With the stunning defeat of Democrats and the progressive agenda in general in the November 4, 2014 mid-term elections, gun-related issues are, for the time being, off the front pages and the nightly newscasts. But as I noted last week in “What We Deserve,” the apparent absence of overt challenges to the rights to armed self-defense and to keep and bear arms does not mean such attacks are not being planned. Or even that they aren’t actually, actively occurring . . .
The biggest story mainstream media outlets are studiously trying to avoid at the moment is the revelation that MIT economist Jonathan Gruber has been admitting for several years and on multiple occasions — six separate videotapes of six separate occasions have thus far surfaced — that Obamacare is a writhing, festering bundle of lies. That it was sold to the American public with a web of misdirection Professor Gruber, President Obama, and the Obama Administration knew to be lies from the start. In fact, Gruber was hired by the Obama Administration and has been paid, to date, much more than a million dollars to concoct falsehoods that would allow Democrats to deceive the American public. Not a single republican voted for Obamacare.
But that’s not nearly all. Gruber, as already noted, stood to make millions from his deceptions, and in each of the surfaced videos, he has not only admitted that Obamacare was a scam from the start, that its promises were lies, he has repeatedly called the American people stupid and bragged about his cleverness in deceiving Americans with a law designed to harm them economically, to massively redistribute wealth and to destroy the American health care system.
From Keith Hennessey, a Gruber quote during a public appearance:
“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it’s written to do that. In terms of risk rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in – you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed… Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really really critical for the thing to pass. It’s a second-best argument. Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.”
Gruber helped write Obamacare to deceive the Congressional Budget Office. A “lack of transparency is a huge political advantage.” It was really critical that the American voter is stupid in order to pass the law. Honesty is secondary to getting a fraudulent, brutally harmful progressive policy into law.
Caught like a cockroach in the middle of the kitchen when the lights come on, Gruber laughably lied again:
“I honestly don’t remember why I said that. I was speaking off-the-cuff. It was just a mistake. People make mistakes. Congress made a mistake drafting the law and I made a mistake talking about it.”
Congress didn’t draft the law. Not a single member of Congress has admitted reading it. And still more videos of Gruber repeating the same crude insults of the American people. bragging about his lies and manipulations, on behalf of the Obama Administration have surfaced.
“A third video emerged Wednesday of MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, one of the architects of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, insulting voters and suggesting their ignorance was exploited by those pushing passage of the health care law. [skip]
In this one, Gruber was discussing how then-Sen. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, pushed forward a way to add a tax on expensive health insurance plans, or ‘Cadillac Plans,’ that would purportedly tax the insurance companies though Gruber suggests everyone knew the companies would just pass on the additional cost to customers.
‘It’s a very clever, you know, basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter,’ Gruber said at the Honors Colloquium 2012 at the University of Rhode Island.”
Gruber tried another fauxpology, and try as they might, even the Washington Post couldn’t avoid the story any longer:
“An MIT professor who was an architect of Obamacare said Tuesday he ‘spoke inappropriately’ when he said a lack of transparency and ‘the stupidity of American voter’ played a key part in the law’s passage.
‘The comments in the video were made at an academic conference,’ Jonathan Gruber said Tuesday on MSNBC. ‘I was speaking off the cuff and I basically spoke inappropriately and I regret having made those comments.”
He spoke inappropriately and regrets making the comments. I’m sure he does (more in-depth coverage of Gruber may be found here and here). And he was speaking at an academic conference which explains everything. Don’t we all expect people speaking at academic conferences to brag about lying to the American people, seriously damaging the economy and committing arguably the most monumental fraud in American history, all the while calling Americans stupid and making more than a million dollars in the process? Actually, perhaps we do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX2Ib_vQh6E&t=9m28s
Why am I writing about health care in a gun forum? Actually, I am writing about gun policy, and for several reasons. Let’s remember who Jonathan Gruber is. He’s one of the progressive elite, people who went to the right schools and who work at the right places. He not only was instrumental in writing and fraudulently selling Obamacare, he has received several obscenely lucrative government contracts from the federal government and various states. He has actually made millions as one of the most arrogant and immoral con men in American history. In short, he’s just the kind of guy who fills the ranks of the Obama Administration, an administration that considered him their go-to guy on health care, one of the elite, a man they richly rewarded for doing their bidding.
Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi — she who told us we had to pass Obamacare to find out what’s in it — now claims to have no idea who Gruber is, and also claims he had nothing to do with Obamacare. Unfortunately for her, a 2009 video of her praising Gruber’s Obamacare work immediately surfaced.
President Obama admitted that Gruber was “an advisor,” but denied misleading the public. Apparently he forgot he already admitted he lied about Obamacare. Who you gonna trust? Barack Obama or your own lyin’ eyes and ears?
The stark reality is that President Obama and his entire administration are lawless. They have nothing but disdain for the Constitution and have shown themselves more than willing to tell any lie, and to conduct any cover up, to implement their progressive policies, the stupid American public be damned.
The kindest interpretation of their beliefs and actions is that they truly believe themselves to be superior to virtually every American in both intellect and morality. Only they, by virtue of their elite educations, their sophistication, and their innate goodness, can properly govern us. Some of them doubtless imagine that they are doing this for our own good. After all, we aren’t intelligent enough to know what’s good for us or what we need. We are so stupid we couldn’t possibly know how to spend our own money. Left to our own devices, we’d probably blow it on things like guns or pickup trucks. We might even read books by authors who aren’t progressives.
A more comprehensive interpretation also takes into account their incredible arrogance and narcissism, and recognizes that their policies can lead only to tyranny and the destruction of the Constitution, the rule of law, and ultimately, America. Total civilian disarmament is absolutely necessary if a progressive utopia is to be achieved against the will of the lumpen masses. Why, those gun-toting rubes might actually try to harm their betters in the name of patriotism or something equally stupid and outdated.
With two years left in office, and with essentially nothing to stop him, Mr. Obama may try to make good on his threats to disarm the public. And he has indeed made them.
On April 18, 2013, a raging President Obama scolded members of Congress who, the day before, defeated his gun control initiatives. Among the failed measures were an “assault weapon” ban, a ban on “high-capacity” magazines, and so-called “comprehensive” background checks. Mr. Obama accused Republicans — and of course, the NRA — of lying about all of these measures. In Washington-speak, this means they actually told the truth.
Mr. Obama called all of these measures “commonsense gun reform.” He made it clear he wasn’t done:
“I believe we are going to be able to get this done. Sooner or later, we are going to get this right.”
On January 28, 2014, at his State of The Union speech, Mr. Obama promised to use his infamous pen and phone to bypass the Congress and the Second Amendment.
“I intend to keep trying, with or without Congress, to help stop more tragedies from visiting innocent Americans in our movie theaters, shopping malls, or schools like Sandy Hook.’ Obama said.
‘Citizenship means standing up for the lives that gun violence steals from us each day,’ he continued. ‘I have seen the courage of parents, students, pastors, and police officers all over this country who say ‘we are not afraid.’”
It makes no difference to Mr. Obama or any progressive that none of these failed measures would have prevented the Sandy Hook murders or any others. It’s the policy that matters, not the results.
In a March 2011 meeting with Mr. Obama, Sarah Brady of the virulently anti-gun Brady Campaign, claimed that Mr. Obama told her he was working on gun control “under the radar.” Even some in the Second Amendment community more or less debunked that claim, and Brady (or the President) may well have been engaging in wishful thinking or outright deception — that’s one of the hallmarks of the anti-gun movement. But Mr. Obama’s subsequent cynically opportunistic attempt to impose gun control over the bodies of the Sandy Hook victims, and his more recent promise to enact gun control without bothering with such trifles as actually enacting laws, make clear that even if Brady misspoke or lied, she well understood President Obama’s ultimate intentions.
The next two years may be dangerous times indeed for liberty and those that love it. Once Mr. Obama has immigration out of the way, we can surely expect executive orders on “assault weapons,” “large capacity magazines,” a background check mandate that would criminalize virtually any transfer of a firearm — even between parents and their children — without prior federal approval, and a variety of other “commonsense” infringements on the Second Amendment, state constitutions, and state and federal laws.
Jonathan Gruber has actually done a public service. He has definitively revealed the utter lack of character and integrity, the criminal pathology, that runs rampant in the Obama Administration from top to bottom. He has clearly exposed the progressive mindset. Those who didn’t know, didn’t want to know, or wanted to deny knowing what progressives truly intend, and what they think about Americans and America, can’t easily ignore that truth any longer.
After perpetrating the greatest and most destructive fraud in American history on hapless, stupid Americans — bitter God and gun clingers all — what’s a little gun control between superior beings and the peasants they are destined to rule? Two years is going to be a very, very long time.
Mike’s Home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.