— Adolph
Hitler, Mein Kampf, Chapter 6.
Controlling the message.
This administration has seemingly adopted the Joseph Goebbels' (the infamous Nazi Minister of Propaganda under
Adolph Hitler) strategy that history has labeled 'the big lie.' Hitler was a master of manipulating
large numbers of people. He intuitively understood that if you simply tell a lie, people who know (or
find out) the truth will easily reject it. But if you tell a huge, enormous lie that is blatantly false,
and repeat it over and over, people eventually will question their own ability to properly process the
information, and they will come to believe it.
The Obama Administration — No
Class, Bad Character. In short, the Obama administration falsely claimed that the Bush administration
had done no planning or analysis regarding the worsening situation in Afghanistan, even though it (1) knew
this was false, (2) had asked the Bush administration not to disclose its work, and (3) relied
in part on the same work it claimed the Bush administration had not performed.
A pay-to-play White House.
Finally, it is clear what President Obama meant when he said this would be the most "transparent administration
in history." He wasn't saying that his White House would be open and accountable; he was saying that his
administration didn't feel much need to come up with plausible lies, they'd be fine using the transparent kind.
Obama's
Doubletalk on Political Dissent. President Obama traveled all the way to China to praise the free flow
of information. It's the only safe place he could do so without getting heckled. With a straight face,
Obama lauded political dissent and told Chinese students he welcomed unfettered criticism in America. Fierce
opposition, he said, made him "a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don't want to hear."
How do you say "You lie!" in Mandarin?
Would
Obama Be President If He Made These Five Campaign Promises? Even amongst politicians, Barack
Obama is such a liar that he makes Bill Clinton look like honest Abe Lincoln by comparison.
Obama's Afghan Pickle.
[Scroll down slowly] By Memorial Day 2008, however, Obama was claiming that it was his "uncle" who
was "part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz." When reminded that his mother was an
only child and his father a Kenyan, Obama designated his "great uncle" as the liberator of Auschwitz.
This proved problematic as well because Auschwitz, as the Republican National Committee gleefully pointed
out, was actually liberated by the Soviets. No matter. Obama was learning that he could say
pretty much anything he wanted without consequence.
A Day Off. [Scroll down slowly]
Nancy Pelosi's promise to end the "culture of corruption" in Congress and Barack Obama's promise to run the "most
transparent administration in history" were unadulterated lies. An ominous thought: both of them might
actually believe they're doing just that, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. Such a profound
disconnect from reality is making Americans furious.
The Lies of Obama: When
politicians are caught out in lies, their supporters often resort to the old cliché: all
politicians lie. But that is itself a lie: most don't. Even among those who do, there
are enormous differences in the importance and frequency of the lies. And it is surely now clear that
this nation has a far from routine problem in the scale and regularity of President Obama's lying.
End of O's cowardly
lyin'. [Scroll down] It's all smoke and mirrors, bells and whistles, held together with glib
talk, Chicago politics and an audacious sense of entitlement. At the center is a young and talented
celebrity whose worldview, we now know, is an incoherent jumble of poses and big-government instincts. His
self-aggrandizing ambition exceeds his ability by so much that he is making a mess of everything he touches.
How do you spell brazen? In
listening to the State of The Union Address, and other recent pondering of President Obama, I am constantly
amazed at his ability to say things that he knows can be fact checked. Let me give you a few examples.
Why
Americans Hate Washington: In January, the Senate joined the House in passing "pay-as-you-go"
rules to require Congress to pay for new discretionary spending. On Feb. 12, President Obama
signed the bill. "Now Congress will have to pay for what it spends, just like everybody else," Obama
crowed. Less than a month later, Obama and fellow Democrats are busily demonizing a lone senator for
pushing Washington to spend responsibly. It seems this administration is all for fiscal
restraint — as long as you don't mean it.
What a generous way to put it.
The president's habit of telling
untruths: Here's how predictable the president's slippery relationship with the truth has
become: Hours before the State of the Union address,
Washington Examiner reporter Timothy P.
Carney posted a "pre-emptive fact check" that, among other things, prebutted any presidential claim to have
"stopped the revolving door between government and corporate lobbying." As it happened, that night
Barack Obama made an even bolder (read: less truthful) claim: that "we've excluded lobbyists from
policymaking jobs."
Obama
budget spends more in each of the next ten years than the last one. President Obama promised a
turn toward fiscal discipline in his State of the Union Address. But his new budget doesn't just plan on
more deficit spending for a year, followed by austerity. Rather, it actually increases deficits in each
of the next ten years over what he'd planned for in last year's budget.
Lawfare, Voluntary Surrender, and Right-wing
"Extremists". [Scroll down slowly] Barack Obama, who passed his bar in 1991, "voluntarily
surrendered" his license in 2008, for unknown reasons. Why did Obama surrender his license?
Citizen WELLs reports that it may have been because of charges that Obama lied on his bar application.
Chicago Does
Socialism. [Scroll down slowly] I could go on and on, but again the pattern is clear.
Each time Obama prevaricates, we grant him an exemption because of his lofty rhetoric about bipartisanship and
his soothing words about unity. Only later do we notice that in retrospect each untruth is part of a
pattern of dissimulation within just a single year of governance. Obama has proven so far that in fact
one can fool a lot of the people a lot of the time.
Obama Attends Non-Existent
Soccer Game? Reading the story about President Obama breaking tradition and ditching the presidential
press pool over the weekend to watch one of his daughter's soccer games, it appears harmless, right?
Not so. It is rather disturbing when you dissect it.
Jon Voight: A Letter to the
American People. In one year the American people are witnessing the greatest lie that is cleverly
orchestrated by President Obama and his whole administration. The lie is a potent aggression that feeds
the needs of people who either have not educated themselves enough to understand the assault upon us all, or
the very poor and needy who live to be taken care of. President Obama feeds these people poison, giving
them the idea that they are entitled to take from the wealthier, who have lived and worked in a democracy that
understands that capitalism is the only truth that keeps a nation healthy and fed.
Obama's 5 Big Lies About Israel.
In preparation for his attempt to impose a final solution on Israel, Obama is spreading a variety of lies through
the media and his spokesmen about Israel. And by exposing those lies, we can best get at the truth.
Obama Fiddled While the Gulf Burned.
President Obama has tried to sugarcoat his administration's inadequate and tardy response to the worst oil
spill in our nation's history. His claim that the administration has been "all-hands-on-deck ... from
day one" is laughable.
The Truth and Barack Obama:
[Scroll down slowly] Mr. Obama is also the person who, when he was running for the presidency, promised
all health-care negotiations would be broadcast on C-SPAN (They weren't.), that he would accept public financing
for his campaign (He didn't.), that he would put an end to "phony accounting" (He hasn't.), that lobbyists will
not work in his White House (They do.), that he would slash earmarks by more than half (He has not.), that he
opposed giving Miranda rights to terrorists (He favors them.), that he was against an individual health-care
mandate (He supported it.), and that he would resist the temptation "to fall back on the same partisanship and
pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long" (He succumbed to the temptation.).
The shameless,
shocking hypocrisy and lies of President Obama. [Scroll down slowly] He lies all the time.
He lied about how often he attended services at Jeremiah Wright's church; he lied about how his parents met;
how his uncle liberated Auschwitz; how his dad came to this country. The guy just lies about his own
background and life. What a phony... and, btw, for someone who decries people's use of IPODs, why did he
give one to Queen Elizabeth as a diplomatic gift — one filled with his own speeches. How
priceless!
Americans are Drowning in Our Government's Lies.
It's not just the lies about climate change. It's not just the lies about renewable, wind and solar, energy.
It's not just the lies about so-called endangered species. It's not just that the Obama administration
refuses to name Islam as the source of the terrorist attacks on America. ... It is a combination of these and
other factors that are based on a contagion of lies told to Americans by their own government.
Tinkering With the
Truth. President Obama used about an hour of his press conference yesterday [5/27/2010] trying to explain
how — in spite of his handlers' having spent the past month trotting out the Secretary of the
Interior, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Commandant of the Coast Guard to be the faces of the
Gulf of Ocean oil spill — that he, Barack Obama, had been personally on top of this situation from
the moment the drilling rig exploded until that very moment.
Was Elizabeth Birnbaum Fired? Don't
Ask Obama. When President Obama's Interior Secretary Ken Salazar promised to root out the "bad
apples" yesterday at a House hearing, the head of Minerals Management Service was at the same hearing —
about to be plucked from the tree. Elizabeth Birnbaum's departure was first reported as a "firing."
Later, a "resignation." When asked for clarity, President Obama told the press corps today [5/27/2010]
he had no idea.
Obama Knew
Birnbaum Was Fired. How could he not have? At his presser today [5/27/2010], the president
claimed that he did not know whether the head of the Minerals Management Service, Elizabeth Birnbaum, had
resigned or was fired. Obama said he didn't know because he was engaged all morning and Interior
Secretary Ken Salazar was busy giving testimony on Capitol Hill. ... So Obama's point man in the Gulf fires a
key oil regulator without first clearing it — or even mentioning it — to the president
during one of their numerous briefings? Fat chance.
The Thrill is Gone.
The news conference [May 27] was Mr. Obama's first in 310 days. His performance makes it likely
it'll be at least that long before he holds another. The low point came when Mr. Obama professed not to
know whether Elizabeth Birnbaum, the woman he appointed to head the Minerals Management Service, resigned or
was fired. No one expects the president to don scuba tanks and plug the hole himself. But he at
least ought to know what's going on with his own people.
Another
'job offer'. After first stonewalling, the White House yester day confirmed that it
tried to lure Andrew Romanoff out of the Colorado Senate primary with an administration job, to help
its preferred candidate, incumbent Sen. Michael Bennet. Sound familiar? The Denver Post
ran a story on the rumored job offer last September — but White House spokesman Adam Abrams
said then, "Romanoff was never offered a position within the administration."
A Ban
On Truth. The advisory board on offshore drilling says it never endorsed a moratorium, which
was added later by the interior secretary. The only thing transparent about this administration is
its lies.
Another Stumble in the Gulf.
The administration has decreed a six-month moratorium on exploratory drilling in the Gulf, based on a report
that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar wrote for President Obama. Salazar claimed that a panel of seven experts
selected by the National Academy of Engineering had peer reviewed his report. It turns out, though, that
the seven experts never saw the recommendation for a moratorium, and in fact oppose it.
The President's Oil
Reserves Lie: During his speech, the president made a statement that was blatantly false.
The president noted, "We consume more than 20% of the world's oil, but have less than 2% of the world's oil
reserve. And that's part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the
ocean — because we're running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water." We are
not running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water. In fact, it is due to the president's
party of extreme environmentalists that BP had to drill some forty miles from the coastline in deep waters to
extract oil.
Leaks and Lies. For two months,
the Obama administration has been skirting the truth about its inept response to the April 20 BP Deepwater
Horizon drilling rig explosion and the resulting fire and oil spill. The O-Team claims it has been
"on top" of this problem since "day one." Reality shows that both the leaks and the lies
continue.
A Big
Government Disaster. On June 15, 2010, President Barack Obama made his first address
to the nation from the oval office. Hearing his address, several things struck me. First of all,
Obama mentioned that when the oil spill occurred, he ordered scientists and the Energy Department to study
how to repair the spill. True to his big government agenda, Obama wasted time on the study while more
oil continued to pour into the Gulf region. Secondly, Obama also said that we are running out of oil to
drill. This is patently false.
More
about Obama's Oval Office speech.
He Blinded Me
With Science. [Scroll down] The White House issued a blanket moratorium on deepwater oil
drilling. Obama cited a report commissioned by the Interior Department that purported to recommend the
ban. "The recommendations contained in this report," declared the document, "have been peer-reviewed by
seven experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering." Except that was untrue.
Barack Obama's
Attention Deficit Disorder. [Scroll down] So perhaps Obama isn't just our first
"black" president but also our first ADD president. At least, that's what the idea that he could carry
on a deep, 20-year relationship with [Jeremiah Wright] and not know of the man's vile views — and
not share them to some degree — suggests. Of course, there is another possibility:
Barack Obama is a liar. Barack Obama is a radical, a demagogue and a clear and present danger to these
United States.
Blather in Kansas City.
[Scroll down] Just as when the President lied about not having available oil reserves last month in his televised
address to the nation regarding the BP oil spill, he told another outright lie in Kansas City. It was so blatant
that it was almost humorous. Note the President's words, "So our goal has never been to create another
government program, our goal has been to spur growth in the private sector." Really? Does any sane
person who even casually follows politics or watched the 2008 presidential campaign believe this?
Obama's "False Narrative".
[Scroll down] According to the True Narrative, Obama the Great acted with wisdom and courage to forestall
another Great Depression. The charges of profligate spending have been manufactured out of thin air.
The stimulus package has been a spectacular success. ObamaCare will bend the cost curve down. The
economy is doing swimmingly. The outreach to the Muslim world has led to unprecedented breakthroughs.
Nation after nation — Iran, Turkey, Russia, China, Brazil, Venezuela — are bending to
Obama's will. And all the problems America faces — from nearly 10 percent unemployment
to polarization to acne among teens — are owing to Obama's predecessor. Yet ... Obama
has become massively unpopular among independents.
The Worst Ecological Disaster
Ever? David Axelrod on
Fox News Sunday this morning [7/11/2010] said that the Gulf oil spill is
the "worst ecological disaster ever" — or words to that effect (the transcript is not yet
available). This, of course, is historical nonsense. Except in terms of the volume of oil released
into the environment, it is not even the worst oil spill in American history.
Obama's
Economic Unreality. Sadly, with President Obama, each day is crazier than the previous one.
His latest economic speeches border on the surreal. I just can't quite figure out who he thinks his
audience is because so much of what he says doesn't square with reality. In a speech Friday [7/9/2010] in
Las Vegas, Obama painted quite a rosy portrait of his economic record to date — at least rosy
compared with what we've all experienced with our five senses. ... [It's like] a student telling a math
teacher that three minus two equals four.
A
Short History of the Recess Appointment. [Scroll down] Obama used a recess appointment
for Dr. Berwick not to avoid a filibuster but to avoid the Senate's advice and consent power altogether.
He blamed — surprise! — the Republicans for delaying the process, but that is a
bald-face lie, as Republicans would be only too happy to have hearings on Dr. Berwick's appointment in
order to put the deeply unpopular ObamaCare back on Page One four months before the midterm elections.
President Obama's action here shows his contempt for everything that stands in the way of his agenda, even
the Constitution.
Why Do Ethics Cost
More in the Obama White House? On his first day in office, Obama announced that he would freeze
salaries of White House employees making $100,000 or more, and the mainstream media trumpeted the announcement
as a supposed example of their hero's fiscal responsibility. The Washington Post even calculated the
amount that the "freeze" would save taxpayers: over $443,000 dollars a year. The Post, and the
rest of the Obamaton media, portrayed the announcement — described as Obama's first act in
office — as a symbolic tightening of the belt. But when Obama got around to actually
reporting White House salaries, as required by law, the numbers told a far different story. Instead
of tightening his belt, Obama was buying a bigger, fatter, and far more expensive one.
Gaslighting America.
[Scroll down] Obama proxies in the administration, Janet Napolitano and Eric Holder, would have us believe
that we are engaged in "overseas contingency operations" to deal with "man caused disasters." Napolitano
actually contends, straight faced, that our border with Mexico is secure, despite a surfeit of evidence to show
that our Mexican border is an anarchical combat zone. Holder peddles even more pernicious feculence.
Does Barack Obama Have
a Learning Disability? [Scroll down] BHO claims to have been a professor of constitutional
law. ... He was not really a law professor. He was a "senior lecturer," though the University of Chicago,
where BHO served as a senior lecturer, claims that he was "regarded as" a professor. How one is
regarded does not always determine what one is.
Secret Support for Lockerbie Terrorist
Reveals Need for "Lies Czar" in White House. Barack Obama desperately needs a "Lies Czar"
to keep track of the president's lies so that The One can avoid tripping over his own words.
Obama's latest lie-gone-wrong gaffe involves the release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, AKA the Lockerbie
bomber. Just last week, Obama stated publicly that all Americans were "surprised, disappointed
and angry" to learn of Megrahi's release.
More about the remarkably good health of
the Lockerbie bomber.
Obama's Lack of Disclosure.
You know when a politician starts a sentence with "frankly," he's about to lie to your face. The same
principle applies to campaign finance legislation dubbed the "DISCLOSE Act." The voter's instinctive
reaction should be: What are they trying to hide now?
Islam Means the End of Religious Freedom.
Obama concluded his remarks by saying: "
And we can only achieve "liberty and justice for all" if
we live by that one rule at the heart of every great religion, including Islam — that we do unto
others as we would have them do unto us." But that is not the rule at the heart of Islam. And
this is not the first time that he has tried to sell that particular lie. But Islam never equates Muslims
with non-Muslims, as Obama pretends it does. Its offer of brotherhood is only open to fellow Muslims.
Its tolerance is only for fellow Muslims.
Demogoguing Social Security.
The Democrats must know they're in trouble: they've turned to one of their hoariest dodges, demagoguing Social
Security. In his weekly radio address yesterday [8/14/2010], Barack Obama accused Republicans of
scheming to ruin the program.
Obama:
Social Security 'is not in crisis'. President Obama said Social Security is not in crisis and
only modest changes are needed to keep it solvent.
Obama's foreign funny
money. In his weekly radio address on Saturday [8/21/2010], the president went on about the
supposed effects of the Supreme Court's January decision in the Citizens United case, which loosened
restrictions on certain types of corporate political activity. Mr. Obama warned of a "corporate takeover
of our democracy." With plenty of melodrama, he complained about "a flood of attack ads run by shadowy
groups." He even claimed, "You don't know if it's a foreign-controlled corporation." Mr. Obama
surely knows his talking points are nonsense. His claim about foreign contributions repeatedly has been
proved false.
The un-faith of
Obama. All Obama has managed to prove over the past year is his inability to tell the truth.
Obama's
credibility is the big issue in religion poll. Thomas Lifson and Byron York have convincingly
demonstrated that the President's own behavior is the source of the one-in-five Muslim answer and that such
an opinion is rational given the evidence. In contrast, the mainstream media's response was a predictably
arrogant dismay that Americans do not believe the President is a Christian, given that the Administration has
said he "is obviously a Christian." ... [But] maybe six-in-ten Americans don't believe the President is a
Christian precisely because he claims to be so. Isn't it possible that Barack Obama has
lost his credibility and, as our parents taught us, such credibility lost is seldom regained?
Another Obama White House Lie About Islam.
In his remarks at the iftar observance, Obama claimed that the "first" iftar dinner in the White House was hosted
by Thomas Jefferson. ... What tosh. There has never been a tradition of iftar dinners at the White House,
sporadic or otherwise, until after the year 1992. Jefferson's dinner was no iftar dinner and no other
president until Bill Clinton even hosted one.
Obama's Misleading Legalities. Why
does President Obama persistently misrepresent a particular Supreme Court decision and make misstatements about
the law? Does he do it intentionally for political gain, or are his legal advisors such poor lawyers that
they misinform him? Whatever the reason, if he were Pinocchio, the statements he made about campaign finance
"reform" in his latest weekly address would give him a nose longer than a Nationals' baseball bat.
United States Declares War on Arizona, Literally.
[Scroll down] Obama proves over and over again his absolute disdain for our Constitution and his deep hate
for our country. His every speech contains at least one derogatory comment about the United States, and
an equal amount of how great is the world of Islam. And there are some people who just can't see the
truth for all of the lies that come out of his mouth.
The Lies And Distortions Just Keep Coming.
[Scroll down] If you work for a small business with more than two or three of employees then you had better
hope that your employer is a millionaire or your job may be in seriously in jeopardy. But Obama doesn't
think employers should be millionaires. Perhaps this is because Obama knows nothing about running a
business. Or maybe it's because his Marxist philosophy tells him that any company worth more than a
million dollars should be owned by the state.
Obama's road show: More
snake oil. The worse the poll numbers get, the more Barack Obama resembles the traveling snake-oil
salesman of old.
Ruse Conference. The
president on Friday revealed the narrative for the Obama re-election campaign of 2012, and it shamelessly
rewrites history. The story goes like this: Bush hurled the global economy on a path toward
depression by cutting the taxes of millionaires. Obama then came to the rescue with his policies —
but the Republicans dug us into such a hole that it's taking even longer to dig out. The trouble with
this myth is that even Democrats running for re-election are shunning it.
More
commentary about President Obama's news conference on September 10, 2010.
So,
Obama wants a longer school year? Sure he does. So, President Obama now thinks that a longer
school year is a good idea? Of course he does, and that's great. But will anything come of it?
Obama has a history with the good idea of increasing instructional time — a history of saying it's a
good idea and then looking the other way as his political allies make sure it never happens.
Barack Obama accused
of exaggerating terror threat for political gain. A US terror alert issued this week about al-Qaida
plots to attack targets in western Europe was politically motivated and not based on credible new information,
senior Pakistani diplomats and European intelligence officials have told the Guardian.
Obama's Biggest Lies. President
Obama loves to make up things that are patently untrue, like every economist agrees his $800 billion
economic stimulus "has done its job," the economy "is moving in the right direction," and the Bush tax cuts
caused the trillion dollar deficits. The facts say otherwise, but he is never challenged by the news
media for his repeatedly dishonest myth-making. Here are some of his worst offenses.
A War Of Lies Against The Chamber.
President Obama has doubled down in his attack on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, continuing to call its ads
foreign-funded. His charges are false and he knows it.
More about President Obama's
fundraising scandals.
President Lies in Press Conference.
"The EPA is under a court order that identifies greenhouse gases as a pollutant." (paraphrase) The truth
is, the court said EPA must make a determination whether they are a pollutant. Big difference.
L.A. contrail a
missile launch? Retired general thinks so. [Scroll down] In my opinion, there is absolutely
no doubt that what was captured on video off the coast of California was a missile launch, was clearly observed
by NORAD, assessed by a four-star general within minutes, and passed to the president immediately. That
is the way the system works, and heads fall if there is a failure. This is one of the most important
tenets of national defense and its sole purpose of protecting the American people. Even the smallest
failure in this system gets intense scrutiny at the highest level. Now, the question that still must
be answered is why NORAD's muted response was simply that North America was not threatened, and later our
government approved the lame excuse that the picture recorded was simply an aircraft leaving a contrail.
This decision was made far above the four-star level, and because the system in place demands it, was made by
the president himself.
More
about the mysterious LA missile.
GM's Bailout Is a
Financial Disaster. Only the government would consider it a success to buy stock at $43.84 a
share and sell it at $33. — But President Obama and those who supported his bailout of General Motors and Chrysler are
claiming just that today [11/18/2010]. First, the alternative to the government bailout wasn't to "give up"
as Obama claimed on Thursday at his press conference. Bankruptcy didn't mean that all jobs were going to
be lost. It didn't mean that all the factories producing cars would be closed. Yet, the president
made that claim in his announcement again today and he continually misstates what would have happened in a
normal bankruptcy.
Wave goodbye to Internet
freedom. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is poised to add the Internet to its portfolio of
regulated industries. The agency's chairman, Julius Genachowski, announced Wednesday [12/1/2010] that he
circulated draft rules he says will "preserve the freedom and openness of the Internet." No statement could
better reflect the gulf between the rhetoric and the reality of Obama administration policies.
Bernanke:
60 Minutes, 2 Big Lies. This past Sunday [12/5/2010] on the CBS program "60 Minutes", Americans
received a massive dose of mendacity from our Fed Chairman. Mr. Bernanke's shaky delivery, and even shakier
logic may cause faith in America's economic leadership to evaporate faster than the value of our dollar. In
particular, Bernanke delivered two massive distortions.
President
Obama's $8 Billion Earmark Rerun: Lesson Not Learned? The Obama administration today [12/15/2010]
told Congress to pass an omnibus spending bill containing $8 billion in earmark projects, even though just a few days
ago the president said one of the lessons he learned from the 2010 midterm elections was to take more
seriously the public's disapproval of — and his pledge to oppose — earmarks.
Obama and Islam.
[Page 14:] "And here in the United States," Obama continued, "Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has
always been part of America and that American Muslims have made extraordinary contributions to our country."
But is this true? Could Obama provide a list of the Muslim Founding Fathers, the Muslim heroes of the
American Revolution, the names of the Muslims killed fighting in the Civil War, World War I, and World
War II? And could he support his rhetoric by producing a list of those "extraordinary contributions"?
It is important for a President to speak for all American citizens in his public pronouncements, not just one
religious group — and it is also important that his efforts at "inclusiveness" not be justified
by historical fabrication.
Obama: 2010 in Faith.
Obama has said that he has not joined a Washington church because it would be too "disruptive" to the services.
Being disruptive apparently did not concern him during his lavish Christmas vacation in Hawaii, however.
According to a MailOnline article, to visit childhood friend Bobby Titcomb's beachfront house, a "10-vehicle
convoy drove the president and wife Michelle from his rental property in Kailua, across highways cleared of
traffic and through a military community."
30 year-old
Chicagoan Wrote Tucson Speech. In a Friday [1/17/2011] article I had speculated that chief
Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau had penned Obama's over-praised Tucson oration, but it turns out that Obama
elevated heretofore unknown Cody Keenan from the "eulogy and commencement beat" for his moment in the Arizona
sun. In an uncommonly frank moment Wednesday night, while flying back from Tucson on Air Force One,
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told a Chicago Tribune reporter and others that Keenan had been
the speechwriter. By Thursday morning, Gibbs was insisting that "Obama had wielded the heavier pen."
The Editor says...
Wouldn't it be great to have a polygraph examiner interview President Obama about the works that he has
allegedly written? Wouldn't it be refreshing to have a reporter ask Mr. Obama to recite a speech he has
given, right after the speech is concluded? My guess is that he would not be able to remember even one
complete sentence, because (I believe) someone else writes all his speeches.
More
about Obama's Arizona speech.
Obama 2.O: The
First Big Lie. [President Obama] has a history of failing to follow through after making
these political pronouncements. In 2009, he demanded every federal department cut their budgets
for a total of $100 million dollars and put a deadline of 90 days on his "order."
However, it seems like no one got the memo or if they did it went straight to the recycling bin,
since the deadline passed and the money was not cut. But it did make for some good press and
very few checked followed up — least of all, the President — to see if his
order was obeyed.
Obama's Prayer Breakfast
Knuckleball. [Scroll down] For a man capable of fabricating a relationship with his
father — to the point of writing a book about it — fabricating a relationship with
Jesus is no big deal, at least not to [Time Magazine's Michal] Scherer and the mainstream media. They
are prepared to believe whatever Obama says and belittle those who don't.
The "Judicial
Activism" Ploy. Barack Obama has a rhetorical solution for every problem. Remember the
repeated claims of "shovel-ready" projects that needed only federal stimulus money to get started? Last
year the President quietly admitted that there were not many "shovel-ready" projects, after all. But the
phrase served its political purpose at the time — and that was obviously all that mattered.
Now, in the wake of rulings by two different courts that ObamaCare is unconstitutional, rhetoric is being
mobilized again, without any fussy worries about facts.
White House Lies On Blackouts
Exposed. [Scroll down] Maxed-out energy grids are a direct consequence of a shortage
of new power plants to meet demand. Indeed, contrary to another of [When Obama Communications Director
Dan] Pfeiffer's falsehoods when he claimed that Texas was not subject to EPA restrictions, one of the delayed
power plants that could have alleviated the energy shortage, the Las Brisas Energy Center, has been the
subject of an EPA battle with Texas state authorities for the past three years. A federal court ruling
last month gave the EPA permission to proceed with greenhouse gas regulation in Texas, temporarily superseding
Texas' non-compliance with the new regulations which came into force on January 2. The White
House's claim that EPA regulations are not currently affecting Texas is a complete fabrication.
Obama's
Attempt to Distance Himself From Wisconsin Rally Fails. "This is a Wisconsin story, not a Washington
one," said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director. "False claims of White House involvement
are attempts to distract from the organic grass-roots opposition that is happening in Wisconsin." But
apparently someone forget to tell the DNC's communication director Bob Woodhouse to scrub his Twitter feed
to reflect this new strategy.
Washington Post
punctures another Obama boast. Barack Obama gives himself another pat on the back and undeserved
good grade. Does he ever have any sense of humility? Will the lies ever stop?
Is Your Wallet Screaming "Inflation"?
I need not mention what we are seeing at the gas pump these days. The price of a gallon of gasoline has
skyrocketed (in my home state of Florida) from just over $1.50 per gallon at the end of the Bush administration
to close to $3.50 for that same gallon today. Anybody that believes that inflation is really
1.63 percent (as told to us by the federal government's Bureau of Labor Statistics in its Consumer
Price Index summary) is not living in the real world.
Clearing up
Today's Obama Energy Lies. This afternoon the President of the United States tried one again
to mislead the public about domestic oil production and how much untapped oil is left in the ground.
He said that domestic oil production is at the highest level in seven years and he indicated that American
reserves are not adequate to help the US reduced its dependence on foreign oil. If Congressman Wilson
was in the audience he might have repeated his famous shout "
You Lie."
Costly Indecisiveness on
Libya. In a remarkably ridiculous statement for a man who has done nothing except charter a
boat in response to the crumbling revolution in Libya, President Obama yesterday [3/16/2011] said that his
administration was "slowly tightening the noose" on dictator Moammar Gaddafi. There has been no noose,
loose or tight, placed on Gaddafi by the U.S. or anybody else.
