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P resident Obama: “Fundamentally Transforming” America?
Townhall.com ^ | June 13, 2014 | Ken Blackwell

Posted on 06/13/2014 5:49:28 PM PDT by Kaslin

Dr. Cornel West is a leading liberal public intellectual. He gave an interview to NewsOne immediately following the 2012 Election that was nothing if not provocative. Dr. West said he was happy Romney didn’t win, but far from satisfied with the Obama record and especially with the just-ended presidential campaign:

So we end up with such a narrow, truncated political discourse, as the major problems—ecological catastrophe, climate change, global warming. So it’s very sad. I mean, I’m glad there was not a right-wing takeover, but we end up with a Republican, a Rockefeller Republican in blackface, with Barack Obama, so that our struggle with regard to poverty intensifies.

Say that again? If one of my conservative colleagues had dared to say anything remotely like that, he (or she) would have been charged with racism of the worst sort. Still, it is worth considering the merits of Cornel West’s argument.

Has President Obama really been so disappointing from a genuinely Left-wing perspective? I suggest he has not. Nor has he been “incompetent,” as so many of my conservative colleagues are charging. Most recently, some have raised the bar (or, perhaps, lowered it) by claiming that President Obama’s administration is one of “epic incompetence.”

President Obama has seemingly floated above these charges, these criticisms Left and Right. He marches to the beat of a different drummer.

He shrugged off sharp criticism from the Clinton camp in 2008. Recall he raised the hackles of Bill and Hillary then by saying Ronald Reagan was a “transformational” President in a way that Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton were not. The Clintons were enraged. But candidate Obama was exactly right. He was giving the Gipper a left-handed compliment, to be sure. He granted that Reagan had transformed American politics—but in no way that he, Obama, would approve.

In fact, the Clintons and most of the Establishment media missed the real point of Mr. Obama’s statement: He was promising liberal activists to be the kind of transformational President for the Left that Reagan was for conservatives.

And so he has been. His administration began by exercising control over the banks, insurance companies, and major automakers. All this was done in the name of pulling

the country out of its economic nosedive. Mr. Obama’s Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers reassured worried corporate leaders that the administration was not going to nationalize everything, but only “the commanding heights of the economy.”

Austin Goolsby seemed blissfully unaware of the Marxian roots of that expression and that tactic. Apparently, it is getting harder to distinguish between classic Marxism and liberal thought in our Ivy League faculty lounges.

After passing a huge, $787 billion stimulus bill that failed to stimulate, Mr. Obama spent the next year driving through the takeover of 1/6 of the U.S. economy. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has been going through the throes of “implementation” ever since.

Millions of Americans feel like they’ve been put on the rack. It is torture. Most of the media coverage has focused on the “botched” rollout of the www.healthcare.gov website.

The “patient protection” part of the 2,000-page opus is obviously false. Millions who had health coverage have lost it.

The “affordable care” part is likewise clearly false. For millions, the doctors they liked and the plans they could afford are suddenly out of reach.

From a political science perspective, however, that part of the Obama plan least commented upon is the last word in its title: Act. It is not an Act of Congress, at all.

What passes for ObamaCare today is not the bill that was rammed through both Houses of Congress—using Nancy Pelosi’s and Harry Reid’s most questionable tactics. It is not

the measure signed with great fanfare by President Obama in an East Room ceremony on March 23, 2010. (Yes, that was the august ceremony that Court Jester Joe Biden told us was a “big f___ing deal!)

ObamaCare today is not even the challenged law that was adjudicated and narrowly upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 28, 2012. That was a dog’s breakfast of a ruling, but even that is not the main point

ObamaCare as it is today is vastly different. It is an ongoing process. It is an administrative amoeba, constantly changing, growing, transforming itself--and us.

We no longer have laws, we have mandates.

There have been no fewer than 41 major changes to ObamaCare since its initial passage.

