Pushback

By Jack Kinsella
The Omega Letter

A new poll commissioned by CNN found that an astounding 56% of Americans think "the federal government has become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens."

Fifty-six percent! That's a lot more than the percentage of the population that is Muslim (0.7%) or is gay (2-4%) or atheist (4%) or liberal (20%).

That's more that it took to elect Bill Clinton (43%) in 1992 and 1996 (41%), more than it took to elect George Bush (47.5% 2000, 50.7% 2004) and even more than it took to elect Barack Hussein Obama (52.9%).

More than half the country believes the government poses an IMMEDIATE threat to rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution, the poll says. And the fact it was commissioned by CNN makes it doubly astonishing.

CNN led the liberal campaign to get Obama elected. CNN's fawning coverage of all things Obama was so unabashed that it prompted several books like Bernie Goldberg's "The Media's Slobbering Love Affair with Barack Obama."

The liberal media has so much of its credibility invested in Barack Hussein Obama that it is practically forced to spike any story that reflects badly on the Obama administration.

The spiking of the Tea Party rallies last year is a great example. Buffalo, N.Y. is a liberal city with a liberal government and a liberal media. On July 4th, thousands of Tea Partiers marched on Buffalo's downtown City Hall.

But if you didn't personally see it (or hear about it on Fox News), you wouldn't know it even happened. I have talked to at least a dozen people who live within ten miles of downtown Buffalo who didn't know anything about it.

Even Buffalo's local media spiked the story - despite the fact it was the biggest public demonstration that city has seen in a decade or more.

When the liberal media can't spike stories that reflect badly on the administration, it spins it.

Yesterday, I heard a CNN anchor blame the Republicans for 'blocking' a $10 billion unemployment extension because one Republican senator had the temerity to ask how it was to be paid for.

The Democrats have an overwhelming majority in both Houses of Congress. Blaming the Republicans for the failure of the Democrats to pass a bill is like blaming a tree for running into a car.

It isn't that the liberal mainstream media can't see the Obama administration for the train wreck that it is. It is just that they can't tell YOU about it - not and maintain any pretense of objectivity.

Last year, they were telling you that Obama the Messiah had come. Chris Matthews reported on air that he felt a 'thrill run up his leg' (yuck!!) when Obama was speaking.

The NYTimes published a virtual photo album of carefully-retouched photographs of Obama, all framing him in iconic quasi-religious themes.

The coverage was SO fawning that Obama himself once joked; ". . .contrary to popular belief, I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on the Planet Krypton."

The joke would have been funny if it had been made ABOUT him. But it was made BY him. So it was hard to tell if he was kidding.

CNN tried to sugar-coat the story by saying the majority poll "reflected a partisan divide."

"The survey indicates a partisan divide on the question: Only 37 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of independents and nearly seven in 10 Republicans say the federal government poses a threat to the rights of Americans."

Ok. Let's stop there. In a 2009 Gallup poll, only 21% of Americans self-identified as liberal, broken down as 16% who say they are “liberal” and 5% who say they are “very liberal.”

Thirty-five percent of Americans self-identified as "moderate."

In the same poll, fully 40% of Americans self identify as either “conservative” (31%) or “very conservative” (9%).

One-third of all Democrats, two-thirds of all independents (moderates) and 70% of Republicans believe that the federal government under the Obama administration poses a "threat" to American freedom.

Freedom is partisan?

Despite the fact that other polls show that a similar majority of Americans want Obama to scrap the health care bill and start over, the administration seems determined to ram through a modified version of this one by any means necessary, even at the cost of losing the Congress.

Nancy Pelosi admitted as much in a recent ABC News interview. Whether she intended to or not is an open question - you tell me.

"We're not here just to self perpetuate our service in Congress. We're here to do the job for the American people."

You see, they aren't there just to 'self-perpetuate their service' in Congress. There's other stuff they do besides that. Like doing a job 'for the American people'. Even if two-thirds of them don't want them to.

The whole comment put me in mind of a Boy Scout trying to earn a merit badge by helping a little old lady across the street - whether she wanted to go or not.

The combination of 9/11, the war on terror, the Patriot Act, the Iraq War, the resurging Taliban and the collapsing economy created the perfect political storm.

By a quirk of fate, the Far Left found itself in control of both the legislative and executive branches of government, with the full support of an activist judiciary and the liberal media.

The resulting pushback, as reflected by these poll numbers, is actually strengthening their hand, at least temporarily.

The handwriting is already on the wall - Pelosi knows she won't be Speaker next January. She probably won't even be in the Congress. Ditto for Harry Reid.

Most of the old school Democrats are lame ducks hoping to avoid indictment by retiring; Charlie Rangel, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, etc.; with the conventional wisdom saying that in November, most of the incumbents will get their walking papers.

So they have nothing to lose by ramming their health care bill through.

But I don't believe it's as much about health care as it is about clearing away some of the obstacles posed by the Constitution.

The Left has twin goals in this effort. The first is control, of course, but the second is aimed directly at the Constitution via the Tenth Amendment.

Obama once described the U.S. Constitution as having “deep flaws” - in a discussion referring specifically to the Tenth Amendment.

During a September 2001 Chicago public radio program, he also that the country’s Founding Fathers had “an enormous blind spot” when they wrote it.

Obama also concluded in the same program that the Constitution “reflected the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day.”

The Tenth Amendment says that any rights not specifically given to the federal government are reserved for the states and for the people. Health insurance isn't in there.

(I heard one liberal argue that it is in the 'general welfare' clause, but that is clueless. "General welfare" doesn't mean using the IRS to fine people who don't buy IRS-approved health insurance.)

Obama’s statements came during a panel discussion that aired on Chicago’s WBEZ-FM on Sept. 6, 2001, titled “Slavery and the Constitution.”

The discussion that led to the statements took place on the now-defunct Odyssey program, which also aired statements by Obama bemoaning the fact that the Civil Rights movement had failed to bring about an economic redistribution of wealth in America.

Obama's no-holds-barred get-it-done-before-anybody-notices health care agenda is aimed at rectifying that shortcoming by forcing a Constitutional crisis over state's rights as guaranteed by the Tenth Amendment.

Ironically, 'states rights' is the same Constitutional issue that forced the last US Civil War.

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