I watched enormous stretches of Thursday’s surreal gathering of politicians at Blair House. Of course, it was a futile exercise. There is nothing healthy about a “health insurance reform” debate, not when its chief proponents are devout Socialists.
Barack Hussein Obama sees “reform” as a path to nationalized, single-payer medicine, consistent with his denouncement of all things fundamentally American. While Thursday’s summit was a triumph for Republican lawmakers, who boldly demonstrated they are not backing down in opposition to a $1 trillion wealth transfer and a bill loaded with kickbacks, Obama clearly viewed them with the same contempt he held for that briefly famous insect. No, not Joe The Plumber. I refer to the winged life form he flicked — after it landed on his arm — into sudden death a few months ago while taping an interview.
Regardless of what becomes of Obama’s socialized health insurance conspiracy — if sanity prevails, it will be flicked into oblivion — his defiant handling of this particular item on his “transformational agenda” has been useful. It seems an odd conclusion that anything that has so distracted from the mending of our economy would be useful, yet the hubris displayed by Obama and his messengers throughout this health insurance reform blitz is useful because it sheds bright, penetrating light on this unexamined, unqualified President.
Barack Hussein Obama ran in a free election for President but interpreted the results of November 2008 as an anointment. He does not want to serve as our President, never did. He stands before us as a reigning despot, a tyrant. If Newsweek was writing the headline, its editors would proclaim, “We’re All Flies Now”.
While attending the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington last weekend, I made sure to be in the hall first thing on Saturday morning to hear from former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton. His words became a preview of what would be witnessed less than a week later.
The rude, smirking, combative Obama who spoke for 119 of the 343 minutes consumed by Thursday’s “summit” did not simply wake up on the wrong side of the bed before strutting across the street to Blair House.
“He sees the inevitability of American decline as a kind of natural phenomenon,” Bolton said last week. “(Obama) is the first post-American President. Fundamentally, the President doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism.”
I would advance Mr. Bolton’s take on Obama further. This self-absorbed 44th President is in reality America’s first Dictator. I didn’t merely read this on some homemade poster at a Tea Party rally and file it away. This is the only conclusion that can be drawn after 14 months of Maobama Occupation of the White House.
Return to his performance in Thursday’s summit. With compliant Socialist zombies flanking him, Soviet Politburo-style (Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden and Kathleen “Sneeze As I Say” Sebelius), Obama instructed that time he took up commenting was not on the clock “because I’m the President”. He didn’t chuckle. Without a writer’s eloquent phrasing via teleprompter to guide him, Obama showed his true leadership style. He apologized for interrupting, then interrupted. He said he didn’t want to cut someone off in mid-sentence, but had done so in the same breath.
Tellingly, as would any dictator, he dismissed topics raised for debate by Sen. John McCain, Sen. Lamar Alexander, Rep. Eric Cantor and Rep. Paul Ryan as rehashed “talking points”. At his lowest moment, Obama derided a testy McCain, reminding him in an utterly contemptuous tone, “John, we’re not campaigning anymore.”
Obama’s dictatorial self-image is apparent in a broader sense as well. What is the one attribute we frequently see in ruthless dictators? They delude themselves with their “agendas” and “visions” while their people suffer in the shadows. As Obama and liberal lawmakers zealously pursue the hijacking of health insurance and medical care by the federal government, unemployment rates remain alarmingly high, small businesses continue to survive but not thrive and the federal budget deficit soars.
The brilliant columnist Charles Krauthammer observed post-summit that Americans accept that our Presidents are given keys to the White House, 24/7 access to a 747 aircraft and a personal chef. (Remember the lingering Bill Clinton at Andrews Air Force Base in January 2001? He did not want to let it go.)
But Obama seems more enamored of his inevitability, of his victory in November 2008, of reminding John McCain over and over that he was vanquished. Most of all, Obama is consumed by his power, which he believes is absolute.
Despite the trappings, Krauthammer said, “you do not become the arbiter of legitimacy of American discourse” when elected President of the United States.
The only conclusion, then, is that we take Obama at his word. He said he’d rather be a “good” one-term President, and he meant that — as in one who succeeds at dismantling the United States as quickly and thoroughly as he possibly can. Throughout history, tyrannical dictators intuitively have known that time is of the essence because their time will be short.
Obama essentially vacated the Presidency soon after he claimed it, perhaps in the same moment when he abruptly ordered a bust of Winston Churchill be removed from the Oval Office. Now we know that this was not solely an anti-Bush gesture. An avowed Saul Alinsky radical seething with dictatorial ambitions does not stare across his office at Churchill.
Jonathan Quick has come to a patriotic crossroads. He is a National Hockey League goalkeeper and a member of the 2010 U.S. Olympic men’s ice hockey team. He loves America and the people who defend her.