We're "Pre-Revolutionary"? Why Is That?

Democratic pollster Pat Caddell says that Americans are in a "pre-revolutionary" mood, fast moving to "revolutionary". Hmmm, let's see...for starters: three years of trillion dollar deficits, 9% unemployment, 18% underemployment, loss of our AAA credit rating, a looming healthcare insurance "individual mandate". That is the core of the source of the anger. So what has been the response to the anger by our representatives: 1) Suspend elections, 2) restrict free speech.

Hmmm, tell me again why we are "pre-revolutionary"....??

Well, at least our churches are safe...

Tell Me Why Americans Are "Pre-Revolutionary" Again?

It is no secret that the federal government is not popular.  All manner of recent polls confirm this and suggest an even bleaker view - Americans go beyond merely not liking, they actively fear their government.  I discussed this sentiment in the context of the 2012 presidential race, citing Pat Caddell's view that Americans are "pre-revolutionary" in mood. There are literary thousands of examples of government run amok to explain why Americans feel this way, but you only have to look at the rhetoric of a President who claims the desire and intention to "go around" Congress to advance his agenda, or a (thankfully former) Governor who suggested we suspend elections, to see the genesis of Americans' fears.

The worsening of this mood has baleful consequences (very baleful if you are a leftist).  People who distrust government wish, at the very least, that it not get bigger and more intrusive. Thus, since 2010 Americans have voted for de facto gridlock.  People who distrust government greatly make contingency plans from reining in economic risk taking to bracing for a break down in law and order (gun sales, ammo shortage, anyone?).

If you were an elected official and this fear and distrust was counter-productive to your goals, you'd seek to allay these fears, no?  At the least, you wouldn't make half-baked decisions that would continue to fuel these fears, right?  Not really.

President Obama’s pick to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency once said that a “majority of white voters” would never vote for a black candidate and that they should be excluded from “the democratic process.”

The Voting Rights Act should be expanded to “adjust districts to take [racially motivated voting] into account,” Watts said.

Such voters “need to be factored out of the equation,” Watt said, because “I’ve got no use for them in the democratic process.”

According to a contemporaneous report of the hearing published by the Cybercast News Service, Watt said that black voters — unlike whites — don’t have “an absolute commitment” to voting for a candidate based on race.

“Black people have not had the luxury of being able to say, ‘Under no circumstances will I vote for a white candidate,’” Watt said in his remarks.

Watt is, indisputably in my view, an abomination by virtue of holding these views.  He also happens to be a buffoon, whites have amply demonstrated an ability to vote across racial lines, while, it must be said, blacks have not.  So, we've got a doubly whammy of repulsiveness here, idiocy combined with a racialist, fascistic worldview.  Triple whammy actually, as we now add into the equation a position of substantial authority. A mentally deficient, racialist fascist in a position of substantial authority in the federal government with sway over a large sector of the economy...?  Was there no other person around who do the job at the FHFA?  Of course there was.  So the decision to appoint Watt was either an out-to-lunch decision or a deliberately antagonistic one.

And people wonder why the government is unpopular and its citizens are angry and wary.

UPDATE:  And today comes this poll. While armed revolt is a consideration, thankfully, only among 29%, what is more interesting, and indicative, is that only 47% don't see it as necessary.  So less than half have taken it off the table.  "Pre-revolutionary" indeed.

Jesse Jackson Jr. Shows Why We Are "Pre-Revolutionary"

Illinois Democratic Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. told The Daily Caller on Wednesday that congressional opposition to the American Jobs Act is akin to the Confederate “states in rebellion.”

Jackson called for full government employment of the 15 million unemployed and said that Obama should “declare a national emergency” and take “extra-constitutional” action “administratively” — without the approval of Congress — to tackle unemployment.

“I hope the president continues to exercise extraordinary constitutional means, based on the history of Congresses that have been in rebellion in the past,” Jackson said. “He’s looking administratively for ways to advance the causes of the American people, because this Congress is completely dysfunctional.”

Here's the link with bonus video. Again, let me point out that pollster Pat Caddell (a Democrat) has determined that Americans are in a "pre-revolutionary" mood, fast becoming "revolutionary". Gee, I wonder why that is...

Let me also reiterate to any of these dodoheads who care to listen, which is likely precisely none of them...

"...elections are the best thing you have going for you right now. With any luck you'll be voted out, allowed to return to society to live out your days peacefully, and then fade into obscurity. Suspend elections and, on current course, you'll probably be hunted down by mobs and strung up in the town square like the elitist pillagers of old. If I were you I'd take that safe retirement via the ballot box over doors one, two or three."

When you don't have the people's consent, they're gonna let you know one way or the other, and, like in all things, there is an easy way and a hard way...

