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Repugnant and cowardly

Repugnant and cowardly

One of the things I missed today during my long drive was the White House calling the ad embedded below “repugnant and cowardly.”

I’ll tell you what else is regugnant and cowardly, a Presidential statement made by exploiting children on stage as a sympathy ploy meant to suggest that those who disagree with him don’t care about children. Obama routinely converts policy arguments into attacks on the character of those who disagree.

This President routinely insults us, plays straw man games meant to demonize us, and enjoys spiking the football. At this point he has so divided the nation that the ad below is a natural consequence.

I would prefer that children not be used by either side, but if Obama is going to exploit children for policy goals, then he has no business complaining when others play that same game.

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Comments

There was nothing remotely “repugnant OR cowardly” about the NRA add.

And it was NOT about the Obama girls. Not remotely.

It WAS about their elitist father, and the gross double-standard his policies foster.

What it WAS was effective, and you can see by the secondary explosions from the moonbattery…!!!

Heh.

“The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.”

— Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf

    n.n in reply to wyntre. | January 16, 2013 at 5:07 pm

    It is a mistake that people capriciously reject traditional wisdom. We only have ourselves to blame when Hitler, Marx, and others, reveal their true nature in writing before the act.

    Not to nitpick, but only the first part of the quote is Hitler’s. The other is from rabbi Lapin. See fourth paragraph from the bottom:
    http://www.wnd.com/2004/01/22711/

      I was just going to make that point. If you google that quote it has really made the rounds today but it is not an accurate quote from Mein Kampf.

      Thanks. I saw the quote on several sites and thought it apropos. Even if not written entirely by Hitler it still hits the nail on the head with how the pos is thinking.

      There is another Hitler quote, about once a kid is indoctrinated in the school system it’s all over for the parents. Will try to find and link.

        Mary Sue in reply to wyntre. | January 16, 2013 at 7:14 pm

        It was definitely a sentiment expressed in Mein Kampf which I think was the point the Rabbi tried to make back in 2004. It is funny that this quote made an appearance on the net with a 2008 move in Australia to censor the internet. There is plenty of reason people would be led to believe the quote was accurate given the number of times it has been cited.

        wyntre in reply to wyntre. | January 16, 2013 at 7:28 pm

        “When an opponent declares, “I will not come over to your side,” I calmly say, “Your child belongs to us already… What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.”

        Hitler

          I was immediately suspicious of the first quote because, even though I never read Nazi propaganda, I didn’t think Hitler would use this kind of language. Would he talk about “liberty”? It felt more like contemporary American discourse, and conservative one, at that.

BannedbytheGuardian | January 16, 2013 at 4:39 pm

You really knew they were going to go all out. Thre is a whole lot more spin & emotive aura than actual new powers.

But if you want to do battle you will just have to give up be

    BannedbytheGuardian in reply to BannedbytheGuardian. | January 16, 2013 at 4:47 pm

    Ahem , I thought twice about that & accidentally submitted it.

    You will have to ……….it is up to you to either submit or be prepared to fight & that is very difficult.

    There will be casualties not least Professor’s career.

Like Rags, I don’t see anything wrong with the ad. Afaic it’s hard-hitting but completely above the belt. Recall that the Left always lets us know what they fear.

That said, the election should have taught us that a consensus opinion at LI may not be shared by many in the country.

So, if the budget allows, I recommend making a variant of the ad featuring a female narrator who speaks as a mother. Ditto for minorities.

I think Laura Ingraham‏ shows the rampant hypocrisy best when she tweeted “Mr President, there are tens of millions of children whose lives were destroyed in abortion, who never got to choose a favorite color.”

    The issue in contention is gun regulation. Author, professional commentator, and talk radio host Ingraham, a graduate of Dartmouth and of top law school U. of Virginia, knows that.

    Draw your own conclusions.

      Sanddog in reply to gs. | January 16, 2013 at 5:13 pm

      Well, Barack says if it saves the life of even one child….

      It’s not wrong to point out that the left has no problem with dead children. They do have a problem with citizens being allowed to defend themselves.

