So I’m sitting at my keyboard and the kids are all out somewhere and my wife is at work and I’m wondering if there’s something I could post over at TPM.  And I can’t think of much.  But I do a little web crawling and find that Jeff Lord, former Reagan White House political director, has apparently been woken early from his afternoon nap and he’s feeling a little pissy about it, too.  At least, I presume that’s the underlying motive for this Special Report over at The American Spectator entitled Freedom and the View From Obamaland, which I will proceed to share with you, Gentle Readers.

Pull back for a moment from the day-to-day and see the pattern.

 

Okay, I’m game.   I’ll pull back from the day to day… er… day to day what?  Never mind, I’m pulling back, I’m pulling back, I’m pulling waaaaaaaaaay baaaaaack… okay, now, what was this about a pattern…?

 

Talk radio. Oil. Guns. Global warming. Smoking.

 

It’s… um… er… I… don’t  SEE a pattern… is this some kind of test, or something…?  Because I always do crappy on those pattern recognition things they make you take to get into MENSA…

On the surface this is a seemingly unconnected laundry list of issues, their connection one to another tangential at best.

 

It… DOES seem that way.  Yes, it does.  How… sinister.

 

Wait.  Talk radio is an issue?  Really?

 

 Or is it?

 

That’s what I’m asking you.  Is it?  I don’t think it is.

 

Oh, wait,  he’s talking about that pattern-whatchamacallit.  The one I can’t see in the seemingly unconnected laundry list of issues.  One of which isn’t an issue.    I mean, unless, you know, subtypes and genres of broadcast media are actually issues, which I don’t think they are.  Well, maybe porn is, for some people… whatever. 

In the increasingly disturbing view we are all getting of the messianic world that is Obamaland,

 

Okay, first, I don’t have any ‘view’ of ‘Obamaland’, because I don’t know what or where ‘Obamaland’ is.  Wait.  Is it that huge supercontinent from pre-history that all the other continents were formed out of?  Oh, no, that’s ‘Gonwandaland’.   So I have no clue what’s up with this ‘Obamaland’ thing, but I will say that the only ‘view’ I’m finding ‘increasingly disturbing’ around here is the one I’m getting of Jeff Lord’s writing style.

 

these subjects in fact have a chilling commonality.

Hold on, hold on, first they’re issues and now they’re subjects.  I’m calling shenanigans. 

* Talk Radio: Think back for a moment to that threatening letter sent earlier this year to Rush Limbaugh's business partners at Clear Channel Communications by Senator Harry Reid, the Democrats' Senate leader.

 

It… what?  Harry Reid is sending threatening letters to Clear Channel Communications?  Holy crap!  If only the author had linked to a copy of that letter, so I could see what it says… wait… here it is… hmmmm… okay, I don’t know, I mean, I’m not a lawyer or a former Reagan White House political director or anything, but doesn’t a ‘threatening letter’ have to actually threaten something?  This letter doesn’t seem to threaten anything.  I mean, I’d say it’s definitely a scolding letter, in that it says Rush Limbaugh is a jerk and he should apologize for insulting our troops over in Iraq, but nowhere does it threaten anything. 

 

 It was signed by all Senate Democrats, prominently including Barack Obama. While Limbaugh famously turned the attempt to intimidate him into a hilarious charity bidding war that raised four million dollars for the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation, make no mistake.

 

It… I… okay, I won’t.  Thanks for your concern.

 

 The idea behind the letter was an attempt by government officials to intimidate a private citizen into silence. To shut down Limbaugh's freedom to run his radio show the way he sees fit.

 

Okay, I read that letter and it seems to me that it was an attempt by government officials to call a private citizen a jackass without actually calling him a jackass, and to indicate that he should apologize for one particularly offensive example of his typical jackass behavior.   Nowhere does it say anything about, say, putting handcuffs on Limbaugh and leading him off to jail, as fellow conservative mouthpiece Bill O’Reilly wants to do with ‘liberal underminers’, nor does it even advocate killing all conservatives except two for each zoo, so future generations can always remember just how dangerous conservatives are, as Rush himself has advocated for liberals.   

