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I Lied Lie
Obama to
delay repeal of US military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
Obama will not move for months, and perhaps not until 2010, to ask
Congress to end the decades-old ban on open homosexuals in the ranks,
two people who have advised the Obama transition team on this issue say.
Repealing the ban was an Obama campaign promise.
Obama provided a policy statement to the (deviously
named ) Human Rights Campaign, the largest U.S. homosexual
rights group, pledging to repeal the exclusion and to invite back
service members discharged under the law. He also said that he
wants the Pentagon to school military people on how to treat gays.
Open acceptance would change the atmosphere entirely. If
fraternization is a problem now between men and women, imagine the
conflicts with openly gay officers who no longer have to be reticent.
He's Too Subtle For That
Charles Krauthammer
says Barack Obama doesn't lie. He's too subtle for that.
He . . . well, you judge.
Here are three examples within a
single speech -- the now-famous Obama-Wilson "you lie" address to
Congress on health care -- of Obama's relationship with truth.
(1) "I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits -- either
now or in the future," he solemnly pledged. "I will not sign it if
it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future. Period."
Wonderful. Obama seems serious, veto-ready, determined to
hold the line. Until, notes Harvard economist Greg Mankiw, you get
to Obama's very next sentence: "And to prove that I'm serious, there
will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with
more spending cuts if the savings we promised don't materialize."
This apparent strengthening of the pledge brilliantly and
deceptively undermines it. What Obama suggests is that his plan
will require mandatory spending cuts if the current rosy projections
prove false. But there's absolutely nothing automatic about such
cuts. Every Congress is sovereign. Nothing enacted today
will force a future Congress or a future president to make any cuts in
any spending, mandatory or not.
Just look at the supposedly
automatic Medicare cuts contained in the Sustainable Growth Rate formula
enacted to constrain out-of-control Medicare spending. Every year
since 2003, Congress has waived the cuts.
Mankiw puts the Obama
bait-and-switch in plain language. "Translation: I promise to fix
the problem. And if I do not fix the problem now, I will fix it
later, or some future president will, after I am long gone. I
promise he will. Absolutely, positively, I am committed to that
future president fixing the problem. You can count on it.
Would I lie to you?"
(2) And then there's the famous contretemps
about health insurance for illegal immigrants. Obama said they
would not be insured. Well, all four committee-passed bills in
Congress allow illegal immigrants to take part in the proposed Health
Insurance Exchange.
But more important, the problem is that laws
are not self-enforcing. If they were, we'd have no illegal
immigrants because, as I understand it, it's illegal to enter the United
States illegally. We have laws against burglary, too. But we
also provide for cops and jails on the assumption that most burglars
don't voluntarily turn themselves in.
When Republicans proposed
requiring proof of citizenship, the Democrats twice voted that down in
committee. Indeed, after Rep. Joe Wilson's "You lie!" shout-out,
the Senate Finance Committee revisited the language of its bill to
prevent illegal immigrants from getting any federal benefits. Why
would the Finance Committee fix a nonexistent problem?
(3) Obama
said he would largely solve the insoluble cost problem of ObamaCare by
eliminating "hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud" from
Medicare.
That's not a lie. That's not even deception.
That's just an insult to our intelligence. Waste, fraud and abuse
-- Meg Greenfield once called this phrase "the dread big three" -- as
the all-purpose piggy bank for budget savings has been a joke since
Jimmy Carter first used it in 1977.
Moreover, if half a trillion
is waiting to be squeezed painlessly out of Medicare, why wait for
health-care reform? If, as Obama repeatedly insists, Medicare
overspending is breaking the budget, why hasn't he gotten started on the
painless billions in "waste and fraud" savings?
Obama doesn't
lie. He merely elides, gliding from one dubious assertion to
another. This has been the story throughout his whole health-care
crusade. Its original premise was that our current financial
crisis was rooted in neglect of three things -- energy, education and
health care. That transparent attempt to exploit Emanuel's Law --
a crisis is a terrible thing to waste -- failed for health care because
no one is stupid enough to believe that the 2008 financial collapse was
caused by a lack of universal health care.
