Karl Marx, the infamous German political philosopher had a vision.  Marx, together with Joseph Engels, predicted and even called for the dismantling of capitalist economic systems worldwide into a socialist and ultimately classless communist world.  24thState will be asking the question of the late Mr. Marx, “How is that working out for you?”

In a series of columns, we will expose the 5th column in the United States.  We will name names and expose the ties from David Axelrod, who just visited St. Louis referring to some GOP presidential contenders as “nutty folks,” to active Marxists and communist party loyalists in Congress and even the Missouri General Assembly.  We will expose their plans and how even their favorite Republican member of Congress (yes, they have one) works to fulfill them.

If we contemplate for a second, whether it is realistic to assume that the Marxists quit being Marxists, in Russia, China and even the U.S., can we assume that the workers of the world decided to not unite?  Did they pack up their tents and go home?  Are Russian and Chinese leaders relinquishing power and creating new constitutional republics?  Did the Communist Party USA shut their doors or just change their tactics? The answers to these questions are unquestionably obvious but uncomfortable to contemplate.

First published in 1848, the Manifesto had ten very specific goals (briefly examine their progress in the U.S. here).  The most alarming tenet however, may be the assertion that communism will never really work until the entire world is communist.  In other words, the true believers have a duty to spread it.  What then is the duty of those opposed to it?  What is IT?

Another alarming tenet of Marxism is the Machiavellian notion that the idea is so important and people so naturally resistant, that deception, propaganda and assorted treachery are not just hallmarks, but mandates.  The history of their “class struggle” shows us their conviction that some must die.  We wonder if Marx and Engels would have desired that upwards of 100 million should die.  When you add up the slaughter of the “less useful” of the “useful idiots” in the lexicon of the Leninists, we have over 35 million human beings “sacrificed” for the cause in Russia alone.  Add in Pol Pot, Castro, Chairman Mao and the estimated 3.5 million dead and still dying daily in North Korea, utopia has what most of us would view as one unacceptably high price.  Some evidently are so untroubled by that legacy that they seek to spread the ideology of death despite the clear and modern existence of communist regimes like North Korea which kills people daily.  Where are the calls of the Marxists of the world for North Korea to stop killing people?  Where are the calls of the leftists in Congress to China to stop paying bounties on escaped North Koreans who are sent back to die?  The deafening silence is the natural sign of an allied relationship.  The hard leftists view China as the partner.

If you ask a naval admiral who he or she fears the most, you will here it is China.  The backwards Marxist state turned economic super power also has the most treacherous anti-ship missile known to man.  Their spies have surpassed the Russians in both U.S. Government and corporate espionage.  Worse, China and Russia have formed a military alliance even bringing Pakistan into their military alliance; the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

So if Russia and China are the first two columns allied against us, East and West, and Cuba and Venezuela make up the third column, certainly radical Islam is the fourth.  We know that they work together allying against our interests around the world, against any civil, peaceful nation that is not communist or radicalized Islamist.  So could the U.S. suffer a fifth column?  Of course we could.  Is it radical Islamic terror cells, Marxists, or both?  If they are here, what goals would they have?  Disarming us, maybe?

So while we bask in the blissful ignorance that the Cold War is over and China is our friendly neighborhood banker ever since Nixon went there, the Islamists, and communists among us are working for “change.”  What are they changing?  We know that the Democrats had two non-negotiable demands out of the failed budget deal:  tax increases and military decreases.  Do we have your attention yet?

On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss a new German push to politically unite Europe to save the Eurozone, Obama’s decision to kill 20,000 jobs, and we respond to a question from a listener.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

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Easy – conservatives tend to be polite, reasonable people with a genuine interest in honest debate and a quaint belief in the efficacy of things like “facts” and “evidence” as a way to demonstrate the truth.  No wonder they get rolled.  The other side believes in none of those things – its only belief is that leftism must prevail and any other value is disposable if it turns into a liability.  The answer is conservative judo – understanding how the Left works and using its own weight and momentum against it.  We need to start being less like butt-kissing conservanerd David Brooks and more like butt-kicking conservastud Chuck Norris.