 

Silencing freedom is also the point with the push by Obama supporters to revive the so-called Fairness Doctrine, a move that would effectively shut down the free-market world of talk radio as Americans by the millions have so enthusiastically come to know it.

 

Because, y’know, God forbid racist hate-spewing wanklords like Limbaugh have to provide equal time to opposing viewpoints on their own shows.    I mean, jesus christ, that’s what free speech zones are for!

* SUVs: Remember this gem a while back from Barack Obama?

"We can't drive our SUVs and, you know, eat as much as we want and keep our homes on, you know, 72 degrees at all times, whether we're living in the desert or we're living in the tundra, and then just expect every other country is going to say OK, you know, you guys go ahead keep on using 25 percent of the world's energy, even though you only account for 3 percent of the population, and we'll be fine. Don't worry about us. That's not leadership."

 

I do remember that, yeah.  That’s one of those reasons I supported Obama so fervently in the primaries.  Damn, I wish he still said cool shit like that.

 

The point is not subtle.

 

God knows that subtlety is not the best policy when attempting to communicate with people like Jeff Lords.

 

Obama is laying the ground work here for the potential banning of SUVs as well as pushing regulations that will tell all of us at exactly what temperatures we must heat or cool our homes.

 

This is, truly, a horror.  It’s way better to just let everyone crank their thermostat as much as they want so we can completely fry our national energy grid and then NOBODY will have any electricity.  Well, except for the rich people with their own generators, for as long as they can afford to buy gas to run them.  That’s much MUCH more fair. 

 

Over at the website BanSUVs.com, an outpost of the type of thinking that prevails in Obamaland, the goal, as the name of their site proclaims is just that: banning SUVs because they are "endangering peoples lives" and are "high polluting."

 

And we must never never never pass laws against things simply because those things kill people or harm the environment.  I mean, what kind of crazy world would THAT be?

 

 The Obama point that we should no longer enjoy the freedom to "keep our homes on, you know, 72 degrees at all times, whether we're living in the desert or we're living in the tundra" has already emerged as a proposal in California. In this Obamaland vision the state would mandate that every heating and cooling system in a private dwelling include a "non-removable" FM receiver that would allow the government to decide the temperature inside your home.

 

Well, fuck ‘em!  I say we all heat our houses with an open wood fire in every room, and cool ourselves down in the summer by hiring great big Nubian slaves with giant ostrich feathers to fan us.  Or, y’know, Mexicans; they work cheap.  That’ll teach all those goddam bureaucratic control freaks in Obamaland!  Yeah!

* Global Warming: The answer in Obamaland is simple. Not only should there be no further debate ("Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers..." wrote Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman a while back),

 

Okay.

 

the demand is on for a Nuremberg-style trial for oil executives.

 

This is crazy talk.  Oil executives should get Guantanamo-style trials at best.

 

 Applauding the sentiments of climate "scientist" James Hansen, who suggested as much in a recent appearance before Congress, one enthusiastic denizen in the Daily Kos precincts of Obamaland put things more succinctly: "Put the bastards on trial on national television."

 

No, no!  Then they’ll want lawyers and everything.  The Gitmo model works WAY better.

Are you seeing the thread here?

 

Uh… wait.  There’s thread?

If not, there's more of this kind of thing. Also on Obama's list of things he either wants to ban or has considered banning are ammunition magazines, semi-automatic weapons, smoking (to be resolved with a federal ban on smoking in public places) and -- at one now infamous campaign rally -- Muslim women wearing the hijab.

 

I, personally, want to ban, or have considered banning, refried beans,  hand held nuclear glowsticks, morons on the Internet, conservative talk radio hosts, the ability of insurance companies to deny coverage, and all warm weather clothing for good looking women more concealing than a thong bikini.  However, it’s unlikely that I could get such laws through Congress even if I were President, and last I heard, Obama is not running for Supreme Being.  Although what with the new ‘unitary executive’, maybe I’m wrong about all that.