Retired general: Congress should
give Obama ultimatum. Retired U.S. Maj. Gen. Paul E. Vallely, a noted military leader
who now is a presence on the Internet with his Stand Up For America and Veterans Defenders websites,
earlier told WND he would like Obama to resign. Vallely, who served in Vietnam and retired in
1991 from the U.S. Army as deputy commanding general for the Pacific, said, "We now must call for the
immediate resignation of Barry Soetoro (aka President Barack Hussein Obama) ... based on incompetence,
deceit, fraud, corruption, dishonesty and violation of the U.S. oath of office and the Constitution."
Drilling Unlikely
to Lower Oil Prices, Energy Information Chief Says. Richard Newell, administrator of the U.S.
Energy Information Administration (EIA), said that while oil prices are likely to stay above average for the
remainder of 2011, it is unlikely that an increase in domestic oil production would dramatically affect oil
prices in either the short-term or the long-term. Newell, a political appointee, was tapped to head
the EIA by President Barack Obama in mid-2009.
The Editor says...
This man clearly does not understand supply and demand, and obviously knows nothing about
the oil industry.
CBO:
Obama budget worse than projected on 10-year deficit. The Congressional Budget Office on
Friday [3/18/2011] released its analysis of President Obama's 2012 budget proposal and found it does less
to rein in deficits and the debt than the administration had estimated. CBO estimates Obama's plan
would produce 10 years of deficits totaling $9.5 trillion. By 2021, it would increase the
debt held by the public to 87 percent of gross domestic product.
Obama's Domestic Energy Doublespeak.
The gap continues to widen between what President Obama claims to be true about domestic energy
production and what Louisianians know is true. With prices at the pump climbing toward $4 a
gallon, the President is asking us to believe that his administration supports expanded drilling
off the Gulf Coast. Those of us who live there know that nothing could be further from the
truth.
Obama, The Great Prevaricator.
Whatever Barack Hussein Obama says, you can count on his meaning the opposite and doing the opposite.
No previous administration has been so devoted to twisting the language like a pretzel to avoid saying what
he means or does. It's not a "war" in Libya; it's a "kinetic military action." There are no
Islamic terrorists and there aren't dozens, if not hundreds of illegal aliens crossing the Mexico border
every day. And, after announcing that his administration was lifting the ban on offshore drilling,
it has issued a grand total of one and that was to restart an existing platform.
The Mendacity of Barack
Obama. While I have always been wary of and have written about his dishonesty, after the speech the
president delivered the 13th of April regarding the federal budget, one that was chock full of lies, deceit, and
crass fear-mongering, it must be said that Barack Obama is the most dishonest, deceitful, and mendacious person
in a position of power I have ever witnessed. That performance was the culmination of four years of outright
lies and narcissism that have been largely ignored by the media, including some in the conservative press and
political class who are loath to call Mr. Obama what he is in the bluntest of terms: a liar and a fraud.
Obama's Deceit.
I have had it with this President's blatant dishonesty. His speech today was appallingly deceitful
and misleading. This President, has spent more money and added more debt than any other President
in history. This is not political rhetoric, this is simply fact! Barack Obama's budget deficit
in March of 2011 was larger than the deficit for all of 2007! ... So where did Obama come up with the
claim that he inherited a trillion dollar deficit? In 2008, the deficit under Bush climbed to a
new high of $458 billion.
Does Obama tell the truth
about anything? Barack Obama pledged that if elected he would make it a goal to have much more
transparency in his administration than those Presidents who preceded him. There was going to be Change.
The transparency would bring about 'accountability" in his words. One of the policies he trumpeted would be
making available to the public the White House visitor logs so we can know who visited with the President, the
Vice-President and key officials of his team. Only later did we discover — through outside investigators'
efforts — that these key officials were circumventing the new "policy" by meeting with lobbyists across the
street from the White House at Caribou Coffee, as well as other spots so that their meetings would not show up
on the logs.
The unraveling of Barry Soetoro, a/k/a Barack
Hussein Obama II: [Scroll down] Reviewing only the admissions of Barack Obama, we are told
that Obama was born to U.S. citizen Stanley Ann Dunham, legally adopted by a foreign national named Lolo Soetoro,
had taken the name Barry SOETORO, and was given Indonesian citizenship. He was raised as a Muslim in
Indonesia, and attended a school there that accepted all faiths. At one point, Barry SOETORO moved to
Hawaii to reside with his grandparents after Lolo SOETORO and Stanley Ann DUNHAM divorced. Obama completed
high school as Barry SOETORO Much is missing from his early years, including a legal name change from Barry SOETORO
to Barack Hussein Obama II. Absent of any document to show the legal process of a name change within the
U.S., it is likely that the man sitting in the Oval Office is, in fact, Barry SOETORO.
Obama Fibs About Chevy
Volt. Speaking in Nevada about the rising cost of gasoline, Obama put in a plug for the
administration's favorite flop, GM's Chevy Volt: "I've been in one of these Chevy Volts. This is
a nice car. It drives well." As I trudged along the sidewalk, it occurred to me that the President
had probably fibbed. He had certainly "been in" the Chevy Volt, but he hadn't ever driven one enough to
know how it actually handles. When he tried the Chevy Volt last summer, he drove it "10 feet, and
probably not above 2 mph," according to the Associated Press at the time.
Uncharitable.
'In the United States, rules on charitable giving have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious
obligation," President Obama claimed during his 2009 Cairo speech. "That is why I am committed to
working with American Muslims to ensure that they can fulfill
zakat." This statement contained
two falsehoods. One, as I've previously detailed, was obvious: There are, in fact, no American
laws or rules that make it harder for Muslims to give to charity. What we have are laws against material
support of terrorism — against using devices like charitable fronts to channel money to jihadists.
Border security
is no laughing matter. President Obama claims the border has never been safer, that his administration
has done everything demanded by Republicans, and more, to secure the border, and cites the FBI's Uniform Crime
Reports data to prove his point. He even went so far in a speech earlier this week in El Paso to chide
his critics, claiming they will never be satisfied, not even with a moat full of alligators.
Obama's Revisionist
History. Always a master at misdirection and diversion, President Obama and his flacks have
taken pains to assert that his new "1967 lines as a basis for peace" formulation for Israel's borders is,
hey, "nothing new." There's a grain of truth in this argument. But a mountain of lie.
The lie renders the truth utterly irrelevant. Let's take a little walk down memory lane of prior US
administrations, and see just how fraudulent it really is.
Obama
Suffers From Economic Schizophrenia. With deteriorating economic conditions putting a damper
on his poll numbers and jeopardizing his 2012 re-election prospects, Barack Obama now portrays himself as a
free-market leader for a change.
Obama's Father's Day
Fraud. In the first paragraph of an exclusive Father's Day essay for
People Magazine,
Obama continues the fiction that his father, Barack Obama Sr., "left when I was two years old." ... It is
clear that the marriage of Obama's parents was a sham. The couple never lived together, and it is
likely they were never married. The mom was living with her infant son in Seattle within weeks of his
birth, while the presumed dad was back in Hawaii. ... If the president persists in lying about the first
few years of his life, why should we accept his account of the first few days?
EPA 'Masquerading
Propaganda as Facts', Expert Says. The 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act will save the
United States $2 trillion by 2020, says Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa Jackson -- citing
figures from an EPA report which one expert has faulted for "widely exaggerated claims." Hundreds of
thousands of lives would be saved over the next nine years, thanks to the regulation of air pollutants,
Jackson said at the unveiling of a "prevention" campaign at the Health and Human Service Department's
headquarters in Washington, D.C. on Thursday [6/16/2011].
The Editor says...
Abolishing the
EPA would
be far more likely to "save the United States $2 trillion by 2020."
The General Motors Management Lie.
Back in June of 2009, when General Motors went bankrupt — even though billions of tax dollars had
been spent to avoid bankruptcy — President Obama declared, "What we are not doing — what
I have no interest in doing — is running GM. ... The Treasury emails reviewed by the
Daily Caller
show the government becoming involved in union negotiations, and even micro-managing GM press releases.
Along with other evidence gathered by the House Oversight subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs, Stimulus Oversight,
and Government Spending, it's pretty clear that Treasury officials lied to Congress about the degree of
Administration control over the auto companies, and President Obama lied to the American people.
More
about the nationalization of GM and Chrysler.
The Mendacity of Barack
Obama. While I have always been wary of and have written about his dishonesty, after the speech
the president delivered the 13th of April regarding the federal budget, one that was chock full of lies, deceit,
and crass fear-mongering, it must be said that Barack Obama is the most dishonest, deceitful, and mendacious
person in a position of power I have ever witnessed. That performance was the culmination of four years
of outright lies and narcissism that have been largely ignored by the media, including some in the conservative
press and political class who are loath to call Mr. Obama what he is in the bluntest of terms: a liar
and a fraud.
The
President's Loophole Lie. That jet-tax loophole derided by the president is one he himself
proposed as part of the stimulus approved by a Democratic Congress. Does the left teleprompter know
what the right teleprompter is saying?
President Obama's war on facts.
President Obama's "corporate jet" line from his press conference Wednesday [6/29/2011] is crashing along with
a host of other claims that fact-checkers dismissed in the hours after his speech. Obama referred to
private jets six times in his remarks, essentially describing the Republican position on how to decrease
rampant deficits as being "willing to compromise their kids' safety so that some corporate jet owner
continues to get a tax break."
Rev. Wright Lets Loose on Another Tirade.
President Obama's former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright tells youth in a Georgia church that "whites are liars",
over and over again. ... Does it still not matter to Obama supporters that the President spent thirty years
with Wright as his spiritual mentor, and claims he never heard him say anything like this?
Did
someone mention Jeremiah Wright?
Obama,
the Poor Loser, Poor Liar. As president he has lied an awful lot. He started lying first as
a candidate, and then continued on as president. Americans are generally willing to put up with that when
politicians can deliver the goods. Obama's administration, however, has been a compendium of incompetence
and lying.
Obama Again Blames His Record Deficit & Debt On
Bush. In his weekly address this week Barack Obama blamed the Bush Administration for his
record defict. ... "The good news is, we agree on some of the big things," he said. "We agree that
after a decade of racking up deficits and debt, we finally need to get our fiscal house in order."
Actually, the good news is that the democrat-media complex continues to give him a complete pass when he
opens his mouth and lies.
Obama's Watergate. After
taking office, Barack Hussein Obama began a coordinated effort with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to control the purchases and ownership of guns in the United States.
To justify the implementation of tougher gun control laws and in a direct assault on the Second Amendment of
the U.S. Constitution, this administration cited a statement made to Congress by William Hoover, Assistant
Director for Field Operations for the BATFE on February 7, 2008. According to that report,
90 percent of the weapons used by the Mexican drug cartels were purchased from or originated from the
U.S. That stunning revelation empowered the Obama administration to solicit public support for banning
so-called assault weapons in the U.S., and calling for tougher gun control laws. The problem, however,
is that the 2008 statement is disingenuous at best.
Nobody
Should Believe A Single Thing Obama Says About the Budget. Granted, nobody should believe a single thing Obama says
about
anything — (including his denials that he knew anything about Fast and Furious), but
in light of his press conference today, ahead of his budget negotiations with John Boehner and the Republicans,
I thought it would be good to count the ways Obama has been duplicitous and disingenuous in his actions re the
economy, (which he really and truly seems hellbent on destroying.) As always with him — you
have to look at what he
does — not what he
says.
US
too dumb to know O is always right. When President Obama started talking at his news conference
Monday, I listened intently for 15 minutes or so. Then I got fidgety as his half-truths about the
debt grew into full-blown whoppers. As he droned on, I did something I never did before during an Obama
appearance: I turned off the TV. Enough. He is the Man Who Won't Listen to Anybody, so why
should anybody listen to him?
One
Obama Presser, 36 Obama Lies and Deceptions. Obama held a press conference last Friday, July 15
which turned out to be a purely partisan effort to increase taxes and increase the American debt. His
speech and the answers he gave to cherry picked questions from the press was fundamentally dishonest:
in all I counted three dozen lies, deceptions and misleading statements.
Obama
Lies About Mom, Networks Yawn. In 1996, Gore moved the Democrats to tears by claiming that when
his sister Nancy died of cancer in 1984, he vowed then and there to oppose the tobacco industry. How
courageous — and completely untrue. The Times found Gore campaigned in 1988 boasting of his tobacco-farming
prowess. He lied through his teeth. Network coverage from ABC, CBS or NBC on this whopper, even
as Gore prepared a presidential run? Zero.
Under
the Hammer. No doubt some reporters were shocked, shocked to find that President Barack Hussein
Obama had misled the public about his own mother's death to gain a political advantage. There was never any
doubt that Obama's mother had full medical coverage to treat her terminal cancer. It was disability
coverage, not health care coverage, that she was fighting with the insurance company over. Obama should
have known this because he is the attorney she hired to represent her against the insurance company. ... But
the mainstream media will continue to let Obama say whatever he wants whether there is any truth to it
or not.
Obama is Determined to Destroy America.
What Americans have witnessed over the first two years of his term is Obama's continual blaming of all
problems on either his predecessor or the Republicans in Congress. What they are witnessing is
the duplicity of a man who appears incapable of telling the truth from day to day.
Top 10 Obama Lies. President
Obama is becoming a veritable Pinocchio by stretching the truth on a regular basis.
Barack the Mad. Obama also told his
audience that "it's hard to keep up with all the different plans" for handling the debt crisis. No, it
isn't. There's are only two real plans: the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act, which enjoys the support of a
huge majority of Americans, or leaving the debt ceiling where it is.
There are no other plans.
There are only vague outlines... absolutely none of which have come from President Obama, who has made
no
concrete proposals at all.
Obama's
Wildly Inaccurate Claim about 'Domestic Spending'. In his remarks on the debt ceiling deal,
President Obama said, "The first part of this agreement will cut about $1 trillion in spending over the
next 10 years....The result would be the lowest level of annual domestic spending since Dwight Eisenhower
was president." This claim is utterly false, as domestic spending has actually gone through the roof.
How, then, can Obama make it? He simply chooses not to count any of the major categories of domestic
spending — Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and (soon) Obamacare — as part of
"domestic spending."
The
President's Stale Sermons. Neither the example of the socialist European Union nor that of
big-spending blue-state America suggests that massive government spending and entitlements lead to collective
prosperity. In response to this depressing news, President Barack Obama still offers the same predictably
stale sermons: George W. Bush did it. The Tea Party fiscal reformers are to blame.
Government will fund "millions of green jobs." His political opponents want to destroy Social Security
and Medicare.
Obama: Stop
selling pickup trucks. [Scroll down] Meanwhile, General Motors, which was the principal
beneficiary of the auto bailout, is fighting a lawsuit over warranty claims related to suspension problems
affecting more than 400,000 Chevrolet Impalas sold in 2007 and 2008. GM, now a ward of the state, claims
the warranties shouldn't be honored because the flaw predated the company's bankruptcy. ... Flash back to 2009,
when the feds took control of GM and replaced its leadership with hand-picked cronies. At the time,
Mr. Obama staked his reputation and that of the government on honoring the obligations of bankrupt automakers.
"Let me say this as plainly as I can," he promised. "If you buy a car from Chrysler or General Motors,
you will be able to get your car serviced and repaired just like always.
The entitlement
tsunami is here. When President Obama announced the debt-limit deal with Congress in late
July, he claimed the legislation would result in "the lowest level of annual domestic spending since Dwight
Eisenhower was President." We're spending less now then we did over 50 years ago? How is that
even possible? In short, it's not.
Exactly the opposite is true.
Biden: Failure to invest in clean energy would be nation's 'biggest mistake'.
A failure by the United States to lead the world in developing clean-energy technology would be the "the biggest
mistake this nation has made in its entire history," Vice President Biden said Tuesday.
Fallout From Day Zero: EPAgeddon Averted.
Do we still have to listen to Barack Obama complain that all these out-of-control agencies, like the EPA,
NLRB, and EEOC are "independent" and "beyond his control?" It looks as if white-knuckle panic
rather abruptly brought the EPA under his control.
Obama's
Middle-Class Tax Cut Fabrication. Since this is the first time we've heard about Obama's
"biggest middle-class tax cut in history," which he supposedly signed nearly three years ago, [Glenn]
Kessler decided to follow up with the White House.
Obama's Rhetoric: Cynical,
Hypocritical and Now Untrue? Obama needs to be careful; if he isn't, the public will
not only turn on him because of his manifest incompetence (which Americans are doing in rather large
numbers these days), but also because of his deeply flawed public character. More and more these
days, the president's rhetoric can be fairly judged to be cynical, hypocritical and untrue.
Obama Speech was "Obama
Unplugged". Obama has a deep, almost desperate, need to portray himself as the opposite of
what he is. This appears to involve more than simple political considerations. Obama has an
unusual capacity to conceive of himself in a way that is at odds with reality. And so the most
profligate spender in history warns the rest of us about profligacy and not placing a debt burden "on our
children's shoulders." The man on whose watch America amassed more than $4 trillion in debt
says, "Washington has to live within its means."
Obama
Lies about the 'Do-Nothing Congress'. Obama can disagree with every piece of paper passed by the
GOP House. But when he slyly bashes Republicans by accusing "this Congress" of "doing nothing," he simply
is lying through his teeth.
Obama's State of Mind.
At a town hall meeting in Mountain View, California, President Obama said, "Things have gotten so ideologically
driven and everybody is so focused on the next election and putting party ahead of country that we're not able to
solve our problems." This formulation is priceless, if only because in a single sentence Obama is advancing
three falsehoods, which may be a new indoor record.
More
Than Ten Reasons Americans Don't Trust Obama. In point of fact, the biggest single obstacle that
Obama faces in getting reelected is that Americans don't trust him anymore. Nor should they, based on
results, history and the false premise under which he was elected.
Michelle
Says Bank Discriminated Against Barack's Grandmother. First Lady Michelle Obama said at a
fundraiser in Providence, Rhode Island, on Friday night [9/30/2011] that a bank where Barack Obama's
grandmother had worked discriminated against her for nearly two decades "because she was a woman."
However, the Washington Post reported earlier this year that Obama's grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, had been the
first female vice president of the Bank of Hawaii.
Obama
'makes up meeting with teacher who "lost his job"'. Barack Obama is today facing accusations that
his tale about a teacher told he was losing his job three times was not entirely accurate. The President
claimed on Thursday to have 'had a chance to meet a young man named Robert Baroz' — but they have
reportedly never met. He also talked about the teacher 'receiving three pink slips because of budget
cuts' — but neglected to mention he reportedly never lost his job.
Obama Lies For "A Higher Truth".
It's quite telling that President Obama couldn't find a highly qualified teacher in the Boston Public Schools
to talk about who is actually unemployed. It would seem that liberals who accused President Bush of lying
about WMD don't care if President Obama lies if it promotes a cause with which they agree. It's OK for
President Obama to lie if it is in service of "a higher truth."
President
Obama's Teachers Tale Embellished?. Obama said he had met a young man named Robert Baroz who has
two decades of teaching experience, a master's degree and and excellent track record of teaching. "He's
an English teacher in Boston who came to the White House a few weeks ago," the president explained to reporters.
"In the last few years, he's received three pink slips because of budget cuts. Why wouldn't we want to
pass a bill that puts somebody like Robert back in the classroom teaching our kids?" But there are two
elements of Mr. Obama's story that are being questioned. According to the Boston Herald, Robert Baroz
never met the president when he was at the White House. And Robert Baroz is currently employed.
Obama's English Teacher
Fiction. President Obama gave yet another speech on Thursday trying to peddle AJA to the American
people — the American Jobs Act, as opposed to the 1977 Steely Dan album. Obama cited the
experience of a Boston English teacher named Robert Baroz to urge passage of the bill. Unfortunately, the
president used a little creative writing to make the story more effective.
Murders,
Rapes, Falling Bridges and Phantom Jobs. Last month, Obama, stumping for his misnamed "American
Jobs Act," told his AstroTurf audience in Raleigh-Durham that "in North Carolina alone, there are
153 structurally deficient bridges that need to be repaired." ... Wally Bowman, DOT's division chief for Wake
County and six neighboring counties, said, "The key thing is: We don't have any bridges that are about to
fall. We don't have any bridge out there that is structurally inadequate, where it cannot handle the
traffic. We make sure those bridges stay in a good state of repair." Obama obviously hadn't bothered
to do his due diligence; he just made a false assertion to gin up support for legislation that a number of
high-profile congressmen in his own party even reject.
What's the point of the FOIA with this in place?
Obama
Rule Would Allow Feds to Lie About Existence of Official Records. A proposed rule to the Freedom
of Information Act would allow federal agencies to tell people requesting certain law-enforcement or national
security documents that records don't exist — even when they do. Under current FOIA practice,
the government may withhold information and issue what's known as a Glomar denial that says it can neither
confirm nor deny the existence of records. The new proposal — part of a lengthy rule revision
by the Department of Justice — would direct government agencies to "respond to the request as if the
excluded records did not exist."
Justice
Dept. proposes lying, hiding existence of records under new FOIA rule. A proposed revision to
Freedom of Information Act rules would allow federal agencies to lie to citizens and reporters seeking certain
records, telling them the records don't exist. The Justice Department has proposed the change as part of
a large revision of FOIA rules for federal agencies. Specifically, the rule would direct government
agencies who are denying a request under an established FOIA exemption to "respond to the request as if the
excluded records did not exist," rather than citing the relevant exemption.
On FOIA,
Obama wants a license to lie. Obama's Justice Department has proposed a regulatory change that
would weaken the Freedom of Information Act. Under the new rules, the government could falsely respond
to those who file FOIA requests that a document does not exist if it pertains to an ongoing criminal investigation,
concerns a terrorist organization, or a counterintelligence operation involving a foreign nation. There are
two problems with the Obama proposal to allow federal officials to affirmatively assert that a requested document
doesn't exist when it does.
OccupyWallStreet:
The Rap Sheet, So Far. Recently, President Obama said that the Occupiers are just like the Tea
Party. That's a lie.
How
'honest' is the Obama administration? Obama frequently tells blatant falsehoods about important
matters, and then in a Clintonian fashion explains how some interpretation of his words could be made to correspond
to the truth. [For example:]
• "We have excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs." He hasn't of course. He's
hired at least 50. But the WH's explanation: "we have turned away lobbyists for many, many positions."
• "I haven't raised taxes once." But he had already slashed middle-class tax deductions
for health-care, raised the tobacco tax, created a tanning tax, and done other tax hikes.
• "The exit strategy will be executed this week," Obama said in March of Libya.
The president's habit of telling untruths.
The president, who promised in both word and style to usher in a "new era" of Washington "responsibility," routinely
says things that aren't true and supports initiatives that break campaign promises. When called on it, he
mostly keeps digging. And when obliged to explain why American voters are turning so sharply away from his party
and his policies, Obama pins the blame not on his own deviations from verity but on his failure to "explain"
things "more clearly to the American people."
Obama:
"Since I've Taken Office, I've Cut Your Taxes". President Obama explains why he's "going to give"
Congress "another chance" to pass measures in his jobs bill. Obama also claims that he is the tax-cutter
in the race.
The Editor says...
Any claim of reduced taxes across the board is dubious at best. Regardless of that, if the president spends
money like there's no tomorrow, that will inevitably result in future taxes, rampant inflation, or the collapse of
the currency. That appears to be Obama's plan.
Holder
Sweats as More Lies Uncovered by Feb. 3rd Memo. As Eric Holder's December 8th testimony before
Congress draws near, more and more lies surrounding Fast and Furious are crumbling to the ground. From
new evidence that appears to indicate that President Obama knew about the operation as early as May 2010,
and
that he gave directives for action against Mexican cartels a year prior (March 2009), to even newer evidence
that the DOJ may have "deliberately misled" Congress via a Feb. 4th memo denying the ATF had "'sanctioned'
or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons."
Fast
& furious lies. It was all a lie. The angry denials, the high dudgeon, the how-dare-you
accuse-us bleating emanating from Eric Holder's Justice Department these last nine months. Operation Fast
and Furious — the "botched" gun-tracking program run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives — did, in fact, deliberately allow some 2,000 high-powered weapons to be sold to Mexican
drug cartel agents and then waltzed across the border and into the Mexican drug wars — just as Sen.
Chuck Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa, who are leading the congressional investigations, have charged all along.
More
about the Fast and Furious scandal.
Obama
Insists He's 'All In' for Domestic Energy Production. President Barack Obama, who punted a
decision on the Keystone XL oil pipeline until after the presidential election, nevertheless insists
that his administration has gone "all in" when it comes to domestic energy production. He also flatly
refused any give-and-take with Republicans to speed up the pipeline project.
Obama lie of the day: Following
the tradition of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, Barack Obama will do what Democratic presidents always do when
they get in trouble — go on "60 Minutes" and lie through their teeth.
America Loses If Obama
Wins. President Barack Obama, speaking of the 2012 election and hoping to rekindle the vigor
of his political fundraisers, said recently, "We are going to win this thing, and America is going to win as a
consequence." In order for American voters to believe Obama's claim that America will win if he wins, they
must overlook the fact that the quality of life for a number of major demographic groups has worsened during
Obama's term in office.
'Let's
Move': A Government Initiative to Lie to Kids. Recently, an aggressive media campaign has been
launched by Let's Move, a government-funded fitness initiative led by Michelle Obama. As you will see in
this TV spot that's airing, one of many, the message of the Let's Move campaign is quite simple: Lying
to your children is fine because it's good for them. ... Instead of a relationship built upon integrity these
health autocrats encourage us to manipulate and lie to our children. This is a paradigm for how the Obama
administration views and treats the American public.
This Is The Section Of
The NDAA That Is Causing People To Freak Out. [Scroll down] After signing the NDAA, Obama released
a statement saying "the [NDAA] does nothing more than confirm authorities that the Federal courts have recognized as
lawful under the 2001 AUMF. I want to clarify that my Administration will not authorize the indefinite military
detention without trial of American citizens." This appears to be untrue.
The Abuse of Power
by Pres. Obama. You see what power has done to Obama? It's frightening. He
says one thing and does another. That isn't unusual in a politician, but Obama brings it to
Olympic gold standard. Every word out of his mouth is worthless when it comes to trust.
Obama to court: "I won. I will trump you on that".
[Scroll down] President Obama's childish argument is steeped in a lie. The people tried to hold the
Democratic Senate accountable for its arrogant actions by electing Scott Brown to the Senate in a special election
on a promise of stopping Obamacare in the conference vote. But Obama and company dodged that vote by manipulating
the Senate rules. So when President Obama — through his solicitor general — claims
to head a government that is "accountable," Our President lies.
First Obama
Re-Election Ad Filled With Fibs. In his very first TV ad of the 2012 campaign, the president is feeding the
public false information about America's dependence on foreign fuels. His twisted statistics actually celebrate the
Obama recession. The Obama re-election campaign is already shaping up as the most deceitful in American electoral
history.
Is
Obama 'Untethered to the Facts'? Are his lips moving? Well, every commercial needs to grab the
viewer's attention and this one does just that. They come out fighting with "Secretive oil billionaires
are attacking Obama." That's an attention grabber, eh? Right from the get-go, 'secretive oil
billionaires.' No names, no pictures, just a statement.
Lies about "stimulus" money and job creation
This subsection is now on another page,
located
here.
Lies and prevarication related to Obamacare
This subsection is now on another page,
located
here.
General disingenuousness
Obama's Manufactured Fury. Freedom
lovers the world over, and American patriots in particular, have been living for 18 months with Obama's
"furious". It's the slow burning, destructive kind that takes down business and jobs. They have
watched as Obama resolutely pulls the wings off a country the rest of the world looks up to. ... Obama's fury
about the oil spill disaster is like the rest of him: phony.
Ten Mental Mistakes of Obamatons.
Barack Obama peppers his rhetoric with a veritable buffet of verbal trickery. But why? If Obamatons are
correct, and Barack is one of history's great speakers, why must he use cheap rhetorical tricks to win support?
The answer is Obama offers ideas which, on their face, are either counter-intuitive, or false to the average
listener. Speakers do not mislead unless they sense an inability to otherwise persuade their audience.
Therefore Barack needs extra help to persuade. What other explanation can there be for such incongruent
methods?
The War on Truth: Has Obama
ever seriously searched for truth? His lifelong chums are a gaggle of pseudo-thinkers and strong-arm operatives
who float through college into jobs unconnected with honor. He reads us his soul off a teleprompter whose
digitized letters conform to polling data. The terrifying numbers which his surreal spending has created
mean nothing to him. The threats to our nation are real to him only as they affect his polling numbers.
His indifference to truth is the greatest danger he presents the world.
Obama's Worst Interview Ever.
If Barack Obama had been engaged in an ordinary job interview on Wednesday evening [3/17/2010], he would not
have been hired. Any experienced interviewer would have instantly picked up on his avoidance of straight
answers and body language that revealed deceptive behavior.
The Real Obama. The Obama Myth
rests on three assumptions: (a) Obama is a nonideological pragmatist; (b) Obama is an uncommonly powerful
communicator; and (c) Obama has a gut connection with the people. All three are wrong. Only
the Democrats' fantasy that opposition to their agenda is limited to a lunatic fringe has blinded them
from seeing the president's liabilities. Let's open their eyes.