        It’s not wrong to point out that the left has no problem with dead children.

        Afaic whether it’s wrong or not is immaterial for present purposes. It is, to put it diplomatically, counterproductive in the struggle against gun control. Maybe it’s not counterproductive for Laura Ingraham’s ratings within the conservative audience.

        Stacey Suburbanite, mother and swing voter, has heard about conservatives and abortion via the MSM, most recently wrt Akin and Mourdock. Linking gun control and abortion might well influence her, but I doubt it would be in the way we want.

          Sanddog in reply to gs. | January 16, 2013 at 5:40 pm

          We can either have a debate on the progressive’s terms… which means being demonized 24/7 and fed lies or we can have an adult debate.

          gs in reply to gs. | January 16, 2013 at 6:28 pm

          1. I doubt that a neutral observer would agree with your dichotomy.

          2. Another thing about the terms of debate: Ingraham is implicitly accepting Obama’s premise that it’s all about the chillllldrenn.

          Accepting the Left’s premises in order to make evanescent talking points is something that we will regret.

          Sanddog in reply to gs. | January 16, 2013 at 8:55 pm

          Neutral observer? You don’t have much faith in your fellow man if believe a “neutral observer” wouldn’t be able to pick apart the progressive position in about 2 seconds. Or by neutral, do you mean leftist?

          gs in reply to gs. | January 17, 2013 at 12:59 am

          You don’t have much faith in your fellow man if believe a “neutral observer” wouldn’t be able to pick apart the progressive position in about 2 seconds.

          Astute no-nonsense conservatives, on this site and elsewhere, misled themselves that the polls were wrong and the betting odds were wrong and we would be celebrating victory on November 6/7. So please spare the wishful thinking.

          Or by neutral, do you mean leftist?

          And please spare the sophomoric gibes.

      Midwest Rhino in reply to gs. | January 17, 2013 at 5:01 am

      I agree it could well divide the current majority to push abortion into the argument. At least it should be mentioned in light of Obama’s desire for free and frequent late term abortions, where the child would survive if allowed to be born rather than killed.

      There is limited air time to make a gun rights arguments, and plenty of winning points to utilize. At least for the commercials, the focus should stay on educating people on the problems of registration and the left’s real goal of confiscation. They will say they respect the second amendment, right up till they show up to confiscate the guns.

      JustCurious in reply to gs. | January 17, 2013 at 4:23 pm

      The reason (excuse) given for gun regulation IS the protection of children. There was no shame in using them as props, either.

      So, then, why the piecemeal approach to protecting children? Isn’t abortion harmful to children as well?

      Chicago has very strict gun laws in place and yet there are untold hundreds of dead children no one ever hears about.

      Why?

      Here’s a hint. It’s not the gun laws.

    Crawford in reply to JustCurious. | January 16, 2013 at 5:27 pm

    Obama voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. Do you think the infants it would have saved suffered any less than the victims at Newtown?

      TrooperJohnSmith in reply to Crawford. | January 16, 2013 at 6:13 pm

      It’s the Placenta Rule.

      On one side, you’re just some tissue, to be aborted at will, up to full term. On the other side, you are a vibrant child, whose saving for future exploitation, is the whole raison d’etre of the Democratic Party.

theduchessofkitty | January 16, 2013 at 4:50 pm

“Repugnant and cowardly” is the fact that The President’s daughters are guarded by armed security at their school, in addition to Secret Service detail…

… while my daughters, the children of regular, law-abiding American citizens, are sitting ducks at their own schools…

… and neither their teachers, nor the staff, nor we are allowed to protect them from harm.

Henry Hawkins | January 16, 2013 at 4:56 pm

I am just happy to see a substantive player like the NRA actually stand up and fight His Majesty.

casualobserver | January 16, 2013 at 4:57 pm

It has become obvious to me since the reelection that this president actually revels in dividing and creating an ‘us’ and ‘them’ situation on even the most mundane governance issues. It was there before, but it is on steroids now. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Either the chorus of ‘them’ who disagree will become sufficient in size or energy to cause him problems, or not. Certainly many in the media relish their role in the game, too. So, we ‘thems’ may need to become more active. Like here. And elsewhere in our communities.