 

The Obama campaign apologized for the latter incident, but the apology only underscores the point. While his staffers may be sensitive to the image of Muslims in the Obama campaign,

 

Fuckers.  I mean, sensitive to the image of Muslims?  That’s intolerable.

 

 they either know or intuit that the idea of restricting the freedom of others is, as a rule, perfectly acceptable in Obamaland.

But not in Conservative Land, where anybody can attend a Bush rally without getting arrested or moved to a free speech zone, and any adult can marry any other adult any time they want to, and adopt a kid, too!  Yay!

 

FOLLOW ALONG NOW to a just-released Obama commercial featuring Obama himself.

 

Jesus I hate Obama commercials that feature Obama himself.  I mean, WTF?

 

Also, why are the first three words of that sentence capitalized, anyway?

 

Doubtless un-intentionally it speaks exactly to what lies at the heart of the philosophical heart of Obamaland.

 

Oh, doubtless.  Doubtless.

 

 Praising himself for spurning a post-Harvard Law School opportunity to work on Wall Street in the heart of free-market capitalism, the candidate boasts of his decision instead to "go to Chicago...helping neighborhoods devastated when steel plants closed." Helping them? Did he go out and raise capital to start a new business that would bring jobs to the neighborhood? Well, no. Job creation through the free market system was not at all what Obama had in mind. What did he have in mind as to how one creates jobs? As Obama himself expressed it in a 1995 interview with the Chicago Reader, Obama wondered if he could "figure out ways to use the political process to create jobs for our communities?"

 

Oh, motherfucker.  Like FDR, you mean?  Commie BASTARD.  It’s not government’s place to create jobs for poor people; it’s government’s place to prop up the financial sector with billion dollar loans while cutting taxes on the wealthy.  Yeah!

 

Still, there is some truth to this particular criticism.  It would have been much better if Obama had borrowed a lot of money, bought some land, and started a big plantation that all the out of work Chicago residents could pick cotton and watermelon on.  That would have been WAY better.

In other words, when faced with a disagreeable problem (in this case the lack of jobs) the answer for Obama always seems to get back to the manipulation of the political process to achieve the desired result.

 

And only Republicans are supposed to do that, goddamit.

Are Obamalanders uncomfortable with the free-market driven success of talk radio?

 

It… I… wait.  Obamalanders?

 

Then they will "figure out ways to use the political process" to shut it down. In the case of talk radio, how else to explain the threatening Reid-Obama letter to Rush Limbaugh's business partner?

 

Um… it wasn’t a threatening letter?  No, that’s too simple.  Space aliens were mind controlling Harry Reid?  Yeah, yeah, that works better.

 

How else does one explain the attempt to retrieve the "Fairness Doctrine" from the dustbin of history?

 

Um… we want every viewpoint to have the opportunity to be heard?  Because, you know, equal opportunity is one of those things that America is supposed to be all about?

 

Nah, that can’t be it.  It must be mind controlling space aliens again.

 

 These are nothing more or less than the "use of the political process" to subvert someone else's freedom. Period.

 

I don’t know.  Maybe there’s a little more to it, if you ‘step back from the day-to-day’ and really look hard at ‘the pattern’. 

 

Are Obamaland followers hostile to oil? Do they hate SUVs? Do they think you have no right to heat or cool your own home beyond what they consider politically correct? Do they think you should pay $5 -- or $6 or $7 or $8 or more -- for gas at the pump to ensure you conform to the Obamaland world-view?

 

I don’t know!  I don’t know!  Please tell me, for the love of God!

 

 Yes, they do think all of this

 

Wow.  Really?  Cool.

 

and their Obamaland answer is inevitable. They will "use the political process" to stop drilling off shore in its tracks.