It is impossible to say today what ObamaCare will mandate tomorrow. But President Obama will nonetheless make tomorrow’s changes mandatory.

President Obama sacrificed much to get ObamaCare through Congress and the courts.

But from a fundamentally transformational point of view, it was all worth it.

Most Americans understand this. A recent poll showed that 56% of the American people believe the real purpose of the law is “to control Americans’ lives.” Smart people!

A hint of this could have been gleaned from the last-minute decision to toss an amendment onto the ObamaCare steamroller that would let the federal government take over college student loans.

What has this to do with health care? If you think ObamaCare was actually about health care, the answer is: nothing. College students are among the healthiest portions of the American public. And under Mr. Obama’s legislation, they could stay on their parents’ plans until age 26.

But if you think ObamaCare is truly about controlling our lives, then the nationalization of college loans makes perfect sense. It completes the portfolio of the average American family’s major debts—home mortgages, cars, health care, college tuition.

Henceforth, we Americans must look to Barack Obama for his help in each of these vital areas of our lives. That is, unless we repeal ObamaCare.

So, do not look to America’s retreat from the world, or to our obviously lowered profile in the international sphere as unintended by this administration. Creating a socialist republic here with a veneer of democratic legitimacy requires a lesser America on the world stage.

To President Obama, American Exceptionalism is exactly the problem. Ronald Reagan’s vision of America as “A Shining City on a Hill” is the source of this problem. America under Obama will become like Europe—large, placid, contented, cared for. Like a cow.

His bumper sticker said it all: Obama Cares.

He means to repeal Reagan. That’s why he needs “greater flexibility” toward Putin’s Russia. That’s why we will lead from behind, if at all. Focus inward, focus on bringing socialism to America. That’s what he means by a nation fundamentally transformed.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Politics/Elections
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1 posted on 06/13/2014 5:49:28 PM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

2 posted on 06/13/2014 5:51:30 PM PDT by BenLurkin (This is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion or satire; or both.)
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To: Kaslin

Dictatorships tend to do that.


3 posted on 06/13/2014 5:53:26 PM PDT by doc1019
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To: Kaslin

And thus the first black President brought forth to this nation common core to fix all from the ground up.


4 posted on 06/13/2014 5:54:30 PM PDT by A CA Guy ( God Bless America, God Bless and keep safe our fighting men and women.)
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To: Kaslin

"If only these miserable people
and their Constitutional system
had but a single neck."

5 posted on 06/13/2014 5:54:34 PM PDT by Diogenesis
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To: Kaslin
Seven years after 9/11, we elected a Muslim terrorist to be our president. Then, having seen the massive damage he was capable of, we re-elected him.

He's now in his endgame, and he sees the time slipping away. Nothing will hold him back now, as he completes the destruction of the country he hates.

6 posted on 06/13/2014 5:54:47 PM PDT by ClearCase_guy ("Harvey Dent, can we trust him?" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBsdV--kLoQ)
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To: Kaslin

You know, I never considered race to be an issue in the past, but this piece of crap has demonstrated that was folly.

I simply no longer have any use for minorities. I won’t talk with them unless it is required, will no longer befriend them, certainly will not trust them ever again.


7 posted on 06/13/2014 5:55:41 PM PDT by Ouderkirk (To the left, everything must evidence that this or that strand of leftist theory is true)
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To: Ouderkirk

I think you are going too, too, far. There are lots of outstanding minorities of all races, Black, Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, you name it. Unfortunately the people in this country voted for a muslim by the name of Barack Housain bin Obamination, an Islamic terrorist and socialist that’s determined to destroy a once proud and free nation.


8 posted on 06/13/2014 6:05:23 PM PDT by Vinylly (?%)
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Comment #9 Removed by Moderator

To: ClearCase_guy
Excuse me, but I did not vote for that arrogant pos and he is not my president. Got it?
10 posted on 06/13/2014 6:22:04 PM PDT by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him, and he got them. Now we all have to pay the consequenses)
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To: ClearCase_guy

0bama’s next step is social unrest.