Conservative judo means going on the offense and keeping on the offense.  It’s not about reasoning with unreasonable people; it’s about using their own strengths against them to defeat them.  It has application to the GOP candidates for sure, but it also applies to those of us in the real world facing liberals every day.

The bizarre Rick Perry rock pseudo-scandal is a wonderful teachable moment for conservatives, mostly because the GOP candidates’ reactions allowed this contemptible lie to gain steam.  The Washington Post ran a story that some idiot wrote a racial slur on a rock at some ranch where Rick Perry hunted.  Now, one might observe that the facts and evidence show that about 30 years ago the Perry family got a hunting lease and promptly painted over the word.  One might also note that Perry was a Democrat at the time.  Moreover, the sources who disagree can’t agree on a different timeline and won’t give their names – inconsistent, anonymous hearsay is apparently acceptable when it comes to conservatives.

But none of this matters.  It’s not about “facts” or “evidence” or even “truth.”  It’s a calculated smear designed by a liberal rag to slander a leading GOP candidate.  Moreover, it is another example of a partisan political publication hiding behind the lie that it is an objective news source.  It is not.  The Washington Post, like the New York Times and the vast majority of mainstream media outlets, is an active collaborator with the liberal elite.  If it weren’t, Andrew Breitbart would not be the one breaking the story of Barak Obama’s game of patty cake with the expressly black supremacist New Black Panthers.

The question is, then, why the other GOP candidates tolerated this attack instead of coming to his defense – after all, this was an attack not just on Rick Perry but upon every conservative.  This was pure innuendo designed not just to trash one candidate but to feed a narrative that all conservatives are just one sheet away from an old fashioned cross burning of the kind dead Democratic icon Robert Byrd would have enjoyed in his pre-Senate capacity as a KKK Kleagle.

Herman Cain fell right into the trap.  A good man, it seems he did so here not in a short-sighted attempt to capitalize on the blow to Rick Perry but because he was genuinely disgusted with the idea that some nitwit would paint that sort of thing on a rock.  When asked about it (at the 3:42 mark) by Chris Wallace of Fox News, he responded that it was “insensitive.”  Well, “insensitive” is one word for it – Cain was being kind.  My saltier characterization would have included an adjective beginning with an “F.”  Cain later clarified that he was referring to the person who wrote it, and that he did not believe the Rock of Outrages represented Perry’s belief.  Too late.  The damage was done.

He had reinforced the meme by not aggressively attacking it with conservative judo.  He should have said to Wallace, who himself was forced into raising the issue on his show by the fact that the Post ran a huge front page story, something like:

Chris, I read the Post’s story and it was a transparent slander of a good man.  I’m not going to play that game and comment on the lies of people without the fortitude to make their accusations in public.  It was journalistic malpractice to run that story and I’m disappointed that you were forced to ask me something based on such shoddy reporting. My question is where was the Post when Barack Obama was spending 20 years listening to Reverend Wright’s sick racist rants?  Where was the Post when he marched with the New Black Panthers?  Where was the Post when his Department of Justice started basing its prosecution choices on the races of the criminals?  Is the Post and it’s liberal comrades covering for him on purpose?

You don’t acknowledge the lie.  You turn it around and attack the premise – and the bogus journalistic integrity these hacks pretend to possess in order to enhance the credibility of their smears.  It’s conservative judo – you go on the offensive and make the liberal water-carries like the Post defend their failure to adhere to their supposed standards (For those Alinsky mavens out there, that’s Rule No. 4).

The liberal mainstream media’s power is such that they can ignite a fire storm that even fair and balanced media like Fox News must cover; conservative judo turns that into an opportunity for a counterattack.