It was effective enough to get my neighbor to join the NRA.

Saving one child murdered by gun takes precedence over saving one million children murdered by scalpel and vacuum. Obama seems to have his priorities confused.

    Midwest Rhino in reply to n.n. | January 17, 2013 at 5:06 am

    But why surrender on the “save one child” point? The dead children of Sandy Hook should be laid at the feet of Obama’s gun free zone. His laws would have done nothing to save Sandy Hook kids, but guns in that zone would almost certainly have saved them.

General P. Malaise | January 16, 2013 at 5:12 pm

what do people expect from a community organiser. REALLY !!

they are just thugs in a suit.

So, Barack Hussein Obama is a pig.

I’ll believe that Obama is working for kids when he quits funding and advocating the MURDER of countless unborn in abortion clinics.

Repugnant and cowardly – and those are two of Obama’s better traits.

There is no doubt Obama is a thug. He appears to get great pleasure in being nasty and promoting thuggish actions. But, when called on, just like Piers Morgan, he is quite defensive. Surrounding himself with children is “dancing on the graves of children”.

This man is about to swear to protect and defend the Constitution… again.

    After the last 4 years, we know his word is absolutely worthless.

      Midwest Rhino in reply to Sanddog. | January 17, 2013 at 5:31 am

      Or worse, when he speaks of protecting the constitution, one can bet that he is about to “reframe” it in light of some greater communist five step plan. He doesn’t randomly lie, he systematically deceives.

      Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth” was not just about lying about the government’s crimes, it was about reframing them as something good. They believe firmly in the right of good citizens to bear arms. But those guilty of hate crimes will have to turn in their (now registered) guns till they love Big Brother. Your tea party adherence is evidence enough that you are not a responsible citizen. (that’s sarcasm of course)

Judas on a bungee cord.

Shout Abortion is murder! and a big fraction of conservatives will drop whatever they’re doing and make a beeline off the edge of the nearest electoral cliff.

1. I keep saying this: our policy should be to defederalize social controversies and let the states decide. The laboratories of democracy thing comes into effect. Social conservatives get some victories, as opposed to none. The Left can be accused of using the government to impose their views on the country when no consensus exists.

2. We are so stuck on stupid.

    Ragspierre in reply to gs. | January 17, 2013 at 10:29 am

    “…our policy should be to defederalize social controversies…”

    Which is PRECISELY what all drives to reverse Roe are about.

    Which is PRECISELY what all drives to defend the idea of marriage are about.

    Remember always that it is the Collective who FIRST attempts to push all such matters to the Federal level, and for the several reasons they do.

      1. Various Human Life Amendments introduced in Congress go well beyond reverting abortion to the states.

      2. From the 2012 Republican Platform:

      Faithful to the “self-evident” truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.

        Ragspierre in reply to gs. | January 17, 2013 at 1:02 pm

        Again, extending rights to the unborn human would NOT prohibit abortion.

          1. Again, extending rights to the unborn human would NOT prohibit abortion.

          Please expand on this if you have time, as I don’t understand what you’re getting at. For example, I’m not sure whether you agree or disagree that the issue should be left to the states.

          2. My point with the links I posted is that there is a political constituency which wants to use the federal government to outlaw abortion nationwide. This constituency is not content to leave the matter to the states or to people.

          3. For the record, I did not raise the abortion topic in this gun control thread. Other people proposed a linkage which IMO is ill-advised.

          4. Fwiw, if the Constitution didn’t explicitly make it a federal matter, I’d listen to arguments for leaving gun control to the states.

        CalMark in reply to gs. | January 17, 2013 at 11:26 pm

        Why do you like abortion so much?

        You must, given the nastiness of your posts about pro-lifers.

The King deployed human shields while continuing to steal away our liberties by royal edict.

