The truth about Obamnasty

So there's a huge debate going on regarding the legality of what Obama did last night. He basically used his executive pen to bypass Congress in order to give 5,000 or so illegal aliens amnesty. Obama is claiming that there is precedence for what he is doing, and he often sites Ronald Reagan as an example.

Pretty much every thing I just wrote is debatable.

1.  I'm referring to them as illegal aliens becasue that's basically what they are. Although the politically correct people in Washington and the media are referring to them as undocumented workers. They are, in effect, illegal, and they are, in effect, aliens.

2.  Ronald Reagan did not use his executive pen to bypass Congress, because Congress passed the Simpson-Mazzoli bill in 1986, and Reagan signed it into law.  In effect, it gave Ronald Reagan permission to use his executive pen to enforce that law. He, in effect, did not bypass Congress.

However, despite this truth, the White House announced that there is precedence, and then the media just ran with it verbatim.

3.  Obama does not have the authority to bypass Congress, as Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution clearly states: "The Congres shall have Power... to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all powers vested by the Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Office thereof."

In other words, only Congress has the power to write laws. The president may sign them into law or veto them, but he may not write them. He may influence the agenda of Congress, but he in no way can enforce his will on Congress, nor the people, as such powers are reserved to kings and queens and dictators and emperors.

As a side note here, he does have executive privilege; he does have the ability to write executive orders.  Yet this is a privilege reserved for those emergency situations (such as impending wars or economic disasters) when Congress is not in session, not just because Congress doesn't support the president's agenda.

During his inauguration Obama, as all other presidents before him, had to recite the following oath: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

So you can see, use of his executive pen to create amnesty, in effect, encourages people to say to hell with the law.  Conservatives see this as unconstitutional. Liberals may also see it as unconstitutional, but they are willing to overlook it because it's the Constitution, after all, that stands in the way of their overly unpopular agenda (polls show 75 percent of Americans oppose amnesty).

4.  Obama is not calling it amnesty. What he is calling it is prosecutorial discretion. This is something used by prosecutors all the time, as there are so many laws being broken that they can't possibly 
prosecute them all.  So, by default, they may prioritize, going after crooks and killers over minor marijuana offenses.

Still, when, for example, prosecutors say they are not going to actively prosecute those who drink and drive, it does not mean that it is now legal to drink and drive. It just means there will be no active prosecution for such crimes. Despite prosecutorial discretion, drinking and driving is still a crime.

So, while Obama does have the Constitutional ability to determine which crimes will be prosecuted, he does not have the ability to make a crime no longer a crime, at least not without going through Congress.

5.  Obama's act encourages anarchy.  By ignoring the law, Obama is, in essence, encouraging others to do the same.  It is for this reason that many are saying that Obama, by this act of his executive pen, is encouraging anarchy.

Can you name your guardian angel?

I had dinner a while back with fellow members of the Knights of Columbus and our priest.  One of the Knights suggested we name our guardian angel.  Our priest concurred.  So we all discussed possible names for our angels. The name I pulled out of my head was Martin, as though my angel named himself.

Angels are superior to humans, and were actually created before God created man in his own image.  Angels are immortal, and were made by God to be his messengers, and their mission is to help us and guide us through life.  We enjoy their company from the time as we as we struggle with the trials and trivializations as well as the great joys of life.  When we struggle, they struggle with us; when we feel joy, they feel joy with us.

Your personal angel not only guides you through life, but also may affect your physical world.  For instance, during those moments when you are driving and wake up from your fantasy world, and you realize, "Wow!  How did I stay on the road?" Probably during those times your angel was driving for you.

Father Ryan Erlenbush of "The New Theological Movement" wrote:

Can my angel guardian affect the physical world around me? Yes. St. Gemma Galgani would regularly ask her guardian angel to mail letters for her – many letters were sent back and forth to her spiritual director while he was in Rome.

Anyway, I recently Googled "Can you name your angel?" and the answer I got was "No!"  It was no on every site I went to, including the Vatican (see section 217):

The practice of assigning names to the Holy Angels should be discouraged, except in the cases of Gabriel, Raphael and Michael whose names are contained in Holy Scripture.

Father Ryan Erlenbush  noted:

Can I name my guardian angel? Perhaps, but we must keep in mind that it belongs to a superior to name an inferior. Thus, it seems unfitting that a human being should name an angel.

So I guess it's not such a good idea to name our angels.  However, I have this feeling my angel's name is Martin anyway, so, perhaps he revealed it to me. Once again, I quote Father Ryan Erlenbush:

How do I find out my guardian angel’s name? You could try asking. But it is also possible that it will not be revealed to you immediately. I should think that in heaven, we would all know guardian angels’ names.