Note to Bev Perdue & Friends, Actually Elections Are Your Best Escape Route

As the great battle of the Future of Government has raged, the Democrats have constantly and repeatedly told us, with unfailing message discipline, that even the most modest cuts to the federal government's budget would result in a litany of inhumanities - starving children, dying elderly, crumbling schools, falling bridges and everything right up to the destruction of the nation. Yet, it is now being revealed that the same crowd is stuffing the pockets of their donors, friends, family, and themselves to a grotesque degree. The nation's vaults have been opened to an array of Democratic Party cronies to extract multitudes of billions - billions, which we have been incessantly told are the difference between illiterate or educated children, the difference between granny enjoying her golden years or her early, painful death.

The vomit-inducing extent of the self-serving lies, hypocrisy and abuse of power is starting to emerge, and it is frightful. Crony after crony and donor after donor, coincidentally linked to politician after politician, is daily exposed with ungodly sums flowing into their insanely speculative ventures. This is why we've had to endure the sickeningly ponderous rally-cries such as "fierce moral urgency of change" and other banners dripping with phoniness. Not for any urgency or moral calling, but for a clique's designs on the Treasury.

Pollster Pat Caddell, through his polling work, has determined that America is in a "pre-revolutionary" mood. I should say so. Incompetent politicians run wasteful program after wasteful program, rack up trillions of dollars in debt and have the audacity to hector and lecture us about doing our fair share and giving back. All the while they are raiding the Treasury for themselves and their cronies. Then as one last anti-grace note in this string of abuses, they have temerity to suggest we give up our voting franchise so that they can escape accountability and sort things out. Pre-revolutionary indeed.

Actually - take note Bev Perdue & Co. - elections are the best thing you have going for you right now. With any luck you'll be voted out, allowed to return to society to live out your days peacefully, and then fade into obscurity. Suspend elections and, on current course, you'll probably be hunted down by mobs and strung up in the town square like the elitist pillagers of old. If I were you I'd take that safe retirement via the ballot box over doors one, two or three.

Why Again Are We "Pre-Revolutionary"?

Remember how I noted that prominent Democratic pollster Pat Caddell said Americans are "pre-revolutionary" in their mood as it relates to how they are governed.  Gee, I wonder why that could be...?

LAWS, LIKE TAXES, ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Deval Patrick: Herald ‘not entitled’ to parking records.

Gov. Deval Patrick — adamant that taxpayers have no business knowing what hours top state officials keep — again refused to release electronic State House parking lot records, daring the Herald to conduct its own surveillance.
“First of all, you’re not entitled to them,” Patrick said about the parking records yesterday when asked why he was denying the Herald’s public records request.
Asked to explain, a petulant Patrick said: “Because you’re not.”

That’s the caliber of legal analysis we’ve come to expect from our lawyer-in-chief. Apparently, it’s spreading. This seems to be the actual reason: “The logs could show not only when state officials are at the State House, but whether lawmakers are honestly reporting their per diem travel reimbursements for trips into Boston — which range from $10 to $100 a day. The log lockdown triggered a firestorm from Herald readers yesterday.”

Why Are We "Pre-Revolutionary" Again?

Let's tick off a few things:
- An official of the Department of Justice, the cabinet-level agency charged with unearthing wrongdoing and enforcing our laws, is pleading the fifth so as to be able to not reveal truths to Congressional investigators;
- ObamaCare is now forcing you and I to pay for free contraception for our fellow citizens;
- more idiocy and taxpayer funded waste at bankrupt Solyndra;
- Feds shut down file-sharing website with no apparent due process
- Coast Guard indefinitely detains seafarers over suspected pollution
- Some in Congress are proposing a "Reasonable Profits Board"
- The national debt - at least the official, understated, national debt - was, at last count, over $15 trillion;
- Our President has just shut down a major infrastructure project that would provide tens of thousands of jobs and increase our energy supplies from a friendly neighbor rather than from extremist, America-hating dictatorships;

That's just today and after just five minutes of perusing. No wonder Pat Caddell has found Americans to be in a "pre-revolutionary" mood.

One Day More

Tomorrow is February 11th, the anniversary of the Khomeinist seizure of power in Iran. It seems the world is set to witness a spectacle of historical import there. The Green movement hasn't erupted in a few weeks, since the the funeral of Montazeri, and its leaders are encouraging nationwide protests tomorrow. Likewise the regime is "thugging up" for a massive confrontation. It's a real world example of that tense, pre-revolutionary moment, in which both sides and the world wait and anticipate, perfectfully captured in the brilliant score to Les Miserables. In "One Day More" the revolutionaries ponder the great future of a world remade:

"One day to a new beginning,
Raise the flag of freedom high!
Every man will be a king.
Every man will be a king.
There's a new world for the winning.
There's a new world to be won."

While the arm of the state, Javert, bolsters his confidence:

"One day more till revolution,
We will nip it in the bud!
We'll be ready for these schoolboys,
They will wet themselves with blood!"

This article by Amir Taheri sums up nicely the current state of affairs as we await tomorrow's events. One can only admire the brave, freedom-seeking Iranian people and pray for their eventual triumph over tyranny, and likewise loathe Khamenei & Ahmadinejad and hope they are relegated to history's dustbin. There is no ambiguity as to the moral calculus here.

