Leo Rizzuti

The past week has been very bad for Barack Obama. The election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts to the Senate meant that the Democrats no longer held a filibuster-proof stranglehold on the legislative process. Following that was the declaration from several Democrats that they were retiring, a sign that they could read the writing on the wall when it comes to their electoral chances in the fall. Obama’s inner circle can’t seem to get on the same page when it comes to identifying just how many jobs have supposedly been saved or created when prompted on the Sunday talk shows. Tim Geithner is looking more and more like the weasley character Eric Gordon from “Billy Madison”, especially after recent revelations of his involvement with attempting to keep AIG bailout details secret from the American people, going so far as to try and give them status as national security secrets. Ellie Light (and other personae), that great Obama supporter of recent note, came to the attention of everybody as either being one of the biggest frauds ever attempted on America’s newspapers or a teleporting member of the X-Men who can apparently reside in multiple cities and states simultaneously, and Fox News ended the week as the most watched cable station in the country.

And now Obama has to give his State of the Union address.

Originally, Obama meant for the State of the Union to be a self-congratulatory speech, one in which he could tout his success at having pushed health care legislation through Congress. Alas, Brown’s election disrupted his timing, leaving the President with no shining star to center his address. Further, the jobs outlook, despite what Obama’s political spinners try and tell us, is bleak at best. The administration has gone so far as to change the very apparatus that they use to count a job that has been either “saved” or “created”, already an exercise in fuzzy math, to include any job that is paid for with stimulus money as being one for their side of the chalkboard, whether or not that job was in any danger of being cut or had any direct tie-ins with government spending. Unemployment, which Obama proclaimed would be held in check at 8% by his machinations, has risen to well over 10%, and is giving no indication of trending downwards any time soon. Terrorism – I’m sorry – “man caused disasters” are once again on the rise, bin Laden is posting You Tube videos faster than Chris Carter, and a majority of people are now saying that they would rather still have George Bush in charge than the current occupants of the White House. Clearly, the President has need of some new mojo.

And it would appear that he has found it. All of this week, every time we have seen Obama speak, he has implemented one term more that any other: “the people”. At first I thought this was simply Obama attempting to ride Scott Brown’s coattails from his “this is the people’s seat” comment that was the final nail in Martha Coakley’s political coffin, but very quickly this idea was dismissed. After all, why would Obama give attention to someone who had just dashed his dreams of realizing the dreams of progressives since 1900, the governmental takeover of America’s health care system? Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I detected something a bit more sinister in the works.

The term “the people”, when given over and over again, is historically the biggest calling card of populism; and, in fact, many other political observers have noted this populist turn in Obama’s speechifying. No one that I have heard, however, has pointed out what a red flag this should be to the American people, and I am afraid that they are ignoring it to their own peril.

Populism is a tool used in the meanest of political discourses, when a politician wants to do nothing more than demonize their opponent, hoping to turn members of the public against each other, with the goal being for the majority to be on their side. It has been successful in the past, too – though I don’t think that the Obama administration will be parading its former proponents around any time soon. After all, populism was the driving force behind such great political movements as the Bolshevik Revolution, the rise of the Nazi Party in 1930’s Germany, and the Communist revolution led by Fidel Castro in Cuba. It has been effectively used by such groups as the Black Panthers, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Not exactly a “Who’s Who” of American ideals.

Barack Obama’s current trend of populist talking points are classic. They aim barbs at the typical populist targets, banks and big business, and set up an “us versus them” scenario – and Obama shows no signs of stopping. This type of rhetoric was most effectively used by Adolf Hitler to gin up public sentiment against German Jews that were, at the time, seen to be the controllers of banking and business. Listening to a Hitler speech from the early 1930’s, one is struck by the eerie similarity of modern speeches, not just by Barack Obama, but by other populists today such as Nancy Pelosi, Alan Grayson, Howard Dean, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.

Chavez, perhaps the most prominent populist in the world today, began turning his country into a totalitarian regime by railing against big business, the banking industry, and opposing media outlets after taking power – chipping away until no one was left to stand against him. Ten years ago, it was thought that he was simply trying to pull his country out of an economic hole, which he blamed on everybody but the out of control government at the time. This week saw Chavez pulling the cable on his last media critic, ending dissent and free speech in Venezuela.

