Friday, August 7, 2009

And You Thought McCarthy Was Dead

On Wednesday, a few of our savvy readers tipped me off to a new development that I had somehow missed. The President of the United States, in the best paranoid style of politics, has decided that the outpouring of citizen anger over his socialization of America, particularly health care, is a sinister plot by the Republican National Committee and the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. So he is taking immediate steps to stop it. Let's call it "Snitchgate."

So who's that handsome devil in the picture? For those of you not old enough to recognize him instantly, that's the favorite scare-devil of the liberal-left, one Joseph McCarthy, Senator from Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. Whenever you query a liberal on any questionable, treasonous or unconstitutional act coming from the left wing of the Democratic Party, the first word out of their crooked mouths is "McCarthyism." It's like an insane Greek chorus, or a bad case of Tourettes syndrome. It's entirely involuntary. Pavlovian, actually.

I'm scarcely old enough to remember McCarthy at all, but I am old enough to remember the proceedings of McCarthy's sister organization in the Congress, the House Un-American Activities Committee. During the height of Red infiltration into the highest levels of American government, the two committees demonstrated historic excesses in pursuing what the left called "the witch hunts." But the difference between a witch hunt and a communist hunt is that there are no witches.

When the leftists attacked George W. Bush as Hitler and America as a tyrannical imperial power, we were told by the Democrats that "dissent is patriotic." When loud and destructive demonstrators turned up at public meetings and on public streets shouting their hatred of all things American and destroying property and physically assaulting those who disagreed with them, we were told that any attempt to restore law and order was fascist oppression. The left shouts "McCarthyism" and "fascist" without having any idea of the actual meaning of either word.

So where are the cries of McCarthyism today when the President and his palace guard set up a White House snitch e-mail address to report those who disagree with the President? In the forty-eight hours since our readers woke me up to this travesty, there has been considerable flak from the blogs and a few news sites. But I'm still waiting for the outraged headlines from the New York Times and the red-faced anger of the TV talking heads. I suspect I'll be waiting for a very long time.

Even FDR at the height of World War II, Johnson at the height of the Vietnam War, and Nixon at the height of his paranoia didn't set up a White House hotlline for citzens to report their fellow citizens for dissenting from the administration's actions. This is something more reminiscent of Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and Maoist China. It's straight out of the playbook in Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism. One of several ways to control an unruly populace is to get everyone informing on everyone else in hopes that the government thugs will come after them last.

Obama's socialists first ran afoul of the tea party protests, and attempted to paint the spontaneous demonstrators as Republican Party plants who were so unpatriotic as to question the government's power grabs, takeovers, and tax increases. Now that Obama's pet project, socialized medicine, has come under attack from many expected and many more unexpected directions, he has decided that it's time to call out the troops and shut this rebellion down.

People are showing up at public meetings all over the country to let Obama know that they think his health care plan stinks like a fish in the sun. Obama's response is to open a White House e-mail hotline to report anyone who is stirring up dissent. Ironically, he is asking people to report anything "fishy." That's his way of describing anything vocal or written that doesn't say that Obamacare is the greatest thing since sliced bread. He doesn't understand why any right-thinking American wouldn't love a plan so complicated that it has more twists than a western sidewinder rattlesnake, and is equally dangerous. It's so damned complicated that even he doesn't understand it, and his lame attempts to explain it sound like they came out of a word-processor designed by Cuisinart.

With Congressional representatives returning to their home districts during the August recess, the duly-elected thieves are facing angry constituents who have reached and exceeded their saturation point. The liberals cannot comprehend that Americans are not easily intimidated, nor are they prone to be silent as they watch their freedom, their personal health, and their livelihoods slip into the hands of government apparatchiks. So it must be that vast right-wing conspiracy stirring up the people who mindlessly cling to their guns and Bibles. They're out to get the Chosen One.

Here's what the Democratic National Committee has to say: "The Republicans and their allied groups--desperate after losing two consecutive elections and every major policy fight on Capitol Hill--are inciting angry mobs of a small number of rabid right wing extremists funded by K Street Lobbyists to disrupt thoughtful discussions about the future of health care in America taking place in Congressional Districts across the country. However, much like we saw at the McCain-Palin rallies last year where crowds were baited with cries of 'socialist,' 'communist,' and where the birthers movement was born--these mobs of extremists are not interested in having a thoughtful discussion about the issues--but like some Republican leaders have said--they are interested in 'breaking' the President and destroying his Presidency."