Cain screwed up twice this weekend.  He also allowed the Obama “defense of gay soldiers” meme to take root when he said that he regretted not reacting to the booing after the gay soldier asked a question at the last debate.  Again, the facts don’t matter.  That the booing was by perhaps two people out of thousands (See for yourself, which is more than the MSM will let you do) and that the booing was for the question as opposed to “the soldier” do not matter.  Not at all.

The purpose of this meme is to allow liberals, whose record of contempt for the military speaks for itself, to attempt to take the moral high ground of supporting our troops in order to divert attention from their utter failure of governance.  And Cain, by responding without challenging the premise, fell into the trap.  He’s a decent guy.  Booing is not nice.  It’s easy to see how he walked into the ambush his MSM interviewer, Christiane Amanpour set for him.

The proper response was:

I know what you are doing and I’m not here to allow you to divert people’s attention from President Obama’s track record of total failure with what you know is a bogus charge promoted by the Democrat party and its leftwing associates.  Do you really think a couple people’s opinion about a debate question is more important than the pay-for-play capitalism of Solyndra?  If the Democrats really cared about the people who protect us, why are they obstructing the Fast and Furious investigation of how guns Eric Holder allowed to be sent to Mexico ended up killing to US federal officers?

Never – ever – fight on your opponents’ terms.  If you do, you accept their premises, and if you accept the premises of the Democrat media complex you are already on the way to losing.

Cain is a great American but an inexperienced candidate who has not learned that he has no obligation at all to assist the press in their schemes.  The press is not some collection of neutral factfinders on a mission to provide objective truth to the American people.  It’s a player, and it’s on the other team.

No conservative has any moral or other obligation to answer any question from the MSM.  None.  Rejecting them drives the MSM tools nuts too, which is a fringe benefit – their egos are totally bound up in the pose they assume as Guardians of the Truth.  It crushes them to be treated like the partisan hacks they are – partisan hacks, mind you, that become less powerful each day as the circulation of their primitive newspapers shrinks down to nothing.  Employ the conservative judo, and don’t let them tap out.

Cain can easily come back from this misstep; this is a learning point for a new candidate, and he remains an awesome potential nominee.  Nor is he alone.  Rick Perry made a similar mistake with his “heartless” comment.  It’s pretty lame to see a dedicated conservative labeling other conservatives “heartless” because they disagree with his position – especially when that feeds the Left’s larger meme of conservative cruelty.  Nor is Romney innocent with his Social Security pandering.  Both have more experience in the arena than Cain and both ought to know better.

Yeah, in the short term buying into these premises might have hurt their opponents, but in the long term it trashes the movement.  And candidates, your personal career goals are absolutely irrelevant to the movement – if you choose to harm the movement to further your own campaign you demonstrate that you are unworthy of our support.

There is nothing wrong with disagreeing, but the lazy and shortsighted tactic of jumping aboard a liberal media meme to try for a tiny bounce in the polls helps the real opposition more than the short-sighted candidate.  And it alienates conservatives who hate seeing potential candidates line up with the Left.

In everyday life, conservative judo is important too.  As a conservative, you’ll be faced with all manner of liberal memes designed to shake your faith in constitutional conservatism and to reinforce the faith of liberals who look around and can’t help but see their damage their idiotic policies are causing the country.  That’s why liberalism’s main effort today is distraction – they want to draw peoples’ attention away from the wreckage of the economy and the Administration’s utter failure at all costs.  “Rick Perry saw a racist rock!” is the equivalent of yelling to a Labrador retriever puppy, “Look, a squirrel!”

Don’t let them get away with it.

Step One:  Recognize the tactic.  Any time a liberal mentions an issue, a controversy or some other ginned-up kerfuffle, you can be sure that the purpose is to paint conservatives as racists, sexists, homophobes, imperialists or some other “ist” that they consider bad this week.  Take up your conservative judo fighting stance!