Oh, come on. This ad is not the “natural consequence” of anything other than the fact that the NRA is run by a bunch of tone deaf cranks. This President’s family is protected exactly as every other President’s family has been for a century. It’s a function of the importance of the office, not the needs of the man. Nixon’s daughters, Reagan’s children, the Bush daughters all had the same kind and level of armed protection, and anyone who claims it’s not needed is a fool. If this or any President or his family members tried to reject the protection, they would be forced to back down by public outcry lest the nation be held hostage. This is a requirement of state, not a personal preference.

What’s more, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the issue of schools employing guards. For that matter, the federal government has precious little it can do about that, because our schools are run at the state and local level — mostly local. Nothing now prevents local school districts from employing armed security officers or county and municipal police from assigning officers to schools. And in fact, quite a few districts do have had such guards or police protection and more have decided to do so since Newtown. Conservatives should be pleased that this issue can be addressed by communities with the feds having neither power nor responsibility to do anything about it.

If the NRA is serious about its call for professional armed security at schools, it would be airing ads spotlighting school districts that have chosen this path, educating people about it, and urging others to take such initiatives.

What do they do instead? Attack Obama for being “skeptical” about armed guards in schools and calling him a hypocrite because the President’s family is protected — which only implies that whether or not schools do this is up to the President and the feds.

If is hard to imagine anything the NRA might do that would be more stupid or self-defeating.

    casualobserver in reply to JEBurke. | January 16, 2013 at 8:43 pm

    Sorry, JEBurke, but you ignore a key factor regarding the NRA. While I think this web ad will backfire on them and is petty, for the most part, they have decided to fight this equally petty and petulant president on his own terms. One can hardly count the number of digs and misstatements as well direct attacks made by this administration against the organization (not to mention those who simply have a differing view of guns than progressives even if they aren’t with the NRA). Even in this presser today he wasted no time in assigning bad motives to groups and individuals who will disagree with his executive orders and requests for legislation. Right or wrong, the NRA is just using the same rules of the game.

    TrooperJohnSmith in reply to JEBurke. | January 16, 2013 at 8:55 pm

    You missed the boat. Maybe the whole ocean.

    This ad was targeted (no pun intended) at the low information voter, the one who reelected Teh Chosen Won v2.0. To that voter it makes perfect sense. That voter is also the one that parrots, “Ban assault weapons! Ban big clips,” without having the faintest notion. His or her mind is there for the washing. In the battle for minds, both the high- and low-brow are in play, because all make up the body of public opinion. You take a win where you can get it.

    Ancillary to that, this ads make Lefties blow their tops and scald their chins on the hot, acidic froth that boils forth for from their pie holes.

    Sanddog in reply to JEBurke. | January 17, 2013 at 1:04 am

    Actually, it is a personal preference vs a requirement of state.

    The Secret Service is authorized to protect the President’s family but they are not required by law to do so if the President declines the protection. The only persons who are not allowed to decline protection are the President and Vice President.

    The President’s wife and kids are no more important to this country than any other ordinary citizen. If you want to run for President and sit in the big chair, that needs to be clearly understood and accepted. Being President is supposed to be a sacrifice and part of that sacrifice is putting the nation before family.

    lichau in reply to JEBurke. | January 17, 2013 at 8:31 am

    JEB, the NRA ad missed a critical point, which obviously you missed as well. The NRA ad was NOT criticizing SS protection for the POTUS’s family. It was pointing out that the SCHOOL (Sidwell Friends, which the ad did not ID directly) has armed guards quite independently of the POTUS’s children.

    While I agree with the “tone deaf” part–and it is why I periodically let my membership lapse–I do NOT classify anyone that defends our right to keep and bear arms as a “crank”. “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.”

    Great ad, and on target on a subject that goes far beyond gun control. We have a nomenklatura in the country that do not have to abide by the same rules as the rest of us.

    jdkchem in reply to JEBurke. | January 17, 2013 at 6:57 pm

    Your point being what exactly? If your lord and savior princess barry unicorn rider is absolutely positive that armed security in schools is bad then he should live up to his own beliefs. Then you and princess barry are cut from the same cloth. Laws and principles are nothing more than edicts you shit out your ass and expect others to live up to. Take your donkey show back to dummies underground.

http://lawreview.wustl.edu/inprint/75-3/753-4.html
Written in 1997. Long read, a couple highlights should help generate interest. Who has a war on women again?

