Hank Fox, The Blue Collar Atheist, took offence to my reference to Obama as LMO – Lord Messiah Obama. He crafted this blog post about it. Please read it before continuing with this article, which is my response.

LMO is not really a reference to Obama; it refers to his more rabid followers, people who believe he is the second coming of {insert their favorite-person-in-all-of mankind’s-history here}.

We agree on many things, the most important of which is that we really only have one party in this country. Virtually every member of the party believes, deeply and to the very core of their bones, that Government is Good, and that every problem, no matter how large or small, must be immediately addressed and fixed by Big Brother. Their solutions make things worse approximately 96.45% of the time, and their response is always the same: we need more government to fix the problems that more government created when we tried to fix the problem that more government created.

Here’s where we differ: I don’t see the government as good. I see it as a necessary evil, and the less evil we have the better off we all are.

Let’s just take one example: The War on Some Drugs. Any thinking person can easily see that it’s a complete failure in every measurable way. The response to that failure, since the days of Nixon, has been to ramp it up. As a direct result drugs have become cheaper, more widely available, have provided a huge revenue stream for violent criminals and corrupt cops and politicians. It has given us the world’s largest prison population (in both sheer numbers and percentage of the population). It continues to finance and provide an excuse for the militarization and increasing violence of the police. It has destroyed (and in some cases ended) the lives of tens of millions of citizens who never hurt anyone else. It has nullified the fourth amendment. The War on Some Drugs has cased far, far more damage than drugs would have on their own.

We now know Obama a huge stoner as a young man. If he had been caught back then he’d now be some unknown guy working in a department store. One would think that would make him a bit more companionate toward his fellow citizens who like to break that particular law. Nope. Not even a little. He continues to support ruining the lives of people who have done exactly what he did. After boldly lying about stopping federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries, he stepped them up. He’s closed over 500 shops in CA alone. Hypocrisy is common in politics, but it seldom reaches this level.

Obama wants to continue this unwinnable war. Mitt has said he’ll do the same thing. This is one of the biggest problems facing our country and their solution is to make it worse by increasing the level of attacks on Americans and their rights and their property.

You briefly mention my opposition to the War on Smokers. If you understand my stance on that issue you’ll understand nearly all of my politics.

The war on smokers is a perfect example of government run amuck, interfering with everyone’s lives “for our own good” and causeing damage too great to measure.

There is no doubt that smoking is bad for you. It increases your risk of many diseases, and is generally unhealthy. You know that. I know that. Every knowledgeable person on the planet knows that. Making everyone aware of that resulted in reducing smoking from about 40% of the population to about 20% today. But that wasn’t enough for the Nicotine Nazis. They will not be happy until everyone bends to their will, so they needed something else to scare everyone into quitting. The government gleefully provided it – a myth, a piece of pure junk science – that claimed the slightest whiff of second hand smoke was deadly. This inspired draconian smoking bans and campaigns of pure hate against smokers. First they went after private businesses that allowed their customers to smoke. This resulted in tens of thousands of businesses shutting down. After driving smokers to the streets they banned smoking on the streets. Now they’re going after people in their own homes.

This makes the smoking issue a perfect example of government ruining lives for our own good. It is also a perfect example of pure junk science in action. And it is providing a template for every other nanny group to advance their agenda. Anyone who has supported smoking restrictions on private property has no right to complain about bans on large drinks, full size candy bars (thank you, Mrs. Obama), foie gras, or anything else. The Food Fascists using the exact same action plan the NNs perfected against smokers: Exaggerate (or fabricate) a problem, generate junk science, instill baseless fear in the general population and use Big Brother to force people to live the way you want them to.

It’s also worth nothing that after promising to never raise taxes on anyone earning less than $250k, the very first law Obama signed in office raised the tax on roll-your-own tobacco by an astounding 2,100%! I don’t think too many people earning more than a quarter million a year are rolling their own smokes. I don’t think too many people earning more than $20k a year are. It was a direct attack on the wallets of the poorest of the poor.

(BTW, is Obama still sneaking cigarettes?)

The final straw, for me, was Obama assassinating an American citizen. Anwar al-Awlaki was pure evil. He preached and promoted pure evil. But we never saw any evidence that he was directly involved in any attacks on US interests.

A law abiding president would have conducted a trail in absentia and presented solid evidence of guilt before handing down a death sentence. Obama couldn’t be bothered. He simply murdered him with a robot drone. Two weeks later he murdered Anwar’s sixteen year old son, just for good measure.

The reaction from his fans was what inspired me to start using the LMO sobriquet more frequently. If G.W. Bush had done the exact same thing the clamor from the left would have been deafening, and rightly so. But when their guy did it they heaped praise on him. Obama is a hero, dontcha know, for the remote assassination of an American citizen. America, Fuck Yeah!

You’re right about the rabid right going bat-shit crazy over anything LMO does. He could hand out free puppies that he’d raised at his own expense and they’d find something evil about it. But you completely ignore the equally bat-shit left who slobber with excitement over everything LMO does, the same bat-shit battalion who automatically lapsed into hysteria over everything Bush did. They portrayed Bush as a chimp, then screamed “racist!” when the same thing was done to Obama. They decry big business, writing their screeds on cheap, powerful laptops created by big business, then sending them out over complex networks carefully built and maintained by big business, blind to their own hypocrisy. When Republicans hand out money to their friends they scream about corporatism.  When Obama does it they cheer.  And when LMO murders a citizen they look at the pretty fireworks and say “aaaaaaaaawww-some.”

The rabid right continues to attack basic human rights, especially reproductive rights and equal rights for lifestyles they despise. But the loony left is even more dangerous. Their anti-vax, anti-GMO, anti-development, anti-nuke and anti-science stance threatens our very survival as a species.

I honestly see very little difference between Mittens and LMO, with the exception of how well they treat their pets. They both insist they want the best for the country while handing out huge payouts to their friends, ignoring the citizens whose lives they damage with every stroke of the pen. They are both deeply hypocritical and dishonest. And both of them believe big huge monster government is the only solution to problems which were mostly created by big huge monster government.

The fact that intelligent, thinking people believe there’s a real difference between the two illustrates how well their professional spin doctors get past most people’s bullshit meters. It’s time to tweak and tune up yours, Hank, because neither of these two clowns give a rat’s rectum about you, or me, or any of the 300 million of us who can’t afford travel in their rarified, extremely wealthy circles of friends and cronies.