One author noted that parents name their children because children are supposed to look up to and respect their parents.  But people should not name their angels because angels are superior to humans, and we should look up to and respect them.

The next time it might be you again

If you grew up with siblings, or if you have more than one child, you probably have had a similar experience as I'm about to describe.

So my wife is gone to Nevada to spend time with her own siblings, and I'm here parenting solo.  We are actually having a good time for the most part, yet there was an ongoing incidence this morning that needed to come to an end.

You see, Callie kept asking me every five minutes "When are we going to the store?'  Laney kept telling Myles that her name is spelled "M-Y-L-E-S."  Myles insisted that his name was spelled "M-Y-L-E-S."  This theme persisted until the dad said to Callie "We will go to the store when we go."

Well, that didn't sit well with Callie, who trumped off to her room in disgust, saying, "Then I'm not going with you then."  Little did she know that this statement was not a punishment to me, more of a benefit.

Yet as this was transpiring, the two little kids start yelling at each other for the umpteenth time, and I heard a loud SMACK! There was no evidence as to who did the hitting, but Myles was lying on the ground crying loudly, and Laney was standing with that guilty expression innocent kids get when they do something they are guilty of.  Yet the truth was that I had no idea who did the hitting, nor did I ask.  You see, it was one of those moments whereby the old anger tank was on F (F for full, that is).

When the anger tank of a parent is full the justice system no longer matters.  In other words, it doesn't matter who started it, nor who did it, all that matters is that it ends and that it ends now.

So it is in this moment, with the anger tank leaking at the seems with anger, steam perhaps pouring fourth from this parents's devil's horns, face red, eye's gleaming bright as the fires of hell, that I picked up Laney, hauling  her to her room kicking and screaming.

(Ironically, as soon as I finished typing the above paragraph Myles touched one key on the keyboard three times, typing 666, the ominous number of the devil.  What are the odds of that happening?)

For a brief moment she stood in the center of her room, as though waiting for me to speak.  Taking advantage of the moment, I said:

"Now you stay in your room until you decide to be good. And you know I am only taking my anger out on you because I had to choose one of you to take my frustration out on.  I needed to make an example of one of you kids, and I chose you.  The next time it might be Myles or Callie!  The next time it might be you again because you're the one who listens."

When I was a kid it was me.  When you were a kid it was probably you.

Get your news from more than one source

Sigh! 

Eyes Rolling!

These are both silent ways of saying, "You are an idiot!"

Imagine the moans and groans when Galileo confirmed to the papacy that Copernicus was correct about the world being round, and the planets evolving around it. It's not hard to imagine the signs and eyes that were rolling.  

Even in today's world, even with an Internet that allows all the facts available to all who yearn to find them, there are still those among us who sigh and groan when we hear truths and opposing viewpoints.

One of the neatest things about the American Constitution is it protects our natural born right to free speech, at least as far as it comes to the government. This is great because every opinion, every fact, and every new idea can be communicated. This allows us an opportunity that most of our ancestors did not have.

In the past most people received all their news from one or only a few sources, and it it was usually from the aristocracy or government.   Even as recent as the 1980s we had only three sources on television -- CBS,  ABC, NBC, and were based in New York, and all copied the front page headlines of the New York Times.

Today, partly thanks to the Internet, no opinion, and no fact, can be prevented from seeing the light of day. A recent example is when Romneycare and Obamacare architect Jonathon Gruber said: "This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes…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.”

This is a stunning admission as to the lies that were told to the American people hoping they were "too stupid" to catch on, and it wasn't even mentioned by American's top news outlets.  The problem with this is that most Americans get all their news from America's top news outlets.  

The media is an outlet created to hold those in power accountable, and they are not doing it in this case.  In this case, they are not reporting the the truth about Obamacare because they are in the bank for Obama, or so it seems by omitting this story from their news outlets.  

Despite all the advancements in today's world, there are still those who would like to prevent certain voices from being heard, and in this case it was the voice of a person who was honorable to reveal the truth of how democrats were able to get this bill passed.  

If anything, all media outlets should want to report all news stories, not just those that support a certain political viewpoint.  The fact that many in the mainstream media continue to have a bias is proof that there is still a long way to go before all Americans are told all that going on in the world, as opposed to just what the "elite" want them to know.  

This is a perfect example of how you should get your news from more than one source.  You should pay attention to the main media outlets, but you should also pay attention to Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and other such voices.  

For those who continue to roll your eyes, and sigh, when you hear opposing viewpoints, shame on you!

