Already, Tom Harkin, smelling fresh blood in the water, is calling for the removal of all restraints on legislation as well.
OS watched the replay of Senator Levin's eulogy for the Senate last night, as he warned his enthusiastic leftist colleagues that they had just won a Pyrrhic Victory. Ni modo, hombre--a mi me no importa--seems to be the response from the left. We won, we won, we won, we won...we slam-dunked Rand Paul and Ted Cruz and any and all who would stand in our way as we get what we want. We drew blood, we can beat our chests.
Levin was telegraphing to his colleagues one simple truth: What Goes Around, Comes Around. The opposition we will face in the future will not be on the model of a Lamar Alexander, Howard Baker, or Susan Collins. An entirely new breed of cat has now entered the cat-fight, with long memories about our behavior, and a completely 'don't-give-a-flying-f*** about what Missah Harry thinks, or what the Yew Nork Times writes'. Harry's old, and the Yew Nork Times is going bankrupt, circling the drain along with the Blue States upon whom the Red States are now staging cavalry raids to cherry-pick what remains of their industrial base. One day, probably soon, the tables will be turned.
Missah Harry and Massah Obama may sense that as well. While it can still be done, let's promote our friends into the lifetime sinecure of the federal bench, the ultimate patronage job. We can pull the puppets' strings long after we've been tossed from office.
After all, all of life is about Power. Pure and simple, straight-no-chaser, 100 proof, gloves-off, raw Power. It's exhilarating, it's the ultimate drug. Hubris just isn't for Greeks, you know. Besides, we know better than those guys. We won't fall into those traps. We've got this whole thing sussed out.
OS writes these things because he can find no other explanation for what he observes.
Normal people undertake ambitious projects throughout life: Education, Marriage, Parenthood. They create businesses, works of art, institutions such as schools and churches. They undertake science to understand how the universe operates, and out of that they create useful inventions. They enter government and public life.
Failure stalks every attempt to achieve. It is an inherent part of the process. Many ventures fail. Normal people, when aventure fails, invariably reflect upon the failure. What went wrong? At what point did things go pear-shaped? Were my assumptions wrong? Did I trust the wrong people? How much of this mess was my responsibility?
And most importantly:
What can I learn from this failure that may fuel the success of the next undertaking?
Benghazi.
The IRS suborned as a political enforcement arm of the Democrat Party.
The chaos and bloodletting of North Africa and Egypt.
The Syrian tragedy.
The revelation of our tapping the personal cell phones of world leaders.
Snowden.
The attempt to draw us into a civil war in Syria, and the promotion of Putin thereby.
The rise of a nuclear Iran as we stand helplessly by.
The ObamaCare 'rollout', which has burned through at least 600 million dollars, and disrupted millions of lives--and we're just on the front end of that particular adventure.
The chronic unemployment that will not respond to zero interest rate policies.
The stock market bubble roars on, while more and more citizens (and non-citizens) live on Food Stamps.
All of the above fueled and explained by a constant stream of lies from the lips of the President, which corrodes what little confidence yet remains in the office.
Normal people, when confronted with this massive sort of failure, pause and reflect. It is a function of the conscience. Obama and Company drop not a beat, and press forward to gather more power unto themselves, to enable them to undertake more of their ventures. Not a moment's reflection, not a moment's hesitation, simply a push forward to the next item on what seems to be a script, a play-book. No matter what happens, move on to the next item. If we seize enough power while we can, the failures won't matter--we'll have the power, and can stuff the record of those failures down the Memory Hole.
These are not normal people. And OS fears that another group of not normal' people may arise from the Right, or from even Farther Left. He fears we are staggering toward our next Civil War, or a dictatorship, or both. Heaven only knows what tragedies await us.
Yesterday's events will serve as an accelerator of that process, but will not be a principal cause. They were symptomatic, the inevitable result of the hubris that fuels the present regime.