Note the words: "Desperate" "mobs" "small number of rabid right-wingers." Ridicule, demonize, minimize. I seem to remember getting that in my radical days from the Saul Alinsky handbook Rules for Radicals.

Take out "right wing extremists" and replace it with "communists" and it is a statement Tail-Gunner Joe McCarthy would be proud of. However, the calculated attempt to suppress dissent never before came from the official organ of a political party or high-ranking officials in the White House. McCarthy never asked ordinary American citizens to call or write to the White House directly and report dissenters to a special hotline designed solely to gather information on those who disagree with the administration. How dare ordinary Americans or grassroots organizations oppose the government without the assistance of Obama, ACORN and other community-organizers?

Linda Douglas, Communications Director for the White House Office of Health Reform ginned-up an indignant video in which she says: "Everyone with a computer and a lot of free time can take a phrase here and there and make it sound like [Obama] is saying something he doesn't really say." She must be referring to several unedited and full-length videos of Obama saying in no uncertain terms that his goal is ultimately to impose single-payer medical care and get the rotten insurance companies completely out of the picture. Of course those videos were filmed at pre-election rallies of union members and proponents of socialized medicine and were not meant to be viewed by the general public.

The latest big lie being told by the Obamacrats is the one coming out of the woman who is third in line for the Presidency--Nancy Pelosi. She was asked by a TV reporter if she thought that the protests were legitimate grassroots events. Her exact words: "I think--they're astroturf--you be the judge. They're carrying swastikas and symbols like that." For the uninitiated, "astroturf" is the expression the lefties coined to describe the "phony" grass roots of the tea party protests. George Bush photoshopped into Hitler and the swastika superimposed on the Jewish Star didn't bother the Democrats one whit. But Pelosi hallucinates "swastikas and symbols like that" and suddenly it's the end of the world. So far, I'm unaware of any photographic proof of those symbols showing up at any rally, but if they did, they would not be that far from accurate.

Some of the blogs are referring to Obama's e-mail snitch address as the place where he can compile his "enemies list." This is far too kind, and somewhat naive. The expression "enemies list" refers to Nixon's list of political opponents whom he considered enemies and against whom he wanted to take action. That's small potatoes compared to a White House hotline that is designed solely to collect information on regular citizens who might pose a threat to the President's plans. And it's not aimed at garnering information from political operatives. He wants to get that information from you. This is not like Nixon. It's more like Himmler. We should have seen this coming when Obama and Biden warned citizens who didn't like what he was proposing even before the election that "those people had better be careful what they say." There is a point at which a change in form becomes a change in substance.

As "town hall meetings" are now being regularly attended by those traitors who think socialism is a bad thing, Congressional representatives are working on developing a different kind of town hall meeting. You come to the town hall, and you get shown a video of your representative mouthing the Democratic talking-points. No direct contact, no questions, no protest. Simple. They're terrified of their own constituents. More from the DNC: "This mob activity is straight from the playbook of high-level Republican political operatives. They have no plan for moving our county forward, so they've called out the mob."

So now we're a "mob." The Democrats assured us that anti-war, anti-Bush demonstrators who shouted down conservative speakers, tossed pies at them, then broke off to go out into the streets to smash store windows, beat up citizens who disagreed with them, carried "Bushitler" signs with the President hanging in effigy, and caused general mayhem were patriotic dissenters. But ordinary citizens who show up at town hall meetings to protest peacefully (if occasionally loudly) are a "mob" bent on attacking the President. The worst thing I've been able to find on the internet was a video of a crowd "mobbing" Texas Representative Lloyd Doggett where one protestor was holding up a sign with a picture of Doggett sporting devil's horns. Wow! Horrible stuff! Hypocrisy, thy name is "Liberal."

Make no mistake. This is a direct assault on free speech and freedom of the press. You are being asked to send an informant's e-mail directly to the White House to let Obama know who is attempting to push the socialist train off the tracks. As a good patriot, you are expected to do your duty and report anything "fishy." So here's my suggestion: Do what they ask. Find an article, or a blog, or a public statement in support of Obama's crazy health care scheme and send it to the White House--exactly as directed by the Obamacrats. Here's the e-mail address: flag@whitehouse.gov. Be sure to tell them you've found something "fishy." I've already sent three, and I intend to keep doing so at least twice a day until this monstrous scheme is utterly defeated, or the White House e-mail address crashes, whichever comes first.