He has about 2 years to drive conservatives over the edge and provoke an armed conflict.

The standoff at the Bundy ranch may have been a test.

The flood of illegals may provoke armed citizens to defend our boarders were the Feds have failed.

I get the sense that this criminal anti-American administration is begging for a fight. An opportunity to pit the/his “government” against those that are true Americans.

If we fight back we will be painted as “right-wing” crazies. If we don’t fight back we will continue to lose our country.

0bama has nothing to lose either way.

Consider how Republicans are viewed in the press etc..

If there was just ONE scandal, we might be seen as rational. But there are a dozen or more scandals and as a result, we are seen as irrational partisans as we “complain” about virtually everything.

This is not going to end well.


11 posted on 06/13/2014 6:22:16 PM PDT by Zeneta (Thoughts in time and out of season.)
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To: Vinylly

BTTT


12 posted on 06/13/2014 6:23:15 PM PDT by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him, and he got them. Now we all have to pay the consequenses)
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To: Zeneta

I agree. I think Obama is probably really surprised that the “right wing extremists” haven’t started trouble. He keeps pushing, and pushing and pushing, and still there is no uprising. I think it must be very frustrating for him.

But he’s got time. He’ll make sure it happens.


13 posted on 06/13/2014 7:10:36 PM PDT by ClearCase_guy ("Harvey Dent, can we trust him?" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBsdV--kLoQ)
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To: ClearCase_guy

There’s an old concept that I think was attributed to Stalin at some point.

To paraphrase:

“When you push your sword into your enemy and you hit a barrier, retreat. If you don’t hit anything, keep pushing”

As I typed this I have to think it was originally from Sun Tzu.


14 posted on 06/13/2014 7:19:13 PM PDT by Zeneta (Thoughts in time and out of season.)
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To: ClearCase_guy

Keep an eye out for a false flag type of event.
A dimrat operative who starts something where the regime and their media responds harshly.

I don’t put anything past these people.


15 posted on 06/13/2014 7:29:26 PM PDT by Texas resident (The democrat party is now the CPUSA)
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To: Kaslin

I wonder if We the People have enough “American Exceptionalism” to impeach, convict and imprison the slimy sonofabitch that is trashing the Presidency and the White House?


16 posted on 06/13/2014 7:44:34 PM PDT by Taxman
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To: Kaslin

“America under Obama will become like Europe—large, placid, contented, cared for. Like a cow.”
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

I don’t think that is how things are headed. I think we will wish it were like that because it will be so much worse.


17 posted on 06/13/2014 7:55:05 PM PDT by RipSawyer
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To: Kaslin

Cornell West is NOT a leading liberal intellectual. He is a hardcore marxist and has been for decades, esp. as a leader of the marxist Democratic Socialists of America.

He has sponsored many communist fronts of the Communist Party USA, DSA and the Workers World Party. It’s all out there, esp. on the internet and in books.

Try www.keywiki.org and www.DiscovertheNetwork. org, as well as Trevor Loudon’s massive books, “The Enemies Within” 2011, and 2013 (Marxists, Socialists and Progressive in the US Congress), www.pacificfreedomfoundtion.org.

West is slick like a snake oil salesman. But he’s a red.


18 posted on 06/13/2014 8:39:43 PM PDT by MadMax, the Grinning Reaper
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To: Taxman
I wonder if We the People have enough “American Exceptionalism” to impeach, convict and imprison the slimy sonofabitch that is trashing the Presidency and the White House?


Uh... Nope.

19 posted on 06/13/2014 11:26:03 PM PDT by itsahoot (Voting for a Progressive RINO is the same as voting for any other Tyrant.)
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To: Ouderkirk

Don’t let Obama’s poison poison you.

Every person deserves to be judged based on their actions and not their skin color. There are honest honorable people from every walk of life.


20 posted on 06/13/2014 11:28:47 PM PDT by DB
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