Reflections From a Murky Pond

The Obama Regime and the Liberals in Congress are masters of Orwellian Newspeak – what would be called bald-faced lying among Americans. Nowhere is this more evident than in attempts to foist ObamaCare onto an unwilling American people.

Misdirection after misdirection, re-branding of terms after re-branding of terms, half-truth after half-truth – and outright lie after outright lie were the orders of business for President Obama and his Socialist myrmidons in getting ObamaCare through – though never actually passed by – Congress.

And the lies and/or Newspeak just come drooling out of jabbering maws the soldiers of Obama’s Regime, namely the thugs in the Justice Department who report to Obama’s boy, Attorney General  Eric Holder.

First Obama and his Liberals claimed that the Individual Mandate included in ObamaCare wasn’t a tax; now, faced with court challenges by over 20 states and several private organizations and being worried that SCOTUS would rightly rule that forcing Americans to purchase health insurance was unconstitutional, they’re defending their position as being an exercise of the federal government’s “power to lay and collect taxes.”

Shockingly, this is even being reported by the New York Times:

When Congress required most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, Democrats denied that they were creating a new tax. But in court, the Obama administration and its allies now defend the requirement as an exercise of the government’s “power to lay and collect taxes.” And that power, they say, is even more sweeping than the federal power to regulate interstate commerce.

Administration officials say the tax argument is a linchpin of their legal case in defense of the health care overhaul and its individual mandate, now being challenged in court by more than 20 states and several private organizations.

Under the legislation signed by President Obama in March, most Americans will have to maintain “minimum essential coverage” starting in 2014. Many people will be eligible for federal subsidies to help them pay premiums.

In a brief defending the law, the Justice Department says the requirement for people to carry insurance or pay the penalty is “a valid exercise” of Congress’s power to impose taxes.

Congress can use its taxing power “even for purposes that would exceed its powers under other provisions” of the Constitution, the department said. For more than a century, it added, the Supreme Court has held that Congress can tax activities that it could not reach by using its power to regulate commerce.

While Congress was working on the health care legislation, Mr. Obama refused to accept the argument that a mandate to buy insurance, enforced by financial penalties, was equivalent to a tax.

“For us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase,” the president said last September, in a spirited exchange with George Stephanopoulos on the ABC News program “This Week.”

When Mr. Stephanopoulos said the penalty appeared to fit the dictionary definition of a tax, Mr. Obama replied, “I absolutely reject that notion.”

Obviously President Obama has a lot of bellyfeel that the SCOTUS’s potential scuttling of his planned government takeover of the health insurance industry is ungood because it interferes with his doublethink regarding the individual mandate in ObamaCare being a tax or not.

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Keep your eyes open. Travel light but load heavy, and always put another round in the enemy after they’re down.

In these quickly darkening and degenerate days Americans are under siege from the Leftists – the Liberals and Progressive – who live within our nation but are no true part of it just as a cancer may be within the body but is not of the body.

The Left is quick to attack Americans. They do their worst to paint us as racists, bigots, selfish oafs, and anything other lie that they can dream up.

These viscous verbal assaults, along with the low-grade but consistent use of physical violence, are based upon fear, however, far more than they’re based upon the hate and/or loathing that the Left feels towards America and American.

One need look no further than to how these Liberals and Progressives, along with their minority tenants, responded to the town hall meetings during the run-up to ObamaCare or the Tea Party protests to see that this true. They are terrified of our anger because they have no recourse to it.

Americans need to either shrug off these slanders or embrace them as a motivation and a guide book to how to purge the body of America of the diseased tissue within it. To do otherwise is to become complicit in the crimes that these Leftists seek to commit against America, the Civilized World, and humanity as a whole.

The 19th century Dutch politician and theologian, Abraham Kuyper, said it better than I ever could.

When principles that run against your deepest convictions begin to win the day, then battle is your calling, and peace has become sin; you must, at the price of dearest peace, lay your convictions bare before friend and enemy, with all the fire of your faith.

– Abraham Kuyper
Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader

That is how it must be if we are to save America from depredations of the Leftists and prevent President Obama’s followers from enacting his plan to “fundamentally change America.” Battle must be our calling; peace has become a sin because that peace is paid for by loss and corruption of our nation and the future of our children and our children’s children.

To those who would name me “extremist” I say, paraphrasing Barry Goldwater, “Extremism in the defense of America is no vice; moderation in pursuit of American liberties is no virtue!”

Remember though that not all wars are fought solely with the open clash of men and arms. War, even within the mortal realm, is fought on many planes and in many ways, not all of which involve physical violence and many of which employ it in only small, targeted amounts. It is war nonetheless and American must steel themselves to offer up sacrifices of blood and treasure upon the alters of America if we are to have any hope of victory.

If we can do that though, I believe we will achieve victory for our progeny because our enemies, as evidenced by the nature of their fears, do not have the faith and the will to do similarly.

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Keep your eyes open. Travel light but load heavy, and always put another round in the enemy after they’re down.

The seven dirty words are seven words in the English language that were considered highly inappropriate and unsuitable for broadcast on the public airwaves – television or radio – in the United States. Comedian George Carlin first listed them in 1972 in his monologue “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television”.  The words were avoided in scripted material, and”bleeped out”  in those rare instances in which they were used.

That sort of censorship was true then in 1972, and it remained largely true throughout the intervening years, but it looks like it has now changed, possibly dramatically.

On Tuesday, July 13, 2010 a federal appellate court threw out the FCC’s rules on indecent speech. This is a big win for broadcasters that could lead to a new Supreme Court test of the government’s power to control what is said on television and radio. For now, the court’s ruling will likely end the commission’s campaign to keep the airwaves clean of even spontaneous vulgarisms with the threat of punitively large fines.

From the Wall Street Journal:

A federal appeals court threw out the FCC’s rules on indecent speech Tuesday, in a big win for broadcasters that could lead to a new Supreme Court test of the government’s power to control what is said on television and radio.

A three-judge panel of the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said the Federal Communications Commission’s indecency policies violate the First Amendment and are “unconstitutionally vague, creating a chilling effect that goes far beyond the fleeting expletives at issue here.”

The decision doesn’t mean broadcast TV and radio shows will now be littered with profanity, because advertisers and viewers would likely complain. But the ruling will likely end, for now, the commission’s campaign to cleanse the airwaves of even spontaneous vulgarisms with the threat of hefty fines.

“I think the notion that broadcasters are going to be dropping f-bombs in prime time is ludicrous,” said Dennis Wharton, a spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters. “If we wanted to do that we could do that from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.,” when FCC indecency standards don’t apply.

Ashby Jones and Joe White discuss the ruling by a federal appeals court that struck down the FCC’s indecency policy. The court said the agency’s efforts to punish broadcasters for allowing “fleeting” expletives was “unconstitutionally vague.”

The judges found that the agency’s decision to sanction broadcasters’ airing of one-time or “fleeting” expletives is unconstitutional, and suggested the FCC’s broader indecency enforcement efforts are unconstitutional as well.

Fox along with other broadcasters sued the FCC in 2006 after the agency said the networks had violated indecency rules when airing “un-bleeped” profanities of celebrities during live televised events and levied heavy fines and penalties against them. Since the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York affirmed the broadcasters’ lawsuit President Obama’s FCC will have to take this the US Supreme Court if they wish to continue continue to police the language used in broadcast media as they have been doing.

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