Obama's Bogus Summits.
Yesterday's [4/26/2010] kick-off of the "Entrepreneurship Summit" in Washington DC, intended, according to
Jake Tapper, "to help deepen ties between business leaders, foundations and entrepreneurs in the United States
and Muslim communities around the world" is the fourth hollow and stage-managed "summit" organized by Barack Obama.
The Editor says...
You may recall the jobs
summit,
*
the fiscal responsibility
summit,
*
and the beer summit.
*
And who could (not) forget the big
Health Care Summit on February 25?
Mr. Obama wants to convey the illusion that he's working, but he has a big problem with overexposure
on television. My impression is that he likes to
preside while other people work, but he
doesn't have any ideas of his own.
Ringmaster-in-Chief.
While we all understand that P. T. Barnum was an exceptional entertainer and showman, his financial
business philosophy was always the same — sell the hoax. ... It becomes more obvious every day that
Barack Obama has turned out to be a far greater pitchman than even P. T. Barnum could have ever
imagined. President — or should I say Pitchman — Obama's understanding of the
gullibility of humanity seems eerily similar to that of P. T. Barnum.
Obama —
Too Little, Too late, Too Cynical. The United States may very well owe a crushing $20 trillion
by 2020. And thus President Obama last week named a bipartisan commission to find ways to address our
national debt. Such a Periclean response might sound sincere and worthwhile. But it comes 13 months
into this administration — and only after Obama added nearly $1.5 trillion in new borrowing in
2009. And by the time the new deficit commission submits its recommendations at the end of this year, the
current 2010 budget will have put us out another $1.5 trillion.
President
Obama's Official Twitterer Connected To MoveOn.org. The woman that poses as Barack Obama on all his
social networking websites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter is connected to the far-left organization
MoveOn.org. For those scratching their heads, the President in theory is a member of these websites.
However, he obviously isn't responsible for typing in the little messages that are going out to his followers
almost 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Obama and the Government
Employees: [Scroll down] While he talks the talk about the deficit and freezing discretionary
spending, Obama engages in a spending binge that would make Imelda Marcos proud. But look what else the
Magician-in-Chief is doing: giving even more money and benefits to government workers, and doing it in
a very
untransparent and sneaky way. Barack Obama is planning a major overhaul of the Federal
government pay system that would boost pay for government workers while loosening scrutiny on how they do
their jobs.
Handling problems the Obama way.
There is a sense of déjà vu in the Obama administration's response to the attempted terrorist
attack on Christmas Day. A by-now familiar pattern has been established for dealing with unexpected
problems. First, White House aides downplay the notion that something may have gone wrong on their part.
The Bizarro President.
72 hours after the Christmas Day terrorist attack on Northwest Flight 253, Barack Obama finally checked in
with the American people — while still on vacation in Hawaii. ... Meanwhile, the president has managed
to find plenty of time to hit the links and work on his golf game. So when the president uses the phrase
"I or we will not rest" until something is done, does it really mean anything?
Obama's Year of Living Blamelessly.
Barack Obama has figured out what went wrong with Homeland Security this past Christmas: George W.
Bush. ... Here's a prediction: Obama will find that he's gone to the Blame Bush well one too many times.
With the Christmas Day fiasco something has "become clear," alright. But it's not the failings of
George W. Bush.
All the president's mendacity.
[Scroll down] And like with so many issues, Obama adorned his rhetoric with sharp warnings of
calamity should he fail, fabricated consensus to buttress his case and a promise of rapture should
he succeed. You'll remember it was Obama who cautioned that failure to pass the stimulus boondoggle
would "turn a crisis into a catastrophe." He claimed that a failure to act on cap and trade will
lead us to "irreversible catastrophe" and a failure to pass a government-run health care system will
mean "more Americans dying every day."
How
O says he's about to mislead. [Scroll down] For connoisseurs of Obama-speak, the address
featured a trifecta, combining three of his favorite rhetorical tropes. There was the vague reference
to "those who" question his agenda; the "false choice" they use to deceive the public; the determination to
"be clear" and forthright, in contrast with those dishonest naysayers. These devices are useful as
signals that the president is about to mislead us.
Obama's Game of False
Choices: From war to foreign policy to the economy, Obama is constantly setting up his "false
choices" in order to soundly "reject" the false choice at hand. The gimmick works well to make Obama
appear really smart, as one who thinks outside the box. In the "fallacy of false choices," Christopher
Beam notes that Obama often sets up straw men and appears to create wiser third options in rejecting the
false choices.
Of College, Character And
'Catastrophe'. Dick Morris' new book — "Catastrophe" — is an education
in itself, on politics, on economics and on foreign policy. It is a strong antidote to the pious
rhetoric and spin that come out of Washington and the media. ... In describing Barack Obama's economic
policies, Morris says simply: "Curing the recession was not his end; it was his means to the end.
The end was bigger government." Obama's actions often make no sense if you believe Obama's words, but
they do make sense if you follow Morris' analysis.
Pelosi's hide-and-seek
accounting. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's directive for lawmakers to disclose individual office spending
online for the first time was billed as a victory for transparency. Well, not really. Earlier this month,
the House clerk posted 3,400 pages of expense reports detailing about $300 million in spending on everything
from staff salaries to mail, but the effort was a sham. The new disclosure system hides more than it reveals.
Obama's
Willful Failure of Comprehension. The violence at Fort Hood, President Obama told mourners on
Tuesday [11/10/2009], was "incomprehensible." The "twisted logic that led to the tragedy," he reiterated,
may be "too hard to comprehend." ... What exactly is so hard to comprehend? Fort Hood jihadist Maj. Nidal
Hasan made his means, motives and inspiration all too clear for those willing to see and hear.
Stop the
'jobless recovery' madness! It's time to stop glorifying our economic doldrums with this
"jobless recovery" nonsense. ... So far there is no sign of an employment turnaround — and
without one, and soon, all the other gains could prove fleeting.
President
Obama's jobs summit is a great feast of folly. Obama's goal is to show he's serious about
taking action on the backsliding economy and to convince the electorate that public activity means real
policy action. I'll have to crash Obama's party, because summits are giant publicity stunts where
loads of taxpayer money is spent on fancy backdrops, flower arrangements and so much glad-handing and
back-slapping that the participants leave with calluses and whiplash.
Obama
Reducing the Debt? Dream On. Obama and his party simply will not agree to keep their
grubby government hands off the estimated $200 billion the banks are going to repay under TARP. ... Obama
[has announced] that he intends to intercept a good portion of the debt repayments and spend it on job
creation and assistance to certain debtors. I assume we're supposed to be too dense to remember
that his stimulus spending to date hasn't created jobs and that most of it hasn't even been used for
that purpose.
Obama's Dover Device. Astonishing
though it may be, there are Americans who actually believe that Barack Obama's vist to Dover was an authentic
expression of concern for our troops and empathy for their loved ones. Of all the Obama fabrications,
this has to be one of the more preposterous. The Narcissist in Chief was not showing empathy because
he doesn't have any.
Obama Similes. Obama
is like Oprah. Much like the media queen, Obama can change vernacular faster than you can say
"ebonics." ... He can simultaneously exist in the world of down home commoners and international elites.
For a guy raised in Hawaii and Indonesia, and educated at Columbia and Harvard, we can see through it,
though. ... I'll never understand the need for vernacular shifts, and many could argue that President
Bush's twang became more evident when speaking to particular audiences. But when Bush's voice
slipped to Southern, it was to his natural dialect; Obama's shift is purely for show.
Obama
is Overreaching. So there is President Barack Obama, giving a speech to a bunch of Democrats, and
he is saying "y'all" do this and "y'all" should consider that, and pretty soon I am asking myself, how did he
become habituated to saying "y'all?" In his youth in Indonesia and Hawaii? From his Kansas
grandparents? At Harvard Law School?
The Recoveryless Recovery.
The [National Bureau of Economic Research]'s Business Cycle Dating Committee is the "official" caller of
recessions. It looks for peaks and troughs in economic indicators. ... It might just be coincidence that
of the seven members on the NBER's Business Cycle Dating Committee, one is the husband of Christina Romer, the
Chair of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors. Mrs. Romer herself was a member of the NBER's
board, along with her husband, until just after Obama's election.
Our Lowered Economic
Expectations. The stock market reaches an old milestone and the unemployment rate is below
10%. In Obama's America, that's worthy of celebration.
The
three envelopes. Is there anything he hasn't blamed George W. Bush for? The economy,
global warming, the credit crisis, Middle East stalemate, the deficit, anti-Americanism abroad —
everything but swine flu. It's as if Obama's presidency hasn't really started. He's still taking
inventory of the Bush years.
Record Time to Nowhere. It's
all a lot like his economic stimulus, which somehow never seems to dent the unemployment rate. On the
contrary, joblessness continues to grow in tandem with the deficit. But who cares? This president is
articulate even if he doesn't actually say anything, a great leader even if he isn't actually leading. It's
the talk that counts, don't you see?
Welcome to the World
of Newspeak. [Scroll down] Newspeak usage also crops up in legislation with titles that
are the exact opposite of a bill's intent. With ever-shortening American attention spans and media's
increasing focus on entertainment news, Newspeak is not simply a fictional danger but a real threat to the
practice of democracy in America. Some recent examples include: "The Respect for Marriage Act,"
"The Employee Free Choice Act," "Internet Freedom Preservation Act," "American Clean Energy and Security Act"
and "America's Healthy Future Act." A quick examination of each reveals Newspeak at work.
You Mislead!
It is a good thing that other congressmen did not follow Rep. Joe Wilson's lead. If they yelled out every time
President Obama said something untrue about health care, they would quickly find themselves growing hoarse.
Excuses wearing thin for Obama,
media pals. [Scroll down] Just a few months ago, the Obama camp ... was under criticism for
the $787 billion stimulus package it bulldozed through Congress on grounds that massive spending was needed
to keep the unemployment rate from breaching 8 percent. When joblessness hit 9.5 percent in June, Vice
President Joe Biden said, "We misread how bad the economy was." They inherited the worst economy since the
Great Depression, or the economy turned out to be worse than they thought. Which is it? It can't be
both — unless your brain is completely addled by the Obama charisma.
Unmasking Obama. It is now
abundantly clear that the image of Barack Obama sold to the American electorate was tightly edited, air-brushed, and
exaggerated. He has worn a series of masks — eloquent orator, brilliant scholar, centrist, and
literary sensation. All of these masks are coming off as he copes with a job for which image will not suffice.
By hook or crook...
House Approves
Hate-Crimes Measure as Part of Defense Funding. Legislation to punish hate crimes became a flashpoint on
Capitol Hill on Thursday [10/8/2009], as a measure expanding the definition of such crimes was attached to the bill
outlining the Defense Department budget and approved by the House over the strong objections of Republicans.
The monster behind the mask.
Once the bill has been signed (make no mistake, the mask will stop at nothing to accomplish this), then the
mask — the façade of comfort and compassion — can be removed, for then it will be too late to
push the monster back into the dark cave from whence it came. This Halloween, Americans will be treated to the most
sinister — the most evil of all conceptual monsters: A monster of lies and deceit.
Obama's Theorems.
Part of the problem with the president's agenda is that it is predicated on a number of radical ideas that are asserted,
rather than proven. His experts and the elites assure us of a reality that most people in their own more mundane lives
have not found to be true. In short, they may find Obama personally engaging, but they no longer believe what he says.
New Survey on Islam Calls Into Question Population
Figure Used by Obama. A comprehensive new survey of the world's Muslim population finds that
nearly one in four people on the planet is an adherent of Islam, but the number of Muslims it gives for the
United States is significantly smaller than those routinely cited by Islamic organizations — and
used by President Obama in his Cairo speech last June.
What Is
Yosi Sergant? Here's how Obama-era "transparency" works in practice: A government agency
is caught in a scandal. The chairman of the agency issues a statement blaming the scandal on an unnamed
"employee," who, the chairman asserts, "has been relieved of his duties." The statement omits the fact
that the offending employee still works for the same agency, in the same office, as he did before. When
a journalist inquires about this, he is told by a colleague in that very same office — the
communications office! — that she knows nothing about his new assignment. It's hard to
imagine government being more evasive and opaque.
The article above refers
to this scandal.
Obama's Speech: Did It Help Him?
From a policy standpoint, there was nothing new in President Obama's speech to a joint session of Congress
tonight [9/9/2009]. It can only be assessed, therefore, in political terms. Here are some excerpts
from the speech that I thought were noteworthy: "
Instead of honest debate, we have seen scare
tactics." Then, a few minutes later: "
Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we
do nothing. Our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More businesses will
close. More Americans will lose their coverage when they are sick and need it most. And more will
die as a result." By far the biggest scaremonger on this issue has been Obama himself.
No, Mr. President. In
his
60 Minutes interview to be aired tonight [9/13/2009], President Obama apparently says, "I intend to be president for a while
and once this bill passes, I own it....I'm the one who's going to be held responsible. So I have every incentive to
get this right." No, Mr. President. It's not about you. If legislation passes, you don't own it.
We all own it. Any health care bill will become part of the U.S. Code, not simply an item on the Obama White House
web site. We will all feel its effects. We are all responsible for the future of our country. Here the
people rule.
Obama Won't Give Federal Insurance Benefits to Illegal Aliens,
He'll Make Them Legal First. It is true that both the House and Senate health care bills as they are now
drafted would make illegal aliens ineligible for federally funded health care. But President Obama has stated as
recently as last month at a press conference in Mexico that he will seek "comprehensive immigration reform" legislation
that will put illegal aliens on a "pathway to citizenship."
Distortions — or Truths? Does the House bill
fund abortions? No. However, while the House Energy and Commerce Committee at first voted to exclude abortions
from "essential" services, to the howls of NOW, Chairman Henry Waxman conducted a second vote, to drop the anti-abortion
amendment. That vote carried. In short, funding for abortions remains an open question. ... Obama is a
pro-abortion absolutist. And if abortion-funding is not in the final health care bill, does anyone doubt that
Democrats will move swiftly to incorporate it in future legislation?
Kill
Grandma or Terrorists Win. Remember when George W. Bush was pushing his plan for partial
privatization of Social Security, and he warned that if Congress didn't pass it, it would weaken his
presidency, with dire results for the war on terror? Neither do we. He never said any such
thing. As best we remember, no one thought to make such a ludicrous argument. Add that to the
list of things that have changed in the age of Obama.
An American Socrates and Other Myths.
It is not enough for Obama to repeat his false claims, day after day, speech after speech. No, he must also
portray himself as America's Socrates, our voice of reason amidst the angry mob, an intrepid truth teller, a singularly
unifying and visionary figure, and a man astonishingly free from the ideological baggage that defines his critics.
He views himself as the adult in a world of children. This is all quite silly. Obama is, in almost every
respect, the opposite of what he portrays himself to be. He is a divisive, polarizing figure, among the most
divisive and polarizing we have ever seen.
Obama as the Wizard of Oz.
Even as
Science magazine is hastily backing off on the media fraud of "global warming," Obama's Medi-Scare Campaign
is using precisely the same fear tactics perfected by climate fraud peddlers to take over American medical care. ... But
neither climate fraud nor Medi-Scare do anything to fix the dire "emergency" they are trying to scare us about.
There is no emergency: There is no global warming doom coming up, and there no crisis in American medicine.
War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength.
Obama
and the Permanent Campaign. The administration's rhetorical tricks extend to issues beyond health
care. The economy continues shedding jobs, yet the administration keeps saying the president's policies save
jobs. ... What Team Obama says not only runs counter to the experience of ordinary Americans, it's causing many to
conclude that their White House is misleading them.
One of several T-shirts and bumper stickers
at
Cafe Press.
Reclaiming Popular Sovereignty: The
deceptions and contradictions are astounding. [Obama's] premises for policy change are consistently
duplicitous. He's embarked on a course to deliberately bankrupt the nation; he is at war with
mainstream American values; he is undermining our national security during wartime (prosecuting our
protectors — and otherwise); and he's pursuing unprecedented government control of the private
sector. Just look at his handling of Obamacare. His stated goals aren't arguably fraudulent, but
verifiably so.
ACES Up Her Sleeve. Well before
Barack Obama brought hope to the White House, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi was adamant that something new and different and
wonderful had arrived. In 2006, the incoming Speaker pledged that hers would be the "most honest, most open, and most
ethical Congress in history." At the time, we were skeptical — to say the least. Our refusal to accept
her rhetoric was roundly vindicated last week. That was when Madam-Speaker used every dirty trick at her
disposal to coldly ram a 1,500 page global warming bill through the House of Representatives.
Relentless Cuts Net 0.0025% In Savings.
The administration has fulfilled a promise to cut spending by trimming $100 million from the 2009 budget. That's
right — $100 million with an "m," an imponderably small slice of this year's expenditures.
Preparing
for War: Boning Up on the Left's Health Care Myths. [President Obama] enjoys
saying — incorrectly — Americans pay $6,000 more per year on health care than people
of other advanced nations for no better care. The statement is abominably false. Just
as Obama is manipulating the cost and benefit numbers to enlist popular and Blue Dog support for
his socialized medicine conspiracy, he distorts statistics to make the specious claim that our
health care system isn't far superior to all others.
Destroying Jobs in Order to Save Them.
President Barack Obama is very insistent on the need to "save American jobs." ... But instead of saving
American jobs, Obama's new corporate tax is apt to worsen what is already the highest unemployment since 1983
and make America's companies even less competitive in the global marketplace.
White House 'Reality Check' Web Site Claims.
A new Web site launched Monday [8/10/2009] by the Obama administration to rebut alleged disinformation about the
administration's efforts to reform the health care system claims that reform "would not add one penny to the
deficit" — despite the fact that the two health care reform bills that have been analyzed by the
Congressional Budget Office are predicted by the CBO to increase the national debt by $239 billion and
$1.042 trillion respectively. The administration, meanwhile, has not produced any health-care reform
legislation that has been independently determined to be deficit-neutral.
Obama's punctured
gravitas: Barack Obama's political glass jaw is the illusion of gravitas that was successfully
sold to enough Americans to get him elected. His stentorian deep voice persuades many, never mind the
pablum of vague clichés he dishes out. Rush Limbaugh brilliant punctures the illusion by speeding
up the tape and raising Obama's register when he plays excerpts of the president speaking. Minus the deep
voice, with an altered rhythm no longer hypnotically caressing the listener, the banality of the actual words
becomes clear.
Make way for Obama the Bogeyman.
The World Health Organization (WHO) — helping the Obama administration stir the pot on panicking
the public into believing a deadly viral pandemic is headed our way this Fall — is getting a big
leg up from the Discovery Channel. It's been a summer of Internet warnings "the pandemic is coming", and
now the Discovery Channel will telecast the definitive Viral Pandemic Survival Show. News of the coming
scare show is available courtesy of Kurt Nimmo at Infowars, those folk challenged by mainstream media as
"conspiracy theory advocates".
That sounds to me
like an example of Low-level environmental terrorism.
Some economists warn Barack Obama's economic
predictions too optimistic. President Barack Obama's economic forecasts for long-term growth are
too optimistic, many economists warn, a miscalculation that would mean budget deficits will be much higher
than the administration is now acknowledging. The White House will be forced to confront the disconnect
between its original, upbeat predictions and the mainstream consensus about how the economy is likely to
perform in a new budget forecast to be unveiled next month.
Cap and Trade; a Solution to a Non-existent
Problem with Devastating Consequences. D.H. Lawrence said, "
Never trust the teller. Trust
the tale." But what happens if the tale is wrong? What happens if the teller knows or should
know the tale is wrong? The key word is trust. A relationship must have trust. A society can
only exist with trust. Political leaders can only succeed with trust. Trust cannot exist when an
unnecessary end is reached by false means, which is happening with the US climate and energy policies.
Did
someone mention Cap and Trade?
The U.S. Government's
Climate Con-job. Suppose a company doctored data, misrepresented study findings, replaced observations
with computer simulations and hired PR flacks to promote its new "wonder drug." News stories, congressional
hearings and subpoenas would be in overdrive. Fines and jail sentences would follow. And rightly
so. But the standards change when "climate catastrophe" is involved.
Overheated White House
Environmental Campaigns. [President Obama] has said on global warming, "The science is beyond
dispute and the facts are clear. Sea levels are rising. Coastlines are shrinking. We've seen
record drought, spreading famine and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season."
Fortunately for the world, not a single one of those claims is accurate.
Obama Revisionism.
During his 4th of July message to the United States, Barack Obama engaged in another round of historical revisionism.
Many have probably not heard the speech ... but the message Obama attempted to sell was a clear distortion of the founding
principles of the United States. Uneducated or undereducated Americans, the products of liberal, politically correct
"instruction" in most public schools, probably would not be able to challenge his slick, deceitful incorporation of the
founding generation into a speech about big government.
Still Decoding Obama.
I recently devoted a piece to trying to decode President Obama. In reading more of his comments, I've
noticed a tendency that now almost qualifies as a reflex: the more strongly the president denies
something — and especially, the more he mocks his critics and feigns amusement at what they
say — the greater the odds are that he will do what he denies.
Imagine what he thinks of
cigarettes. This gem just in from Tuesday's press conference: Obama: "At a time of
great fiscal challenges, this legislation [Waxman-Markey bill coming to the House floor Friday] is paid for
by the polluters who currently emit the dangerous carbon emissions that contaminate the water we drink and
pollute the air we breathe."
The Editor says...
Even Obama's speech writers and teleprompter operators can't possibly believe that carbon dioxide
pollutes "the water we drink" and "the air we breathe." When you turn on your garden hose,
if carbonated water comes out of it, you'll have the greenest grass in town. Simply stated,
carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.
Understanding the Age
of Obama. Are you confused by all that has changed since President Barack Obama took office in
January? If so, you're not alone. ... Wanting to cut $17 billion from the budget, as President
Obama has promised, is proof of financial responsibility. Borrowing $1.84 trillion this year for
new programs is "stimulus." The old phrase "out-of-control spending" is inoperative.
Obama: America
"One of the Largest Muslim Countries in the World". As we noted earlier, and as ABC now confirms, Obama's
speech in Cairo will focus on his Muslim roots and the unique perspective it provides him. Obama also teased the
contents of the speech in an interview with a French television station: "...Now, the flip side is I think that the
United States and the West generally, we have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam. And one of the points
I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslims Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim
countries in the world."
Obama's
Muslim comment sparks debate. President Obama's assertion that the United States is one of the world's
biggest Muslim countries has sparked debate about the comment's accuracy and how far the president will extend himself
to the Muslim world. "If you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim
countries in the world," the president told French television station Canal Plus on Monday [6/1/2009], the eve of
his five-day, overseas trip with stops in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
The Not So Golden Mean.
The best way to view President Obama's speech in Cairo is to understand the way Obama views himself and the
rhetorical devices he employs. In this case, the key to unlocking Obama's speech may be Aristotle's golden
mean, the search for a mid-point between extremes. Obama's rhetorical template is an increasingly familiar
one: he gives voice to one side of a dispute and then the other.
Sorry Barack, but there were no Muslims on the
Mayflower. Speaking at the University of Cairo, President Barack Hussein Obama said that
Americans are indebted to Islam for the great contributions Muslims have made to the history and development
of the United States. "I know that Islam has always been a part of America's story," Mr. Obama told the
throng of unenlightened Muslims.
More
about Obama's speech in Cairo, June 4, 2009.
Obama pretends to be frugal as we sink deeper in
debt. Remember President Obama's New Era of Responsibility? It got off to an inauspicious
start, with a $787 billion economic stimulus package, a $410 billion appropriations bill, and a
record $1.8 trillion budget deficit. But now Obama wants to signal that he's getting serious
about cutting the federal budget. Unfortunately, his plan hinges on the assumption that Americans
do not know how to calculate percentages.
Biden Claims Stimulus Spending
Has Created 150,000 Jobs. Vice President Joe Biden last week claimed that the federal stimulus
spending program has created or saved 150,000 jobs since February, when President Barack Obama signed the
stimulus bill into law. ... However, the basis for his claim is elusive at best.
Relief is too
slow. President Obama's claim that his economic stimulus plan has "saved or created" 150,000 jobs
is all but meaningless, given a 9.4 percent unemployment rate. Nobody can measure plausibly a "saved"
job. ... But Democrats are touting the phony concept of "saved" jobs because they know it's impossible to
disprove, too. It's a lame attempt to spin criticism that the federal recession-fighting plan isn't
fighting the recession very effectively so far.
Untangling the Spaghetti. A couple
of years back, I happened to catch an intriguing headline up north. "The Canadian economy is picking up
steam," reported the CBC. Statistics Canada had just announced that "the economy added 56,100 new jobs,
two-thirds of them full time." ... But I was interested to know just what sectors these jobs had been created
in. And, upon investigation, it emerged that, of those 56,100 new jobs, 4,200 were self-employed, 8,900
were in private businesses, and the remaining 43,000 were on the public payroll. "The economy" hadn't
added those jobs; the government had: that's why they call it "creating" jobs.
Mission Accomplished?
Eight years after war was declared on the US and the most heinous attack on the USA was launched on American soil,
the war has been won (according to President Obama). Done. Over. Does not exist. No
need to call it the war on terror, so says Obama. Now it is merely an "overseas contingency operation".
The Politics of Stupidity: Crazy Word Games from Team
Obama. It looks like the "intelligence" in the Obama administration isn't too intellectual.
Instead of using the word "terrorism" to describe things such as the terrorist attack on 9/11, Janet Napolitano,
head of Obama's Department of Homeland Security, says we're now supposed to use the words "man-caused disasters."
That sounds like a wreck at the Indy 500. ... That change to nicer wording puts Mohamed Atta, ringleader of the
9/11 hijackings and the suspected pilot of the first plane to crash into the World Trade Center, in the same
boat as those folks who shipped the contaminated peanut butter from that plant in Blakely, Ga. Both
produced "man-caused disasters."
The Half-Penny Solution.
President Obama unveiled a budget Thursday with a 2010 price tag of $3.5 trillion financed with
$1.2 trillion of new debt. For domestic agencies, that's a 9.3% spending hike over last year.
Mr. Obama and his advisers know the public won't accept gigantic governmental expansions without at least some
effort to pare the waste in Washington. So they scrubbed "line by line" through this historically huge
budget and identified $16.7 billion of budget savings. This is less than a penny, about 0.47 cents,
of savings out of every dollar Uncle Sam will spend this year.
Rephrasing
Obama's lexicon. In the debate over his top environmental goals, President Obama is backing away
from "cap and trade." Not the policy. It's the phrase itself, deemed confusing by Democratic
pollsters, that has all but disappeared from the president's vocabulary of late. Now when Obama talks
about forcing companies to bid at auction for the right to emit greenhouse gases, he is more apt to mention
"market-based" proposals and "clean energy jobs," hinting at a rich new employment source.
Obama At the Plate.
It's been clear for some time that Barack Obama knows every technique in the debater's handbook, and he must have used most
of them during the course of that first White House press conference: There was the dubious revisionist history rolled
out ever so casually, as if it were accepted fact (tax cuts don't work); the assumption that any fault lies not in us but
elsewhere ... The man can say the most unbelievable things in the most matter-of-fact way, for example, his claim that
there's "not a single pet project" in his stimulus bill.
We don't have a moment to spare, but evidently we
have $1 trillion. Last October, while campaigning in Toledo, Barack Obama called for "a new
ethic of responsibility." The nation's economic troubles, he said, occurred partly because "everyone
was living beyond their means," including politicians who "spent money they didn't have." In his
inaugural address last month, Obama regretted "our collective failure to make hard choices" and heralded "a
new era of responsibility." Now President Obama, as one of his first priorities, is pushing a gargantuan
"stimulus" plan that will add around $1 trillion to the national debt and cannot possibly work as
advertised. Welcome to the new era of responsibility.
The Bread and Circuses Presidency.
Call it the Bread and Circuses Presidency, or better yet the Bailouts and Reality TV Presidency. Forget
expecting results or ethics from the occupant of the White House. Just join an organization or a cause
and stick your hand out for your share of of misappropriated taxpayer money, and get ready to vote online for
which puppy the Obamas should adopt.
Obama
is a Great Pretender. To those who believe that Barack Obama is a different kind of politician —
more honest, more courageous — please don't examine his administration's budget. If you do,
you may sadly conclude that he resembles presidents stretching back to John Kennedy in one crucial respect.
He won't tax voters for all the government services they want. That's the main reason we've run budget
deficits in 43 of the past 48 years.
Michelle Obama serves food
to D.C. poor and homeless, but... First Lady Michelle Obama showed up Thursday as a surprise
and welcome volunteer at Miriam's Kitchen, a soup kitchen for homeless poor people not far from the White
House. She brought with her some food donated by White House staff. ... [But] If this unidentified meal
recipient is too poor to buy his own food, how does he afford a cellphone? And if he is homeless, where
do they send the cellphone bills?
Obama's
Diversionary Tactics: Stickers and Straw Men. From unveiling new emblems to attacking
Rush Limbaugh, Obama sure knows how to change the subject from a tanking economy.
Obama: Pro-Israel
talk, anti-Israel walk. Barely a month into the presidency of Barack Obama, a profound
realization is spreading among the pro-Israel community: we do not have an ally in the White
House. ... So how exactly did this get by most Jewish voters during last year's election?