So on to the next
gambit: selling health-care reform as a cure for the deficit. When
that was exploded by the Congressional Budget Office's demonstration of
staggering ObamaCare deficits, Obama tried a new tack: selling his plan
as revenue-neutral insurance reform -- until the revenue neutrality is
exposed as phony future cuts and chimerical waste and fraud.
Obama doesn't lie. He implies, he misdirects, he misleads -- so
fluidly and incessantly that he risks transmuting eloquence into mere
slickness.
Slickness wasn't fatal to "Slick Willie" Clinton
because he possessed a winning, nearly irresistible charm. Obama's
persona is more cool, distant, imperial. The charming scoundrel
can get away with endless deception; the righteous redeemer cannot.
Obama's 21 Inaccurate Claims
Michael F. Cannon and Ramesh Ponnuru have been fact-checking Obama
and say that it's a good thing that other congressmen did not follow
Rep. Joe Wilson’s lead, last fall (2009). If they yelled out every time Obama said
something untrue about health care, they would quickly find themselves
growing hoarse.
By their count, Obama made more than 20
inaccurate claims in his speech to Congress. They have excluded
several comments that are deeply misleading but not outright false --
for example: Obama pledged not to tap the Medicare trust fund to pay for
reform, but since there is no money in that "trust fund," anyway, the
pledge is meaningless. Even so, they may have missed one or
more false statements by Obama. Their failure to include one of
his comments in the following list should not be taken to constitute an
endorsement of its accuracy, let alone wisdom.
Here's
the list of Obama's 21 "inaccurate claims."
A New World's Record
7 Lies In Under 2 Minutes (01:47)
Pamela Geller
thinks this is a new
world's record for a dirty, lying politician. Wow! Not one element of
truth in there. Not one. Nada. Zip. Zilch.
Just A Liar And Not A Leader
Rob Binsrick
says that during one of Barack Obama’s speech to a joint session of
Congress last year, he was met at one point with an emphatic outburst of
"You lie!" by Congressman Joe Wilson. At the time Wilson’s
outburst was deemed to be disrespectful, demeaning, unprofessional
and/or even just stupid. In retrospect though, Wilson should be
commended for pointing out what is the absolute truth about Obama, which
is that he is indeed a liar.
When Bill Clinton was serving as
president, it became very evident that he was a pathological liar.
However, Clinton’s lies were more of a personal nature which for the
most part only affected himself. On the other hand, Obama’s lies
will affect hundreds of millions of Americans for generations to come.
As a prime example of Obama’s pathological lying, there is perhaps
none more glaring than his reversal about holding healthcare hearings in
the public eye, which he often noted would be broadcasted on C-SPAN.
He made these vows eight times during the presidential campaign (video
at link).
Now though, Congressional leaders have decided that
they are not even going to follow the normal protocol of reconciling the
House and Senate versions of their respective healthcare bills through
the use of bi-partisan conference committees. Instead, they are
going to hold closed-door meetings which will involve only Democrat
leaders from both houses of Congress and representatives from the Obama
administration. Republicans will essentially be completely shut
out of the process.
Obama, for his part, rather than asking the
Congressional leaders to help him keep his campaign promises is instead
fully supporting their plans and even asking them to speed up the
process as much as possible. The main reason for the urgency is so
Obama can speak about the legislation during his state of the union
address in February.
Yes, that is correct, the reason for the
urgency is not because the bill is so good for and/or so needed by the
American people that it needs to be passed as quickly as possible.
Instead, the reason for the urgency by the Democrats is simply so Obama
has a talking point in his speech.
Obama has talked about how
proud he is of the Democrats in Congress for passing their healthcare
bills and talked about how it was a victory for all Americans.