For example, Betty Friedan has called the trend of women buying guns “a horrifying, obscene perversion of feminism.”[12] She believes “that lethal violence even in self-defense only engenders more lethal violence and that gun control should override any personal need for safety.”[13]

The Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church takes the point a step further, stating that women have a Christian duty to submit to rape rather than do anything that might imperil the rapist’s life.

————————

Professor Wills, resonating the views of a large and influential constituency, asserts that not seeking to possess the means of self-defense is a defining element of civilized life. Good citizens should depend instead on the military and police for their physical safety. The mere desire to defend hearth and home counts “among the worst instincts in the human character.”

———————–

There is no serious argument for conflict-filled life as a social ideal. The argument for a widely armed citizenry holds the opposite ideal: a social equilibrium of nonviolence. “Individualists,” “communitarians” and “none of the above” should all be able to agree at a minimum on this much: it is an empirical question what distribution of firearms does in fact tend to social peace. It is not in fact true that a world without guns must be a world without violence. Nonviolence was not the characteristic state of the world before there were guns,[35] and it is not the characteristic state of the world now in places where access to guns is practically or legally restricted.

    2nd Ammendment Mother in reply to 4fun. | January 16, 2013 at 7:53 pm

    Our very rural church’s Alter Society is sponsoring CCL and self defense classes for the ladies of the parish, their guests and any interested gentlemen…. So far 220 ladies have registered – kind of interesting since the entire parish is 146 souls. I might add that my 87 year old great aunt was the first person to sign up.

      I’m not surprised. I recently ran a single person class for a 70 year old woman who decided it was time. She wanted to become proficient with a handgun and a shotgun so I took her out to the range with a .38 revolver and a .410 shotgun. She had no problem handling either and subsequently ordered the same firearms for herself.

Great ad! I’m proudly one of those quarter-million new members of the NRA.

[…] Hat tip video, William Jacobson, Legal Insurrection. […]

Henry Hawkins | January 16, 2013 at 9:38 pm

The NRA ad is of two kinds. As TrooperJohn points out, it’s good for affecting the reactive, nonthinking listener. For the thinking listener, not so much. Of course the president’s children are going to be under constant armed protection no matter where they go, regardless of party or ideology, so the ad falters there. The ad is meant to point out the hypocrisy of politicos denying armed protection for regular folks’ kids while keeping it for their own kids, and it might’ve been more effective if they’d made a list of liberals at lower power levels, those not under Secret Service protection, who hypocritically deny protection to average kids while keeping it for their own. This would also underscore the liberal penchant for establishing an elite/peasant class dichotomy while hypocritically paying lip service to equality, wealth redistribution, etc.

My recommendation is for the shotgun approach – hit ’em 24/7 with every kind of messaging: low-brow, high-brow, middle-brow, with the criterion that every charge be based solidly on the truth, which is not at all hard to do. They really are as hypocritical as we suppose and probably then some, given the incidences of it we don’t know about.

    Midwest Rhino in reply to Henry Hawkins. | January 17, 2013 at 6:18 am

    right … important understanding, that Obama lies freely with a grin, because he knows we know, but knows he will get away with it for 70% that get info only from Leno, Stewart, and maybe a few talking points that their local celebrity “news” people read verbatim from the networks. (and mocking the “low info” citizen for only listening to big media, may be effective, shame them for blind allegiance)

    It’s a twofer for him, getting away with the lie, and poking us in the eye.

    But I think the ad could have been a little better if it had just said:

    “schools for the elite, like the one the president’s children attend, use armed guards routinely.

    In a nation where criminals will never relinquish their weapons, it is sheer evil arrogance for Obama to claim that only the elite should be allowed to protect their children with weapons, whether at home or in school or in the park.”