As for our own selfish purposes, the geopolitical question, this could be our last chance to have the world's most pressing geopolitical threat neutralized with a silver bullet, which points up what a monumental blunder President Obama's past fumbling and current silence represents. Prior to June of last year, Iran had been a long-standing intractable situation hurtling toward a resolution via one of two terrible options - a fanatical, acopalyptic regime armed with nuclear weapons or a military strike of uncertain effectiveness and unpredictable consequences. To the extent that this global problem had a silver bullet, it arrived in June with the fraudulent presidential election that ignited popular resentment and unleashed months of steady, widespread protest. A regime change from within that moved Iran from a fanatical, West-loathing regime to a liberated, democratic society desirous of engagement with the modern world would have been a rare miracle, a moral and geopolitical win-win for the ages. And President Obama did nothing and said nothing. To make it that much more inexcusable, he failed not because he just missed something or misread the situation, he did nothing and said nothing because his approach rested on the arrogance that he was unique in this world, that he alone possessed the ability to resolve the situation where decades of efforts have previously failed. Hence the power, prestige and moral exmaple of the United States of America is out of the game. The Iranians have only themselves and we can only wish them the best and pray for them. And so, one last line from Les Miserables:

"Tomorrow will discover what our God in Heaven has in store.
One more dawn. One more day. One day more!"

Secessionist Idea Spreading

First, some Coloradans want to split from the liberal urban nexus.  Now, some Marylanders have the same idea.  The recall elections happening tomorrow are of a piece with this.

The notable point here is not the likelihood of success but the proliferation of the idea.  This is the result of driving Americans into, as Democrat pollster Pat Caddell terms it, a "pre-revolutionary mood."  Petty-tyrant progressives have awakened the beast of popular democracy.

I suspect New York will see such a movement in short order.  Remember this map?

Turbo Tax Tim Geithner Deserves Your Contempt

Sometimes I don't know whether to boil over with rage as a show to the world that they ought to consider the same reaction (Q: Where is the Outrage? A: Right here.) or to calmly lay out the case so that others can assess it rationally too.

In the case of Turbo Tax Timmy, Larry Lindsey does the latter. A taste:

"Last week Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said that the "most fortunate Americans" should pay more in taxes for the "privilege of being an American." One can debate different ways of balancing the budget. But Mr. Geithner's argument highlights an unfortunate and very destructive instinct that seems to permeate the Obama administration about the respective roles of citizens and their government."

As for the outrage, I encourage all to read Lindsey's piece carefully and contemplate what a reprehensible schmuck TT Timmy is if this is indeed his view. I hope there is a special place sometime somewhere where the contemptible arrogance on display by TTT is held to account.

From Bev Perdue to this SOB...I wonder why Americans are "pre-revolutionary."

Pat Caddell Was Right

Carter-era pollster Pat Caddell put his finger on the mood of the citizenry several years ago...he called it "pre-revolutionary." 

As in ripe and ready for revolt.

We tend not to do things like storm the Bastille or break out the guillotine here in the good ole USofA.  We've developed and taking a liking to a more civilized ways to chop heads of our leaders (for which many of our leaders should be thankful), via the ballot box.

I'd say Caddell was spot on.

Hey, Reject the Voices That Say Government Is Creeping Towards Tyranny

OK, so the IRS is targeting you for special scrutiny based on your political beliefs, the DOJ is illegally tapping the phone lines of the press (and these are their friends?!?!?!), the White House is lying to us about the existence of Islamic terrorism that is targeting us abroad and home, and cabinet officials are shaking down private businesses to fund an already lavishing funded entitlement.

But,naturally, us idiots have apparently a third thing that we inexplicably and irrationally cling to, and that is Rush Limbaugh.

This, of course, on top of what I have talked about that average Americans see every day:

Now, stop and think of what Americans are seeing and hearing every day.  First, their government just concluded a massive and contentious, but ultimately successful, effort to demand that they buy a product which many do not want and/or cannot afford.  This is on top of thousands of smaller petty tyrannies, such what lightbulbs one can use, how much water a toilet or washing machine may use, or what processing must be done to the milk you buy.  Then Americans look to some of the policy ideas that get put forth here and there, such as forcing the installation of tracking devices in all automobiles ostensibly so that government can tax you by the mile (good heavens, no, never to track your movements) or taking your retirement nest egg in return for a government provided annuity.  These are serious proposals put forth by credentialed people with access to those in power.

Finally, we see our elected representatives passing laws that no one has read let alone analyzed carefully.  Sometimes they do this in contravention of the rules and sometimes even with a sickening pride in bypassing the rules.  We have other officials suggesting the suspension of elections and there are countless examples were those in power don't seem to want or tolerate the rules applying to them, so we are increasingly living under a set of rules that the elites have exempted themselves from.  And I haven't even mentioned what to many is an obviously bloody-minded statist President who no one would ever accuse of valuing modesty in the exercise of power.

So, if Pat Caddell is right and Americans were "pre-revolutionary" prior to the IRS/AP/Benghazi/Sebelius crap, what are they now?