JUDGING OBAMA

The next president will probably be nominating one and perhaps two new supreme
court judges. John Paul Stevens is 88 and Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 75. Add in the hundreds of potential nominees for the various federal courts and this becomes, in my
opinion, a major issue in the presidential race.

In remarks on the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts in 2005, Barack Obama
stated that he was voting against the Roberts nomination. As near as I can tell, Obama
thought that Judge Roberts was qualified to sit on the highest court in the land but he was
concerned about the depth and breadth of his empathy and what was in the judges heart.
He felt that Judge Roberts had too often “used his formidable skills on behalf of the strong in opposition to the weak.”

In a speech given at a Planned Parenthood conference in 2007, Obama expanded on this
saying: “We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like
to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or
African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that’s the criteria by which I’m going
to be selecting my judges.” Excuse me, but what in the heck does that mean? I imagine that many of you, like me, don’t belong to any of the “special groups” he mentioned. Are
the people in his selected groups always the weak and the rest of us always the strong?

Suppose some poor, African-American, gay guy breaks into my house to steal my stuff.
Then suppose my guard dog attacks and injures him. Then the guy sues me for mental anguish or something. If this case gets in front of an Obama judge, I’m thinking I’m in big trouble. Middle aged, middle class, white guy against a guy with the “special group” trifecta. A judge meeting Obama’s criteria for empathy and heart is going to whack me pretty hard.

Now, a different scenario. Suppose , after going to church on Sunday, I decide to shoot
my guns. (I live in the Midwest, that’s what we do) Because I’m a knucklehead, I shoot
myself in the foot. I decide to sue the gun manufacturer for pain and suffering. Now here the dynamic changes. I’m sure that I would be considered the weak party because
how can a big, bad gun company ever be considered anything but strong in Obamaland?
So, regardless of the merits of my lawsuit, I should be in for a big payday with an empathetic, big hearted judge.

There are innumerable situations that don’t fit Obam’s template. What if an old guy sues
a disabled guy? Or a teenage mom goes after a gay guy? With Obama’s level of hubris,
I’m sure he would be comfortable being the final arbiter in these difficult cases. But that
is not how it’s suppose to work. Obama cannot be allowed to choose which “team” judges play for. Judges aren’t suppose to play at all. They’re job is to umpire and to hold both sides accountable to the same set of rules. We are a nation of laws, not of men.

MARX FOR OBAMA

As I have discussed previously, liberals are full of wacky and often dangerous ideas. They have beliefs that are antithetical to the truly American philosophy of individual rights and freedom. Because most clear headed Americans find liberal ideas and beliefs offensive, liberal politicians need to be good bullshitters. And, if you are going to run for the highest office in the land, you need to be an expert. Barack Obama is a master of obfuscation and deceit. Sure, his challenge is made easier by a fawning media, but there is no denying his oratory skills. But, it’s a long campaign and even Obama screws up on occasion and we are able to get a glimpse of the real man. I’m not talking about routine gaffes, like his initial reaction to Russia’s invasion of Georgia. While their homeland was being overrun by Russian tanks, Obama encouraged the Georgians to “take it easy”. He issued several statements calling for the UN Security Council to pass resolutions condemning the Russian aggression and for economic sanctions against them. Apparently, Obama did not know that as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, Russia has veto powers. I’m pretty sure that the Russkies wouldn’t go along with those types of resolutions. For a man who wants to be president, this shows an appalling lack of knowledge in foreign affairs. Apparently, it hasn’t hurt him much. Knowledge can be gained with experience and it seems that many Americans aren’t concerned that Obama will be getting his experience while he is on the job, during a time of war, no less.

Lack of knowledge and experience is bad enough, but what concerns me even more is Obama’s underlying political philosophy as revealed during his brief moments of candor. In a debate with Hillary during the Democratic primary, Obama was asked about his proposal to raise the capital gains tax from 15% to the Clinton era level of 28%. Initially, he blabbered the standard democratic line about financing health care and education and the need for revenue sources. When the moderator pointed out the fact that revenues to the treasury go down whenever the capital gains tax is raised and that revenues increase when the tax is lowered, Obama finally admitted that he would raise the tax out of a sense of fairness. That’s right. Fairness is achieved when all are equally miserable. While helping no one, Obama wants to punish those with the audacity to take risks and the desire to succeed. He is appealing to the most depraved of human emotions, greed and envy. He is absolving all personal failure by criminalizing individual success. Hope and change my ass! He is the candidate of despair and bitterness. God help us if he gets elected.

Then, just last week, Obama stepped into the light again when he told “Joe the plumber” that “when you spread the wealth around it’s good for everybody”. I agree. The question is, how to best do that? Obama wants to spread the wealth through government tax policies. This is the essence of socialism. Obama proposes to use the coercive power of the state and ultimately it’s monopoly on the organized use of force to regulate and expropriate the wealth of those that produce it and redistribute it to those he deems as entitled to it. Socialism institutionalizes envy and class warfare and legitimizes government theft by calling it “paying your fair share”. It is a morally bankrupt system that has failed every time it’s been tried. It will be no different with Obama leading the way.
I would prefer that we “spread the wealth around” in the traditional American way. Not only is the free market, capitalist system morally superior to socialism, it actually works. It is morally superior because it enables free people, acting as individual moral agents, to trade or sell goods and services of their own free will and on the basis of mutual consent. As with any system, there will still be winners and losers, but they are determined by the actions of the individual, not by the favor of some government bureaucrat.