As a side note, I realized in the wee hours of the morning that my associate Andrew Price has done an extensive analysis of Obama's plan on this site, as well as providing what I consider to be an excellent counter-proposal. Andrew, my friend, that looks mighty "fishy." But I am hoping that nobody reports him to the White House. Or maybe not. In any event, in light of Obama's transparent attempt to squelch free speech, I suggest that all of you carefully read Andrew's posts on the subject, if you have not already done so. Then compare it to Obama's blithering defense of his plan. You decide which plan smells fishy. And while you're at it, you might want to start demanding to know why the mainstream media is largely ignoring the "snitch hotline" issue. Let's get out there and expose "Snitchgate" to the light of day.

34 comments:

Joel Farnham said...

Great article LawHawk.

StanH said...

Lawhawk there’s that passion again! It’s breathtaking the length that these jerks will go to screw the greatest country in the world. Their hatred for the USA is now fully exposed, and I would expect when the pendulum swings back to the right, many a politician will be unemployed. It’s instructive to all that Barry would set up a “snitch line,” it to me is a real window into who he is, …a statist to his core, big brother comforts him. Great article Lawhawk much work is required of all the citizens of America, we are under attack from within, …stay vigilant.

Writer X said...

Excellent post, LawHawk. And I love how the media describes the mobs in the paper: hysterical, violent, shrieking...

All I see are frustrated people, young and old (one lady in Tampa had a breathing machine). That's pretty scary stuff!

We're still waiting for our representatives in Arizona to come out into the light. So far Harry Mitchell has done nothing but hide. All of a sudden, he doesn't have any ribbon-cutting ceremonies to attend.

P.S. I got you beat. I've turned in six fishy leads to the White House, including me. The other five are for Obama himself.

Tennessee Jed said...

I enjoyed the post, Hawk. It is scary what this administration is doing. As for McCarthy, I know many do not care for Ann Coulter, but I find much of her biting sarcasm to be right on point. I read her 2003 book "Treason" which devotes a section to Joseph McCarthy. I think the folks today are doing far more to curtail free speech than Joe ever did. Like you, I am barely old enough to remember McCarthy, but for some reason, do remember hearing about how powerful H.U.A.C. was in my earliest studies on government (remember weekly reader?)

BevfromNYC said...

The DNC is insisting that this a conspiracy and that someone must be paying for all of this. Does anyone know where I can pick up my paycheck from the RNC? It must be lost in the mail...

DNC Web Ad Attacks Protesters At Dem Town Halls

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtTBkxvBq88&feature=player_embedded

AndrewPrice said...

Great article Lawhawk, and well said. I find this shocking. The idea that the White House would ask Americans to turn in other Americans because they disagree with White House policy is the sort of thing that would have gotten a Republican impeached. So where is the "independent" media to complain about this?

Writer X, I recall from your website, where you were discussing the problems you had with reaching your representative. Incredible!

Bev, if you find out where that check went, let me know. . . I didn't get mine either.

Writer X said...

Andrew, I thought about calling saying that I wanted to donate money to his campaign. That way I'm sure that I'd get a call back within the hour. Then I decided that life was too short. And I'm supposed to be on vacation.

AndrewPrice said...

Writer X, You don't want to do anything to suggest that you have money. . . they'll want it.

LL said...

After Watergate (Nixon Administration), Congress enacted USC 552(a)

United States Code § 552a, "United States agencies, including the Executive Office of the President shall, 'maintain no record describing how any individual exercises rights guaranteed by the First Amendment unless expressly authorized by statute or by the individual about whom the record is maintained or unless pertinent to and within the scope of an authorized law enforcement activity'.”

There is no statute that applies here so it would seem that our president is moved to violate the law. I'm shocked... Anyway, who is there to hold him accountable since the Congress literally worships him as "their Messiah".

It makes me want to toss my cookies.

AndrewPrice said...

LL, Welcome. And nice find. I wasn't aware of that code provision, but it certainly sounds like Obama is violating that. I hope some free speech public interest group brings suit, using that provision, to try and stop this garbage.

If anyone does, however, I will bet it won't be the ACLU, since the L seems to stand for "liberal" rather than "liberty".