Further reading:

• Jonathon Gruber speaks the truth about Obamacare
• Third video of Gruber speaking truth about Obamacare
• Media tries to cover up Obamacare architect

Unicorn governance, or reality versus the idealist dream

I wrote a column a while back about how difficult it is to argue against liberalism, mainly because liberalism is based on the idealist dream that a perfect --,Utopia -- world is obtainable.  When you're comparing an idealist dream verses the ugly reality, the dream will win every time, and hence the liberal agenda moves forward even when it fails.

Michael Munger calls this type of governance, one that is based on a dream, as unicorn governance. With Obama being the most liberal president in a generation, we see unicorn governance at its height right now.

Conservatives have been saying for years that the best way to succeed is through hard work. They contend the best thing for the government to do is to create a stable economic environment and then to stand on the sidelines while the people create all the wealth.  It is in this environment that established American exceptionalism, whereby every person has an opportunity to succeed in life.

Yet this argument, even though it has succeeded every time it's been tried, has a hard time matching up against the liberal argument.  The liberal argument is that by creating a large government that controls the flow of wealth, this will provide the poor with the greatest opportunity.  The problem with this, is though it sounds good, it doesn't work.  Under this type of economic system, often called Keynesian Economics, FDR prolonged the Great Depression, and now Obama is prolonging the Great Recession.  Keynesian economics has failed every time it's been tried, and yet it is tried over and over and over again.

Conservatives often wonder why it is so hard to defeat liberalism, especially when it continues to fail. Lyndon Johnson started the war on poverty back in the 1960s, and yet there are more people in poverty today than ever before.  For the past 40 years 90 percent of African Americans have voted for democrats, and yet the plight of blacks has not improved.

Considering it keeps failing, why do people continue to support liberalism?  Why do conservatives continue to have a hard time defeating liberalism?

The reason is because of unicorn governance.  The reason is because when you fall asleep and dream of the unicorn, an animal whose farts smell like sweet cinnamon, and then you wake up, you want the unicorn.  The problem with unicorns is they are not real.  The problem with dreams is they are not real.

Conservatives have trouble making any headway against liberalism. The reason is that it's hard for them to convince people that the unicorn does not exist in the real world.  The reason is because it's almost impossible to realist policies that will work with idealist policies that are like dreams.  As I wrote before, when you compare reality with a dream, the dream will win every time.

Economist Michael Munger explains this a little better in his August 12, 2014, column in the Freeman.  I will publish a portion of it here.

Unicorn governance, by Michael Munger

Our problem is that we have to fight unicorns.

Unicorns, of course, are fabulous horse-like creatures with a large spiraling horn on their forehead. They eat rainbows, but can go without eating for years if necessary. They can carry enormous amounts of cargo without tiring. And their flatulence smells like pure, fresh strawberries, which makes riding behind them in a wagon a pleasure.

For all these reasons, unicorns are essentially the ideal pack animal, the key to improving human society and sharing prosperity.

Now, you want to object that there is a flaw in the above argument, because unicorns do not actually exist. This would clearly be a fatal flaw for the claim that unicorns are useful, if it were true. Is it?

Of course not. The existence of unicorns is easily proven. Close your eyes. Now envision a unicorn. The one I see is white, with an orange-colored horn. The unicorn is surrounded by rainbows. Your vision may look slightly different, but there is no question that when I say "unicorn," the picture in your mind corresponds fairly closely to the picture in my mind. So, unicorns do exist and we have a shared conception of what they are.

Problem: "the State" is a unicornWhen I am discussing the State with my colleagues at Duke, it's not long before I realize that, for them, almost without exception, the State is a unicorn. I come from the Public Choice tradition, which tends to emphasize consequentialist arguments more than natural rights, and so the distinction is particularly important for me. My friends generally dislike politicians, find democracy messy and distasteful, and object to the brutality and coercive excesses of foreign wars, the war on drugs, and the spying of the NSA.

But their solution is, without exception, to expand the power of "the State." That seems literally insane to me—a non sequitur of such monstrous proportions that I had trouble taking it seriously.

Then I realized that they want a kind of unicorn, a State that has the properties, motivations, knowledge, and abilities that they can imagine for it. When I finally realized that we were talking past each other, I felt kind of dumb. Because essentially this very realization—that people who favor expansion of government imagine a State different from the one possible in the physical world—has been a core part of the argument made by classical liberals for at least 300 years.

You can read the rest of the column by clicking on the link above.  For the purpose of this post, I just wanted to show why it is that people keep yearning for socialism, liberalism, progressivism, or any other 'ism that you can think of.  They do it because idealists (socialists, liberals, and progressives) believe the dream is achievable.  They believe there really could be a an ideal utopian world some day, so long as they keep realists (conservatives, libertarians, classical liberals) on the sidelines.