Ostracized by Obama.
President Obama has used events such as community discussion groups and last week's summit to foster the
impression that he is soliciting opinions from all angles of the health care debate, but the reality is a
lot different. Obscured by the Administration's theatrics is the fact that it has kept at bay those
who advocate free-market solutions rather than government-run health care.
Who's
Obama Kidding? In 2007, the federal budget deficit was $162 billion (1.2% of gross domestic
product). For 2009, the budget deficit is projected to be 11 times larger: $1.752 trillion.
... Nonetheless, contrary to the spin of big-government types, these deficits are not just temporary.
In fact, the Obama administration uses every trick in the book to convert an understandable and potentially
temporary budget lapse this year into a structural lack of fiscal responsibility.
No More of Obama's Talk,
Tone, or Temperament. Another "means into end" abuse of Obama's lies with the word "bipartisan."
Obama has used the word to suggest he is uniquely blessed with the skills to bring people who otherwise would
find it difficult to "come together" to satisfying compromises. Without the approval of both sides,
obviously, a result would not be bipartisan. So "bipartisan" as used by Obama is suggestive of a skill
and process in which he is skilled. Yet "bipartisan" has developed into an end in itself. ... The
process of actively engaging Republicans and incorporating their positions has turned into an end signified
by simple physical participation in photo opportunities.
Tim Geithner's
Black Hole. Pity Barack Obama's economic advisers. The blogs are now demanding their
scalps, and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and his colleagues face a nasty dilemma: There are no
solutions to the banking crisis without extraordinary political and financial risks. Thus, they have
adopted a three-pronged approach, delay, delay, delay, in the hope that somebody comes up with a breakthrough.
The President Politicizes Stem-Cell
Research. Yesterday President Barack Obama issued an executive order that authorizes expanded
federal funding for research using stem cells produced by destroying human embryos. The announcement
was classic Obama: advancing radical policies while seeming calm and moderate, and preaching the gospel
of civility while accusing those who disagree with the policies of being "divisive" and even "politicizing
science."
Obama's $80 Billion Exaggeration.
The basis for the president's proposal is a theoretical study published in 2005 by the RAND Corporation, funded
by companies including Hewlett-Packard and Xerox that stand to financially benefit from such an electronic
system. And, as the RAND policy analysts readily admit in their report, there was no compelling evidence
at the time to support their theoretical claims. Moreover, in the four years since the report,
considerable data have been obtained that undermine their claims. The RAND study and the Obama
proposal it spawned appear to be an elegant exercise in wishful thinking.
The Obama Rosetta Stone:
[Scroll down slowly] One of the first technical examinations of the Romer-Bernstein projections has
been released by Hoover Institution economists John Cogan and John Taylor, and German economists Tobias Cwik
and Volker Wieland. They conclude that the growth and jobs stimulus will be only one-sixth what the
administration predicts. In part, this is because people anticipate that the spending burst will have
to be financed by higher taxes and so will spend less than anticipated.
Obama has it both ways on pork.
President Barack Obama had it both ways Monday when he promoted his stimulus plan in Indiana. He bragged
about getting Congress to produce a package with no pork, yet boasted it will do good things for a Hoosier
highway and a downtown overpass, just the kind of local projects lawmakers lard into big spending bills.
Obama's sales pitch on the enormous package he wants Congress to make law has sizzle as well as steak.
He's projecting job creation numbers that may be impossible to verify and glossing over some ethical problems
that bedeviled his team.
The more things change. Barack Obama
is already finding things more complicated as commander-in-chief than when he only aspired to that
title. ... It was always easy, for instance, to fire up the fruitcake left by promising a quick withdrawal
from Iraq, but now, with responsibility for American security, which also means responsibility for security
in Iraq, rapid withdrawal suddenly becomes unfeasible.
Limbaugh Responds to
Obama. "If I can be made to serve as a distraction, then there is that much less time debating the merits
of the trillion dollar debacle. One more thing, Byron. Your publication and website have documented Obama's ties
to the teachings of Saul Alinksy while he was community organizing in Chicago. Here is Rule 13 of Alinksy's
Rules for Radicals: 'Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.'"
Obama
wields pen at historic pace. Looking to move quickly on his campaign promises, President Obama
has turned to the one tool that he has to ignore Congress and take unilateral action — he signed
eight executive orders in his first 11 days in office, making him by far the most activist new president
in modern history on that score.
Suddenly Obama has Muslim roots. During the U.S
presidential campaign, Barack Obama's handlers vigorously pointed out his Christian faith whenever the
misconception arose he may be Muslim (even though the politically correct response should have been his
religion doesn't matter). ... Once elected, however, he personally insisted on his middle name being spoken
at his swearing-in ceremony. And now — in a gesture to the Muslim world — he has
not only granted the first sit-down interview of his presidency to a pan-Arab television network, but uses the
occasion to gush about his Muslim ties.
Obama: A Profile in Cowardice.
Meet Barack Hussein Obama. The man who turned his own middle name into a no-go zone during the election,
only to bring it out of the closet when he trotted down to a Muslim country. The man whose associates
labeled talk about his Muslim background as racist, only to proclaim his Muslim background loudly and proudly
from the podium of a Muslim country. There's a word for a man like that. Coward.
Good Morning, Suckers.
Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats are playing the voters for fools with the so-called stimulus package.
The massive $825 billion package is not even targeted on programs to stimulate the economy. Instead,
it is laced with runaway government spending for increased welfare, overgrown bureaucracy, pork, political
payoffs, and other waste.
Did someone mention
the so-called stimulus bill?
Obama's
Collectivist Nationalism. Run-of-the-mill politicians try to hide their duplicity. Only
the most gifted of that profession brag that they intend to confound and confuse the public. Such an
effort is beyond ingenious; it is brazenly ingenuous. And it is working.
Four Safe Bets about Obama.
[Scroll down (obviously)] Second, we will hear more and more from Obama and his supporters about the severe difficulty
of the situation they face. The days of healing the planet and reversing the ocean tide are gone. Indeed, the
notion that we can expect any progress in 2009, we will be told, is utterly fanciful; just write it off. In fact, have
you noticed how everything seems harder now that Obama is president?
Obama's Administration of
Grand Gestures. In its first week the Obama administration revealed itself to be infatuated
with dramatic gestures and sweeping pronouncements: Guantanamo is going to be closed, enhanced
interrogation ended, Middle East peace re-established, Iraq to be "left" to the Iraqis, and bipartisanship
restored. But the reality is quite different, leaving open the question as to whether President Obama
really believes his own rhetoric or is slyly wielding symbolism to conceal the very familiar contours of his
not-so-groundbreaking policies.
Obama
runs into trouble with lobbying rules. President Obama's new lobbying rules that intended to close
the revolving door on lobbyists-turned-government officials have run into immediate complications. Obama
has granted some of his nominees waivers when it comes to their lobbyist past — an action that has
resulted in criticism from government watchdog groups.
The rules apply only when they are convenient.
Geithner names ex-lobbyist as
Treasury chief of staff. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner picked a former Goldman Sachs
lobbyist as a top aide Tuesday, the same day he announced rules aimed at reducing the role of lobbyists in
agency decisions. Mark Patterson will serve as Geithner's chief of staff at Treasury, which oversees the
government's $700 billion financial bailout program. Goldman Sachs received $10 billion of
that money.
Obama's Ethics Reform Promise
Faces Early Test. During almost two years on the campaign trail, Barack Obama vowed to slay the
demons of Washington, bar lobbyists from his administration and usher in what he would later call in his
Inaugural Address a "new era of responsibility." What he did not talk much about were the asterisks.
The exceptions that went unmentioned now include a pair of cabinet nominees who did not pay all of their taxes.
Then there is the lobbyist for a military contractor who is now slated to become the No. 2 official in the
Pentagon. And there are the others brought into government from the influence industry even if not
formally registered as lobbyists.
Obama's exec
orders have loopholes. President Obama's first moves earned him triumphant headlines:
"Obama Freezes Pay, Toughens Ethics and Lobbying Rules," and "Obama sets new course." But some of his
biggest accomplishments are twinned with the word "but": Lobbyists are banned, but exceptions can and
will be made; orders on ending torture and secret prisons contain loopholes and provisos. Call it the
fine print, an exception, a waiver, but there have been caveats to many of Mr. Obama's first actions.
The Editor says...
Loopholes, indeed. Sounds like
equivocation to me.
Watch out
Greens! Here Comes The Bus. Will Obama's environmental constituency get thrown under the
bus to make this pig of a stimulus bill fly? The only way large scale infrastructure projects will
stimulate in the near term is if all environmental regulations are bypassed and litigation resulting from
any construction collateral damage is squashed in advance.
Pentagon pick shows challenges of Obama's
ethics rules. The man President Obama nominated to become the No. 2 manager at the
Pentagon isn't the first person for that job to come from the defense industry. But Mr. Obama's own
executive order on ethics has now become a stumbling block as the White House seeks to push the former
lobbyist through confirmation.
Hope He Can Change.
[President Obama should] drop all the talk about the best, the most, the greatest ethical, moral, legal etc.
Just keep quiet and call in Senate leaders of both parties and show them the names of nominees and ask for
pre-hearing advice. I think Geithner cannot now stay: not when Obama confesses that Daschle had to
go to avoid two tax laws for elites and mass. But Geithner's sin was far worse, since he was the nominal
head of the IRS itself. He should step down, and Obama should likewise distance himself from Rangel.
Advice: Keep quiet and carry a big ethical stick.
Obama spokesman defends ethics
standards. Despite the tax problems faced by high-level nominees, and the exceptions made to
the no-lobbyists pledge, President Barack Obama's spokesman is defending the administration's ethical
standards. Robert Gibbs told reporters Tuesday [2/3/2009], "The bar that we set is the highest
that any administration in the country has ever set."
No Consensus on "Stimulus"
Bill. President Barack Obama has done more in the first three weeks of his presidency to validate the suspicions
of his critics than I thought possible. But of all his objectionable actions, nothing compares to his falsely labeled
"stimulus" bill, which he is trying to force upon us with fear and deception.
Obama's
Un-Nourishing Prayer Breakfast: No one wants to stir up controversy regarding an annual gathering meant
to unify religious believers, so it's understandable that press and pundits largely ignored President Obama's profoundly
peculiar remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 5th. Nevertheless, his brief prepared talk (the
White House released a text of his comments before he spoke) February 5th in the nation's capital contained so many
provocations, contradictions and flat-footed misstatements that they deserve more serious attention than they've received.
Obama's Doomsday Scenario Doesn't Add
Up. In Elkhart, Ind., on Monday, President Obama spoke as if America were approaching a doomsday
that only a massive increase in government could avert. ... Do we really face the possibility of an irreversible
crisis? Well, yes. Not the one Obama describes, but the one he may cause.
Obama's Failed and Tired Ideas From the
Past. The entire U.S. GDP is roughly $14 trillion. The government currently spends roughly
$3.5 trillion of that. In his stimulus plan, Obama proposes effectively to borrow another $1 trillion from
the private economy to add to $1 trillion in still further government spending. How exactly is that supposed to
stimulate economic growth and recovery? Is America's economic growth and prosperity produced by increased government
spending, deficits, and debt? I don't think so. The American people don't either.
Our Clever President.
[Scroll down] Along with a fair amount of blarney, Joe Biden also makes more honest and candid observations in an
afternoon than many politicians make in a lifetime. One comes away from a conversation with Biden with at least one
truthful nugget. The same cannot be said for President Obama. Both Monday night and usually, the president
offers his audience one of the finest verisimilitudes of sincerity and manly vigor this side of an old Laurence Olivier
performance of "Henry V."
Reaganomics vs. Obamanomics: In his
inaugural address, President Barack Obama said, "The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or
too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford,
a retirement that is dignified." ... Unfortunately, this rhetoric is not true. Mr. Obama's economic policy is
following not what has been proven to work but liberal ideology. The best way to understand this is to compare
what's being proposed now with what Ronald Reagan accomplished.
Doomsday scenario doesn't add
up. Do we really face the possibility of an irreversible crisis? Well, yes. Not the one Mr.Obama
describes, but the one he may cause. Forget, for a moment, the economic weathermen forecasting the economic
equivalent of global warming. Look instead at the historical data. Claims Mr. Obama, "We have inherited an
economic crisis as deep and as dire as any since the Great Depression." But the historical figures for the gross
domestic product (GDP), calculated by the U.S.Bureau Economic Analysis, say something else.
Failure To Launch. Even
before winning the election, [Obama] began assembling a much-vaunted "team of rivals" to guide U.S. foreign and domestic
policy. ... We were assured that the Obama administration would be ready on "day one." Apparently, that's not the case.
Fiscal
Stimulus Is a Ruse Absent Fed Pixie Dust. It's a jobs-creation program. No, it's
investment in our future. It's a tax-relief plan. Wait, it provides assistance to consumers
hardest hit by the economic recession. It's legislation to jump-start the economy. No, it's a
recovery program. It's a life raft for state and local governments. It's a spending bill.
Which is it? Fiscal stimulus is all things to all people. In other words, it represents the
triumph of faith over reason.
Dukes of Moral Hazard.
[Scroll down] In part to avoid putting an astronomical price tag on this plan, the Administration doesn't
necessarily fix loans for the long term. In fact, the program encourages mortgage servicers to keep the
payments low only for five years, after which rates will rise. During the housing bubble, these were
called "teaser" rates. ... What investors, businesses and working Americans want to hear is a President with
ideas to spur economic recovery. What they've been getting are plans for a long national Chapter 11
workout.
Bogus Bipartisanship.
A timely front page article in the February 4th Washington Post provided desperately needed insight into the most
misunderstood term in Washington today. Of course, I refer to the term "bipartisan." The media
demands it. The political pundits love it. It polls extremely well — almost as high as
"change." It is antithetical to its ugly twin — "partisan." ... So, what
does it
mean?
Picking
Winners and Losers by Executive Fiat. [Scroll down] Perhaps the most chilling aspect of this particularly
noxious stealth provision of the stimulus scheme is not what's in it, but how it — and other such free
market-destroying provisions — were rushed through under deliberate cover of darkness. McCaughey attributes
this strategy to Daschle, as well. A year ago, McCaughey tells us, Daschle warned that the next president should not
make the same mistake the Clintons made with Hillary Care, which was to allow debate. Daschle wrote: "If that
means attaching a health-care plan to the federal budget, so be it. The issue is too important to be stalled by
Senate protocol." So much for "liberal" democracy. So much for transparency. So much for a new era of
hope and change.
Obama
administration lobbyist count increases. Washington lobbyist Christine Varney is poised to take her
third pass through the revolving door of lobbying and government with her nomination by President Barack Obama to
be his administration's top antitrust enforcer. Also, on Thursday, Obama nominated Derek
Douglas, a former lobbyist for the O'Melveny & Myers law firm and Center for American Progress, as special
assistant on urban affairs.
Obama's First Month:
Obama may not be eloquent, but he is glib and clever and at times persuasive. One of his favorite rhetorical devices
is setting up a straw man, then knocking it down. He invoked this classic ploy subtly in his inaugural address,
crudely in his press conference. "We will restore science to its rightful place," Obama said at his inauguration.
Really? Where had science been? "We are ready to lead once more," he said, as if we —
America — hadn't been. He may have disapproved of the prior administration's policies in the world, but that
doesn't mean it wasn't leading. Also in his inaugural speech, Obama said, "we can no longer afford indifference to
suffering outside our borders." When we were indifferent? Not in Obama's lifetime.
Orwell Knew. After a month in
complete control of the federal government, Democrats in Congress and the White House have quickly dispensed with any notion
that we have entered into a new post-partisan era of governance. Their campaign claims of wanting to govern inclusively
were greeted with optimism by the more gullible among us. However, their recent actions leave no doubt as to their
true intentions. They will push through whatever they want whenever they want. The minority party need not
participate.
'Absurd' Understates Obama
Plan. Many are in favor of the Obama Housing Plan that was announced on Wednesday, February 18, 2009.
It was touted as the first plan designed to help struggling homeowners who were unable to refinance because they owe more than
their homes are worth. ... The plan isn't all it's cracked up to be. There are several issues on both the homeowner
and investor side as well as the lender and builder side that make this plan problematic in the long term.
Fuzzy
Green Math: There's something odd in what the administration is telling the press.
According to Greenwire: "The climate program would generate nearly $650 billion between 2012 and
2019, according to Obama's proposal. About $80 billion of the climate revenues would go toward
Obama's proposed middle-class tax cut each year beginning in 2012, the draft says, and the government
would spend $15 billion per year on 'clean' energy technologies." This is absurd on its face, of
course: $650 billion taken in over 8 years, used in part to fund $640 billion over
the same period to help ease the pain it causes, and the ... er, remaining ... $120 billion going for
green pork, leaving us a balance of
minus $110 billion.
Common sense missing in Obama
bailout. There's a reason that English is the most widely spoken language on the planet:
It's the most highly adaptable, capable of evolving to meet new needs in the blink of an eye. For
example: Just last year, offering mortgages at a cheaper-than-market teaser interest rate with little
or no money down was known as "predatory lending." But conditions changed — specifically,
the party occupying the White House — and now we call that style of lending "national policy."
Obama's
trillions dwarf Bush's 'dangerous' spending. Pelosi and Reid called Bush's budgets "dangerous"
and "unpatriotic," but with Obama, they've changed their tune.
Read Obama's Lips.
Obama seems intent on running a permanent campaign, and he's still making the kind of over-the-top promises
that campaigns toss around like Monopoly money. In this speech he promised cap and trade and health care
reform this year. He promised universal college education. He promised a cure for cancer.
Obama also promised that he, too, would "sacrifice some worthy priorities for which there are no
dollars." ... It's only been a few weeks, but so far all the American people have to show for Obama's
election is $1 trillion in new debt and a thousand point drop in the Dow.
Judging Obama:
Obama promises to "save or create" 3.5 million jobs, but if the unemployment rate is unchanged in four
years, do we credit Obama for saving 3.5 million jobs that would have been lost? If new jobs are
created, should stimulus get the credit? If the gain is in the government sector or in areas fed by
taxpayer money, how do we know that the job creation didn't crowd out the creation of more and more productive
jobs?
The Obama
Way: Hit the Ground Promising. One of President Obama's first actions on his first
full day in office was to announce a pay freeze for White House staff. ... The original
intent to
freeze salaries was announced to the press, dutifully reported by the press, put in writing and made
available on the White House's web site. The actual "report" was an oral one, given in private,
with no known details, and we know this only from an unnamed spokesman. And still no pay freeze.
This is worth noting only in respect to the insight it gives us into how business is conducted in the Obama
White House. Announce something good-sounding, follow it up with nothing real, and no one's the wiser.
President's Inner Circle Has
Earmarks in Omnibus. Funny how items show up in spending bills without any notice —
like an earmark for a president who promised not to seek any. President Obama, who took a no-earmark
pledge on the campaign trail, is listed as one of dozens of cosponsors of a $7.7 million set-aside in the
fiscal 2009 omnibus spending bill passed by the House on Wednesday. But not for long. On Thursday,
Rob Blumenthal, a spokesman for the Senate Appropriations Committee said the one earmark in the bill that
carries Obama's name will be edited. The committee will attribute that earmark to other senators on
the list of that provision's supporters, but not Obama.
The Difference Between Change
and Reform. Republican candidates now have talking points about Democrats: The party that talks
about ethical government but hires tax cheats; The party that talks about open government but practices lobbyist-friendly
government; The party that talks about stimulus but enacts "porkulus." Above all the Democratic Party is the
party that takes care of its special interests before it steps up to fix the credit system, a party that reverses welfare
reform without even a public hearing, a party that criticized a president's defense policies for eight years and then
turned around and continued them.
Obama's Phony
Pullout: Forcefully delivered, his speech to the Marines served up more waffles than the International
House of Pancakes. Consider his big sound bite: "Let me say this as plainly as I can: by August 31,
2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end." What does
that mean? Will the 50,000 troops he intends
to leave in Iraq, the trainers and maintainers, be forbidden to defend themselves? Are they just going to
hang out?
Obama Dons the Presidential Cloak. The
White House no longer uses the phrase "stimulus package." They always say "recovery plan." Stimulus is
yesterday. When you say it, they give you a wonderfully blank-eyed look and two sentences later weave in the
phrase "recovery program."
The Power Of Life And Death Is
In Our Words. Words can shield the most blatant reality. Legislation to take away workers'
rights to a secret ballot, when deciding whether or not they want to be represented by a labor union, is
called the "Employee Free Choice Act." The merits or demerits of this legislation have seldom been
debated. Who could be against "freedom of choice"? The Obama administration's new budget, with
deficits that make previous irresponsible deficits look like child's play, has a cover that says "A New Era
of Responsibility." You want responsibility? He'll give you the word "responsibility." Why
not? It costs nothing.
Congress to Erase Obama's Name From
Earmark. Congress will scrub President Obama's name from a list of earmark cosponsors in the $410 billion
omnibus spending bill. The reason: Whether Obama cosponsored the earmark depends on what the definition of
earmark is and when an earmark becomes an earmark, according to the Senate Appropriations Committee. The
provision itself is still considered an earmark, and it's staying in the bill (HR 1105) — but it's
losing the Obama brand.
The Return of Big
Government. Twice last week, [President Obama] insisted he doesn't favor "big government." Then he
proposed a budget that would vastly expand the size and reach of the federal government, add $600 billion to the
deficit, and produce a one-year shortfall of $1.2 trillion (or more). This prompted House Republican leader
John Boehner to proclaim, quite accurately, that the "era of big government is back."
The word is subterfuge.
How Obama's team gets his
messages out while you're not looking. Here's how President Obama's team is using his vast donor
e-mailing list to circumvent any intermediaries and get his pure political message out to millions of supporters
to marshal support for whatever he wants, in this case support for his budget: They send out an e-mail to
an estimated 12 million or 13 million names with a short text message from David Plouffe, the political
campaign's manager and now the campaign manager for "Obama for America."
He'll Only Break Your
Heart. Remember when he told you he would have the most transparent government in history?
He vowed to have a "clean break from business as usual" and said he would protect you from the undue
influence of lobbyists. And what has happened since he made this promise? How many have been
granted an exception? If he respected you, would he make a promise that he knew he would break?
If he cared about you, would he walk all over you?
More on earmarks: Obama's chief of
staff has some in bill. Even though President Barack Obama has repeatedly pledged to ban
congressional earmarks, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has 16 such projects, worth about
$8.5 million, in the bill the Senate is scheduled to begin debating Tuesday. The earmarks
include funds for a Chicago planetarium and a Chicago suburb. Obama has been relentless in
criticizing the use of earmarks; in his address to a joint session of Congress last week, he
boasted how the economic stimulus package was "free of earmarks."
The Never-ending
Surge. It turns out that $1.6 trillion of the "savings" Obama is anticipating are based
on the surge in Iraq continuing for 10 more years — even though Obama has already
announced all combat troops will be out of Iraq by 2010 and the Status of Forces Agreement is set
for 2011.
It's
Not the Economy, Stupid — It's Limbaugh. As the tax-and-spend policies of the Obama
administration extend and deepen the recession, the new administration's strategy to deal with the fallout
becomes clearer and clearer. Blame Rush Limbaugh.
The Magic of Barack
Obama. [Scroll down] Obama shamelessly says his trillion-dollar "stimulus" plan from
which taxpayers will be enslaved for generations, will cut the taxes of the 95%. "That's insane," you
might exclaim. Well, yes, if words retain their customary meaning. When Obama said in 2004 that
people don't want their tax money wasted, the meaning of the word "wasted" is the key to understanding
The One. Obama believes that "reinvesting" tax money into the welfare system is a responsible use
of government-forced contributions from the "wealthy." When Obama speaks of tax cuts, often he is
actually speaking of redistributing tax money. In Obama's world, government spending can actually
mean cutting taxes. Words take on new meaning when Obama the Great performs his magic.
Barack
Obama's most troubling tendency. There are many things that bug me about Barack Obama —
the insane laundry list speeches, the silly rhetoric, the hostility to the free market — but these
are all talked about. He has another habit that hasn't been talked about so much and, of all the
things he does, it makes me the most queasy.
The Stupid
Party. The economy is nowhere near recovery. The banks remain plagued with toxic
assets. The markets are engaged in a limbo contest. Congress is about to take up a budget
that will increase the national debt and decrease the chances for long-term growth. But don't
worry! Lucky for us, the Obama administration, its allies in the Democratic party, and the media
have decided to lead the country in a debate over who the leader of the Republican party is.
Deception at
Core of Obama Plans. "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," said Chief of Staff Rahm
Emanuel. "This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before."
Things. Now we know what they are. The markets' recent precipitous decline is a reaction not just
to the absence of any plausible bank rescue plan, but also to the suspicion that Obama sees the continuing
financial crisis as usefully creating the psychological conditions — the sense of crisis bordering
on fear-itself panic — for enacting his "Big Bang" agenda to federalize and/or socialize health
care, education and energy, the commanding heights of post-industrial society.
The Big Tent in the
Wilderness: Would parents wish success for a math teacher who taught their children that
two plus two equals five? No, they would hope for the teacher's failure and firing. A president
who proposes policies based on falsehoods deserves no less. ... At this moment in American history,
"bipartisanship" is just another complacent name for tyranny.
The Obama Double Tax
Whammy: President Obama's proposal to provide only a 28 percent benefit for charitable
contributions by top-bracket taxpayers is part of a double whammy, since he proposes at the same time to
raise the top bracket from 35 to 39.6 percent. The double-barreled increase/decrease reflects
a two-part strategy that is much more than a simple tax increase. Less civil society and more government
power is the result.
Unbelievable, Isn't It?
Wasn't it Obama's political hit men who cooked up the scheme to Limbaugh-ize the GOP? Wasn't it Gibbs and
Rahm Emanuel who egged on reporters? It is not the Republicans who are claiming Limbaugh should be
crowned head of the party. To the contrary the GOP's elected leaders have been imploring the media to get
back to the economy, the grotesque omnibus spending bill, and, frankly, the president's cluelessness about the
market crash.
Hint: They were promised a tax cut during the Obama campaign.
Who Pays for Cap and Trade?
Cap and trade is the tax that dare not speak its name, and Democrats are hoping in particular that no one notices
who would pay for their climate ambitions. With President Obama depending on vast new carbon revenues in
his budget and Congress promising a bill by May, perhaps Americans would like to know the deeply unequal ways
that climate costs would be distributed across regions and income groups.
Obama's Political
Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome. The country cared little that much of FDR's "New Deal" policies
had been originated by Hoover, or that Roosevelt and his "Brain Trust" viewed the Country's dire situation as
chance to experiment. Action was called for and what mattered most was
change. FDR (Obama)
appeared to be so caring and attentive, few suspected any wrongdoing. Just as in the case of the abusive
parent, FDR (Obama) was jovial, cool, and unusually calm in the face of serious adversity. In both
versions of MPS, blame is typically placed on a previous caregiver as part of the deception and to provide a
scapegoat. ... The denial of reality is crucial.
Present at the
creation. President Obama, who repeatedly criticized earmarks while campaigning last year, is
supposedly not happy with the 9,000 projects individual legislators tacked onto the $410 billion spending
bill, but his boss will sign the bill anyway, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel says. It's hard to
believe Mr. Obama is really unhappy with earmarks, which date back to last year when the bill was starting its
trek through Congress.
Anatomy of
Vero Possumus. It is odd that after five weeks we can pretty much see the next four years. ... We
will get utopian rhetoric about a new ethical bar, followed by the nominations of serial tax dodgers, lobbyists,
and DC insiders. We will hear sermons about a new bipartisanship, followed by comical attacks on talk
radio, and deeming "unpatriotic" any who resent the ramming through of the largest increase in debt in
a half-century.
The
Orwellian Presidential Bully Pulpit. The president brazenly sermonizes against scientifically
challenged conservatives while triggering federal funding of research that is scientifically controversial and
preparing to impose cap and trade penalties on corporate America in deference to global warming junk science.
While you won't hear much about this in the mainstream media, there is a meeting currently taking place in
New York City that serves as an ironic backdrop for Obama's embryonic stem cell order.
Obama
grants two more lobbyists waivers. President Obama has issued waivers allowing two appointees
who were formerly registered lobbyists to work for his administration. The waivers ensure the two
appointees can work for the administration under his executive order on ethics, which was intended to
reform the revolving door between K Street and the government.
Obama's New 'Council on Women' Seen As
Vehicle to Promote Feminist Agenda. President Barack Obama on Wednesday created a new bureaucracy to
deal with women's health, domestic violence and economic security. But some conservatives fear the new council will
actively promote the feminist agenda in the government. ... Although the president did not say exactly what issues
the council would address, the group is likely to promote feminist causes such as expanded litigation and the abortion
rights, said Janice Crouse, a senior fellow at Concerned Women for America, a conservative advocacy group.
Obama's
Impractical Pragmatism. The Obama administration is nothing if not pragmatic, we're told.
Obama is not guided by ideology, according to his hagiographers in the press, but is instead simply committed
to doing what works. And that may be true, if you understand that to mean what works politically for
Obama. It's pragmatism, true enough, but pragmatism in the cause of satisfying Democratic interest
groups.
