As more facts come out about the background of the Tucson shooter, it has become clear that the massacre had nothing to do with political or media opponents of Barack Obama. But the left refuses to give up on the charge or give in to the facts.
The New York Times is still insisting, in the absence of any evidence, that there is a link between the Tucson shooter and the political and media opposition to Obama's campaign to "utterly transform America." In Sunday's edition, the NYT printed a lengthy profile of the shooter, carefully omitting any of the recollections of the shooter's friends that he was not political, and never watched TV or listened to political talk radio. Facts just don't fit the meme.
The L.A. Times also did a lengthy profile of the Tucson shooter in its Sunday edition, reluctantly mentioning the shooter's apolitical history in three lines of paragraph 31.
Why the need to continue to link Obama's political opponents with the massacre in Tucson? Because silencing opposition is a prerequisite to preparing public opinion for an intensified Obama dictatorship.
Harsh words? Not if you consider the facts.
Faced with defeat of cap-and-trade legislation in the Congress, Obama has vowed to implement CO2 restrictions anyway by executive dictate through the Environmental Protection Agency. In the 2008 campaign, Obama acknowledged that with such restrictions "electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." Just what we need – higher electricity rates to help us get out of this recession. If this is not dictatorship, what else would you call implementing a law that was not passed?
Faced with congressional and court opposition to the Federal Communications Commission taking regulatory control of the Internet, Obama's majority of the FCC board did it by making a rule that gave them that authority. The Internet is the last part of the American economy that could be called "free." Not anymore. What, if not dictatorship, is ignoring opposition from Congress and the courts and announcing new regulation of the Internet?
Faced with federal court rejection of his Gulf oil-drilling moratorium, Obama announced the end of the moratorium and then had the Department of the Interior place all of Alaska, the West and East Coasts, and the eastern Gulf of Mexico off limits to new drilling. Exactly one permit to drill in the remaining Gulf area not off limits has been issued since the moratorium was "lifted." The price of gas in my neighborhood went from $2.799 last May (BP blowout) to $3.409 a gallon last week. Higher gas prices will certainly help the economic recovery, no?
On April 25, 2010, at a memorial for coal miners who had died in a mining collapse in West Virginia, Obama praised the miners' courage and "the fruits of their labor that so often we take for granted." He described those "fruits" as the "electricity that lights up our church or our home our school our office, the energy that powers our country, the energy that powers our world."
Last week, Obama revoked a permit that had already been granted to Arch Coal to discharge rock waste from their existing Spruce No. 1 mine in southern West Virginia.
Ignoring Congress, ignoring court rulings, acting on his agenda without congressional authority, revoking permits already lawfully granted, is there a more "civil" word to describe this dictatorship?
Even worse, what laws Congress does pass are so vague and leave so much to bureaucratic "rule making," that Obama has free rein to expand on his predecessors' steady expansion of the power of the presidency to dictate to wide swaths of the economy.
The Wall Street Journal, for example, writes that the Dodd-Frank financial "reform" bill requires no fewer than 243 new rules by 11 separate federal agencies over a dozen years to implement the vague goals of the bill. This failure of Congress to be specific gives law making authority to an ever more powerful executive. Not that this trend is new. It is not. It notably began in the 1930s – the last time America experienced a recession transformed into a Depression by too much government.
Hundreds of "major" rules are expected from the health "reform" bill as well. "Major" rules are those that have an impact on the economy estimated at $100 million or more. Over the last 25 years, 30 to 40 such rules have been promulgated annually by the president. This year, Obama has 191 such "major" rules in the works.
If the 3,000-page Obamacare "reform" cannot be stretched to accomplish a goal, Secretary Sebelius of HHS will make up the authority to act. Recently, the secretary demanded that certain insurance company announced rate hikes in health-insurance premiums be rolled back. There is specifically no authority in Obamacare to do this. After ridiculing Sarah Palin's denunciation of "end of life" care as "death panels" last year, Sebelius released draft regulations last month which contained financial disincentives to prolonging life.
These are but a few examples of Obama's intensified presidential power grab.
Last week, the president announced his re-election campaign theme "Together We Thrive" at the memorial for victims of the Tucson massacre. The theme is lifted from an essay of that title by John Berry IV dated Feb. 11, 2008, and republished with approval at My.BarackObama.com. The blog post calls Obama's campaign "a chance for a revolution" and describes America's free-market economy as setting Americans "one against the other." It's standard Marxist tripe and standard Obama campaign.
In addition to kicking off the 2012 campaign with the memorial speech, Obama announced the next day he intended to raise $1 billion for the re-election effort, surpassing his own 2008 record of nearly $800 million.
Obama is nothing if not bold. He is disciplined, focused and always on agenda. Regardless of election setbacks, court rulings, laws passed by Congress (or not passed), Obama charges ahead to transform the country from a free market, constitutional republic to a one-party, government-directed economy.
To accomplish this transformation and make a majority of Americans accept it, the opposition must be silenced. Opposition political figures must be ridiculed and demonized. Opposition media figures must be demonized and, better yet, taken off the air in the name of "fairness."
This president's admirers tell of his admiration for Abraham Lincoln. By his actions, Obama's role model is closer to Hugo Chavez.
We were warned a long time ago: "By their deeds you shall know them."