When Obama speaks of “Freedom”, he doesn’t mean what you THINK he means…

“…Did you see that amazing football game this weekend?…”

That’s a question millions of Americans ask each other every week throughout the fall and early winter. Whether you prefer high school, college or the NFL is irrelevant: it is the nation’s unquestioned #1 sport, and everyone knows precisely what is meant upon hearing the question.

And yet: what happens if you ask the same question of an Englishman? Instantaneously, he’ll picture images of a soccer field in a rowdy stadium, with the latest exploits of Manchester United or some other local club replaying in his mind.

We purportedly speak the same language (English), and use the exact same word (“football”). The actual understood meanings of that word, however, are completely different.

And so it is with Barack Obama and “freedom”. Whenever he speaks of it, our president is supposedly speaking the same language as the country he leads, and yet “freedom” to Mr. Obama most certainly doesn’t mean what it does to you and me.

…and it certainly doesn’t mean what our Founders intended, either.

Retconning reality, the #Obamacare way…

Are you familiar with the term “retconning”?

It stands for “Retroactive continuity“, and basically means when a previously established fact(s) is altered in the continuity of a fictional work. Retconning happens in movies, TV shows and comic books all the time, especially when the writer wants to unmake something that’s already happened, like if a character died and they want him/her back.

But again, …comic books. Movies.

Fiction. As in: “Not real”.

Because you can’t “retcon” reality.

And yet what else can you call this?

Warning to the #GOP: Don’t let the Left rewrite history, again…

The Democrats can’t say they weren’t warned:

(Courtesy of Eric Allie)

But that’s not how they view/spin it.

No, no. Years of warnings, the rise of the Tea Party, countless townhall meetings, Scott Brown’s election, the 2010 mid-terms, and even the government shutdown itself weren’t warnings, but rather “sabotage“.

And they’re serious. In Liberal/Leftist/Democrat parlance, somehow standing in the middle of the road and screaming that the bridge is out is now the moral equivalent of cutting your brake lines.

Want to know why Leftists like #Pelosi don’t respect the U.S. Constitution?

ANSWER: Because they don’t have the tiniest inkling what it even is.

Keep in mind, these are her PREPARED remarks. Pelosi didn’t fall prey to some impromptu civics inquisition as she walked down the street: she had to put pen to paper for this. Ahead of time.

Commercial removes “endowed by their #Creator” from the Declaration of Independence…

This story is actually less about what happened, and more about WHY it happened. 

In case you missed it, Samuel Adams Beer® (named after one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence) decided to omit the phrase “endowed by their Creator” in a recent commercial which quoted that key line of text from the Declaration.

Now, if that’s all there was to the story, it wouldn’t be that big of a story. To be fair, there’s nothing listed anywhere that mandates someone has to quote our founding documents verbatim in a commercial. However, this is just the beginning.

“A-B-C”, and other secrets to Obama’s victory (plus what WE need to do going forward)

Been reading through all of the election post-mortems, just trying to learn as much about why President Free-Stuff won and what this portends for our country. What I’ve found is ….interesting.

One of the better pieces thus far was from Slate.com, of all places. Not one of my usual ‘go-to’ sites, but I can’t argue with much of John Dickerson’s assessment.

Just a sample:

Of the nine battleground states that were up for grabs, Obama won seven of them, losing only North Carolina (Florida remains to be called). But while Obama won those states, he didn’t crush it; he won instead, a string of precise narrow victories. He didn’t win because his leadership during Hurricane Sandy blew all those swing votes his way (though it may have helped). The president won because he ran a permanent campaign, keeping his offices open in the battleground states from his 2008 campaign, tending his coalition assiduously, and because he relentlessly defined his opponent. His was the better campaign. The Democratic candidate of “hope and change” beat the big business Republican in the trenches, in one state after another.   

The 4th of July, and the meaning of our Declaration of Independence

Sometimes I find Dick Morris a bit overbearing, and his predictions have often been less than Nostradamus-esque. But apart from those failings, there is no doubt that this brief dissertation on the Declaration of Independence is solid and worthy of seven minutes of your time.

Our Declaration is the foundation of our country, which is why we recently touched on exactly what its author, Thomas Jefferson, would think of the recent SCOTUS decision.

While we’re on the subject, another source to consider on this most important document would be Mark Levin’s ‘Ameritopia’, which Morris references in this clip. Additionally, picking up a copy of Levin’s 1st bestseller, ‘Men In Black’, which concerns the Supreme Court itself, wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.

Here’s hoping you all enjoy a peaceful and meaningful Independence Day holiday, and that we never lose sight of what our country is SUPPOSED to be. It is only with a concerted effort on the part of the populace that our freedom, so wonderfully articulated in the Declaration, can and will be preserved.

Have a blessed 4th, folks.
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“If We Don’t Learn from History” (….you know the rest…)

I’ve always been a Fred Thompson fan: from the first time that I saw him in the movies, in Die Hard 2 back in 1990, you couldn’t help BUT like the guy. And his portrayal of District Attorney Arthur Branch on the series Law & Order made it watchable for the first time since Michael Moriarty was the Chief Assistant DA.

But between those two appearances, I noticed Thompson when he was elected to finish the remaining two years of Al Gore’s unexpired U.S. Senate term, and somewhere along the line I found out about his involvement with the Watergate investigations for the very first time. Fred was appointed minority counsel to assist the Republican senators on the Senate Watergate Committee, which certainly gave him a different perspective on the whole ordeal, and gives any lessons drawn from that time significantly more weight.

What lessons, you may ask? Here’s a taste:

Today, the office of the president, along with the entire executive branch of government, grows with each administration, bringing less accountability and more opportunity for improper activity. Today, unelected bureaucrats tell states what they can and cannot do about the enforcement of their own well-established laws. Federal regulations run every aspect of American life, even as the Supreme Court regularly slaps them down. These actions on the part of the executive branch are not criminal, but neither were many of the arrogant and foolish things the Watergate crowd did. At issue here is not just a few bad individuals. At issue is the way power can be used and abused. Watergate was not the first time the darker side of human nature manifested itself, nor was it the last time.

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We make a mistake when we build a moral fence around Watergate. It was, indeed, unprecedented in many ways, and the ugly array of crimes, misplaced loyalties, immaturity, and hubris speaks for itself. But Watergate is more about the frailties of man and his tendency to abuse power than it is about the unique evil of a small group of people at one time in history.

Thompson is a long-time Federalist, and his ideas on what constitutes an ‘abuse of power’ is a bit different from the current crew’s in the White House right now. For instance:

“The Founders knew what they were doing when they separated and balanced governmental powers. Federalism with limited, delineated federal power was an important part of that equation.”

Yeah: there’s a slew of jokers in Washington right now who’d read that and just *roll their eyes*….

Thompson’s opinions are informed by more diverse experience than most folks, and certainly more diverse than most politicians. This piece is a break from the political play-by-play that we usually see, and you really should read the full article.