Step Two:  Redirect the blow.  Point out exactly what is happening:

I see you are trying to imply Rick Perry is a racist because someone else did something a long time ago, but it’s pretty clear what you really want to do is not talk about 9% plus unemployment under Obama.  I don’t blame you for trying – with a record of failure like Obama has, I can see why you want to try and divert attention by making up stories.

Step Three:  Strike the Gut.  The staggering hypocrisy of the Left, which is more racist, more sexist, and more bigoted in general than the Right could ever be, provides a delightful smorgasbord of hypocrisy to choose from.  Find it, and slam it home:

What I want to see is the President explain why he would appear on the same stage as the New Black Panthers.  I mean, first he sits in Reverend Wright’s pews for a couple decades, then he eulogizes Democrat icon and KKK kleagle Robert Byrd, and now he’s marching with his pals in the Black Panthers.  If Perry did any of those things, I couldn’t support him.  How can you still support Obama?

Just let them savor that for a while.  And remember, you can never reference Democrat icon and KKK kleagle Robert Byrd often enough.

Conservative judo is the synthesis of the recognition of the nature of our opponents and their favorite strategies with a fierce delight in counterattacking in order to retake the offensive and defeat their schemes.  Our candidates need to understand who they are dealing with and they need to understand that any backpedaling that accepts liberal premises simply makes the real opposition stronger.  And we need to do the same in our own lives.

Now get out there and make Chuck Norris proud!

I’ve always been kinda shy around it – even as a kid. But this turned into a full-blown fright fest when I was working at my first newspaper as an obituary clerk.

In my first few weeks at The Farmington Daily Times (Farmington, NM), I wrote the obituary of my high school friend, Chelly, who drowned in Navajo Lake near my hometown, while trying to save a little girl’s life. So, that, coupled with an already slightly ridiculous inability to back float, spiraled into me spending more time tanning on the side of the pool while my friends played Marco Polo and water volleyball. Such is the life of a land-bound girl with tan lines …

I talk about fears today because I am seeing fear throughout our Conservative ranks right now. We are a group who is more prepared for the upcoming Barackolypse (“If Obama is elected again inflation will make food and energy prices so high we won’t be able to buy bread!”) than we are in actually trying to mount an offensive and defeat him.

We have respected leaders in our own movement, telling us to head for the hills and store up food in order to take care of you and your own should the worst happen and Obama become reelected as president. I am reminded of the mania surrounding New Years Eve 2000 when everyone thought the new millennium might bring earthquake, death, destruction and a need to retreat to the caves and caverns of the Midwest. Have we already succumbed to the fear of fears here? Are we not even willing to see what we can do as a group large enough in number to actually make a difference?

As a group, it seems we have let our fears consume us. We have decided we don’t have a voice big enough to beat the bias of the media, take down the liberal mob or counter-act the power of the current government.

In watching the Republican debate earlier this week, I was yearning for a message of hope – a message OBAMA seemed to give so many people in 2008 – that actually made them vote for him. But I was left with nothing. All I heard were the problems this country had – not the potential. ‘ObamaCare will ruin the economy,’ ‘Withdrawl of troops jeopardizes our safety,’ ‘Our borders aren’t safe despite what Obama says ..’

Let’s face it. There’s not a person reading this who is involved in our Conservative circles who thinks President Obama has done a good job. We all know he’s sucked horrendously as Commander in Chief and we would like nothing better than to run him out of Washington on a rail … But I don’t need our Republican candidates to remind me of this time and time again. Tell me the problem. Tell me your solution. And lastly, tell me what we have to look forward to.