Unknown said...

Joel: Thanks for your comment. I had originally planned to publish it yesterday afternoon, but it took me nearly another full day to edit out my expletives. It's not easy being civil about something like this.

StanH: Old radicals never die, we just become conservatives--or university professors.

Unknown said...

WriterX: Leave it to a writing pro to stay ahead of me in the snitch count. I'll have to get busy and try to catch up!

Tennessee: I happen to be a big fan of Ann Coulter's. The reason so many dislike her is that she is in lawyer mode all the time and won't concede an inch to the opposition. For that reason, she is an advocate rather than an analyst. In "Treason" she followed that pattern, and of course many took it to mean she was praising McCarthy. She was not. She was defending McCarthy, and that's a big difference. She knows he was a paranoid demagogue, but he was attacked for ferreting out communists in the State Department, and at that, he was very successful.

I learned about HUAC the hard way. I was a young teenager. After my dad died, my sister and her family decided a road trip would be a good way to get our minds off his death. We stopped in San Francisco on our way to Crater Lake in Oregon. I wandered off, and ended up at S F City Hall. And managed to walk right into an anti-HUAC protest by UC Berkeley students. After getting hit with a high-pressure water hose while the police were clearing the City Hall steps, I had my first radical epiphany. I didn't even know what HUAC was, but I decided if it was going to get me water-hosed, I was against it. It's also the first time I learned what UC Berkeley was, and decided that was where I'd go to college.

Unknown said...

Bev: I know what you mean. I rush to my mailbox every day, and I never get a check. I never get paid and nobody from the major Republican organizations have contacted me about where I can get that check. But that's sort of our point, isn't it? Remember, Obama was a leader in ACORN, which has only "paid volunteers." If you're paid, you're not a volunteer, but since leftist organizers don't understand that, they can't believe people are protesting Obama without being told what to do and getting paid for it.

Andrew: You and I both know from experience that snitches can be very valuable in catching criminals. What Obama doesn't understand is that free speech is not a crime--at least not yet. Asking people to snitch on other people for disagreeing with the government is an exercise in fascism. Unlike the leftists, I actually know what that word means.

Joel Farnham said...

LawHawk, I hope you don't mind, I linked it over on the Open Friday section at BH.

What can I say? It is an article that should be read by many people.

Unknown said...

LL: Welcome, and thank you for reminding me of one of the post-Watergate pieces of meaningless legislation that the Democrats passed to prove how much they loved liberty. All we have to do to understand how Obama justifies a snitch-reporting hotline is remember that he considers speech criticizing his administration to be tantamount to a criminal act, and therefore justified under the law enforcement provisions of the legislation. This analysis of Obama requires understanding the mind of a Harvard Law grad and constitutional law professor who never read the Constitution. And if he read it, he didn't much like it.

Unknown said...

Joel: I appreciate you considering the article of sufficient importance to link to Big Hollywood. I just hope you made it clear that you are a volunteer, not a mob-member, and not an organizer for the Republican National Committee, lest I have to report you to the "fishy snitch line." LOL

BevfromNYC said...

The link below will take you to Gibbs' Daily WH Press conference yesterday about the "fishy" inquiries.

I love his non-answers to other questions too. I don't know about you, but I actually do understand some of the questions that Gibbs just can't seem to follow...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQjPXCymqmo&feature=player_embedded

Unknown said...

Bev: Gibbs keeps saying that Obama just wants to correct any "misinformation," then goes on to deny that Obama on numerous occasions was caught advocating single-payer. He is still claiming that those lengthy speeches were "edited bits and pieces" that made it look like he was advocating single-payer. Most of all, I loved it that he kept denying that they were keeping names from the snitch site. But he couldn't explain how they could avoid keeping names when it's required by law for the National Archives.

Unknown said...

The Democrats have been going on about "mobs" showing up at the townhall meetings. Well, it's true. But it's not the protestors who are a mob. Here's a video of the St. Louis attack on a conservative who was handing out yellow "don't tread on me" flags at a meeting conducted by Democrat Russ Carnahan. The SEIU has apparently replaced the Teamsters and the ILWU as the shock troops of the Democratic Party.

http://patriotupdate.com/stories/read/688/Violence-Against-Black-Conservative-at-Town-Hall-Meeting

BevfromNYC said...