Wrong Move: Obama's
Liberal Agenda. Obama's proposed budget shows all the vision, restraint and grace of a grasping committee
chairman, using the cover of a still-unresolved banking crisis to push through a broad liberal wish list before anyone
notices its costs and complications. The pledge of "responsibility" has become the massive expansion of debt, the
constant allocation of blame to others and the childish cultivation of controversy with conservative media figures to
favorably polarize the electorate. The pledge of "honesty" and "sacrifice" has become the deceptive guarantee of
apparently limitless public benefits at the expense of a very few.
Obama Administration Declares Proposed IP Treaty
a 'National Security' Secret. President Barack Obama came into office in January promising a new era of
openness. But now, like Bush before him, Obama is playing the national security card to hide details of the
controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement being negotiated across the globe.
Copyright treaty is classified for 'national security'.
Last September, the Bush administration defended the unusual secrecy over an anti-counterfeiting treaty being negotiated
by the U.S. government, which some liberal groups worry could criminalize some peer-to-peer file sharing that infringes
copyrights. Now President Obama's White House has tightened the cloak of government secrecy still further, saying
in a letter this week that a discussion draft of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and related materials are
"classified in the interest of national security pursuant to Executive Order 12958."
From Catastrophe to Not
so Bad? Talk of the Great Depression was necessary to enact a massive spending bill with a $1.6 trillion
deficit; then, once the European-like spending was in place, it was important to flip, drop the gloom and doom, and talk
up the economy for the midterm elections to come.
Please Get Serious, Mr. President.
[Scroll down] Optimism and patience were not on offer just a few weeks ago, when the president was telling us
we were on the verge of CATASTROPHE!!!! unless Congress immediately authorized the spending of some $800 billion.
Obama is asking us to believe that the so-called stimulus was both necessary and sufficient to turn things around in less
than a month. He is straining the limits of our credulity and testing the limits of his own credibility.
The Obama
3-Step. Barack Obama has perfected a three-step maneuver that could never even be attempted by a
politician lacking his rhetorical skill or cool cynicism. First: Denounce your presidential predecessor
for a given policy, energizing your party's base and capitalizing on his abiding unpopularity. Second:
Pretend to have reversed that policy upon taking office with a symbolic act or high-profile statement. Third:
Adopt a version of that same policy, knowing that it's the only way to govern responsibly or believing doing otherwise
is too difficult.
Global gun control: There
may good reasons for deploying the National Guard along the U.S.-Mexican border, but illegal firearms isn't one of them.
The administration recently launched a study to examine whether soldiers should patrol the Southern border to staunch the
flow of firearms headed for drug dealers in Latin America. The silence you hear is the concern about armed drug gangs
headed here. In short, the administration seems more concerned about the guns going south than the non-citizens
streaming north.
Obama,
Kruschev, and Limbaugh. Today, I heard the latest pronouncement from our glorious leader, the
great and powerful Oz. He said he didn't want Americans whipsawed by bursts of either bad or good news,
and that he was highly optimistic about our economic future. Oddly enough, yesterday he announced that
this was the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. So the way I figure it, in order to avoid
being whipsawed, the secret is to only listen to Obama on either odd or even days of the week.
Electing a Child to be President.
[Obama] had, on taking office, already written two autobiographical memoirs, but people are slowly becoming aware
of the fact that there is virtually no paper trail by which to measure him. His birth certificate and legal
standing to be President are in dispute. Records from his college days are hidden from view. His
record as a one-term Illinois legislator is replete with "present" votes that revealed little about his political
positions. He did not even wait to complete a full term as a U.S. Senator before almost immediately beginning
to run for the highest office in the land. In terms of political leadership, he is a child among grownups
and a petulant one at that.
March Madness: How the White House Plays
Defense. Part of the Obama mystique — one his own aides work hard to promote — is
that he and his team are sublimely calm and collected, too cool to care about Washington chatter, too disciplined
to be thrown off message by the uproar du jour. The reality is that the Obama team can be every bit as
reactive and improvisational as any other political operation.
The Banality of Obama:
Pundits have been critiquing the new administration for its socialism, for its willful ignorance of foreign policy,
for its puerile missteps, but the salient fact of the Obama Presidency is its banality. He who promised
change has dredged up the failed nostrums of the past as if they were something new and fresh. In fact,
the ordinariness, the dullness, the lifelessness of the Obama Administration is obvious.
Mr. President: War Is Not
A 'Struggle' Or 'Situation'. First, President Obama jettisoned the admittedly empty and useless
phrase "war on terror," a label which pleased pretty much no one, primarily because it didn't specify an
enemy; it's often been pointed out that the phrase was like calling World War II a "war on blitzkrieg."
Next, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano avoided even mentioning the word "terrorism" in her first
congressional testimony. Now the Department of Justice has announced it is dropping the legal designation
"enemy combatants," which referred to suspected terrorist detainees. The aim of all this muting of the
language in the War with No Name is twofold: for the Obama administration to distance itself from George W.
Bush's "politics of fear," and to whitewash a plain fact that liberals are suicidally reluctant to
acknowledge — that we are at war with radical Islam.
Obama's rhetoric and reality clash.
Barack Obama's optimistic campaign rhetoric has crashed headlong into the stark reality of governing. In office
two months, he has backpedaled on an array of issues, shifting positions as circumstances dictate while ducking for
political cover to avoid undercutting his credibility and authority. That's happened on the Iraq troop withdrawal
timeline, on lobbyists in his administration and on money for lawmakers' pet projects.
The "Depression" for
Us Idiots. I feel like Winston Smith in Oceania, confused about all the doublethink coming out of Washington.
Great Depression — no Great Depression. Recession for years; its end at the end of this year. Signing
statements bad; signing statements good. Fundamentals hardly strong; fundamentals really sound. Earmarks terrible;
8,000 wonderful. Bush's $500 billion deficit reckless; Obama's $1.7 [trillion] sober and judicious; Iraq
horrific and the worst whatever; Iraq suddenly quiet, democratic, and hopeful; highest ethical bar in an administration
ever — Richardson, Daschle, Killefer, Solis, etc. cannot meet the lowest; ... Obama not to be blamed for
massive collapse of stock prices since November; Obama to be praised for modest gains last week. At some point,
someone in the media must be getting embarrassed that they are all working at the Ministry of Truth.
Obama toils as communicator. Before
he took office, White House aides told us Obama would spend his first months telling hard truths about the complexity
of the economic problems and the complexity of the solutions. There's been very little of that. ... One reason
is that White House officials aren't anxious to explain the depths of the problems. They tell us they
anticipate unemployment to exceed 10 percent next year...
The Myth of the 46 Million:
Whether it's in political speeches, commentary, newspaper features, or hard news stories, the statistic of 46 million
uninsured is one of the most-widely cited numbers in the health care debate. It promotes the idea that nearly one out
of every six Americans does not have access to health care and it plays into the arguments of those calling for massive
expansion of government to fix the problem. Yet the ubiquitous figure is highly misleading.
New Obama lOgO for RecOvery.gOv.
Guess what it lOOks like? [It has] gears to represent the American automobile industry that's on its way
out and the manufacturing sector that's already vanished from the land. It has eight stars to represent, uh, some
of the 13 original Colonies. It's got the "website number" that Vice President Biden couldn't remember on TV.
And the new logo has poison ivy leaves to represent the green revolution that hasn't quite caught on yet because few
people can afford the extra costs that come with it and the ones that can are gonna get taxed extra because they can
afford it and didn't vote for the winner anyway.
Obama: Editor in chief? At
4:52 p.m., the White House sent out embargoed excerpts from President Obama's planned remarks
tonight. ... But then at 5:16 p.m., the White House sent out revised — and now
unembargoed — excerpts from the president's comments. But there were two changes in wording
between the two versions that were an indication that the White House was continuing to tinker with the
language even as airtime approached.
The butler did it. It was the mystery
of the week in Washington: Who stuck that language into the stimulus bill allowing $165 billion in
bonuses to the very executives at AIG (Americans Into Government, Inc.) who had just about ruined that
financial insurance company and a good part of the American economy with it?
Obama's Prime Time Pitch. President Obama
sometimes strayed from the facts or made dubious claims during his hour-long evening news conference
March 24. He said his budget projections are based on economic assumptions that "are perfectly
consistent with what Blue Chip forecasters out there are saying." Not true. ... He said he is reducing
"nondefense discretionary spending" to less than it was under the past four presidents. Not true.
Barack Obama's delivery
of no news is quite smooth. Obama created real problems in his first national news conference
by promising Geithner would deliver too much the next day. And when the inarticulate bureaucrat didn't,
the markets plummeted. But this news conference seemed anticlimactic. At times the president
appeared to be mailing in his delivery. He made no notable news and did so quite smoothly. Unless
sticking by his guns over cutting charitable deductions is news.
Obama
Scraps 'Global War on Terror' for 'Overseas Contingency Operation'. The Obama administration has
ordered an end to use of the phrase "Global War on Terror," a label adopted by the Bush administration shortly
after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday. In a memo sent this
week from the Defense Department's office of security to Pentagon staffers, members were told, "this
administration prefers to avoid using the term 'Long War' or 'Global War on Terror' [GWOT.] Please use
'Overseas Contingency Operation.'"
Homeland Linguistics.
The Obama administration has made great changes in the way we handle national security. And judging by
its actions so far, it seems that the most important failing of the previous administration has been in
semantics. The changes started with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano deciding that the
word "terrorism" was too harsh. She has made a point of not using it, opting instead for "man-caused
disasters." That was merely phase one.
Transparent
Obfuscation. One problem with the Obama financial rescue plan is that it is almost as
complicated and obscure as the problem it is designed to solve. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner,
testifying yesterday [3/26/2009] on Capitol Hill, called for greater simplicity in financial regulation.
Good luck with that.
FCC Won't Allow 'Diversity' Chief Mark Lloyd to be Interviewed
about Public Policy Views. The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) won't allow its Chief Diversity
Officer Mark Lloyd to be interviewed by the news media about his views and past statements on federal communications
policy. Lloyd, who cites the radical author Saul Alinsky as an inspiration, has argued that public broadcasting
outlets in the United States should be funded on a level equal to the funding of private broadcasting companies —
with the money coming from licensing fees levied on private broadcasters by the government.
Obama, Charity, and
Fairness. Leave it to Barack Obama to justify a tax proposal that would significantly reduce
the amounts going to charity — on grounds the proposal is necessary for "fairness."
Taking Debt To The Next
Frontier. In his budget message, the president says "the time has come to usher in a new era
of responsibility." But a new report shows the only thing his budget delivers is an unprecedented era
of deficits and debt.
Congressman Wants to Know Why
Geithner Contradicted Congressional Testimony in 24 Hours. Geithner told Congress under oath
Tuesday [3/24/2009] that he wouldn't consider China's proposal to shift away from the U.S. dollar toward a world
currency — then the following day said the U.S. would "be open" to the idea. Rep. John
Shadegg (R.-Ariz.) thinks the Treasury secretary's swift about face demands an explanation.
It's Not the Economy, Stupid. If the
multi-trillion-dollar credit card, massive redistribution schemes, and behemoth budget seem so zany, why is anyone
continuing to think of any of this is economic policy at all? Why don't we think of it as, well,
politics? Shrewd and well-played politics at that. For if we do, everything the current leadership
is doing makes perfect sense.
1984 in 2009. Last
week President Obama announced that we would no longer call enemy combatants "Enemy Combatants." Yesterday
[3/26/2009] the Office of Management and Budget sent a memo instructing people who are fighting the Global War
on Terror that it was no longer Global, nor a War, nor had anything to do with Terror.
Hiding
a Mountain Of Debt. With a bit of bookkeeping legerdemain borrowed from the Bush
administration, the Democratic Congress is about to perform a cover-up on the most serious threat
to America's economic future. That threat is not the severe recession, tough as that is for
the families and businesses struggling to make ends meet. In time, the recession will end, and last
week's stock market performance hinted that we may not have to wait years for the recovery to begin.
Obama's
War on English. In an age when a waiter is a server, an actress is a female actor, and a
dubiously-competent socialist cult leader is an American president, it was only a matter of time before
the "Global War on Terror" became an "Overseas Contingency Operation" (OCO). Thus Spoke Zarathustra
this week via a memo sent to the Pentagon and select speech writers, officially establishing Team Obama's
redesigned terminology. The War is over, long live the Operation! ... Victory through euphemism!
Speaking Obama.
In order for us morons on the right to understand the newspeak of the Obama administration I offer this
glossary of terms before and after being "Obamized." Feel free to add to my list while you are still
able.
What
Do You Mean 'If We Ever Want to Leave' Afghanistan? Beware, America. You are about to be duped
by an alliance of Obama-niks and Bush-ites who, together, are laying the groundwork for nation-building in
Afghanistan — nation-building in Iraq having worked out so well (insert acid shot of sarcasm here).
Only they are not going to call it "nation-building." Worse, they are forging ahead without heeding the
remedial lesson of Iraq: No matter how many American dollars spent, no matter how many American lives lost,
it's not possible to transform an Islamic republic that enshrines Islamic law (Sharia) into an ally against Islamic
jihad ... .
The Three (Ways of Making Us)
Stooges: Fans of Barack Obama are impressed with his ability to do two or three things at one time,
as am I. Here is a classic twofer: he succeeded in exposing both the intellectual inadequacy and the
moral bankruptcy of his worldview in one terse statement. As a bonus he threw in an example of his
deceitful manipulativeness.
Obama's
Childish Vision of Politics: Despite his "hard choices" rhetoric, Barack Obama's favorite political
tactic is to claim that no choices need be made at all; all political differences of opinion, he says, can be chalked
up to misunderstanding rather than conflicting fundamental values. All choices are "false choices" if we just
think deeply enough. Or rather, if Obama thinks deeply enough. And so Obama claimed in the Chicago Tribune
that Americans "need not choose between a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism and an oppressive government-run economy."
That choice, he said, is a "false choice." It is a false choice as he phrases it — capitalism isn't
chaotic and unforgiving.
The Master of
Misdirection. President Obama is the master of misdirection. His skill in using this
tactic is a key to his success as a candidate and to his popularity as president. He is a great
salesman, marketing his product — the liberal agenda, plus a few add-ons — in a manner
that disguises what he's really up to. Misdirection isn't the same as exaggeration. Everyone
understands that politicians inflate their accomplishments. So their self-puffery is discounted.
Misdirection is different. It is meant to deceive.
What
Does the President's 'Meaningful Coverage' Mean for Health Care? Upon taking office, President
Obama hit the ground running on comprehensive healthcare reform that he originally referred to as "universal
health care" but now calls "meaningful coverage." What is "meaningful coverage," and what do the few
specifics we've been given concerning it portend for our future physical health and the viability of our
nation as a whole?
Misrepresenting Mexican Gun Origins. Fox
News has completely blown apart the mantra being chanted by politicians and the news media that 90 percent of
the guns used in crimes in Mexico come from the United States. Fact is, says Fox News, only about 17 percent
are trickling in from north of the border, and some of those legally. Why such a disparity in the numbers?
The Price of Extremism. [Scroll
down] One school of thought suggests that Obama is deep down a far-left ideologue and would rather achieve his
agenda than build a lasting coalition. He has to hurry to beat the clock to the 2010 election and wants to do
everything he can to tick off the items on the liberal wish list. In this scenario, his moderate language and
bipartisan themes, as central as they were to his campaign, were essentially deceptive. He's not a centrist
and has no interest in governing as one.
A
Bogus 'Anti-Cigarette' Bill. A law ordering the Food and Drug Administration to regulate cigarettes is
moving through Congress — but is it truly good for public health? Hint: Cigarette maker
Altria (formerly Philip Morris) is one of the bill's strongest supporters. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) has
already gotten the measure passed in the House; Sen. Ted Kennedy is on track to get it through the Senate soon.
Obama's Unreality Tour. Barack
Obama vowed to turn to the U.N. Security Council for strong action following North Korea's weekend missile launch.
He would have done better by turning to Dr. Phil. So, as the good doctor likes to say: Get real.
Get real about North Korea. Get real about the U.N. Get real, also, about NATO, arms control,
Russia, the global financial system, and every other item headlining the president's unreality tour through
the capitals of Europe.
Transparency
Killer at HUD: Another Disastrous Obama Nominee. If you need a shining example of the utter
disingenuousness of Barack Obama's commitment to government transparency, I have two words for you:
Ron Sims. This lifelong political hack is to transparency what sunlight is to Dracula, what salt is to a
slug, what kryptonite is to Superman, what "The View" is to intelligent debate.
Deception is the Root Cause of
America's Ills. In 1998, 46 state attorneys general and major tobacco companies signed the Master
Settlement Agreement. The major tobacco companies agreed, among other things, to give states $240 billion
over 25 years to provide for smoking cessation programs and cover the health costs associated with using
their product. ... Of the $80 billion extorted so far, states have spent about 30% on health, not all
tobacco-related, and less than 6% on smoking cessation programs. Instead, state legislatures spent the
bulk of their tobacco money for items such as museum building, tax relief, rainy-day funds and other expenditures
having nothing to do with tobacco or health.
Mr
Obama's Traveling Circus. While the United States writhes in the agony of seeking a way out of the current
financial mess, President Obama, his wife and a cast of 500 aides and hangers-on took the show on the road, crisscrossing
the old world well-equipped with a supply of the trusty teleprompters needed to render him eloquent. ... It was like a
sideshow featuring never-before-seen characters that the rubes couldn't wait to observe — as they might flock
to see the bearded lady. The Obamas took all this attention as an indication that what was really curiosity was,
in fact, adoration.
A Fool And Your Money. Once
again we have stubborn liberals who refuse to admit that their strategy is wrong and will not work, and instead not only
give credence to their agenda with this scheme, but do so under the guise of "fairness". Massachusetts Democrats
recently advocated voting rights for illegal immigrants because it is an issue of "fairness". President Obama aims
to change the social fabric of this country because as is the system lacks "fairness".
Earmarks:
Online hide and go seek. Scores of House members are hiding their earmark requests in obscure corners
of their official websites — sticking to the letter of their new rule while shunning its spirit. The
lawmakers are interpreting an ambiguous rule liberally, disclosing their requests as required on their official
congressional webpages but avoiding any prominent display.
Is Barack Obama a Muslim wolf in
Christian wool? Obama wants it both ways, has always wanted it both ways. Black and
white, Indonesian and American, Muslim and Christian. He loves playing one off the other, using
one to hide the other even as the traces of the truth may be assembled to reveal the whole cloth of
deception and self-promotion he has been weaving so skillfully since his childhood. No wonder
he is a man of change. He IS a changeling, a veritable chameleon, adapting and amending his
life story to fit the circumstances.
Back to the Future on
Cuba. The repeal of a largely symbolic policy is more than Obama is ready to contemplate. The
administration portrays his new approach as a "major" shift. The Washington Post said he is "breaking from
policies first imposed by the Kennedy administration." As if. He's doing little more than dropping
a few extra restrictions imposed by George W. Bush, leaving the basic embargo encased in rock, like the fossil
it is.
Obama
continues to send mixed messages on economy. President Barack Obama on Tuesday [4/14/2009] shifted
focus back to the economy, but continued offering a mixed message on where things stand and prospects for a
turnaround. "There is no doubt that times are still tough," Obama told an audience at Georgetown
University. "By no means are we out of the woods just yet. But from where we stand, for the
very first time, we're beginning to see glimmers of hope."
Obama's Dodge:
In a speech at Georgetown University yesterday [4/14/2009], Pres. Barack Obama tried to explain how his economic
policies "fit together in a single, overarching strategy." The only constant we could discern, however, was
the president's desire to use the financial crisis to justify enormous expansions of government power.
Obama's code of secrecy.
Government secrecy has become the norm under this administration, particularly when it comes to the financial bailout.
Exhibit A is a gag order preventing banks from divulging how they performed on the Treasury Department's financial
"stress tests." These tests were instituted Feb. 25 to gauge the liquidity of the country's 19 biggest banks and
determine whether they could survive another dramatic economic downturn. Federal officials told the bankers to keep
mum about how stressed out the tests say their institutions are.
Fed Shrouding $2 Trillion in
Bank Loans in 'Secrecy,' Suit Says. U.S. taxpayers need to know the risks behind the Federal Reserve's
$2 trillion in lending to financial institutions because the public is now an "involuntary investor" in the nation's
banks, according to a court filing by Bloomberg LP. The Fed refuses to name the borrowers, the amounts of loans or
assets banks put up as collateral under 11 programs, arguing that doing so might set off a run by depositors and unsettle
shareholders.
King Barack? You might think
the repeated conservative complaint about Obama's egregious lack of transparency is, by now, a tired talking point.
But we're not just referring to minor procedural matters that are substantively inconsequential. He hasn't just
breached his promise to make his legislation available for public preview. He and his congressional cohorts are
burying very important matters in legislation.
What
Obama's hiding and the media are ignoring. It is no accident that history and literature are
replete with rocky tales of doubtful succession, of the maladjustment brought on by pretenders to thrones.
There is something in human nature that yearns for the rightful leader. And there is something in our
Constitution that requires it. So why won't this president, who, after all, promised the American people
an unprecedented level of transparency, reveal his original long-form birth certificate?
Where's Obama's Birth Certificate?
[Scroll down slowly] I am suspicious when a candidate for president has virtually no paper trail
of documents. ... Here's a list of documentation that, as of 2008, was "unavailable":
1. Occidental College records -- Not released
2. Columbia College records -- Not released
3. Columbia Thesis paper -- "Not available"
4. Harvard College records -- Not released
5. Selective Service Registration -- Not released
6. Medical records -- Not released
7. Illinois State Senate schedule -- "Not available"
8. Law practice client list -- Not released
9. Certified Copy of original Birth certificate -- Not released
10. Embossed, signed paper Certification of Live Birth -- Not released
11. Harvard Law Review articles published -- None
12. University of Chicago scholarly articles -- None
What does anyone REALLY know about Obama?
Obama: American Demagogue. All
during the long campaign leading to his election and inauguration, the media kept telling us what a genius Barack
Obama was. He was a lecturer on the Constitution at the University of Chicago. He was in the Illinois
State legislature. He had graduated from Harvard Law School and, before that, Columbia University.
Curiously, throughout all that time, few of his fellow students or faculty had any recall of him. No records
from those days exist or are available. He was (and is) a cipher.
You Might Be a Birther
if... [Scroll down] I might be able to get past the whole long-form birth certificate
issue if this president had released the whole host of other life documentation, generally required for
high-level job applications. To whit, (sic) what is in the following documents that might diminish
the Obama "narrative," as sold to the public by marketing guru, David Axelrod, and a strangely incurious
media?
• Panahou Academy school records, 5th through 12th grades
• Occidental College records, including financial aid information.
• Columbia University records, including the missing senior thesis and financial aid information.
• Harvard University records, including information on how a student who never wrote anything (that
can be found) was elected president of the prestigious law review, and including information on how
Harvard Law School was afforded by humble community agitator, Barack Obama.
• Obama's Illinois state senate records and papers, mysteriously lost.
Obama Used 'Invest' or
'Investment' 18 Times in Press Conference to Describe Government Deficit Spending. When
the government engages in deficit spending it has to borrow money — part of it from foreign
sources — and then charge future taxpayers to pay the interest on the borrowed
money. As long as the government's loans are not paid off, the taxpayers must continue
paying interest on the debt year after year — just as an individual citizen would
need to pay interest year after year on a credit card whose principal is never paid down.
Passive Opaqueness.
The president went to Langely for some damage repair today, telling the CIA employees he knows "the last few
days have been difficult." Here is a tip: when a speaker uses the passive voice he is hiding something.
If the president had been more candid, he would have said "I made your jobs more difficult in the last few
days."
Obama's
Rounding Error: Did President Obama leave off a few zeroes when he ordered federal agencies to trim
$100 million from their budgets? ... Make no mistake: Obama's not asking for cuts of $100 mil from
each department — which would also be negligible. He's looking at a cumulative $100 million —
across the entire federal budget. And this, after he signed one piece of legislation for $787 billion and
another for $410 billion — and then introduced a record $3.6 trillion federal budget.
Will Obama Seize the Radio Stations
Next? Obama started his Administration repeating the mantra that he only cares about what works, not about
ideology. That was meant to draw attention away from the fact that Obama is all about extremist ideology, not
pragmatism. That is why he is so intent on sharply raising tax rates on savings and capital and top income
earners. Nothing practical about that in promoting the economy. Just the opposite. Obama's proposed
severe global warming regulation serves extremist environmental ideology, not practical economics. Misdirection
rhetoric is another trick Obama learned from Saul Alinsky.
It's Not Easy Being Green.
In Barack Obama's America, there are no costs and benefits. There are only "false choices" that must be
avoided lest we fall into the dangerous trap of old thinking. We can increase deficit spending and
improve budgetary discipline, expand health care funding and reduce costs, and pay for social programs
unimagined by LBJ with the tax rates of Bill Clinton. ... Unfortunately, the laws of economics cannot
simply be repealed and benefits still do come at a cost.
Obama Outsources His Presidency.
The first 100 days can reveal a pattern of behavior that comes to characterize a presidency. In this
respect, there are two emerging habits of Team Obama worth watching. One is the gap between what Mr. Obama
said he would do and what he is doing. His administration is emphasizing in its official 100 days
talking points steps he has taken to "deliver on the change he promised." During the campaign, Mr. Obama
denounced the $2.3 trillion added to the national debt on Mr. Bush's watch as "deficits as far as the eye
can see." But Mr. Obama's budget adds $9.3 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years.
What happened to Obama the deficit hawk?
Obama strays from some facts, or
spins. [Scroll down]
— He told a joint session of Congress on Feb. 24 that "we import more oil today than ever before." That's
untrue. Imports peaked in 2005 and are lower today.
— He claimed in the same speech that his mortgage aid plan would help "responsible" buyers but not those who borrowed
beyond their means. But even prominent defenders of the program in his administration concede that foolish borrowers
will be aided, too.
— He said in an address on March 10 that the high school dropout rate has "tripled in the past 30 years."
But according to the Department of Education, it actually has declined by a third.
When the Obama Backlash Comes.
The contradictions between Obama's words and actions are many. He opposes big government, and then he vastly expands
it. He says he favors bipartisanship, but doesn't practice it. He says he is against earmarks, and then signs
the largest pork package in history. And that is just to name a few. Such inconsistencies are contributing to
a lack of confidence in Obama and his economic policies.
Good news!
First 100 days more talk than action.
What has the Obama White House really achieved in its first 100 days? Well, he did pass a stimulus bill that
was largely negotiated and completed before he got into office. ... He appointed a treasury secretary who didn't pay his
taxes, he tried to appoint a Health and Human Services secretary who didn't pay his taxes, and he decided not to appoint
a government accountability czar who didn't pay her taxes. He also visited with Jay Leno. He did very well on
his NCAA college basketball pool. He fired the CEO of General Motors. He appeared on "60 Minutes" a
couple of times. He went to a Bulls-Wizards game. He got a dog. His wife planted a garden.
Confessions of a Contrarian.
I followed the Obama senatorial campaign and even his early career in Chicago, and confess I was not impressed. I
think on any occasion he announces a moral standard it is reactive — not proactive — and we can
be sure it serves as cover for something of questionable morality. So when he says he won't do something,
it usually means he already has.
Obama the Sophist.
I have heard "there are those who say..." from this President quite a bit in the last three months. I think
it's time he start naming names. Who are these people who hold such backward-looking, unacceptable positions?
If they are elected members of the government, shouldn't the President tell us who they are so we can vote them out?
If they are unelected, how is it they have such power? Or maybe there are no such people, at least not of such
relevance they deserve specific mention by the President. Maybe this is just a rhetorical trick designed to
make Mr. Obama's position seem like the only one allowed by common sense.
"Never Again," Obama
Style. No president in modern times has managed to conceal so much of his biography as this
one. The journalists assigned to the Obama beat seem to have lost their traditional avidity for digging
out the missing details. We do not have a medical report, or a college transcript from Columbia, or a
notion of how well he did in Harvard Law School. These things are not automatically significant, but
they can be.
The 100-Day
Assault on America. Aided by an eagerly compliant Democratic-controlled Congress, a sycophantic
media, and a bunch of squishy Republicans, President Obama has taken the country on a radical, mind-boggling
leap into collectivism. ... Obama promises to use taxpayer money to rescue "responsible homeowners" —
whatever that means — from foreclosure, thus artificially propping up prices that shut out renters
who would love to buy now-much-cheaper houses. Obama proposes spending billions (or trillions?) more on
"creating or saving" — whatever that means — 4 million, 3.5 million or
2.5 million jobs. Pick a number.
Reality Knocks. Saying
unsupported piffle is the stuff of campaigns, but the current occupants of the White House seem unaware of their
higher obligation to provide complete and unspun information to the American people. While they may be
determined to throw out whatever hits them as an available political counterattack, neither their own intelligence
officials or the previous ones support the view that a single American was harmed because of interrogation
tactics. The available information suggests the contrary is true.
Doublethink is Truth. Of
course, the term "Global War on Terror" left something to be desired since it was really a Global War on
Radical Islam. Doesn't anyone in the political world believe in plain speaking and clear understanding?