 

It… but we’re… they… okay, wait.  Off shore drilling is already illegal.  Aren’t conservatives trying to ‘use the political process’ to START off shore drilling?

 

So too with stopping the use of oil shale or ANWR or anything else that even hints at allowing average Americans their basic freedom to drive whatever vehicle wherever they damn well please whenever they damn well please.

 

Which amendment was that again?  I forget. 

 

In Obamaland it is not only perfectly acceptable, it is gospel from the secular bible that they must use the political process to stop refineries from being built, to keep nuclear power plants from being built, to keep coal from being burned.

 

Because clean energy sucks!  Nobody has stock options on it, or anything!

 

Use the political process to forcibly mandate the temperature inside every single American home. As a matter of fact, why not just go all the way and nationalize the oil companies -- this actually being suggested by Obamaland's New York Congressman Maurice Hinchey.

 

Obamaland has Congressmen?  But they’re from New York?  I’m gettin dizzy here.

Tired of debating global warming?

 

Yes, please.

 

Use the political process to set up show-trials for oil company executives.

 

I… okay, that sounds like a good idea, actually…

 

Who will be around to object if you have successfully used the process to silence the world of talk radio?

 

Um… conservative asshats like you?  And, y’know, FOX News?  Plus most of the rest of the ‘mainstream media’…

As we learned in one of his last debates with Mrs. Clinton, presented with the economic fact-of-life that cutting the capital gains tax resulted in increased revenue for the government, not, as he was portraying it, a loss,

 

Wait, I can do this, too… ‘presented with the economic fact of life that cutting the capital gains tax resulted in DEcreased revenue for the government, not, as Jeff Lord was insisting, any kind of gain… See how easy it is to say anything you want, when you don’t have to cite any actual references or anything?

 

 the ringmaster of Obamaland simply shrugged, saying he would raise it anyway because to do anything else was "unfair."

 

Yeah, yeah, more of this ‘fair’ bullshit.  I mean, seriously, WTF.  You’d think he was a Democrat or something.  Or even a liberal.  God DAMN him.

 

 The idea of your having the freedom to do with your money as you please -- even when doing so increases the revenues for Washington politicians to spend -- was simply irrelevant to Obama.

 

Or maybe the idea of having the freedom to do with my money as I please even when doing so increases… wait… what was the middle thing again? 

 

No, your freedom must pass his "fairness test" -- and if it doesn't, well, too bad.

 

This ‘fair’ shit has totally got to go.  I mean, this is stupid!  Nobody was complaining about how unfair it was when the Republicans were running every branch of the government!  Well, no conservatives were, anyway, and liberals are all pussies, so who cares about them?  This sucks.

 

 Your income is going to suffer right along with your freedom to listen to talk radio, drive an SUV, debate global warming, eat what you please, heat your house the way you please or -- the latest Supreme Court decision notwithstanding -- own a gun if you please.

 

Having to care about the consequences of MY actions on OTHER people?  That’s not American! Did we lose a WAR or something?  This sucks!!!

Is there a problem in Obamaland with your constitutional right to own a gun? It's an easy-to-solve problem, as state senate candidate Obama proposed way back in 1996 when he filled out a questionnaire endorsing the idea of, you guessed it, just banning your freedom to own handguns.

Interestingly, when this questionnaire came to light the Obama camp denied their candidate had done this, which prompted the Politico to come up with an amended copy of the questionnaire plainly showing the candidate's own handwriting.

Heh.  Yeah, I figured you'd come up with a link to THAT document pretty frickin' quick.

The Obamaland acolytes say their leader favors the use of guns for hunting and target shooting, but on the issue of handguns -- well -- his stiff response to the 5-4 decision of the Court that insists gun ownership is, in fact, a constitutional right suggests that handguns in Obamaland would go the way of talk radio and oil.

 

That’s right.  Obama says he’s in favor of gun ownership, but you can’t trust THOSE people.  They all lie.  Especially when they’re filling out forms.  They learn how to do that when they’re applying for Welfare. 

