barack Obama has been speaking with Rabbis and Priests, urging them to explain the need for Obamacare to their congregations.   So, next time you head to church or temple, don’t be surprised if you hear the message that there’s an all-powerful being who really wants the House plan to pass.

Honestly, considering that previously it’s had little use for the almighty, it’s a bit surprising to see the White House “clinging to its religion” in this way.

How many messiahs can they cram into one building?

- Robert Laurie

 

The Obama administration has decided to shut down the controversial Flag@whitehouse.gov email address amid controversy and criticism over its possible abuse.  Given the fact that it was set up so that American citizens could snitch about “fishy” health care emails that their friends and families were forwarding to them, one wonders what kind of activities Obama feels would constitute misuse. 

Regardless of presidential intent, last week thousands of people began receiving spam emails promoting the president’s health care reform plan.  The problem? Many of them never visited the site, never consented to put their email address on the government list, and didn’t want to receive the propaganda in the first place.

Shortly after the program began, history’s most inept White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, issued this statement:  “We’re not collecting names from those e-mails. … All we’re asking people to do is if they’re confused about what health care reform is going to mean to them, we’re happy to help clear that up for you. Nobody is keeping any body’s names.”

It’s an obvious lie because, according to the law, the White House is forced to collect and keep a list of those emails, just as it’s forced to compile a record of any correspondence it receives.

Gibbs’ denial led to the following confrontation with FoxNews correspondent Major Garrett.

Interesting that, while busily claiming there were no government email lists, Gibbs makes the argument that he’d have to check Garrett’s names against “the list.”  Hmmmmm…   The pattern of denial went on for about five days before crumbling.

Now, the white house does admit that they were sending the emails but have opted, of course,  to pass the blame to some nebulous, non-specific third parties.  According to the President’s staff, it seems these nameless groups were visiting the White House website and putting in all sorts of names, so that everyone would receive the official word on Obamacare.  Which third parties?  Well, depending on the day, they’re either left wing or right wing organizations determined to either hamper or aid passage of Obama’s reforms.  In a move that we can only assume is intended to protect their privacy, Obama’s team has chosen not to name them.

Don’t worry, though.  You can still rat out your friends.  Just because Obama has eliminated the flag@whitehouse.gov email address doesn’t mean he hasn’t given you any other McCarthey-esque options.  If someone is exercising their free speech in a way that frightens, confuses, or offends you, just go to http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck and put their name on the new non-existent list.  It’s a little more involved now, with a couple of easily-handled steps to ensure that those nasty third parties don’t abuse the system.  We promise, though, use the site properly and your friend’s names and email addresses will still wind up in government hands.

As Texas Senator John Cornyn wrote in a letter to President Obama: “I can only imagine the level of justifiable outrage had your predecessor asked Americans to forward emails critical of his policies to the White House.”

There goes crzazy ol’ John again, trying to bring logic to the Obama administration….  Put his name on “the list.”

- Robert Laurie

On August 11, Rep. Phillip Pavlov and 44 co-sponsors introduced  the “Firearms Freedom Act.”  The bill will “make certain findings regarding intrastate commerce; to prohibit federal regulation of firearms, firearms accessories, and ammunition involved purely in intrastate commerce in [the State of Michigan]; to provide for certain exceptions to federal regulation; and to establish certain manufacturing requirements.”

Yup, that’s right, Michigan has jumped on the 10th Amendment bandwagon.  It’s a trail blazed by Montana and Tennesee, both of which have passed similar legeslation.  Basically, the idea is that while the federal government has the right to regulate interstate commerce, they have no right to control INTRAstate commerce.  The bottom line is, the feds would have no authority over any firearm as long as it never crosses state lines.

Michigan now joins 37 other states who have passed, or are considering, similar legislation.  If the bill succeeds, it would negate most federal firearms laws, a move the ATF is already railing against.  Last month the agency issued a statement saying laws like the ones in Montana and Tennessee don’t matter.

Tennessee judiciary chairman Mae Beavers sees things differently and fired back.

The Federal Government, by way of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms expressed its own view of the Tenth Amendment this week when it issued an open letter to ‘all Tennessee Federal Firearms Licensees’ in which it denounced the opinion of Beavers and the Tennessee legislature.  ATF assistant director Carson W. Carroll wrote that ‘Federal law supersedes the Act’, and thus the ATF considers it meaningless.

Constitutional historian Kevin R.C. Gutzman sees this as something far removed from the founders’ vision of constitutional government:

“Their view is that the states exist for the administrative convenience of the Federal Government, and so of course any conflict between state and federal policy must be resolved in favor of the latter.”

“This is another way of saying that the Tenth Amendment is not binding on the Federal Government. Of course, that amounts to saying that federal officials have decided to ignore the Constitution when it doesn’t suit them.”

 

 

Now, the fight will head to the courts.  It’s a battle that most people don’t even have on their radar, and one The Robalution suspects the Dems are utterly unprepared for.  If you care about your constitutional rights, support it.

For more information on how to do that, go here: http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/

- Robert Laurie