Not exactly. Mostly they believe in "doublethink," the Orwellian concept of holding two contradictory
beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
Let's
Declassify Obama's Birth Certificate Along With the 'Torture' Memos. As long as we're creating a
paper trail a mile long and a mile wide, Obama might want to keep the momentum going and release that long form
birth certificate we keep hearing so much about. ... Hey, if it's no problem to release classified documents,
the birth certificate should be an easy call, as to my knowledge it's not classified. Neither are his
undergraduate records. If he's as brilliant as everyone keeps saying he is, why not prove it by showing
off his stellar grades? What articles did he write while editor of the vaunted Harvard Law Review?
Inquiring minds want to know. Speaking of Harvard, how did he pay for his high priced law degree?
Let's not forget that trip during college to Pakistan in 1981...
Barack Obama aglow after 100-day honeymoon — just like
Carter. [Scroll down] The day has been seized as another opportunity to hone the Obama
image, which was carefully crafted and protected during a campaign in which his persona and life story,
rather than his policies, led to triumph. Advisers who publicly mock the theme of 100 days have
been discreetly parcelling out made-to-order anecdotes to the press, each one designed to show how
decisive, far-thinking or cool under pressure he is.
To Seem, Rather Than To
Be. To the conspiracy-minded, it could all be deliberate — an endless series of
dumb stunts and public flubs and embarrassing incidents serving as bright, shiny diversions
from the real work of the Obama administration. While we all point and laugh (or point and
howl) at these moves, they quietly go forward with their agenda — bringing the banks under
direct federal control, bringing the auto industry under direct federal control, "reforming"
healthcare insurance to bring that under direct federal control, going after the credit card
companies...
Obama Again Uses the Word 'Investment' to
Describe the Deficit Spending He Plans. When President Barack Obama gave a primetime press conference on
March 19, he used the terms "invest" and "investment" 18 times to describe the deficit spending he wants the
federal government to pursue under his budget plan. In another primetime press conference last night, Obama again
used the term "investment" three times to describe the deficit spending while almost in the same breath decrying
"overleveraged banks" and those who "maxed-out on credit cards."
The Green Wind Of Destruction.
To say we're skeptical of the administration's claim that green jobs will bolster economic recovery is putting it
mildly. It's much easier to believe that needless environmental rules will cause widespread job losses.
Green
Job Efforts Kill 2.2 for Every One Created. The Spanish government's renewable energy initiatives
have destroyed 2.2 jobs for every new "green" job created, concludes a new study by economics professor
Gabriel Calzada of King Juan Carlos University in Madrid. Calzada says American jobs will suffer the
same fate if the United States similarly attempts to promote renewable energy at the expense of conventional
energy sources.
The Audacity of Socialism. Barack Obama
has styled himself a centrist, but does his record support that claim? In this series, we examine Senator
Obama's past, his voting record and the people who've served as his advisers and mentors over the years.
We'll show how the facts of Obama's actions and associations reveal a far more left-leaning tilt to his
background — and to his politics.
The News That
Didn't Happen. When the president of the United States spoke at Notre Dame the other Sunday, he
didn't so much speak about abortion as around it. ... There's no way to disagree with a stand not taken.
And yet what he said seemed to strike a chord. Never underestimate the power of the platitudinous.
Unpleasant
surprises buried in cap and trade. If cap and trade is an energy and global warming bill, why is
a three-year package of unemployment benefits, job training and relocation expenses buried deep within its fine
print? And why is a federally subsidized "job bank" needed if laid-off workers would quickly be rehired
for higher paying "green" jobs? The fact that generous unemployment benefits are buried in the bill
means that "green jobs are bunk," the conservative Heritage Foundation's Ben Lieberman told The Examiner.
The Buck Stops
Elsewhere. President Obama wants you to know that nothing is ever his fault. He gave a
speech on national-security matters Thursday [5/21/2009] the gist of which was: George W. Bush left
me a mess, and I'm doing the best I can to clean it up. A more forthright theme would have been:
Radical Islam has thrust the United States into a defensive war, and it's now my duty to protect the
nation — despite legal complications created by left-wing lawyers, many of whom are now working in
my administration.
First Round Knockout.
Proof is defined as confirmation of fact by
evidence. The concept of evidence escapes present-day
Obama because he believes so strongly in his gift: a commanding voice that delivers his ideological rhetoric
with overbearing force. The President actually expects us to believe his word should suffice
sans
evidence.
Obama, Hubris and Cheney. President
Obama's Thursday [5/21/2009] speech was simply breathtaking. ... Standing in the hall of the National Archives,
Obama began by claiming the Constitution as his ancestor. His sophistry soared, claiming that it was our
values that had defeated our enemies throughout history, their soldiers surrendering to ours because they knew we
would treat them better than their own governments.
O So Above It
All. Put Barack Obama in front of a TelePrompTer and one thing is certain — he'll make himself
appear the most reasonable person in the room. Rhetorically, he is in the middle of any debate, perpetually
surrounded by finger-pointing extremists who can't get over their reflexive combativeness and ideological fixations
to acknowledge his surpassing thoughtfulness and grace. This is how Obama, whose position on abortion is
indistinguishable from NARAL's, can speechify on abortion at Notre Dame and come away sounding like a
pitch-perfect centrist.
Still Politicizing
Our Security. Never has a sitting president been as obsessed with scapegoating the policies of the preceding
administration as Barack Obama. We are four months into his administration, folks, and he is still sneering
at — and blaming — Bush and Cheney for our economic woes and national security policies.
You-Won't-Get-A-Credit-Card-Unless-You're-Rich
Bill is Now Law. Amidst the anti-market frenzy in Washington, D.C., President Obama today [5/22/2009] signed
into law a bill that will drive up interest rates on credit cards and force people with good credit to pay more to
subsidize people with bad credit.
Obama's
Credit Card Reform is a Fraud. Congress explicitly rejected any limitation on the interest rate credit
card companies can charge. It remains perfectly legal for them to charge rates that would make a loan shark
blush. ... Competition can do nothing to force down rates since 90% of the credit cards are issued by a handful of
companies. And states are paralyzed when it comes to regulating rates. It is up to Congress to act.
Yet the credit card companies' massive campaign donations succeeded in buying off enough Democrats and virtually all
the Republicans to kill any limits on interest rates.
Where Are the Cries of 'Obama
Lied, Jobs Died'? In mid-February, I identified several clear fibs and pathetic straw-man arguments that
Barack Obama and his teleprompters (not necessarily in that order) employed in four statements he made at his first
presidential briefing and at an appearance in Elkhart, Indiana, earlier that day. It is now painfully clear that
Obama and his apparatchiks have entered an arena many thought Bill Clinton and his crew had all to themselves.
The Myth of Ever
Increasing Fuel Economy. By proposing a set limit for economy on all classes of passenger
vehicles, Barack Obama has basically said one of two things: In 2016, he wants only economy cars
to be sold in the US or he is instructing car companies to squeeze gas from a stone. Since he cannot
change the laws of physics, I envision the date those proposed standards take effect will either be repealed
by the next administration, or continually be delayed. This is just another dictate similar to all
the rest of Obama's plans: not based in reality, but wishful thinking.
More
about Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards.
Hope and Change's
Shelf Life. Rather than explaining the bleak choices before us and explaining why his preferences have
the best chance of succeeding, Obama has so far reduced his presidency to two themes: "Bush did it" and "I'm
not your normal white male President." If he keeps this monotony up, at some point even the comedians are
going to notice the predictability.
Obama Blames 7 Straw Men for
Being 'out of money'. The deficit today is not due to Medicaid and Medicare, or even Social Security, all
failed government programs. It is due, in part, to the explosion in entitlements over decades. By shifting the
conversation away from the deficits today onto long-range problems, he creates Straw Man #4 and #5 —
Medicaid and Medicare.
I Feel Your Pain. Not Theirs. Yours. Concerned
that Sotomayor's famed "empathy" might not shine through in cases such as
Ricci v. DeStefano, the Democrats are
claiming — as Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said on MSNBC — that she was merely applying "precedent"
to decide the case. You know, just like conservatives say judges should. This was an interesting claim, in the
sense that it was the exact polar opposite of the truth.
Sotomayor: "Empathy" in
Action. "Empathy" for particular groups can be reconciled with "equal justice under law" — the motto
over the entrance to the Supreme Court — only with smooth words. But not in reality. President
Obama used those smooth words in introducing Judge Sotomayor but words do not change realities.
'We Are Out of Money'. President
Barack Obama handed his political opponents a bludgeon the size of Thor's hammer Saturday [5/23/2009]. In a story
played up by the Drudge Report but virtually ignored by the
New York Times and
Washington Post, C-SPAN's
Steve Scully pointed to the massive financial obligations taken on by his administration and to America's generally lousy
financial forecast. He asked Obama, "At what point do we run out of money?" "Well?" the U.S. president began
with his practiced nod to the unhurried, unflappable style of Ronald Reagan. Then he said it: "We are out of
money now."
Federal Deficit Becomes Nearly
Indecipherable. Did you miss the "good news" on May 12? The Treasury Department, led by tax cheat
Tim Geithner, retroactively reduced the deficit through March 31, the first six months of Uncle Sam's fiscal year, by
over $175 billion.
Obama's vanishing gray hair.
Steve Gilbert assembles the evidence, and it is conclusive. Either President Obama is dying his hair, or it has
miraculously gone from graying to solid black since he took office. At one point in the campaign, as a young and
inexperienced candidate, a little gray was a good thing. But now that he is energetically grabbing control of the
economy, a more youthful look is important.
Obama and the Amazing Trillion
Dollar Dreamcoat. Obama is amazing, a miracle worker in fact. So much so that he has decreed an end to
arithmetic. No way can he spend a trillion here and a trillion there without it adding up. But the O administration
is not very good at addition. Or subtraction.
The
Myth of 5 Million Green Jobs. [Scroll down] The central finding of the study is that —
treating the data optimistically — for every renewable-energy job that the government finances, "Spain's
experience reveals with high confidence, by two different methods, that the U.S. should expect a loss of at least
2.2 jobs on average, or about 9 jobs lost for every 4 created." Despite expensive and extensive
green-job policies, a surprisingly low number of jobs were created. And about two-thirds of those "green" jobs
were just to set up the energy source, in construction, fabrication, installation, marketing and administration.
Only 10 percent of the green jobs created were permanent jobs actually operating and maintaining the renewable sources
of energy.
Thousands of New Jobs 'Created' by Obama's
Stimulus Are Summer Jobs for Teens. At least 12,000 jobs "created" by President Obama's stimulus package
are summer jobs for young people, according to a White House report issued on May 27, 100 days after passage
of the $787-billion American Reinvestment and Recovery Act. The White House report, "100 Days, 100 Projects,"
summarizes various projects on infrastructure, renewable energy and "jobs and job training."
Magician-in-chief.
Barack Obama's political magic is based on an ever-growing bag of tricks, relying on illusion, misdirection,
and the media's willingness to believe. Behind the stage presence of openness, bipartisanship, sincerity,
transparency, and geniality are tricks learned from the hardball politics of Chicago. Every magician
needs his stage assistants. Barack Obama has two key people helping to smooth his way: Rahm
Emanuel and David Axelrod. Each knows plenty of tricks of his own.
Transparent nonsense.
The administration repeatedly has stiff-armed Congress, the media, outside organizations and even a prestigious
independent government commission. It has raised "none of your business" from an adolescent rejoinder to
a public policy — to keep the public in the dark. Before examining examples of this alarming
trend, let's remember what newly inaugurated President Obama said in a big press conference on Jan. 21, his
first full day in office. His words and tone could not have been more clear...
"My
Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in
Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of
transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our
democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government."
— Barack Obama
Sources:
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
The Obama
Infatuation. Obama's rhetoric brims with inconsistencies. In the campaign, he claimed he
would de-emphasize partisanship — and also enact a highly-partisan agenda; both couldn't be true.
He got a pass. Now, he claims he will control health care spending even though he proposes more
government spending. He promotes "fiscal responsibility" when projections show huge and continuous budget
deficits. Journalists seem to take his pronouncements at face value even when many are two-faced.
Obama Motors.
President Obama claims to "have no interest" in running General Motors. He does so with a straight
face — and the same monotonous cadence that he employs whether condemning North Korea for nuclear
explosions or joking with Jay Leno. But his actions, as well as his words, betray him. ... Which is
more absurd — his implication that he is the embodiment of the U.S. government or that a former
community organizer, part-time lawyer, part-time lecturer, part-time author, and fulltime politician knows
beans about running the nation's largest automaker?
Double Standard.
Tiller's suspected murderer, Scott Roeder, is white, Christian, anti-government and anti-abortion. The alleged
gunman in the military recruitment center attack, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, is black, a Muslim convert, anti-military
and anti-American. Both crimes are despicable acts of domestic terrorism. The disparate treatment of the two
brutal cases by both the White House and the media is striking.
Obama's wrong numbers.
Appearing with executives of six industry groups on May 11, Mr. Obama announced what he called a "historic" and
"unprecedented commitment" by the medical care industry to "cut the rate of growth of national health care spending by
1.5 percentage points each year" that would yield $2 trillion in savings over 10 years. The story
got front-page play and nightly news coverage across the country. However, after American Hospital Association
President Richard J. Umbdenstock returned to his office, he was besieged by calls from AHA members opposing such
large cuts in spending. Days later, during a conference call with 230 members, he told them the
1.5-percent-a-year savings touted by Mr. Obama was a gross exaggeration.
Obama's Voodoo Health Economics. On
Monday [6/1/2009] President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers released a report called "The Economic Case for Health Care
Reform." The report argues that Americans must curb their consumption of medical care in order to avoid soaring
federal deficits, unsustainable burdens on family budgets, and damage to the economy. All of these claims are untrue.
Obama's
Health Care Reform "Paints the Roses Red". President Obama has correctly identified that Americans spend a
great deal more on health care than any other developed nation. According to the Administration's website, the U.S.
spent over "$2.2 trillion on health care in 2007, or $7,421 per person — nearly twice the average of other
developed nations". But, if Americans are spending too much for health care as the Administration contends,
why does the President's health care reform set aside an additional $634 billion over 10 years, over half
of which will come from tax increases? Apparently, as the Cheshire Cat might say, the new Wonderland logic
means that you lower costs by spending more.
Obama's Health Cost Illusion.
The main White House argument for health-care reform goes something like this: If we spend now on a hugely
expensive new insurance program for the middle class, we can save later by reducing overall U.S. health
spending. ... What if this particular theory turns out to be a political illusion? What if the speculative
cost savings never report for duty, while the federal balance sheet is still swamped with new social obligations
that will be impossible to repeal? The only possible outcome will be the nationalization of U.S. health
markets, which will mean that almost all care will be rationed by politics.
What
Happened While Barack Was 'Saving and Creating'. [Scroll down] And, as if "saved or
created" wasn't a fatuous enough standard to begin with, Obama continues to claim that he's "saved or created"
150,000 jobs during the same time the economy has lost 1.6 million. He could at least drop the
"created" half of the canard. Then, I guess, "Hey, if we hadn't gone $700 billion further into debt
in the last three months, we would have lost 1.75 million jobs" isn't an argument he wants to make.
Sure, the jobs news isn't great, but Obama has to start showing some bang for the buck he's "investing" in
"recovery," according to the newest Gallup numbers, which show his approval ratings slipping on spending and
handling of the deficit.
To
stimulate the economy, let it be free. Lobbying is about the only sector of the economy experiencing
a boom right now. This is a predictable effect of the tax-and-spend stimulus model favored by both major
political parties. Taking money out of the economy, wasting some of it on bureaucracy, and then putting it
back in is not going to spark economic growth. About the only thing that has been sparked is a lobbying
feeding frenzy over stimulus funding.
The Media Fall for Phony 'Jobs' Claims.
"Saved or created" has become the signature phrase for Barack Obama as he describes what his stimulus is doing
for American jobs. His latest invocation came yesterday, when the president declared that the stimulus
had already saved or created at least 150,000 American jobs — and announced he was ramping up some
of the stimulus spending so he could "save or create" an additional 600,000 jobs this summer. These numbers
come in the context of an earlier Obama promise that his recovery plan will "save or create three to four million
jobs over the next two years."
Obama's economic
spin machine. The Obama administration was out in full force defending the stimulus this
weekend. The mantra is that the economy is getting better but Americans need to be patient to see
progress. The problem is that, so far, there hasn't been any economic progress.
Obama
quotes verse 5:32, omits 5:33. The supposedly noble sentiments of the first verse, taken from a Jewish
source, are entirely undercut by the second verse, which becomes a bloodthirsty menacing by Muhammad of the Jews.
(And as an aside the Muslim sources estimate Muhammad killed 24,000 Jews in his jihad campaigns against them). Far
from abjuring violence, these verses aggressively insist that any who oppose the Muslim prophet will be killed, or
crucified, mutilated, and banished.
Health Care Huckster. The biggest
obstacle President Obama faces in selling his health care agenda could be the albatross of his own economic stimulus
package. During its last major sales push, the Obama administration promised the $787 billion stimulus
legislation would create up to 4 million jobs over the next two years, serve as a model of transparency, and be free of
earmarks. But those claims haven't held up so well.
The smothering
embrace of nanny government. When President Barack Obama tells you he's "reforming" health care
to "control costs," the point to remember is that the only way to "control costs" in health care is to have
less of it. In a government system, the doctor, the nurse, the janitor and the Assistant Deputy Associate
Director of Cost-Control System Management all have to be paid every Friday, so the sole means of "controlling
costs" is to restrict the patient's access to treatment.
Why
the suddenly shy press corps? The administration is trying to muddy the waters by its constant use
of the meaningless metric "jobs saved or created" -- as President Obama did yet again when he said that
the stimulus bill would result in 600,000 jobs "saved or created this summer." But the May
unemployment numbers put the lie to this slippery formulation. The administration told us that with
the stimulus bill we would have 8 percent unemployment and without it we would have 8.7 percent
unemployment. In reality, we have 9.4 percent unemployment. How did the stimulus manage
to "save" jobs when there are a million less jobs today than there would have been if Congress hadn't
passed it?
Watching How Hopenchange is Made:
It seems clear that, if the public knew what is in this [Waxman-Markey] bill, and how much it may cost them,
they would concur with this analysis: it is a "disaster." But the Democrats plan to ram it through
without hearings or even public availability of the relevant text. The same legislative process that brought
us trillion-dollar stimulus spending and trillion-dollar deficit budgets is about to replicate itself yet
again. Why so fast? Aside from the obvious reasons, there is a need to make room for the next bill
to be railroaded through on a fast track by a one-party Congress.
What
is going on with the Cap and Trade bill?. The bill is only available online at the House Rules
Committee and is reported as "text of the bill to be introduced." Despite having a bill, H.R. 2454,
that has been reported out of the Energy & Commerce Committee and discharged by eight other committees,
there is now, suddenly, a new bill that is almost 300-pages longer -- but it's still being considered
as H.R. 2454.
Did
someone mention Cap and Trade?
Democrats
are relying on deception again. Support for any Democratic policy initiative requires dishonesty, and
the health plan being pushed by President Barack Obama is no exception. Let's examine what the proponents of
government health care are saying. First, there are 46 million uninsured people in the United States.
Even though this may be literally true, it is deliberately misleading. And, it is often stated as "46 million
without health care," which is not just misleading, it's an outright lie.
Gibbs-erish. Such is the lot of
the White House press secretary that he will stick to the White House line, no matter how dumb it sounds. Robbert
Gibbs was up at bat on Thursday [7/2/2009] and went down swinging. In the process he pointed out just how untenable
the White House spin is.
The Empirical President.
Instead of data, the president offers humbug. The great genius of American ingenuity, he suggests, after
receiving billions in government "investments," will create new technologies for extracting usable and cheap
energy from wind, solar, and geothermal sources. But if those technologies are just a wish away, why have
they not been discovered already by businesses hoping to undersell oil and gas? Note that nuclear power,
the one "green" source that is empirically proven to provide relatively inexpensive power without producing
greenhouse gases, is not even on the president's agenda.
40 Acres and a President.
During the election, despite having been portrayed as America's first post-racial candidate, Barack Obama actually
represented the complete opposite. With astonishing cunning and guile, a type that his opponents could
have never imagined possible, Obama and his campaign unabashedly and tenaciously used race to goad Americans
into believing that voting for him would right the wrongs of America's racial history.
Obama's
Economic Incoherence. As the unemployment rate climbs beyond the administration's projections,
Vice President Joe Biden informs us that the administration "misread how bad the economy was." Apparently,
we were going to experience a once-in-a-lifetime economic crisis comparable to the Great Depression without a
particularly high unemployment rate. This was the promise of the Obama administration, which indulged in
hair-raisingly alarmist economic rhetoric while pumping out unduly hopeful economic projections.
Spread Freedom?
Not So Much. The Obama Doctrine is finally coming into focus. ... Obama himself insists that he's
guided by nothing other than a cool-headed pragmatism. Indeed, Obama has a grating habit of describing any
position not his own as "ideological," as if his is the only sober, practical understanding of the problems we
face. ... This attitude has allowed him to dismiss opponents of socialized medicine and the government takeover
of various industries as "ideologues," and critics of trillions in debt-fueled spending as small-minded
cranks.
'Put
nothing in writing,' Browner told auto execs on secret White House CAFE talks. Carol Browner, former
Clinton administration EPA head and current Obama White House climate czar, instructed auto industry execs "to
put nothing in writing, ever" regarding secret negotiations she orchestrated regarding a deal to increase
federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-WI, is demanding a
congressional investigation of Browner's conduct in the CAFE talks, saying in a letter to Rep. Henry Waxman,
D-CA, that Browner "intended to leave little or no documentation of the deliberations that lead to stringent
new CAFE standards."
Stuttering Stimulus. Those who
pushed through this year's $787 billion fiscal "stimulus" seem to be counting on the American people's short memory.
Wasn't it just last year that we were told, repeatedly and with stark emphasis, that this economy was the "worst" since the
Great Depression? That was the pretense for not only the stimulus, but for the federal takeover of the U.S. auto
industry and the quasi-takeover of the U.S. financial industry. ... If the stimulus passed, the White House vowed,
unemployment would peak at 8%. Today, it's 9.5% — and rising. "The truth is, we and everyone else misread
the economy," said Biden. He used that phrase — "the truth is," or something similar — at
least three times in a talk with ABC's George Stephanopolous. But the "truth is" something quite different.
Obama's Op-Ed,
Annotated. At a press conference a few weeks ago, when confronted with the disparity between his
administration's projected unemployment figures under the stimulus (8 percent) and the real unemployment figures
(9.7 percent), Obama said, "Keep in mind the stimulus package was the first thing we did... If you recall, it was
only significantly later that we suddenly get a report that the economy had tanked." So Obama took office amid the
most severe downturn since the Great Depression, at a time when the country was hemorrhaging jobs and the financial
system was on the brink of collapse. He said as much a week before signing the stimulus into law. But
don't blame him for overselling the impact the stimulus would have — his administration was totally
blindsided by a sudden report that the economy had tanked!
Obama Can't Be Trusted With Numbers.
The administration consistently pledges unrealistic results that it later distances itself from. It has gotten away with
it because the media haven't asked many pointed questions. That may not last as the debate shifts to health care.
The Audacity of Conceit. It
is a common mistake of intellectuals to confuse IQ with common sense and verbal fluency with leadership qualities. ... Nobody
would deny that the members of Obama's circle of economic advisors are indeed academically adept, well-spoken men and
women. But have any of them ever run a lemonade stand, much less a bona fide business? Have they ever met a
payroll? ... So what do they bring to the administration other than long resumes and fearsome reputations as intellectual
polemicists? All these brilliant academics have been brought on board for the sole purpose of lending an intellectual
veneer to Obama's political schemes and validate his power grab.
Hoyer Says Small Businesses Don't Make
$280,000 Per Year So They Won't Be Hurt. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said that job growth
and economic recovery would not be harmed by a Democratic plan to increase income taxes by $540 billion to pay
for their health-care reform proposal because the tax hikes would not affect small businesses.
The President Moves the Economic Goalposts.
So what's a president to do when the promises he made about his economic stimulus program fail to materialize? If
you're Barack Obama, you redefine your goals and act as if America won't remember what you said originally. That's
a neat trick if you can get away with it, but Mr. Obama won't. His words are a matter of public record and he will
be held to them.
Numbers Don't
Lie — Except When They're Fabricated. Anyone who remembers his campaign pronouncement that
a Kansas tornado had left "ten thousand dead" and "an entire town destroyed" (the 2007 storm actually killed twelve
people) knows that President Obama hasn't been one to worry about playing fast and loose with a few facts or numbers.
However, Mr. Obama's dogged refusal to deviate from his "150,000 jobs created or saved" by the $787,000,000,000.00
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is beginning to lend itself to more than a little head-scratching.
Mr. Obama and his administration have been making the claim for several weeks now.
Obama wags the dog. President
Obama's political strategy has finally crystallized: When all else fails, blame Bush-Cheney. And make no mistake
about it — all else has failed. ... Congressional Democrats and Obama seem to be disturbingly comfortable
with placing partisanship before national security and are not above manufacturing a scandal as a means to
achieve their objective.
Obama's Ethics: There was
an overwhelmingly fictional quality to President Obama's press conference last night from his opening remarks
on. Promoting his notional health care reform plan, whatever it is, he endlessly asserts a set of talking
points that would be demonstrably false if we had the text of a plan to check it against, such as the House's
thousand-page monstrosity. When he is about to unleash a whopper of special magnitude, Obama emits a
tell-tale sign. He prefaces it with "let me be clear" or "understand this." Last night [7/22/2009]
he achieved such "clarity" twice in his opening remarks.
IG-Gate: Connecting the
SIGTARP Dots. The Obama administration's promises of "transparency" are being revealed as lies
on the magnitude of "The check's in the mail" ... Avoiding public scrutiny of reckless misappropriation of
taxpayer dollars is at least one possible motive for the legislation sponsored by Rep. John Larson
(D-Conn.) ... that would give President Obama power to fire and replace five IGs at federal financial
oversight agencies.
Did someone mention
the Walpin scandal?
"Miss
Information". [Linda Douglass] makes no attempt whatsoever to prove her assertion that Obama's
comments were out of context or irrelevant. And that's what's sort of interesting to me. Her rebuttal
technique is truly Obamaesque, in that she does what Obama himself does: Quotes Obama as proof that
Obama is always right.
Obamacare Meltdown. The revelation
last week that a majority of Americans may actually disagree with the President was something for which his
team was clearly not prepared. Their attempt to marginalize citizens across the country who dared to
speak out against a government-takeover of health care is shameful, arrogant, and desperately sad. With
the American people growing increasingly unhappy with the President's health care plan, Democrats in Congress
are working feverishly to cast those who are concerned as radical props to the special interests. Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid, in a sign of bold leadership, last week told reporters that protests of
government-run health care were "phony" and "staged."
Barry, Barry,
Quite Contrary. I want to express my deep disappointment with your continued refusal to address
my questions about the new health care reform bill currently being pushed through Congress. A few days
ago, I sent you several dozen questions about the bill. You did not answer a single one of them.
Instead, you keep sending me form emails.
White House Acknowledges Unsolicited
E-Mails on Health Care. The White House for the first time Sunday [8/16/2009] somewhat acknowledged
that people across the country received unsolicited e-mails last week on health care from the administration,
suggesting the problem on third-party groups it claimed placed the recipients' names on the distribution list.
In a written statement released exclusively to FOX News, White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said the White House
hopes those who received the e-mails without signing up for them were not "inconvenienced" by the messages.
The Editor says...
The White House explanation was, in so many words, that their web site was hacked, and some malicious third
party loaded up the White House computer with email addresses. It's the old "somebody else did it"
excuse. If the White House story is true, then the people in charge of the White House web site are
incompetent. If the story is not true, then the White House is being run by liars. Take your
pick: they are incompetent or they are dishonest.
White
House Blames E-Mail Controversy on 'Sinister Conspiracy Theories' . The White House is blaming
the controversy over its Web site and mass e-mails on viral rumors, "fear-mongering" and "sinister conspiracy
theories" even as it acknowledges problems with its online practices. After confirming to FOX News over
the weekend that third-party groups could be responsible for official White House e-mails that have been sent
to people who never signed up for them, President Obama's new media director took to the official White House
blog to "clear up" the confusion.
Meet the new
crop of White House Fellows. Now I am sure all these people are fine people. But the
White House Fellows are supposed to be chosen on a strictly non-partisan basis. Do you think this crew
of community organizers, activists, and environmentalists were evenly split along partisan lines — as
is the nation is as a whole?
Who's Running the
Show? Is Eric Holder running the administration, or is the president disingenuous
when he denies responsibility for reactivating the investigation of CIA detainee-interrogation
cases? ... Either Obama is lying about his objectives at Justice or his attorney general is
seriously off the reservation. At the next prime-time press conference, someone might
ask Obama who is running the show.
Overcoming 'Remote-Control'
Government. The elaborate shell game local politicians play with our money is the biggest
threat to our freedom.
Senate Cloaks Obamacare. You can't read the bill
because they refuse to put it in writing. And you'd better not oppose it because the government will try to muzzle
you. President Obama has consistently refused to put his details into legislative language, and now the U.S. Senate
is doing the same thing. Rather than respecting public demands for transparency, they're figuratively spitting in
the public's face.