I shall be paying close attention to Barack Obama’s State of the Union address tomorrow night. I think I know what he will say. But I hope, for the sake of freedom, that I am wrong.

It was a common theme during the ascendancy of Barack Hussein Obama. He was compared to everyone imaginable, photoshopped into pictures of FDR, his speeches were compared to Ronald Reagan, and his image replaced Jesus Christ in many religious icons. But the greater glory that was seen by the left, especially those acolytes in the media, was that the election of Obama would mean nothing less than a return to their glory days, the days when the First Family was seen as fashion icons, when style would once again trump substance, and when the President would assume celebrity status normally held by movie stars. In short, it would be nothing less than a return to Camelot. Read the rest of this entry »

“In darkness one may be ashamed of what one does, without the shame of disgrace”  Sophocles

Woe to those who go to great depths to hide their plans from the LORD, who do their work in darkness and think, “Who sees us? Who will know?”  Isaiah 29:15

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

Senate Oath of Office

Today is Sunday, December 20, 2009. The time is 11:45pm, and I am doing something that I never thought I would have to do as an American: keeping an overnight eye on our government. The Harry Reid led Senate, bolstered by Sen. Ben Nelson’s statement in support of the current health care bill, will be taking a crucial vote on the issue in about an hour. This vote will advance the bill to a cloture vote, paving the way for the Federal government to take unprecedented control over 1/6 of the national economy, all in the name of “health care reform.” Read the rest of this entry »

I’m going to have to say something that I thought that I would never, ever have to say:

Thank you, God, for the gift that is Howard Dean.

OK, so I’ve said that before, but it was always in the context of Dean being a never ending source of punchlines, You Tube moments, and enough gaffes to make Joe Biden blush. In short, the man is political comedy gold.

This time, I’m saying my thanks without even a snicker, and I’m not only thankful for Howard, but also for every uber-leftist within reach of a microphone or a member of the press. And at this moment every freedom loving American should join me in my offering of thanks.

I think. Then again… Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, a very dear friend of mine asked me to explain the differences between a democracy and a republic, specifically a representative republic. Much has been said on this subject by some of the greatest political philosophers. Unfortunately, judging from the way that the individual terms have been used, not much of what has been written has been included in the education of our populace. That is very sad, because it is quite difficult to defend a political system that someone does not even understand to the point of correctly naming it. There was a time in our country when even someone with the most basic of educations was well versed in the construction of our chosen form of government, but that was before we felt it was necessary to indoctrinate children in the wonders of multiculturalism, revised history, and choreographed Obama worship. The social engineers that have controlled the curriculum of our public schools would call that improvement. I would call it a woeful disgrace. Read the rest of this entry »

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

The Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America. One of the most famous documents in the world, and one of – if not the – most important. But what does it really mean? What were the Founding Fathers trying to tell us? And what can we learn about what our country originally meant by listening to them? Let us take a closer look: Read the rest of this entry »

 Maybe it’s that I have a unique mind. Or perhaps just an odd sense of humor. Or, as my wife has often suggested, I simply took one too many blows to the head playing football. Whatever the reason, I simply find myself one of those individuals who are incapable of not poking the proverbial hornets’ nest with a stick. So obviously when I heard that our most beloved Democrat Congressman Alan Grayson (FL) had followed up his “the Republicans’ plan is for you to die quickly” with the establishment of a website, my curiosity was, at the very least, piqued.

Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier today I read an opinion piece regarding Barack Obama being given (and I stress “given”) the Nobel Peace Prize, an award that even the Chosen One has expressed he has done nothing to earn. Granted, he’s still going to keep it, but he spent the majority of the day with the same puzzled look on his face that is normally reserved for times that he is forced to listen to Joe Biden speeches. Read the rest of this entry »

You know, I have a thought here. What if we’re all looking at what Barack Obama has been doing with the freak show that is his inner circle in completely the wrong way? No, no, hear me out here…

Read the rest of this entry »

Are you ready, kids? Because once again it’s time to play…

HITLER OR OBAMA – PART II!!! 

You all know how to play: I give you a historical fact and you tell me which politician that fact fits – Barack Obama, Adolf Hitler, both or neither! Answers are at the end, so let’s go on and play!!! Read the rest of this entry »