How about a pro-agenda? Like … (BTW, thank you … you know who you are …)

• Empowering individuals to make their own health care choices through savings accounts, allowing them to buy insurance across state lines, etc – definitely repealing Obamacare.
• Flattening the tax rate
• Changing the tax and incentive structure so more entrepreneurs can take more chances, and get the government out of the business of picking winners and losers
• Follow a pro-growth energy policy – where we find our most EFFICIENT means of energy, develop it, transport it. Or more directly, allow others to do this, and open currently closed areas to exploration and development, and fire and replace the nuclear regulatators
• Sign trade agreements that help American businesses, not protect union jobs
• Return more power to the states to create their own guidelines for schooling, providing for the poor, their own environmental or pollution laws, etc
• Close onerous agencies, like the EPA and HUD, just for starters

I don’t know, are we as a nation really so far gone we can’t choose to find something wonderful amongst the manure pile this current administration has left us with? Are we too worried about self-preservation we can’t figure out how to work together to bring about solid change?

Fear is powerful, isn’t it? It’s defined as a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid. And politicians on the right and left have learned to play to our fears for far too long and cause panic among our ranks. What is really sad is you’d think they’d realize fear causes the focus to shift from a global perspective into a personal, self-preservation one – and in the case of our country, this isn’t a good thing.

We need fellow Conservatives to team up right now and help get our message out. We need to not only think of how we can contribute on an individual level, but also how we can convince others to do so, too. Have you ‘converted’ anyone lately? Are you armed with the knowledge needed to defend your beliefs and guide a floundering liberal to the light?

We, like any other organization or group, need new members. We need to garner excitement, hope and youth into our ranks to keep us thriving, growing and viable. And while we do need our fear to keep us aware of what’s around us and what is happening, we don’t need it to ruin our focus on what our task is at hand: Take control of the Senate. Keep control of the House. Take over the White House.

This is our mission. This is my purpose in writing this and I am hoping we can rally around it. Those of you familiar with my writing will know it is very common for me to call us to action – and I won’t stop doing it. I feel it as deeply as ever – now is the time for us to get out and make a difference.

Needless to say, I am not canning and planning for a Barackolypse … Nor have I dug myself a hole in the side of the nearest mountain …  but I am taking a stand and making my beliefs and positions known …

… Just don’t expect me to do it anywhere near the swimming pool …

Enclosed in the book The Devil At My Doorstep, a first-hand account written by Dave Bego of the extremes Big Labor is willing to go to avoid having a secret ballot election, was a letter briefly explaining the NLRB’s steps toward implementing Card Check through regulations and other NLRB activity (click image to read letter).

On Thursday, The National Right To Work Committee distributed the book to members of congress to provide them the opportunity to read about the turmoil that card check corporate campaigns have on the lives of individual employees, their families, and communities.

In the hearing on Thursday, Larry Getts, a former union steward, who lived through a community dividing UAW campaign, was prepared to answer any questions regarding the anguish individual workers, their families, and his community suffered.

But, Democrat members refused to actually ask a real employee about what happens or how he felt about the NLRB’s actions. Outrageously, one congressman spent his five minutes reminiscing about the wonderful 1930’s and the Wagner Act that created the NLRB and federally sanctioned forced unionism.

Most of the other Democrats gave much of their time to Kenneth Dau-Schmidt, the somewhat paroxysmal professor from Indiana University, who could think of no reason why joining any union would be wrong for an employee. Though when asked again, he did say maybe for religious reasons.

While many Republican members tried to find a reason for the NLRB’s irrational proposal, they needed to look no farther than the Democrat’s Professor for the answer. For he, like Obama’s recess appointed NLRB board member Craig Becker, believes that forcing someone to pay union dues is a fair and reasonable thing to do. The real problem appears to be that we waited 159 years until 1935 to begin Rep. Kildee’s glory days of forced unionism. To Kildee and Becker, people must learn “a share” of their paycheck actually belongs to a union, even if that union has not been around for the past twenty years of their career.

Union membership trends indicate that Big Labor can’t seem to sell their product without forcing people to buy it and that is what the NLRB is trying to do – expand compulsory dues through bad regulations and “unconstrained” NLRB rulings. The Obama NLRB needs to be stopped, and if it takes repealing the NLRA – congress should do it.