Obama's
foreign policy vision not so new age. President Obama's speeches often claim "the time has
come" for something, or "the days" of this or that "are over." It's as if his presidency has introduced
a new epoch. I used to think that invoking the vision of a new age was merely a rhetorical device to
distinguish him from George W. Bush. Now I think it is something more — a way to make
a very old philosophy sound new and failed policies of the past seem fresh and exciting.
Will the Real Barack
Obama Please Stand Up? In a clever twist on the 1960's quiz show, the President of the United
States is playing all three figures himself, all professing to be the real Barack Obama. The centrist
is a leftist, the post-racial plays the race card, the post-partisan is anything but. He supports free
markets, then nationalizes one after another. He swears to "preserve, protect and defend the
Constitution," but says it is defective and walks all over it. He denies being a socialist or a
fascist, but who is he really. Wright and Ayres were just a pastor and a guy in the neighborhood,
but seem to be more. Obama is an American, but seems to loathe America. Obama is the
chameleon in the White House.
The Un-Bama. [Scroll down] Obama
will frequently answer a tough question by saying "on the one hand we want X, while on the other we
certainly must be concerned with Y." He will avoid a clear answer, inviting the audience to
trust to him on the presumption that, because he could mention something of value to both sides, he
must be best suited to work out the optimal compromise. The liberal media fell completely for
this simple and cheap trick. Meanwhile, Obama, the hustler, never intended to solve any problem
with any solution other than one from the far left.
Beware Our Rousseauian
Imaginer-in-Chief. When the president talks about the America he wants to create, he envisions
some futuristic ideal community in which all good things exist, but only if the people — in John
Lennon-esque fashion — first imagine it will be so and then act to make it happen regardless of
whether it is possible. This kind of utopian thinking is not merely political hyperbole, but the main
sales routine for the president's political program.
Obama's First Year. Why
have Obama and his supporters fallen so far and so fast? We must, I think, begin before the beginning.
The Obama campaign was predicated on a fraud.
Obama: Ruling a blow to democracy.
President Barack Obama used his weekly address Saturday to attack this week's Supreme Court ruling that the government
cannot ban campaign contributions by corporations, saying it is a blow to his efforts to rein in special interests in
Washington. "This ruling strikes at our democracy itself," Obama said.
When Is a Person Not a Person?
Socialists have the most incredible lack of intellectual ability, and they lack the most basic tenets of
morality. Why is this? It is because their lives are predicated on political philosophy rather
than on facts and truth. That is how the Kenyan, Obama, came to be the Great Pretender in the White
House. In essence, he spoke well, but didn't have an ounce of truth about him. Yet, people
voted for him, to the astonishment of more rigorous minds.
Obvious Opacity.
Nancy Pelosi insisting on defining clandestine conferences as transparency brings clarity to what America
deals with every time Obama speaks. Since January of 2009, black is white, right is wrong, and open
is shut. Overarching debt is economic stimulus, job loss is growth, socialists are capitalists,
enemies are friends, and despair and despotism are defined as hope and change.
Triangulation makes a comeback.
President Barack Obama's proposal to cap certain government spending in his 2011 federal budget immediately
brought an old term back into the Washington conversation: triangulation.
President
Obama's Lexicon of Rhetorical Devices: Obama is addicted to utilizing language that he has
carefully tailored or perverted to obfuscate the truth. In other words, he uses double talk on a routine
basis. In order to understand what Obama truly tells us when he speaks to us, it is necessary to grab our
Little Orphan Annie Decoder Ring and decipher precisely what he means when he uses his pet phrases.
As Predictable as Clockwork — the
Obama three-step. In the past, every time Obama has been in a jam, two things followed. He first
throws under the bus perceived liabilities (yesterday's Rev. Wright and grandmother will be this year's Rahm Emanuel,
Timothy Geithner and Janet Napolitano). Second, he adopts the no more red state/blue state, "bipartisan," "there
is only one America" rhetoric.
Obama's 2011 budget will include phantom cap-and-trade
revenue. A trade publication is reporting this afternoon [1/29/10] that President
Obama's 2011 federal budget proposal will assume receipt of billions of dollars in revenue generated
from the cap-and-trade program even though that proposal appears now to be all but dead in Congress.
Obama's
Secret Slush Fund. President Obama and Budget Director Peter Orszag have thrown transparency out
the window and created a black box for taxes and spending on climate change hidden inside the administration's
2011 budget. ... A secret budget-within-the-budget. Talk about a lack of transparency. The blank
line is labeled: "Allowance for climate policy."
Americans finally
starting to see through the president's prevarications. The fact that this duplicitous non-achiever
was elected in the first place proves his ability to fool nearly all of the people some of the time. Despite
a near total lack of credentials, a voting record vacillating between rad-lib and "present," and a passel of
communists, terrrorists, anti-Semites and criminials in his close circle of friends, Obama rather easily fooled
nearly all of the people in our great land. Especially those who went to journalism school.
Obama's Bipartisanship Scam: When
the Republican House leadership surprised its members with their invitation to President Obama to speak at the
Republican retreat in Baltimore, many conservatives were dismayed. As the event played out on January 29th,
their concerns appeared justified. ... Throughout, Obama pushed his bipartisanship scam. But he made it
clear that it's a roach motel he's built for the Republicans willing to enter it: they'll go in and
never come out without adopting his ideas wholesale.
Obama Parts Company With Reality.
In his budget announcement today [2/1/2010], Obama said: "[O]ur government is deeply in debt after what
can only be described as a decade of profligacy." So he proposes to put the country far more deeply in
debt through profligacy of a sort that was undreamed of just a few years ago.
Politicians in
Wonderland. There was a recent flap because three different members of the Obama administration,
on three different Sunday television talk shows, gave three widely differing estimates of how many jobs the
president has created. That should not have been surprising, except as a sign of political sloppiness
in not getting their stories together beforehand. They were simply doing what Barack Obama himself
does — namely, just pulling numbers out of thin air.
An
Unusually Bad Prevaricator, Unusually Bad. Obama said in his State of the Union speech (and
similar statements several times since): "By the time I took office, we had a one-year deficit of
over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was
the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program. On top
of that, the effects of the recession put a $3 trillion hole in our budget. All this was before I
walked in the door." Though it's true that the deficit for President George W. Bush's final year in
office was close to $1.3 trillion, it must be noted that Obama and his fellow Democratic-controlled
Congress members approved the TARP bailouts and are largely responsible for the other budget expenditures
leading to that record deficit.
Presidential Promises and
Pretenses. If you accept responsibility for something bad, aren't you accepting blame by
definition? Not if you're Barack Obama, who has a talent for accepting responsibility while
minimizing and deflecting it.
Paygo Paygo. Barack Obama's
rhetoric about the economy in recent days has been a blizzard of excuses, euphemisms, denials, and
scapegoating attacks. Notice that Democrats are more upset that he is caricaturing Las Vegas
than Wall Street. By telling people not to "blow" their money in casinos, Obama is killing
business there, they say. But what about demonizing and discrediting bankers and "fat cat"
employers?
Pay-go gets
passed, then it gets bypassed. The ink is barely dry on the pay-as-you-go law, and Democrats
are seeking to bypass it to enact parts of their job-creation agenda.
The Political Masters Of Propaganda and
Their Well-Intentioned Disasters: "Pay as you go" -- it's the new code phrase for raising taxes
even more to pay for the inefficient and in many cases unsound, failure-prone government programs pushed relentlessly
by progressives. Great-sounding slogans. Great-sounding promises, claims and speeches. But now it's
OK to say one thing while cleverly concealing and delivering something different -- something most
Americans in survey after survey clearly say they do not want.
The Paygo
Fraud: When a White House statement refers to a "bedrock principle," it means something
slushy and soft and not really a principle at all, but a gimmick, still one more fraud to fool the
public, a joke of the kind that must keep presidential aides rolling on the floor in laughter at
all the fools who cheer them on.
The Paygo Con:
Pay-as-you-go, or paygo, rules require that new entitlement spending and new tax cuts must be paid for dollar-for-dollar
with entitlement spending cuts or tax increases. As Paul Ryan, the ranking Republican member of the House Budget
Committee has noted, the Democrats under Speaker Nancy Pelosi "have violated pay-as-you-go rules by nearly
$1 trillion" over the past three years. And they're not done.
Failure Writ Small. [Scroll
down] What Obama did in New Hampshire is the same as he has done for the past year, and on the campaign
trail before that. He presented a façade of an argument to justify actions Americans would not
possibly support were he to state their real motives. It's exactly how he tried to sell health care
reform (it's vital to economic recovery!), his massive transfer of wealth from private producers to
government employee unions (it's shovel-ready stimulus!), and his cap-and-trade bill (it will create
green jobs!).
Rigging the
Numbers: [Scroll down] "We need to develop a greater resiliency in this country on
security issues," Sarah E. Mendelson of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told the
New York Times. "The administration needs to remind the American public that we have convicted
195 international terrorists in federal courts since 2001." That 195 number is making the rounds.
It is both false and an exercise in hypocrisy.
Who
are the 300 terrorists held in U.S. prisons? [Scroll down] But there's one serious factual
debate going on about Holder's letter, and that concerns those "300 individuals." Just who are they?
It turns out some lawmakers have been trying for months to get an answer. They're not saying the claim is
false — they just want to see what it's based on. But so far they haven't been able to find out.
Obama's
Three Hundred Imaginary Terrorists: In justifying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's civilian trial, the
Obama administration is fond of citing a seemingly slam-dunk factoid: 300 other terrorists are currently
sitting in federal prisons after being tried in civilian court. One problem: that number seems
to have come out of nowhere.
190 Terror
Convictions in Civilian Trials, Mr. President? How About Fewer Than a Dozen? A new study
should finally put to rest the nonsense claim by President Obama, Attorney General Holder, and others in the
administration that "hundreds" of terrorists akin to Khalid Sheikh Mohammad were convicted in the civilian
justice system during the Bush administration. The number thrown around by the administration has
varied widely from 300 to 190 to assorted spots in between.
If
you think our debt's bad now ... On day one of his vow to take "meaningful steps to rein in our debt," Barack
Obama asked Congress to freeze portions of discretionary domestic spending. ... On Day Two, taking a break from the rigors
of austerity, he was in Tampa, Fla., promising $8 billion for high-speed rail projects there and in a dozen other
places. Four days later, he released a $3.8 trillion fiscal year 2011 budget that would add another
$1.3 trillion to the national debt.
Obama vs. Einstein: According to the
Washington Post, David Axelrod, Barack Obama's senior advisor, said that the president worked with "[Harvard
professor] Laurence Tribe on a paper on the legal implications of Einstein's theory of relativity." I've
read that paper, "The Curvature of Constitutional Space." It's complete nonsense. It shows no
understanding of Einstein's theory of relativity, or of the relationship between relativity theory and
Newton's theory.
Who Are the
Gitmo 9? The Obama administration, and Holder's Justice Department in particular, have a knack
for making a bad thing worse. Their typical scandal pattern is: (a) make bold pronouncements
about unprecedented transparency, (b) show a little leg, and then (c) stonewall, after which (d) White
House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel assures some friendly journalist that everything would have been different if
only they'd have listened to him. The result is the the trifecta: The administration ends up looking
hypocritical, sinister, and incompetent.
Obama Administration Using Accounting Gimmicks That Would
Make Enron 'Blush'. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) says the Obama administration is using an accounting
"gimmick" in its budget by not including the debt owed by mortgage firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Senate
Staffers Warned to Stay Clear of Drudge Report. The Senate's official gatekeeper, said the
Drudge Report, a conservative news aggregator, and whitepages.com "are responsible for the many viruses
popping up throughout the Senate," according to an e-mail to the Environment and Public Works Committee.
A
little secret about Obama's transparency: The current administration, challenged by the
president to be the most open, is now denying more Freedom of Information Act requests than Bush did.
Executive
Order Hijinks. I know we tire of the hypocrisy, but I really think this is remarkable.
We spent the eight years through January 19, 2009, listening to Democrats complain that President Bush
had purportedly caused a constitutional crisis by issuing signing statements when he signed bills into
law. ... But now Democrats are going to abide not a mere signing statement but an
executive order that
purports to have the effect of legislation — in fact, has the effect of nullifying legislation that
Congress is simultaneously enacting?
Education
Lessons Are Lost on Obama. I can't pinpoint the moment when the Obama administration went wrong
on the subject of education. But I can pinpoint the moment when it demonstrated that it can't be taken
seriously. It happened on Monday, March 15, when Education Secretary Arne Duncan was expounding to
reporters about revising the No Child Left Behind law. The new policy, he asserted, "is going to
revolutionize education in our country." No, it's not.
Changing its name isn't going to fool anybody.
White House: "Cap and Trade"
is Out. At the same time the White House is opening up to offshore oil and natural gas drilling,
the Obama administration is backing away from "cap and trade," a market-based plan to limit the nation's carbon
output — or at least that particular language used to describe the plan. "I think the term
'cap and trade' is not in the lexicon anymore," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said this morning on CNBC.
Obama's
Drilling Deception: If this were a sincere change of heart and an honest, stand-alone effort to
wean America off foreign oil, it would be worth heralding. But as always with this administration, there's
a catch...
Pence
calls president's drilling announcement a 'smokescreen'. Congressman Mike Pence, an Indiana
Republican, said in a statement today [3/31/2010]: ..."As usual the devil is in the details. Only
in Washington, D.C., can you ban more areas to oil and gas exploration than you open up, delay the date of
your new leases and claim you're going to increase production." "The President's announcement today
is a smokescreen. It will almost certainly delay any new offshore exploration until at least 2012 and
include only a fraction of the offshore resources that the previous Administration included in its plan.
Not exactly terrorists.
Holder compares Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to a mink rescuer.
Stall, Baby,
Stall. The administration's sudden interest in offshore drilling is little more than political
posturing designed to gain support for job-killing energy legislation soon to come down the pike. I'm
confident that GOP senators will not take the bait.
Wonder where
the next 'crisis' will be manufactured. The Democrat political template is very predictable
and depends on a complicit liberal Mainstream Media (MSM) to cover up and obfuscate for shortcomings in policy
execution. The Democrat political strategy to inundate, exaggerate, obfuscate, and inoculate policies is
evident in domestic policy initiatives as well as foreign policy efforts. The process begins with a
classic Cloward-Piven strategy to overwhelm the public with "crisis" after "crisis" that only Democrats can
successfully address.
Note
to Doctors: Now I'm "Entitled" To Your Services. Vice President Joe Biden did it again.
He reiterated what was once a central theme of Barack Obama's presidential campaign, and what has been a central
tenet of our government since Mr. Obama became President. And the idea is, simply, this: when government
takes wealth away from certain individuals and groups, and gives it to certain other individuals and groups, such
actions are NOT to be called "economic re-distribution." Such actions are to be described as "fairness."
Even
Obama's Fans Notice He's a Phony In How He Writes, Talks, and Even Walks. How phony is Barack
Obama? PBS Washington Week host Gwen Ifill reviewed New Yorker editor David Remnick's new Obama book
The Bridge in the Washington Post Outlook section Sunday [4/4/2010], and she kept finding Obama is a
Slick Barry, a "shape shifter." Obama even admitted to rhetoric what should be obvious — how
he changes "dialects" depending on the audience he's talking to.
The Empty Vessel President.
Although African-American in appearance, he was raised by whites and educated in the most elite Eastern liberal
tradition, with only a thin veneer of calculated street cred imbued by his time in the south side of Chicago.
Although swept to office as the recipient of the gift of soaring rhetoric, he has been found to be as heavily
dependent on a teleprompter as any beginning mass communications student, and prone to stammering and
self-contradiction in its absence. So what's left?
Obama Swings And Misses When Asked To Name Favorite White Sox.
When it comes to being a die-hard White Sox fan, the president's pin-striped jersey appears to be as empty as
his business suit.
What The Trustees Will Say About Social Security: It's
not surprising that the Obama administration has delayed the annual report from the Social Security and Medicare
trustees to reflect the impact of health care legislation. ObamaCare will show an immediate improvement
in the finances of both programs — at least on paper. How real that improvement turns out to
be is another question.
Searching for Core
Beliefs. For those who have not heard, beginning July 1, student loans will no longer be
administered by banks. Instead, they will be issued directly by the federal government via the U.S.
Department of Education. Tellingly, Obama used the same line of argument when pushing for health care
reform. There, too, he argued that government takeover will save money. Such assertions are
obviously absurd. To see why, we need only to ask this question: When has any government-run
program saved money?
Obama's false START.
[Scroll down] The administration is also hyping the "historic" scope of the arms reductions, ignoring the
more substantial efforts it inherited from the previous administration. Under President George W. Bush,
the United States retired 4,000 nuclear warheads, while the new agreement commits the country to retiring only
550. Mr. Bush moved significantly closer to Mr. Obama's fantasy-land vision of a nuclear-free world than
Mr. Obama will.
Prez Throws
Like Girl, Not Koufax, Media Cheers Anyway. Everywhere we look, we are surrounded by phonies, people
who say they are one thing but in actuality are something else entirely. ... Therefore when the president of the
United States, who in one short year has smoothly gone back on his word about many things — transparency,
democracy, earmarks, war — stepped out on the baseball mound on opening day to throw out the first pitch
for the Washington Nationals, we learned a bit about his authentic self.
Obama's useful idiocy: A look back.
Sarah Palin attacked President Obama's announcement of a new strategy on nuclear weapons that foreswears development of new
weapons and promises not to respond to chemical or biological attacks with nukes. Asked about Palin's comments by
George Stephanopolous, Obama responded: "Last I checked, Sarah Palin's not much of an expert on nuclear issues."
Is Obama himself an "expert on nuclear issues"?
Behavioral economics — the
governing theory of Obama's nanny state. Just as Obama is a liberal Democrat who, his admirers
insist, isn't really a liberal Democrat, behavioral economics proposes government regulation that, behavioral
economists insist, isn't really regulation.
Expansion of the welfare state disguised
as environmentalism.
Earth Day: An Assault
on Man. [Scroll down] The American Clean Energy and Security Act passed by the House proposes
green economic schemes that should frighten us greatly. For example, buried on pages 1014-1016 of the
bill is the "Monthly Energy Refund." According to this trick, for those with a gross income that "does
not exceed 150 percent of the poverty line ... a direct deposit" of an undisclosed amount of money will be
sent "into the eligible household's designated bank account[.]" On pages 502-503 we find the "Low Income
Community Energy Efficiency Program," whereby grants will be issued "to increase the flow of capital and
benefits to low income communities, minority-owned and woman-owned businesses and entrepreneurs[.]"
Obama Now Pushing Sneaky Wall Street Bailout.
Talk about taking another giant leap in the wrong direction. Fresh off his successful (for now) effort
to ram through an unpopular healthcare "reform" law, President Barack Obama is now fighting for legislation
on Capitol Hill that would set up a permanent fund to bail out companies in the financial sector. Of
course, that's not how his team is spinning things.
Obama's credibility
crisis: Hard on the heels of that shocking Pew Research Center survey finding that four out of five
Americans don't trust government comes a blitz of new revelations about the Obama administration that amount to a
full-fledged credibility crisis. The latest disclosures are especially damaging because they concern President
Obama's possible misrepresentation of his relationships with former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and convicted felon
Tony Rezko, his administration's misleading statements about Obamacare costs, and questions about improper
manipulation of government-owned General Motors and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
O, Such Sad Deception.
[Scroll down] Like the Jews of Goray, those people who voted for Obama are going to have their world turn over
180 degrees. I fear for their faith in Obama. He is not an honest broker. He misleads and uses
the ancient Roman trick of "bread and circuses." Interesting is the fact that this allegedly transparent leader
has not held a press conference in months. Obama's angry and contemptible behavior against allies is revealing.
His mercurial nature has Americans spinning; it takes incredible energy to keep up with his poisonous prevarications.
How Does Obama Keep A
Straight Face? Barack Obama seems to believe that Unions are not "special interest" groups.
Either that, or he really believes we're just too stupid to understand what he says and pay attention — over
time — to what he actually does.
Another Fine
Mess. The Obama Administration has tirelessly pushed the line that it has employed every
available tool to fight the Gulf oil spill from "Day One." Well, it's certainly true that every media
resource is being deployed to squelch comparisons with the slow-footed 2005 Bush administration response to
Hurricane Katrina. But as for having actual oil-spill fighting technology on hand before the crisis,
as the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 requires, the administration was clearly caught unprepared.
The President's Trick Or Tweet.
President Obama, while addressing college graduates, condemns our access to new media as a subversion of
democracy. Is the iPad a threat to democracy or exactly what Thomas Jefferson had in mind? At
Hampton University in Virginia on Sunday, the president lamented that in an age of text messaging, the Internet
and the iPad, information and its unfettered exchange had become a diversion that was putting a strain on
democracy. We are not making this up.
The Editor says...
Hmmm... The internet puts a strain on democracy, he says. Is that why he's trying
to
take control of the internet?
You
Want Us to Believe You Can't You Use An iPod, Mr. President? [President Obama] thinks that new
technology is dangerous, especially if it means you will pay less attention to official news. Yup, this
is the same Barack Obama who, in 2008, was the high-tech candidate of cool, whose campaign built a list of
13 million people, many of whom were "Friends of Barack" on Facebook and other cutting-edge websites.
Last Year He Said He Had All Michael Jackson's Music on His
iPod. President Barack Obama told Hampton University's graduating class on Sunday that he does
not "know how to work" an iPod. Last July, however, after pop-star Michael Jackson's death, Obama told
the Associated Press that he had Jackson's music on his iPod.
Obama campaigns against Bush —
again. President Barack Obama is trying to ride the wave of anti-incumbency by taking on an unpopular
politician steeped in the partisan ways of Washington. It doesn't matter that George W. Bush left
office 16 months ago. The White House's mid-term election strategy is becoming clear —
pit the Democrats of 2010 against the Republicans circa 2006, 2008 and 2009, including Bush.
Border
Charade. There's something disingenuous about the president's plan to deploy 1,200 National
Guard troops to the Arizona border to help the Border Patrol catch illegal aliens. His director of
immigration and customs enforcement, John Morton, has said he might not enforce immigration crimes reported by
Arizona officials, though the state's new law merely copies federal law.
We need a leader, not a
politician. We have become accustomed to [Obama's] management style — target a
scapegoat, assign blame and go on the attack. To win health care legislation, he vilified insurance
executives; to escape bankruptcy law for General Motors, he demonized senior lenders; to take the focus from
the excesses of government, he castigated business meetings in Las Vegas; and to deflect responsibility for the
deepening and lengthening downturn, he blames Wall Street and George W. Bush.
Drilling Bits of
Fiction. The Obama Administration is under political pressure to reverse its ill-considered deep
water drilling moratorium, and the latest blowback comes from seven angry experts from the National Academy of
Engineering who say their views were distorted to justify the ban.
Obama: If I had tried to prevent it, which I didn't, they would have stopped me.
In an interview with Politico's Roger Simon, President Obama says Republicans share blame for the Gulf oil spill
because they would have objected if, months ago, before the spill, Obama had tried to take steps to prevent such
a disaster. Of course, Obama did not attempt to take those steps, but the president says he would have been
stopped from doing so if he had. Therefore, the GOP is to blame.
Barack Obama's Body
Language. [Scroll down] Recall, for example, his claim, "I am not an ideologue."
It is reminiscent of Emerson's famous quote, "The louder he spoke of his honor, the faster we counted
our spoons." If you have to say it, maybe it's because it isn't so. Mr. Obama loves to talk
tough. He likes to make threats, demands, and promises. However, as Mary Matalin has observed,
"Obama talks like John Wayne but acts like Peewee Herman."
Obama's
9/11 envy. President Obama doesn't like the fact that the Gulf oil spill reminds people of
Hurricane Katrina, since the public response to that catastrophe hastened the decline of his predecessor's
standing. He'd prefer that the American people be reminded of something else — something
that rallied people around their president. And so he told Politico over the weekend that the oil
spill has "echoes of 9/11."
The bogey man.
[Scroll down] In an effort to defend his boss, a White House spokesman argued that Obama's recent golf
outing "probably does us all good as American citizens" because it gives him an opportunity to "clear his
mind." How, in the middle of a national disaster, is this President — or any President —
not working a good thing? If my apartment were on fire and I took time out to get a pedicure, it would seem
absurd. Why would the President believe the visual of a triple bogey while the Gulf of Mexico is being
destroyed is any better?
Obama's
Coffee House Loophole. President Obama is finally uniting the left and the right —
in joint opposition to his administration's chronic sabotage of transparency and public disclosure rules. ... K Street
influence peddlers told The New York Times last week that they've met routinely with Team Obama officials
over the past 18 months to discuss policy matters — at Starbucks, Caribou Coffee, even on a
side lawn — with the express purpose of circumventing the public's right to know.
The War
On Coal. President Obama journeyed to Wisconsin last Wednesday ostensibly to tout the success
of his failed stimulus package(s). On the same day, the Ex-Im Bank announced it was reconsidering a denied
loan guarantee affecting a Milwaukee-based company that sought to export coal-mining equipment to India. A
coincidence? We think not. Wisconsin is in play in November and so is the Senate seat held by
incumbent Russ Feingold.
A Hapless Administration.
Last week was extraordinary. ... Nancy Pelosi, known for her innovative solutions such as passing major pieces
of legislation without voting on them, announced that the best way to create jobs was to extend unemployment
insurance beyond 99 weeks. The President himself simply reminded the American people that it's all
George Bush's fault, and it will take "some time" before things get better. That should boost the
public's confidence in the economy.
Are
Overdue Reports Concealing ObamaCare Impact On Medicare?. Every year, the Annual Report of
the Social Security Board of Trustees comes out between mid-April and mid-May. Now it's July, and
there's no sign of this year's report. What is the Obama administration hiding?
The
endless hypocrisy of Eric Holder. Attorney General Eric Holder has developed a bad habit of
accusing others of acting in bad faith while doing so himself. Take the issue of Guantanamo Bay.
In Aspen, Colo., last week, Holder accused Congress of playing politics in preventing President Obama from
closing the Gitmo detention center — as Obama had promised to do within a year of his inauguration.
But this accusation is disingenuous for a variety of reasons.
Amnesty bill to be blurred with Gay marriage
and 'freedom rights'. A leak, who is very reliable, has revealed from behind closed doors the
intentions from this progressive congress and Obama. There is a Bill in the Works that will blur the
controversial, gay marriage issue with illegal alien rights and amnesty. This administration and congress
plans to hide behind 'freedom' and are obtaining huge support from the gay community, naturally in the name of
freedom regarding this soon to be exposed Bill. You and I have just gotten a sneak peak as to the
next 'Rules for Radicals trick' as it is unfolding.
The
Blame Game. The White House has gotten into the habit of blaming everything on Republicans.
Nowhere is that more evident — or mistaken — than in the debate over the extension of
jobless benefits.
Joe
Biden's merry band of lobbyists. Vice President Biden's latest fundraising e-mail asks for
help battling "corporate interests." "By spending an unprecedented amount of cash to support Republicans,"
Biden writes, "they're doing their best to buy their way back into power." This is the style of Obama's
White House: Never grant that your opponents disagree in good faith and always accuse them of corruption.
Beyond being unfair, it's dishonest, because it ignores the White House's coziness with corporate lobbyists.
Mission Accomplished II.
[Scroll down] Obama and many other congressional Democrats were similarly wrong about the war.
Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid famously said the war was "lost" and Senator Joe Biden said the only
solution to Iraq was to carve up the country into separate states. Now Biden credits, not President
Bush, but himself and President Obama with "success." This is political shoplifting.
How Many "Top Priority" Issues Does
Obama Have? After the Senate passed that $600 million Border Security Bill yesterday [8/12/2010],
President Obama issued a statement asserting that securing the southwest border has been "a top priority" since
he took office. But if you think Mr. Obama can have but a single "top priority," you'd be wrong.
He's got a load of them.
Obama Continues Pushing
Absurd College Agenda. [Scroll down] Obama and his education establishment allies note
that on average, people who have college degrees earn a lot more than people who don't. True, but
irrelevant. Individuals can't make decisions based on what the
average person has experienced;
they must make decisions based on
what they expect will happen to them.
Obama
Demagogues Private Enterprise. Many Americans fear privatizing anything they've come to view as
government work. They object to privately managed roads, independent charter schools, private prisons,
etc., despite private companies' repeated success at providing better service while lowering costs.
Private retirement accounts seem particularly threatening.
The Crisis President Finds
No Issues with Social Security. President Obama, if nothing else, is a prolific discoverer of
crises. In the short space of nineteen months, we have had a health care crisis, economic crisis, swine
flu crisis, housing crisis, banking crisis, auto industry crisis, financial regulatory crisis, global warming
climate change crisis, Gulf oil spill crisis, mortgage crisis, deep-water drilling crisis, teacher layoff
crisis, and of course, the lack-of-freshly-paved-roads crisis, aptly addressed by the Stimulus bill. ... But
the president assures us that "Social Security is not in crisis," thus guaranteeing that the situation will
worsen at least as long as he occupies the Oval Office.
Social Security
Bait and Switch. Democrats are trying to keep control of Congress by scaring the wig off grandma
with a phantom GOP plot against Social Security. That is not news. Social Security scare tactics
have been regular campaign themes since FDR. President Obama's unique contribution is to do this even as
he's begging Republicans to help him reduce the deficit and reform entitlement spending.