Why do uneducated people become liberals

So we have people out there saying things like: "I hate politics. All people do is fight." They hate politics. They tune politics out.  When you send them something political in an email, they either respond with antipathy, or they say things like "quit sending me all that political junk?"  But these are exactly the people we need to reach with our conservative or libertarian message.

These are the people who say they don't pay attention to politics, but when you say something political they get all upset.  When you tell them that global warming is a hoax, they get all upset. When you tell them that Obama's number of 200,000 new jobs created every month is not good, they say you are a racist.  So they say they are not political, that they don't pay attention, but they still take sides; and they still get angry.

You know, if you ask me, if I was uninformed about something, I certainly wouldn't take sides.  I also wouldn't get angry, because people who are truly uninformed about something surely have no need to get upset about it.  So something is amess with these people who say they hate politics, and they don't take sides, and they don't follow the news, yet they still get upset when you share your ideas that are the antithesis of theirs.

The truth is, if I were uninformed on an issue, of which there are many issues I'm uninformed on, I'd be open minded and listen to all arguments without getting upset. I wouldn't be a liberal by default, I'd be neither liberal nor republican. I'd be bipartisan, at least until I had all the facts on the table. Then I'd sift through the facts, and I'd make a decision based on the facts.

Truth be told, I don't see why an bipartisan, or an independent voter, or a person who didn't pay attention to politics, would get upset about any political view.  So, the logical conclusion here is that the person is lying, that he is truly partisan, and most likely a liberal with his head in the sand because he's embarrassed to admit it.

But, lacking knowledge of politics because, as they admittedly say, they don't pay attention, they, by default, form an opinion based on their feelings, their heart, instead of their head.  They, by default, fall for the dream world politics of liberalism/ progressivism/ socialism.  Of course if you ask them if they are liberals, they will deny it tooth and nail.

These are exactly the types of people we need to continue to inform, even if it ticks them off.  In the meantime, they will continue to complain that "I hate politics.  I hate that people don't get along.  I just want people to get along.  I want them to get along and compromise."

Yet what they don't realize is that the liberal definition of compromise is "do it my way."

Liberals don't want to compromise.  They only see the dream, the end goal, and so any other information, fact or other, is the antithesis of what they want to hear.

So they reject it tooth and nail.  They refuse to listen to your facts, because the truth hurts.

By telling them the truth, by educating them, you are in fact hurting their feelings.

And, lacking any political wisdom, this all makes sense.  So they continue to tune you out and get ticked when you try to educate them.

To them, global warming is not politics, it's science.  Even though science is based on educated guesses -- mankind is making the climate change --, they don't care. To them this is all fact.  They don't want to hear anything about the natural cycle of events, or the natural cycle of warming and cooling, warming and cooling, warming and cooling.

To them that's too complex to understand.  So when you tell them global warming is a hoax, they tell you that you are ignorant.  They tell you you are stupid and blind.  However, what they don't ever do is present you with facts to back up their statements because there are none.  They do not study politics, so how could they obtain facts.

So that brings me back to my point.  If they do not study politics, if they do not read the news, if they do not listen to the facts, if they do not search for the truth, then how can they take sides?  How could a person who hates politics, wants nothing to do with it, become a liberal, let alone a conservative?  It makes no sense to me?

How could a person who has never studied politics a day in his life tell me that I'm a racist and bigot because of my conservative views, when he has never studied politics, and probably has no clue what my argument is, or what my evidence is, because he refuses to listen to it.  He might hear it but he never listens to it.  

It's perplexing.

After the great mystery of the father, son and spirit, this might be the second biggest mystery of all time: why someone could become a liberal by default when they lack any knowledge at all about politics.

But it does make sense, because liberalism is based on a dream.  And when you compare a dream with reality, the dream will win out every time.

I am not a racist because I disagree with Obama

So I'm on Facebook, and I read this: "What if Obama was white, would the creation of 200,000 jobs for several straight months still make you think his economic policies aren't working."

When I see junk like this, I have a hard time not responding.  So I didn't, but I will in this space.  Here is what I would have responded if I did.

So, are you implying I'm a racist because I don't approve of Obama's economic policies.  Let us investigate those 200,000 jobs. Actually, let's just investigate the 275,000 jobs created in June.  On the surface that number sounds great.  However, once you break it down, it actually doesn't.  Consider that in June the number of people employed full-time actually declined by 523,000, and the number of part-time workers increased by 799,000 (which includes those who wanted part-time and those who wanted full-time but could only find part-time).  So the 275,000 number is misleading in itself. It is in no way indicative of a robust economy.  Am I a racist because I chose to investigate the numbers the Obama administration releases? Am I a racist because I do the job the media refuses to do? 

There, that saves me from angering some friends.  Thanks.