The group is helping make the case to patients across the country about why Obamacare might be bad for their health.  Rather than spin, these doctors are offering facts born from their decades of practicing medicine on America’s frontlines.  They know the consequences for the quality of care when the government gets involved and the folly of many of the reckless assumptions the Obama plan makes.

Dr. Dorin recently appeared on my show and has been kind enough to share some of his personal insights.  As the townhalls of two summers ago showed us, the best way to fight Obamacare is at the grassroots level with cold-hard facts.

Here is what Dr. Dorin and his colleagues wanted to share with us.

An Open Letter Debate Challenge On Obamacare

It is my duty as an American to question any orders or directives from a superior ‘officer’, even the President of the United States, if those orders conflict with my responsibility to uphold the principles and Constitution of the United States, and if they impede my work to preserve the sanctity, safety, and security of its citizens.  Further, I am concerned that there has not been an honest, open and transparent discussion on the true merits of ObamaCare, which the public fully understands.

To this end, I hereby challenge any top leading expert in America who is a supporter of the President’s vision for our national medical system to a fair and open public debate.

As a board-certified specialist in anesthesiology, medical director, military officer, small business owner, and family man, I am troubled by several themes laced within the thousands of pages of the President’s health care reform law.  I’ll leave it to the majority of states who have sued the administration to sort out the proper interpretations of the 5th and 10th Constitutional Amendments. What concern me most are the five gravely flawed underpinnings:

1.  The attempt to ’socialize’ and ‘equalize’ health care “providers” so that the lines of distinction between physicians, nurses, and ancillary personnel are blurred.  Why?  Are the hundreds of years of tradition and time-honored values embodied in the M.D. (medical degree) of no significance?  Does the President not see consequences of his actions to elevate non-physicians to practice beyond the safe boundaries of their scope of training?

2.  The deliberate attempt protect the one segment of society, trial lawyers, who contribute nothing to the care of patients, at the cost of the entire medical delivery system.  Physicians, nurses, hospitals, equipment manufacturers, insurance companies, and patients are all asked to make shared sacrifices to save money and increase access to health care services; in contrast, attorneys are protected at all costs. The ‘trial malpractice reform test centers’ are a joke. The President takes tort reform seriously.  Why not this?

3.  After a year of painstaking discussions and disagreements among lawmakers, the President endorsed over two thousand pages of legal-ese to make a point of his resolve.  Yet after much political chest thumping, Pelosi and Reid, allowed over one thousand waivers to the very law he created.  Why the waste and duplicity?

4.  Great lengths were taken to protect the unions.  Why bail out the unions, but leave the patients and doctors to fend for themselves?

5.  A minority census of doctors-in fresh white coats provided for them at the door-assembled in a White House lawn ceremony purporting to show the solidarity between America’s physicians and the PPACA legislation.  What the President forgot to say to the cameras that day, or since, is that these doctors were only members of the American Medical Association (AMA), an increasingly abandoned and disregarded group with a membership of practicing physicians today of only ten percent.

Furthermore, the AMA receives about one hundred million dollars in exclusive copyright royalties each year from the federal government, a fact not disclosed to the American people.

The President’s misrepresentation of health care statistics to falsely denigrate our current medical system is but another important topic for discussion-one that we can have openly before the American public.  That is should anyone accept my challenge to a debate.

Adam F. Dorin, M.D., MBA is the co-founder of The Doctors National TEA Party and the founder of America’s Medical Society. He lives and practices medicine in Southern California.

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Yeah, any such connection between Obama policies and energy prices is a pretty hard case to make, what with the Obama administration having immediately upon taking office canceled oil and gas leases, placed more areas off limits for domestic exploration and production, changing the Minerals Management Service to an offshore windmill permitting agency since all we need is some offshore windmills (not one but two senior administration officials have said this, including a cabinet secretary), then not letting the Gulf spill ‘go to waste’ by seizing it to strangle our biggest domestic source of oil.