    The clearest message from Sandy Hook is that precious children should not be ordered to be left defenseless. Without using the Sandy Hook kids directly, this NRA ad is pretty good at driving home that point. It targets Obama directly, not really his kids … their pictures or names are not used.

    Alinsky says to personalize the target and freeze it. Obama is the perfect one to target I guess (instead of a vague “elite”) … he gives every opportunity to freeze him as a socialist, elitist, hypocrite and LIAR. Obama tries to deflect that by saying “they demonize me”, and with the race card. But he deserves it, and we should not stop.

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, apparently. Obama is one who can dish it out, but spectacularly fails when it comes to taking it.

I didn’t think it was particularly hard hitting.

Not once did I spot the use of the phrase “rat bast___” so I considered it quite genteel and rather soft in its presentation of the truth.

Midwest Rhino | January 17, 2013 at 6:24 am

Rubio was with O’Reilly last night … agreed with him on registering all guns. High per gun tax might be next, or refusing to allow transfer of guns. Registration should be a no go.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAjeplC6zAI

    Midwest Rhino in reply to Midwest Rhino. | January 17, 2013 at 6:31 am

    Rob a Seven Eleven with a gun, 10 years in the Federal pen. Illegally possess a gun, same deal, 10 years!”

    “Limiting heavy weapons like assault rifles should be considered by the individual states. Background checks on gun buyers should be mandatory and so should gun registration.”

    “The situation will not get any better in Chicago, or anywhere else, until gun crimes are federalized.”

    Register all your weapons, or ten year mandatory. O’Reilly is pretty hard core gun control. Rubio agreed.

    I’m glad I don’t have cable TV. O’Reilly drives me nuts.

    None of these solutions will prevent the next Adam Lanza. Actually, it’s his mom who dropped the ball. If Hussein turns every doctor into a DHS agent, it might catch the next nut, but that’s a Stalin-esque solution.

    If dad was at home, might things have turned out differently? Not that the Feds can solve this.

    O’Reilly is a pretty conventional media liberal, he plays a conservative on TV.

    If Rubio is for any additional gun control, he is off my list. The list is pretty short, as is.

They could do an ad about all of Obama’s soft-on-crime votes. E.g., he did not vote for a law to strengthen legal penalties against school shooters. (The law passed overwhelmingly.)

They could also give the stats on this admin’s lax prosecution of gun crimes.

It shouldn’t be hard to demonstrate that Obama is not very concerned about reducing crime, violent or otherwise. He simply wants a disarmed citizenry.

2nd Ammendment Mother | January 17, 2013 at 12:08 pm

Just a thought –

Isn’t this the type of brutally honest challenges against Obama that many of us were disappointed that Romney failed to use in the campaign? Maybe if we’d been a bit more brutally honest about Obama’s record in office, Obama’s last press conference of his first term – really would have been his last press conference?????

    Henry Hawkins in reply to 2nd Ammendment Mother. | January 17, 2013 at 1:28 pm

    Let’s not go crazy. If a Republican spoke the unvarnished truth about Obama, somebody might be offended and might not vote for the Republican who spoke the truth about Obama. We’ll set aside the point that unless that Republican speaks the truth about Obama, the lies prevail and there is no reason to vote for the Republican. It’s about civility in political discourse and about losing elections gracefully, you see.

    /sarc

Oh, gracious! Gracious me!

What a HORRIBLE ad! Our enemies might think we’re…well, you know…uncivil! Boo-hoo!

And that means…well, that means that we won’t be able to feel morally superior to them anymore. Which makes our constant, semi-intentional political lossess…meaningless! [weeping]

/sarc off

What a great ad. If only more people on our side had the stones to go toe-to-toe with the scumbag in the White House about this stuff.

P.S. Idle thought: how is it that the Dems never seem to lose? No matter what they do, they win; at worst, a convenient betrayal by “our” side gets it done for them in the end. It seems as though it can’t continue — laws of probability or nature — and yet, despite our energy and determination we keep losing, THEY KEEP WINNING AND NEVER LOSE.