 

The first Supreme Court vacancy announcement would have barely made it onto the cable news networks in an Obama Administration before an Obamalander would be named to fill the vacancy on the understanding that at the first opportunity he or she can grandly reverse that 5-4 decision and effectively ban the entire Second Amendment.

 

On the other hand, the first Supreme Court vacancy announcement would have barely made it onto the cable news networks in a McCain Administration before a McCainite would be named to fill the vacancy on the understanding that at the first opportunity he or she can grandly reverse that goddam annoying Roe vs. Wade decision and effectively ban a person’s right to privacy as regards what medical procedures they will or won’t have performed on their own bodies.   Which is way WAY better. .

 

SO LET'S SUM UP what America would look like in an age of Obama.

 

AND LET’S INCORRECTLY CAPITALIZE the first four words of a sentence because we’re kind of retarded, too.

To start there would be no more driving SUVs. No more Rush. For God's sake absolutely no driving your SUV while listening to Rush.

 

But… wait… if there’s no more SUVs, OR Rush, then… I… um… how can you… ::gibbering::

 

No more eating whatever you want.

 

No, goddamit, you will eat what the married gay liberal illegal black Mexicans tell you to eat, and LIKE it!!!  OR ELSE!!!!!

 

 Definitely no keeping your home as warm or as cool as you prefer.

 

But liberals will be able to, because they’re sneaky.  Especially the illegal Mexican liberals. 

 

 No capital gains cuts because they are unfair.

 

Once again, all this fair shit sucks.  This is America.  Rich people have a RIGHT to live in a society that is unfair in their favor. 

 

Your guns will be banned.

 

Or at least semi-automatic rifles that fire explosive rounds will, and god knows you can’t hunt anything without auto fire and explosive rounds.

 

And if you have a different opinion on global warming? All those lofty supporters of rights for terrorists are going to strip every oil executive in America of theirs in a heartbeat, live and in living color.

Which is totally un-American.  Here in the U.S., we only strip people’s rights when nobody is looking.   

Is anyone paying attention here? Today the targets are talk radio, oil, SUVs, or guns or debates on global warming and so on. But what about tomorrow and the day after that and the day and years after that?

 

First they came for the talk radio people, and I did nothing, except blog about it.  Then they came for the oil executives, and I did nothing, except blog about it.  Then they came for the gun nuts, and I did nothing (except hide my guns and blog about it).  Then they came for the people who don’t believe in global warming, and I did nothing, except stop talking about what a farce global warming is while they were in earshot, and blog about it. 

 

Then they came for my SUV, but I’d already traded it for a hybrid, so I laughed at them.

 

When they finally came for me, there was nobody left to help me, except those fucking hippies in the ACLU, who represented me for free and kept them from locking me up, just like all those other people before me.  Goddam I hate the ACLU. 

 

What freedoms will next be targeted with that deadliest trademark of an Obamalander -- moral superiority?

 

Yes.  Moral superiority is even worse than all this ‘fairness’ horse shit.  Conservatives hate people who are morally superior to them.  If only there weren’t so goddam many of them.

 

 What do we have when the sole purpose of the government as run by the chilling principles of Obamaland is to "use the political process" to remove freedoms large and small one by one by one?

I don’t know, I don’t know, please TELL me, please, please!

Someone needs to speak it plainly.

And you’re just the guy to do it.

 

The word is fascism.

 

It… um… okay, wait.  ‘Fascism’ is a word derived from the Italian ‘fasces’, which is a bundle of rods.  Mussolin used this symbol for his political movement, which is where the phrase ‘Fascist’ originates.  The bundle of rods symbolizes the use of force to accomplish political ends.  So, yeah, given that, pretty much any political system that uses force to accomplish its ends is ‘fascism’, absolutely.  Our government is ‘fascist’, yes, indeed.

 

But it’s going to be that way regardless of who wins what office in November, dude.  You just don’t like fascism’s new chocolate flavor, is all.