Of course, there is also that long trail of aspirational comments, well beyond vowing to cause electricity prices to ’skyrocket’, indicating this steady gas price hike is their objective, even if overseas developments are causing problems for them [helping the rise advance too quickly such that people pay attention, with these developments adding to the price hikes the admin have built in, with much more obviously undone but hopefully on the way]. As I detailed with many more admissions ten months ago in Power Grab.

Obviously, this is one of the items worrying Team Obama, along with their foreign policy fecklessness. And — in lieu of gimmickry to redirect voters’ gazes from policies that contribute to this, such as by releasing Strategic [NB: not 'Political'] Petroleum Reserve crude — Obama cheerleaders (like Politico) note he could take the opportunity to push his “Clean Energy Standard”.

That’s one of the “other ways to skin the cat” after cap-and-trade failed legislatively. Of course, for one, that is an electricity standard, adding windmill and solar panel mandates that are superfluous to a GHG rationing scheme like EPA’s backdoor cap-n-trade. Because we drive wind- and solar-powered cars. Or something.

But speaking of EPA’s involvement in all of this, Speaker Boehner jabbed at it yesterday when co-incidentally rolling out the Republicans’ energy arguments, “American Energy”. This follows up Newt Gingrich’s chosen talking point — which of course draws no line to exclude stupid, costly and harmful ‘American energy’ like ethanol, windmills or solar panels, any more than that previous stab of “All of the Above”. Sigh. Will someone please stand up and yell “Stop!”?

Anyway, as part of that rollout the Speaker pointed out the administration’s policies including their regulations on greenhouse gases (EPA’s backdoor Kyoto) are responsible for some of the price hike.

Shocked, shocked! the Dems shrieked,  how dare you, it’s idiotic to say that GHG regs on stationary sources like refineries increase the price of gasoline, per E&E News, in its lead story, ” Democrats cry foul over GOP’s attempts to tie fuel prices to EPA”:

“If they could fool people into believing there’s a connection, I think they would gain some political mileage, but it’s all deceptive,” said Rep. Henry Waxman of California [see below], the Energy and Commerce panel’s top Democrat and a chief author of that 2009 climate bill. “There’s no connection to EPA regulating greenhouse gases for certain stationary sources by requiring them to be more efficient and the price of gasoline.”…

“It reminds me of somebody who ate a hamburger and then ends up catching pneumonia and then says, ‘Hamburgers cause pneumonia,’” [Dem. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (MO)] said.

Mmm. There was also some muttering about how can rules that don’t go into effect until 2012 have contributed? — though they actually began taking effect January 2 [ See "the first step of this [EPA's] Tailoring Rule, which will begin on January 2, 2011″, showing EPA thinks refineries are so not nice that they’re covered twice!: ” all of the covered sources … will simply be adding a GHG component to what would be an otherwise occurring permitting action for conventional pollutants. These sources include fossil fuel-fired power plants, petroleum refineries, cement plants, iron and steel plants, pulp and paper plants, petroleum refineries,…”.] Not much attention to detail by this crowd, either at EPA, or on the Hill.

But, still, wait a sec.

Does anyone remember that $30 million “Say No on 23″ campaign by the Dems and their allies just this past fall? It included a long list of their claiming that Big Oil – specifically, refiners — were the dark forces behind trying to stop California’s version of Obama’s GHG regs (AB 32) from going into effect.

Which is it? a reporter might be prepared to ask today. Surely it will come up. It has to. Which time is your team lying, Mr. President? Was it, as you all said time and time — and time — again, the refiners who were behind the campaign saying that GHG regs will increase their costs — and yes, Virginia, costs are passed on to consumers — or is that now just a made up claim?

Did your team spend $tens of millions of dollars California saying refiners are the ones trying to stop GHG regs from going into effect by yelling about the cost, or not? Did we imagine this? Was that just made up?

If that did occur, why should we believe you now? And, if it was insincere, why should we believe you now? Or aren’t we better off believing all of those vows to raise our gas prices to Europe’s level, etc.?