Has anyone picked up on the fact that all of these "townhalls" are being billed as "Democrat" townhalls with these RNC led infiltrators?

Unknown said...

Bev: Not only that, the last desperate cry of "racism" has reared its ugly (and not unexpected) head:
Krugman Finds Racism at Townhall Meetings.

patti said...

oh man, as far back as i have been writing my blog, i have been visited by someone in d.c. government. they root around, leave and then come back a week later. i am so on that list. now who wants to report me officially?! gotta go, someone's at the door....

Unknown said...

Patti: After being on two different Attorney General's List of Subversives, and expecting shortly to be on a third, I can tell you that it's something to be worn as a badge of honor. The snitch list ain't nothin'. Are you listening, Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano. Come and get me, ya dirty coppers. Oops, I'm frothing again.

Here are a few more fun "mob" links to peruse: Physicians Mob Houston Meeting
Obama Tells Democrats to Hit Back Hard
Town Hall Meeting Turns Violent
Union Thugs Unleashed (video)
Tempers Flare in Michigan (video)
And my personal favorite: Pelosi Out-Shouted in Denver

Unknown said...

Oops, mistake. The link to "Tempers Flare in Michigan" is an article, not a video.

StanH said...

Lawhawk, you must have raised some hell in the ‘60s. This snitch site is unbelievable my blood pressure spikes every time I hear anything about it. I would imagine their server is being taxed.

Unknown said...

StanH: My poor mother used to have to check people's party registration before risking introducing me to anyone. But I've mellowed. I almost never threaten to have anyone killed these days.

Anonymous said...

Clearly stated Lawhawk. I however am just dumb founded at the level of paranoia exhibited by the bo worshipers.What has happened to our country? Is there no analytic thinking by its electorate? Their mind set has no rational at all, it is like some form of fundamentalist who with no understanding of the issues or points just believes it because bo said it. They want change and by golly its coming just like a runaway freight train down the Cajon Pass.
Lets just hope we can find enough thinking people to either get the brakes working or derail the damn
thing.It will easier to solve this proactively than to try fixing it re actively and probably with a great deal less blood shed.

Unknown said...

Anonymous: Cool! Somebody else knows about the legendary runaways in the Cajon Pass. And it wasn't just trains. Nothing more exciting than an eighteen-wheeler a mile behind you, then a half-mile, then 100 yards. And at that point, you're already doing 90 mph! What a joy that road used to be.

Your description is perfect. The Obama administration is the runaway train, hurtling down the rails of the Twenty-First Century, with no brakes, no engineer, and no dead man's switch.

BevfromNYC said...

I think we need to set up a super secret code word for Commentarama-ians to use just in case we are taken to one of those Obama Re-Educaton Camps. We will know how to find you and send Bill Clinton in to negotiate your rescue and/or release. I suggest "antidisestablishmentarianism" or "onomatapoeia". We know at least some of us can work these words into a sentence! Hint..hint!

Monica said...

The website for Right Soup has some great sample emails to send in to the snitch line. I called my parents and told them I wouldn't report them even though they keep sending me "disinformation" with health care emails. After all, they're old enough they're practically obsolete according to Obama anyway. I have told my coworkers to report me, however. So, if you hear me yelling "antidisestablish. . ."

Unknown said...

Bev: I'm paddling as fast as I can.

Monica: I just sent them the Hippocratic Oath. I'm sure they'll find that REALLY fishy.

AndrewPrice said...

I would like to offer a little praise to LL, who apparently has scooped everyone by pointing out the post Watergate prohibition on collecting free speech data.

Fox New's Andrew Napolitano is now reporting the same thing.

Click Here

When I read that, my first thought was, hey, somebody already said that at our place!

Unknown said...

Andrew: And yet Press Secretary Gibbs, when pushed by a reporter, couldn't explain how to reconcile the post-Watergate statute with the more recent post-Watergate statute requiring that all records of communications with the White House must be maintained in unaltered form by the National Archives. The former was to protect sources, the latter to protect public access under the Freedom of Information Act. They are in direct conflict with each other. Once again, the road to hell is paved with good intentions and bad legislation.

Unknown said...

Hi, Team: Here's one to add to your list for the fishy snitch hotline (thanks to my friend Angel in Arizona): Cars.gov allows the government to "own" the entire contents of your computer.

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