Reaping the Whirlwind.
[Scroll down] A couple of weeks ago, thirty National Guard troops showed up for border duty; Arizona asked
for three thousand. In a move designed to fail, administration talking heads can now claim there is Guard
support for border enforcement. It is another trick, another betrayal of a beleaguered state, and normal
operations for our anti-American president and his cabal of "progressive" academics.
Evil Democrat Paradigms.
Here are two paradigms which evil, divisive Democrats have shamefully promoted and exploited for years:
one, white men are burning the midnight oil thinking of ways to keep blacks down; and two, all rich white
people are selfish, evil, and deserving of punishment. No Democrat president has sold the "you have too
little because the rich have too much" message better than Barack Obama, which led to angry protesters
picketing the homes of corporate executives. Democrats are masters at creating a hated "bad guy"
to further their agenda.
Poverty and the Democrats.
The Associated Press reports that Census Bureau data due next week will show a record increase in the poverty
rate. ... The Democrats, of course, are like the arsonist who works for the fire department. They will
argue that soaring poverty demands more government spending.
Obama's Tax Evasion.
[Scroll down] In the liberal imagination, the money is the government's by default, and the president and
Congress determine through the tax code how much to give back to the people. Last week Obama told an audience
in Virginia that an extension would be "giving them $100,000 for people making a million dollars or more."
But this is backwards. Low taxes don't give away the government's money. Low taxes allow individuals
to keep the money they've earned through hard work, sound investment, and good fortune.
A classic case of Obama's sophistry and
lack of candor. I wonder how many people believe Obama's claim that his "understandings of the
traditional definitions of marriage" (the inapt use of the plural here suggests he is blowing smoke) are what
have kept him from "signing on to same-sex marriage." I don't believe it. I think he hasn't
publicly signed on for purely political reasons.
Change
No Change. President Obama's interview with CBS' "60 Minutes" was a study in calculated
arrogance. "We haven't seen enough change in Washington," is what he says the voters' message was in
unseating historic numbers of Democrats. "I think people rightly said, 'You're the president. You
committed and promised that we would see changes. We haven't seen as many changes as we'd like.'"
What an extraordinary example of Alinskyite propaganda: When the people try to stop you, misrepresent
what the people are doing.
Report: White House edited to favor
drilling ban. The White House rewrote crucial sections of an Interior Department report to suggest an
independent group of scientists and engineers supported a six-month ban on offshore oil drilling, the Interior
inspector general says in a new report. In the wee hours of the morning of May 27, a staff member to
White House energy adviser Carol Browner sent two edited versions of the department report's executive summary
back to Interior.
Today's
Prohibition. The White House has reversed its March decision and will now impose a drilling
moratorium in the Gulf and off the Atlantic coast. It blames the BP spill, but that's just a convenient
cover for the real reason.
Obama's 200lbs of Gulf Coast Seafood Stinks of
Hypocrisy. President Obama announced Wednesday [12/1/2010] that he will serve 200 pounds of
Gulf Coast seafood to guests at White House parties this holiday season, symbolic of his support for gulf coast
fishermen. It is unlikely, however, that 200 pounds of seafood will make Gulf Coast citizens forget that
just two days earlier, the Obama administration reimposed an embargo on US oil against America by reinstating
the offshore moratorium.
Obama muffed U.S.
motto. Members of Congress on Monday [12/6/2010] called on President Obama to issue a public correction
after he incorrectly labeled
E pluribus unum the U.S.'s motto in a speech last month, rather than
"In God We Trust." The lawmakers, members of the Congressional Prayer Caucus, also said the president was
making "a pattern" of dropping the word "Creator" when he recites the self-evident truths of the Declaration of
Independence. "By misrepresenting things as foundational as the Declaration of Independence and our national
motto, you are not only doing a disservice to the people you represent you are casting aside an integral part of
American society," the representatives said in a stern letter asking for him to correct the speech.
The Editor says...
This pattern of behavior clearly shows that President Obama is either dishonest or ignorant.
Obama
not so accurate on Social Security, Medicare histories. We were wondering if any historian types
would bring this up. In defending the need for compromise the other day, President Obama mangled the
legislative histories of Social Security and Medicare.
What
pay freeze? Remember that two-year federal pay freeze Obama proposed last week? Steve Losey at Federal Times
has crunched the numbers, and it doesn't look like federal workers are are going to be hurting much. In fact, out of a
workforce of about two million federal workers, the majority are still going to get raises in the next two years.
What
Obama's State of the Union speech has in common with Taco Bell. I agree with the liberal
blogosphere — Obama's State of the Union was "Reaganesque." Well written and well
delivered. Awe-inspiring. Except that it was all distortions, false promises, and bait and
switch. Don't believe a word. It was pure sales and marketing, with zero substance.
It was the same old "Cash for Flunkers." Failed programs renamed "investments" in order to sell
the con. Obama's State of the Union reminds me of the Taco Bell lawsuit in the news this same
week. ... There's no meat in Obama's product either.
Obama
Isn't Fooling Anyone. President Barack Obama penned a witty Wall Street Journal op-ed this week,
titled "Toward a 21st-Century Regulatory System." In it, he extolled the virtues of a free market system.
And to prove that his admiration of capitalism has nothing to do with naked political expediency, Obama signed an
executive order that will "root out regulations that conflict, that are not worth the cost, or that are just plain
dumb." Sounds rather subjective, though, don't you think? How do we gauge excessive regulation in the
Age of Obama? I can't recall a single federal program, piece of legislation or proposal in the past two years
that was initiated to ease the burden on consumers or businesses.
Obama's
sleight of hand on regulation. In Obama's first two years in office, he showed no signs
of concern about the number of costly regulations being issued by federal regulators. He set new
records for both the number of major regulations issued (43) and their added annual net burden on the
economy (conservatively estimated by the regulators themselves at $26.5 billion). None of
these will be revisited or revised by Obama's initiative. James Gattuso and Diane Katz of the
Heritage Foundation, who analyzed the new regulations in detail, predict that the real costs of
Obama's regulations so far are probably much higher than the government estimates.
Obama
Mispronounces Name Of 'Great Friend' Gillibrand. [President Obama] was at an event at
GE in Schenectady, New York today, announcing his selection of GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt as a senior
economic adviser. The president began his remarks by recognizing dignitaries in attendance.
The only ones among them he identified as "great friends of mine" were the two New York senators.
He then proceeded to mispronounce Gillibrand's last name.
Obama
the Centrist? Don't Be Fooled By His State of the Union Speech. If Obama's
inaugural address was any indication, expect a lofty oration that's thin on details and heavy on
the soaring rhetoric that helped propel the president into office. But don't believe the spin
that he's moved to the middle. To win re-election, President Obama will, in true chameleon-like
fashion, return to the man we met on the 2008 campaign trail, but only on the outside.
Our
So-Called 'Centrist' President. Will the man who conned the public into believing
he was a moderate, but who has governed as the most immoderate leftist in the country's history,
now try to pull the same con so he can be elected again?
'Investing'
our way to the poorhouse. President Obama hopes to be saved by a euphemism. He is
wagering on the power of the word "investment." It sounds so market oriented and cutting edge
in contrast to its more pedestrian, politically fraught synonym, "spending," especially the toxic
"deficit spending" that, to this point, has defined Obama's presidency.
Does Obama Think We Citizens Are All
Idiots? To freeze spending merely means that you will keep it at the same level.
In other words, after two years of wildly insane spending that increased our debt by trillions of
dollars, Obama says he won't increase that spending, but freeze it at that same level; and for
five
years. Can you imagine how many more trillions will be added to the national debt if he spends
at the same level for five more years?
Obama's
Business-Friendly Optics Are an Illusion. Who says President Barack Obama didn't get the
message of the 2010 midterm elections? In the last few weeks alone, the president reconfigured his
inner circle to look less like America and more like Bill Clinton's White House. He appointed one of
those formerly disparaged "fat-cat bankers," William Daley, as his chief of staff.
The
Obama Budget's Magic Asterisks. Past presidential budgets have been declared "DOA," or dead
on arrival. President Obama's budget should be declared "TBD" — to be determined.
Despite taking an extra week to release this year's budget, the president's budget is an incomplete list of
magic asterisks. Overall, the budget's claimed $2.2 trillion in deficit reduction over the decade is
based on smoke and mirrors. It claims $315 billion saved from eliminating "certain tax
expenditures" — but doesn't list which ones.
On Wisconsin, Obama
Appeals to Fear. It was only last Tuesday that senior White House advisor Valerie Jarrett
cautioned Fox News against making a "Wisconsin issue... [into] a Washington issue," signaling that the
administration was distancing itself from the ongoing public sector union battle in the Dairy State.
Monday, however, as Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was putting the final touches on his two year budget
plan, President Obama appeared to reverse himself on this decision in remarks made to the nation's governors.
Once again, the president has turned to manipulative community organizing tactics to divert attention from
the real issues as stake.
Global Warming By Another
Name. Even in this age of deficits and debt, the president's budget is chock full of global
warming items — except he wraps them around a new cause: clean energy. And that may be
enough to get Republicans to sign on. That "clean energy" is code for "anti-warming" is obvious, given
that even Environmental Protection Agency numbers show that virtually all emissions have dropped dramatically
in recent decades — except for greenhouse gases. To cut
those, Obama's budget aims to
hike Department of Energy spending by 12 percent from 2010 levels. He proposes $8 billion more
for various clean-energy programs — on top of the $30 billion "invested" via the 2009 stimulus. Even
that's only the tip of the iceberg. To pay for it all, Obama would stick it to Big Oil.
What Is Obama Thinking?
The House Republicans want $61 billion in cuts between now and the end of the fiscal year on September 30.
The Obama administration says it wants to meet them "half way" by offering cuts amounting to $10.5 billion.
A European's
Warning to America. [Scroll down] My guess is that, if anything, Obama would verbalize
his ideology using the same vocabulary that Eurocrats do. He would say he wants a fairer America, a
more tolerant America, a less arrogant America, a more engaged America. When you prize away the
cliché, what these phrases amount to are higher taxes, less patriotism, a bigger role for state
bureaucracies, and a transfer of sovereignty to global institutions.
No bureaucrat left
behind. "Did you know that it is Education Month in the Obama White House? Neither
did we. But apparently it is, and accordingly the President crossed the Potomac yesterday [3/14/2011]
to visit an elementary school in Arlington, Virginia, where he pushed for reauthorization of the unpopular
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) program. It was a classic President Obama performance. First he
denounced the "stale debates" over whether education needed "more money" or "more reform."
Then — surprise — he said what the country really needed was both.
Obama's Fuzzy Oil
Production Math. He doesn't want to admit it, but President Obama is taking credit for
something George W. Bush did. The White House is touting federal data that shows domestic
oil production is at its highest level since 2003. In a blog post last week, Obama's top climate
and energy aide, Heather Zichal, points to Energy Information Administration data that shows oil production
from the Outer Continental Shelf (which basically means the Gulf of Mexico) has increased by more than a
third between 2008 and 2010.
Obama might be a
socialist. If you want to allocate hundreds of millions to the Internal Revenue Service to
go after tax cheats when your administration is filled with tax cheats, including the guy in charge of
America's taxes (Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner), you might be a socialist. If you think the
"White House Party Crashers" are terrible people because they came to a state dinner without aninvitation,
but you want to give instant citizenship to 12 million uninvited "illegal aliens" who crashed our
border, you might be a socialist.
The White House Guess List. President
Barack Obama has won praise from the media — and from himself — for
putting the White House visitor logs online. Yet the visitor logs may hide more than
they reveal. The White House is still holding back "tens of thousands" of visitor logs,
according to congressional testimony last week by Tom Fitton, President of Judicial Watch, who also
added that "the Obama administration is less transparent than the Bush administration."
Obama's war on 'war':
What if they gave a war and nobody was allowed to say it? The debate over military action in Libya has
lately taken an absurd twist, driven by the Obama administration's bizarre unwillingness to call a war a war.
Everyone knows what is going on in Libya is a war, but the administration has placed a moratorium on plain English.
On
The Budget, Obama's A Real (Mis)Leader. With his speech Wednesday, President Obama will try to claim
leadership in the fight against the debt tsunami. But he's already had his chance to lead — many
of them, in fact — and he blew it.
Suppressed
EPA Hushgate climate report returns to snag CO2 regulation. Inside the National Center for
Environmental Economics, analysts scurried to finish the vital technical support document to fulfill
President Obama's most draconian campaign pledge: "Implement an economywide cap-and-trade program
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050." The NCEE was ready to cement the case
for the Environmental Protection Agency's "endangerment finding," the official declaration that carbon
dioxide from burning fossil fuels poses a threat to human health and welfare. Thousands of government
careers, academic contracts, and Big Green grants hung in the balance, and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson
needed to release it within days.
Obama's
Dreamland. Barack Obama just gave a belated but stern warning about escalating debt — a
few weeks after he presented a 2011 budget with a $1.6 trillion deficit, the largest shortfall in
American history.
Obama
and the FDA Stifling Innovation, Shortening Lives. President Obama has been on an "innovation"
binge these days. Since the start of the year — when he mentioned "innovation" nine times in
the State of the Union — the President has celebrated "Innovation Week" and released a 76-page
"Strategy For American Innovation." Why, then, are his policies doing so much to undermine his
rhetoric?
The Fog of Fog.
Incapable of straightforward answers, Team Obama's clarity-challenged civilians have led nauseated news-watchers through
more twists and turns than San Francisco's Lombard Street.
Securing the
border with semantics. The Obama administration has cooked up a novel way to calculate what a
great job his Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has been doing in stemming the flow of aliens
flooding over the border from Mexico. In March, Ms. Napolitano stood on a bridge connecting El Paso
to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and proclaimed border security to be "better than ever." In testimony before
the Senate Homeland Security Committee last week, Ms. Napolitano claimed that the meaning of "operational control"
of the border is "archaic" and that she intends to devise a "more quantitative and qualitative way to
reflect what actually is occurring at the border."
Obama's Predictable
Immigration Lies. President Obama went to El Paso, Texas, yesterday to pander to Hispanics by
promoting the myth that anyone who wants to get serious about border security is a dishonest racist.
Left's
Ideology Is Untethered From The Facts. Last month, Barack Obama was asked by an interviewer
from Texas why he is so unpopular there. Obama replied: "Texas has always been a pretty Republican
state, for, you know, historic reasons." Well, yes, "always" — if you believe, as many baby
boomers seem to, that the world began when they became more or less sentient. But, for the record: ... Other
than during Reconstruction, Texas did not elect a Republican senator until 1961 (John Tower) and did not
elect a second one (Phil Gramm) until 1984, and there were not as many as three Texas Republicans in the
U.S. House until 1968. Republicans were not a majority of the state's congressional delegation
until 2005.
The Reluctant
Assassination of Osama. Did Barack Obama want to assassinate Osama bin Laden? He may have at
some point, because he gave the ultimate order, or allowed it to happen. But I suspect the president
was deeply ambivalent. It's not just his postmodern worldview that suggests this reluctance.
It is the discombobulated aftermath of the killing, the weirdly botched reportage featuring such events as
cabinet members in the situation room supposedly watching a (we learned) non-existent streaming video of
the action and the statement that bin Laden — who had been under surveillance for months from a
CIA safe house — was living in a million dollar mansion. That was dialed down within a day
or two to $250,000 and then revealed, in videos, to be close to a slum.
White House Says They'll Stop Faking Photos.
Now if we can get them to stop faking: Polls, Unemployment stats, Presidents intelligence, experience,
love of America, town hall meetings, questions from reporters, answers from the President, spending numbers,
recoveries, benefits from Obamacare, foreclosure help, jobs numbers, grassroots (bussed in union hacks) support
at rallies, illegal immigrant numbers, new border patrol agents, Seabuiscuit Meechelle's diet, Obama's
smoking habit, Obama's hair color, his understanding the Constitution, etc.
Obama's
debt-limit truth-twisting. The battle over raising the federal debt limit is pretty confusing to most
Americans — and it doesn't help matters that the Obama administration is twisting the facts in a bid to
get the public on its side against congressional budget-cutters. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, in particular, is
playing the "dire warning" game.
Alligators,
Moats and Other Such Nonsense. President Obama gave what was billed as an important speech on
immigration last week near the border in El Paso, Texas. Unfortunately, it was one of the most
demagogic moments in recent presidential history. Nearly everything Obama said was either factually
incorrect or deliberately misleading.
The
truth behind Chrysler's fake auto bailout pay back: The New York Times reports: "Chrysler
said Tuesday that it had paid back $7.6 billion in loans from the American and Canadian governments,
marking another significant step in the revival of the company, the smallest of the Detroit automakers."
But as The Truth About Cars reports, the loan pay back is just another Obama con job.
Obama resides on the outskirts of the law.
ROBAMA:
Is It OK for a President to Autopen a Bill Into Law? With the Patriot Act set to expire last
night, President Obama signed legislation extending it — from France — as first reported by ABC News.
How did he do that? Using an autopen, of course. Is that allowed?
Congressman questions Patriot Act
"autopen" signature. Republican Rep. Tom Graves of Georgia sent President Obama a letter today
questioning the constitutionality of the president's use of a device called an autopen to sign into law an
extension of the Patriot Act. Congress passed the bill Thursday night, shortly before certain provisions
of the Patriot Act were set to expire. However, Mr. Obama could not sign the bill right away in person,
since he was in Europe for the G8 Summit. In order to sign the bill before the measures expired, he
authorized the use of the autopen machine, which holds a pen and signs his actual signature.
Obama
"Signs" Patriot Act Extension From Afar — Via Autopen. On Thursday, May 6
Congress passed a four-year extension of the unconstitutional powers included in the Patriot Act. These
unprecedented powers include allowing the federal government to search records and use wiretaps of terrorism
suspects without satisfying the conditions of the Fourth Amendment. The House of Representatives and
the Senate rushed the votes through their respective bodies, following the futile, though noble, efforts of
several of their colleagues to prevent the passage of this post-9/11 package of unconstitutional measures.
In the name of fighting the Global War on Terror and keeping the "homeland" safe, the protections placed by the
Constitution around the civil liberties of Americans were removed, the parchment barrier shredded by the
purveyors of fear.
If a machine can sign for the
President, could Sasha, too? Forget what you learned in civics class back in high school.
It turns out a bill doesn't have to be signed by the president to become law. A machine can sign it for
him. Pres. Obama was 3,700 miles from the White House at the G8 Summit in Deauville, France, when
Congress voted final passage of a bill to extend the life of three expiring provisions of the Patriot Act,
provisions deemed important by the president.
Obama's
Donor Charade Begins Again. Back during the last round of Democratic presidential primaries in
2008, the Obama campaign disseminated the completely disingenuous claim that that it didn't take money from
special interest groups and lobbyists. Even after this was debunked time and time again, Obama continued
to stand by it.
Double-dip deniers.
President Obama says he's not at all worried that the nation is on a double-dip recession track, even though he
admits he has no idea what the meaning of the sudden downturn in job growth foretells. He claims the
nation is on a path of solid but uneven recovery and we should not "panic."
FDA
warning photos faked. Tobacco peddlers will soon be forced to emblazon every package of their
product with graphic new warnings that show what the government says will happen to you if you smoke
cigarettes. ... There is only one problem with the federal government's great campaign of graphic images aimed
at combating the deceit of tobacco companies and rescuing us from our stupid selves. The images are
fabricated.
DNC
Fundraises from Inside the White House? [Scroll down] His cheerleading section in the
press is quick to defend the president, saying that it is not yet known whether or not these Wall Street
execs were expressly pumped for cash. But let's be real about this. The president, through the
DNC, didn't invite his Wall Street friends over to the White House because he sincerely wanted their advice
on the economy. No, the meetings and the president's follow-up phone calls to those who could not
attend had one purpose: To make his fundraising pitch. Even the liberal
New York Times
sees that.
Obama's Petulant, Passive Aggressive Leadership
Reveals a Fixed Adolescent Mindset. One of the chief traits of the adolescent mindset is the
fascination with being omnipotent and perfect. This is why adolescents love such comics as Superman,
etc. Obama seems to enjoy nothing more than standing to pontificate upon topics he apparently has no
depth of knowledge of. Further, he invariably presents his ideas as the only sane or acceptable choice
against the Conservative's monstrous position, an invariable bona fide straw man misrepresentation.
This
is not leadership. As the United States continues to drift, many Americans still seem
perplexed that after two-and-a-half years, Barack Obama is a walking contradiction. He cannot
seem to lead; he can only follow and dictate. He has no policies, only vague concepts and Marxist
ideology. He starts wars and calls them something else. He simultaneously makes Congress
responsible and yet irrelevant. He refuses to be held accountable for anything.
The Permanent
Insurgency. By now, the Obama "leadership" style should be blindingly apparent: Do
nothing, lie in wait, and then counter-attack. Never present a plan if you can possibly help it,
but deal exclusively in bromides and platitudes as you stake out the moral "high ground" and get ready
to ambush the other guy. Think of it as the Permanent Insurgency campaign.
Obama's Idiotic Infographic.
President Obama has suggested in his last 147 television appearances that he inherited the national debt from
President Bush, who squandered the Clinton surplus with his "tax cuts for the rich" and his unnecessary wars.
Now someone at whitehouse.gov, apparently not an accountant or an economist, has put together an "infographic"
that assigns hard numbers to these vague assertions, explaining in detail how "$12.7 Trillion [was] Added
to the Debt Over the Last Decade." The graphic parts of the infographic are competent, and the White
House logo looks spiffy, but the info part is entirely mendacious.
Obama's
"Country Before Party" Nonsense. The "country before party" line has become Obama's new theme in
the wake of the debt crisis, and the passion with which he invokes it indicates it's something he actually and
truly believes in. And it's utter nonsense. Offensive nonsense too. Obama isn't truly asking
Republicans to put country before party. He is asking them to elevate the interests and ideas of the
Democratic party higher than their own ideas, their sense of what is best for the nation, and their deeply held
convictions about the moral hazard posed by a too-large government and a populace too reliant on it.
Why
it's really hard to trust Barack Obama: [Scroll down] In his State of the Union Address,
Obama said, "We have excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs." But I counted fifty ex-lobbyists in
policymaking jobs. So I asked the White House about this. The response: "As the President
said, we have turned away lobbyists for many, many positions." America heard "we haven't hired lobbyists."
Obama had to know that's how it would sound. But he meant "there are some lobbyists who didn't get the
job in our administration for which they applied."
Obama Too Clever by Half.
Obama's goal is to get Republicans on record as rejecting or blocking a "jobs bill" made up mostly
of tax cuts and opposing tax hikes on various unsympathetic groups. That would give Obama, a
little more than a year out from the election, the chance to campaign on the message that Republicans
refused to cut your taxes because they were sheltering tax breaks for oil companies, millionaires
and billionaires, and so on.
Obama's
Holiday Greeting: Does He Now Claim He's Jewish? First, he clumsily inserts nakedly political
posturing that seems altogether out-of-place in the context of the High Holy Days. And, second, Mr.
Obama seems to suggest that he himself dutifully celebrates Rosh Hashanah — treating the holiday
like a universal American tradition rather than an unequivocally religious occasion annually embraced by
less than 2% of our citizens who identify as Jews.
'Must
Pass' Bill Must Be Nuked. For a full month now, President Obama has insisted that Congress "pass
this bill." And for a full month, his own party has steadfastly refused to bring it up for a vote. ... All
the while, Obama has been running around the country blaming Republicans for blocking his bill, with pliant
media regurgitating the charge.
Team
Obama's Magic Act — Rise of Deportations Hides Drop in Immigration Enforcement. The
famous magician Harry Houdini would be proud of President Obama?s efforts to fool Americans into believing that
immigration enforcement has increased. His trick is getting the public to focus on the total number of
deportations while he hides the details of what those total numbers really reveal.
Obama's
party dodge. We don't doubt for a moment that President Obama thinks he's surrounded by
Republicans — given the Democrats' lack of any accomplishments on Capitol Hill. But that hardly
justifies what he and other leading Democrats have been doing lately. The Hill newspaper notes that top
Democrats from Obama on down have begun referring to the legislative branch as "the Republican Congress" — as
if their own party's majority in the Senate didn't even exist.
Obama's Socialism in
God's Name. First, Obama's White House spokesman Jay Carney seems to have squirmed a bit when
trying to unpack the president's somewhat confusing proclamation. When challenged by reporters about
the propriety of bringing God into the current political fray Carney responded by saying: ["]I believe
that the phrase from the Bible is 'the Lord helps those who help themselves.["] The trouble with Carney's
response is that it is simply wrong. The phrase is not biblical in origin, and more importantly, the
president said nothing about people who "help themselves." The president in other words wants the federal
government to expand in size, scope, and power in order to
put certain constituencies back to work.
Time's up for Obama.
President Obama is horrible at governing. He's not bad, though, at moving goalposts. The stimulus was
supposed to "save or create" a bazillion jobs. When the jobs on the "create" side of the ledger were smaller
than predicted, the administration did away with the term and started using jobs "funded." That, of course,
includes numerous pre-existing jobs (including part-time ones) at every company or government entity that received
stimulus money. In the debt ceiling debate this past summer, the White House initially agreed to a target of
$800 billion in new revenue. When House Republicans put out a plan to reach that figure, the White House
raised the bar to $1.2 trillion. Now the President who gave himself one term to fix the economy is asking
for another four years to complete the job.
The
Orwellian American Left. As I heard Barack Obama and his propaganda minister, Jay Carney,
endorsing tax cuts as a vehicle for economic growth, I was reminded, again, of George Orwell's "1984" and
the striking similarities between his Oceania and the American left's vision for America. Oceania's
Big Brother regime had "four Ministries between which the entire apparatus of government was divided," the
Ministry of Truth, the Ministry of Peace, the Ministry of Love and the Ministry of Plenty. Each
department was dedicated to the opposite principle suggested by its title.
The Editor says...
George Orwell wrote
1984 as a warning to future generations about the dangers of totalitarianism.
It was not intended to be a how-to manual.
Lawmakers
Blast Administration For Calling Fort Hood Massacre 'Workplace Violence'. Sen. Susan Collins on Wednesday [12/7/2011]
blasted the Defense Department for classifying the Fort Hood massacre as workplace violence and suggested political
correctness is being placed above the security of the nation's Armed Forces at home. During a joint session of
the Senate and House Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday, the Maine Republican referenced a letter from the Defense
Department depicting the Fort Hood shootings as workplace violence. She criticized the Obama administration for
failing to identify the threat as radical Islam.
Is
the Obama Administration Politically Manipulating the Poverty Data? The Census Bureau's recently
created "Supplemental Poverty Measure" (SPM) looks like a ruse to artificially show economic and poverty-reducing
improvement in time for the 2012 presidential election. Longer-term, it appears to be a rigged mechanism
for demonstrating how ObamaCare, assuming it survives legal challenges and attempts at repeal, is a resounding
success. If I'm right, the press is doing a really good job of setting things up.
Report:
Government Vastly Overstating Immigration Enforcement. A just-released Syracuse University
study indicates that the government is overstating its enforcement of the immigration laws by a staggering
amount. According to TRAC, Syracuse's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, the Immigration and
Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) has overstated the number of immigration law violators apprehended by a
5:1 ratio. And that's the good news. Deportations were overstated by 24:1 and detentions
by 34:1. TRAC says that ICE has represented, not only in press releases but in congressional testimony,
that in 2005 it apprehended 102,034. The records it produced, however, show only 21,339. It
further claimed 166,075 deportations but documented only 6,906; and said it had detained 233,417 when
the paperwork shows only 6,778.
Smaller
Government's Newest Politician: Barack Obama. Seems Barack Obama has slipped on his Mitt Romney
mask. The President hosted a White House smaller-government event complete with a bubble graph slide show
and CEOs. One difference: Obama is proposing lessening the grip of government on jobs and the economy
by asking Congress to transfer more power to him. Obama asking for more power to curtail government could
be likened to quitting marijuana by shooting heroin.
Presidential nonsense: Last week,
President Barack Obama, at a Capital Hilton fundraising event, told the crowd, "We can't go back to this brand
of you're-on-your-own economics." Throughout my professional career as an economist, I've never come across
the theory of "you're-on-your-own economics." I'm guessing what the president means by — and
finds offensive in — "you're-on-your-own economics" is that it's a system in which people are held
responsible for their actions, that they take risks and must live with the results, that people can't force
others to pay for their mistakes, and that they can't live at the expense of other people.
Reorganizing
deck chairs on U.S. Titanic. President Obama's puny election-year plan to consolidate a handful of
government agencies and programs is about three years and $4 trillion too late. With America's jobless
rate stuck at a few tenths below 9 percent and his dismal job approval polls in the mid-40s — the
equivalent of a failing grade — Mr. Obama is attempting to impersonate a budget cutter. He's
fooling no one.
Obama claims credit for cheap
natural gas. President Barack Obama has been taking the credit for the worldwide boon of cheap natural-gas,
and declining to give credit to the entrepreneurial energy industry.
The Obama team manipulates the news media
This subsection is now on another page,
located
here.
Flip-flops and broken promises
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here.
Bait and switch
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here.
"Spontaneous" events and "randomly selected" people
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Outright hypocrisy
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located
here.
What's the rush?
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located
here.
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