Progressive Racism, Again

[Sigh]

Here it is, made appallingly manifest, by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid:

It’s been obvious that they’re doing everything they can to make him fail.  And I hope, I hope—and I say this seriously—I hope that’s based on substance and not the fact that he’s African-American.

Because it’s impossible for a white man to criticize a black man.  That would be racist.

Never mind that Reid’s racism is an insult not just to every American, but in particular to those Americans who also happen to be black: Reid is saying that a black man is simply too child-like, too immature, too unintelligent to be able to handle being criticized by a fellow American who happens also to be white.

Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo

While the world, including our own government, decries the Egyptian government’s efforts to clear two Muslim Brotherhood encampments in downtown Cairo, it’s important to keep a couple of things in mind, regardless of what we might think about that crackdown.

The violence, the bloodshed, is entirely on the hands of the Brotherhood.  The police went in with water cannon and tear gas, and they were met with gunfire (including mortar rounds in other cities, as the Brotherhood’s decision to riot spread).  They’re openly rioting, but they’re cynically not limiting themselves to opposition to the Egyptian police: they’re also butchering any Coptic Christians that they can reach (generally in southern Egypt, as the Christians have been hunted out in the north, by this gang and others), desecrating these Christian churches in the process.  Never mind, just kill them all, seems to be the Brotherhood’s attitude.

The Brotherhood could have kept their protests peaceful.  Think what a powerful statement that would have been in the face of the force—however gentle—the police would still have had to use to clear those encampments.  Instead, the Brotherhood demanded violence, demanded to be killed in their protests so that they could be martyred.

This is a violent movement, bent on violent destruction of all who disagree with them.

Why Do Progressives Oppose a Safe Ballot?

Their latest opposition to protecting the sanctity of an American’s vote is in North Carolina, where the state’s government enacted a law that moves to protect a vote by ensuring the one casting it is the one who’s eligible to cast it, only casts it once, and is who he claims to be; and in front of the American Bar Association, in a speech by ex-Secretary of State and President wannabe Hillary Clinton.

The law contains these provisions, among others:

  • changes in how residents can vote that includes requiring them to show a photo ID at polling stations
  • eliminates a week of early voting, while maintaining 10 days of early voting
  • ends same-day registration
  • prohibits “out-of-precinct” voting
  • allows voters to cast a provisional ballot if they come to a polling station without proper ID
  • places additional campaign finance restrictions on lobbyists

Critics argue the true goal is to suppress voter turnout, especially among blacks, the young, the elderly and the poor.  Because blacks—especially blacks—are too…simple…to be able to plan ahead and get their—free—photo IDs well in advance of voting.  The elderly and poor are similarly incapable, claim Progressives; they, too, need to be led by the nose by their Betters.

More, the law suppresses other Progressive demographics—the non-resident voter; voters who don’t always vote, but when they do, they prefer to vote several times; illegal alien voters.

Clinton made similarly insulting allegations:

…she said some observers have defended the US Supreme Court ruling as a sign that discrimination has ended.  She disagreed and said it gave jurisdictions carte blanche to renew discrimination at the polls.

Because it’s impossible for people to change.  Because it’s still 1963, and the Party of Jim Crow still is rampant.  She’s projecting.

In the weeks since the ruling we have seen an unseemly rush by previously covered jurisdictions that will make it harder for our fellow Americans to vote.  Unless we act now, citizens will be disenfranchised and victimized by the law instead of served by it.

No, the only ones being disenfranchised are those ineligible to vote.  The only unseemly rush is the Progressives’ move to place disliked states back under the yoke.  In the mean time, states are moving to protect the sanctity of the vote.

Nice VA Benefit You Got There

Be too bad if something happened to it.  Get rid of the sequester.  Or else.

Thus, President Barack Obama’s threat to our disabled veterans.  Which he made just prior to jetting off to the comforts of his Martha’s Vineyard vacation estate.

The fact that the sequester was his idea, imposed on Congress in the aftermath of his intransigence and refusal to compromise on taxes and spending?  Forget about it.

No Case

When a man knows he’s defending the indefensible, as President Barack Obama knew in his presser Friday, he falls back on ad hominem slander of the men trying to remove the indefensible.

Now, I think the really interesting question is why it is that my friends in the other party have made the idea of preventing these people from getting health care their holy grail.  Their number-one priority.  The one unifying principle in the Republican Party at the moment is making sure that 30 million people don’t have health care; and presumably, repealing all those benefits I just mentioned—kids staying on their parents’ plan, seniors getting discounts on their prescription drugs, I guess a return to lifetime limits on insurance, people with pre-existing conditions continuing to be blocked from being able to get health insurance.

And

The—the—the notion is simply that those 30 million people, or the 150 million who are benefiting from the other aspects of affordable care, will be better off without it.  That’s their assertion, not backed by fact, not backed by any evidence.

And

And let me just make one last point about this.  The idea that you would shut down the government unless you prevent 30 million people from getting health care is a bad idea.  What you should be thinking about is, how can we advance and improve ways for middle class families to have some security so that if they work hard they can get ahead and their kids can get ahead.

Of course, nothing in Obama’s diatribe could be farther from the truth.  The House has already passed—included in their budgets of the last few years—a number of reforms to our health care system that actually reinvigorate the health insurance industry, rather than converting it to a privately funded, Federally mandated welfare program; do drive down costs of both insurance and health care; and thereby do make both more available to those who want the care and/or the insurance.  All while leaving the choice and the assessment of need not in the hands of government bureaucrats through one-size-fits-all diktat, but squarely in the hands of those who know best—we American citizens.  Furthermore, these alternatives all represent market solutions that enhance the health and prosperity of Americans; they are not the failed policies of centrally directed economies.

On the matter of shutting down the government if one doesn’t get one’s way, it’s true enough that many Republicans have said that that’s a preferable alternative to funding the abomination of Obamacare.  However, the only ones actually threatening to shut down the government are Obama and his Senate colleague, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV).  They’re the ones who’ve said, in the one case, he won’t permit a budget that doesn’t fully support Obamacare even to come to a vote on his Senate floor, and in the other case, he’ll veto a budget bill that doesn’t fully support Obamacare.  In that latter case, he’s also said that he’ll veto any bill that doesn’t raise taxes, increase spending, and raise the debt ceiling commensurately—preferring to further damage our credit rating and our economy to not getting his way.

The decision to shut down the government is entirely in these two Democrats’ hands.  Nowhere else.

And let me make just one last point.  In the end, as is Obama’s wont, he wouldn’t even answer the question put to him.

Fox News’ Ed Henry: You recently decided on your own to delay a key part of [Obamacare]. And I wonder, if you pick and choose what parts of the law to implement, couldn’t your successor down the road pick and choose whether they’ll implement your law and keep it in place?

President Obama: With respect to health care, I didn’t simply choose to delay this on my own. This was in consultation with businesses all across the country….  We did have the executive authority to do so, and we did so.

But there was no consultation with the law itself, which unequivocally mandates that “key part” begin 1 January, and there was no consultation with the Constitution he’s sworn to uphold, which unequivocally mandates that the President “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed….”

And—carefully—there was no answer to the question of whether, himself having picked and chosen, a successor couldn’t do the same and gut Obamacare.