Then why are they so afraid of letting the American people see the
process? If this legislation is supposedly so good, then the
Democrats should be lauding it daily in the public eye and it should be
the cornerstone of their election campaigns in 2010. Instead
though, they are doing all that they can to hide the bill and to hide
their actions from the public eye
The reasons for that are
obvious. First and most importantly, it is not a good bill.
The majority of the American people do not support it. It will
inevitably add to the deficit regardless of how many accounting gimmicks
the Democrats use to hide that fact. And the quality of health
care will go down if this bill passes.
Second, the Democrats do
not want the American to see for themselves the back-room deals and
sweetheart packages that they have to include in the bill to get their
own party members to vote for it. And once again, if the bill is
supposedly so good then why would those bribes and incentives be needed
anyway?
Third, the Democrats and Obama do not want the American
people to see just how partisan they have become by locking out the
Republicans and even the more moderate Democrats from the process.
Obama once stated that if Iran would offer an open hand to him then he
would meet with them. However, he will not even do that with
fellow Americans who disagree with him. That is not leadership but
is instead a clear sign of cowardice. It is tantamount to the
playground crybaby who takes his ball and goes home whenever he does not
get his way.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, in discussing
this healthcare reform process, actually stated that "There has never
been a more open process" in passing the legislation. Even if that
comment had been intended as a joke it would have still raised eyebrows.
The fact that she was actually being serious when she said it should
concern every American because it shows how Pelosi and her cohorts
define openness.
The real problem here though is still Obama.
He could have acted like a president at some point and made the process
more open and more bi-partisan. However, he instead turned it over
to the highly partisan Democrats in Congress and has now joined in with
them in their orgy of spending and government intervention. When
the American people heard Obama’s bold statements on the campaign they
voted for him to be a new bold leader. But instead of a leader all
they got is a bold-faced liar.
The Lies Of Obama
John Ellis says, 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 Obama’s lying.
When politicians lie they are usually trying to avoid political damage,
or to make themselves look good. Bill Clinton lied (and got
himself impeached) to save himself from embarrassment about his
relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Hillary Clinton lied about
being under fire in Bosnia to enhance her non-existent foreign affairs
profile. Richard Nixon was forced from office because he lied to
cover up his involvement in a political dirty trick. John Kerry
lied about his Vietnam combat experience to blunt his anti-military
reputation. But Barack Obama’s lies are far more corrosive and
destructive, because they go the heart of legislation and governance,
and so seriously undermine trust in government. His lies generally
take a specific form: they attempt to persuade people to vote for him or
his policies by categorically assuring them that they need not have the
anxieties that they have been expressing. The lies say,
essentially: trust me, support what I want, and I promise that what you
fear will never happen. But in every case it soon becomes clear
either that he knew perfectly well that what the public feared would in
fact happen, or that he was giving a firm assurance that he was in no
position to give, or that he had no intention of following through on
his promise.
Ellis concludes, Obama evidently
believes that he can solve any problem with a speech. But he
really does not care whether what he says is true or not, nor does he
feel any responsibility to honor the assurances and promises he makes.
As a result, this nation is now in a position where it cannot believe a
word that he says, and that amounts to an unprecedented crisis of
confidence. Democratic government will atrophy if we allow lying
on this scale to count as the business as usual of politics. When
will the press and the Congress hold him accountable?
Obama Says Anything -- And Does So, Again and Again
Hugh Hewitt
says said the caller from Atlanta said, "I have seen more of
President Obama than I have of my wife, and I'm a newlywed."
Funny. And true. And sad. Stung by his defeat in
Massachusetts after a personal appearance on behalf of Martha Coakley
and a long speech telling Massachusetts voters why they had to send her
to Washington, Obama seems intent on punishing the entire nation with
speech after speech after speech.
We are to be cajoled into
submission.
It isn’t working. "He talks and talks," Mark
Steyn said on my show Thursday. "And the more his rhetoric is
detached from reality, the more he’s actually devaluing his only
currency which is words."
Obama’s meeting with Senate Democrats
on Wednesday is the perfect example of the political cul-de-sac he finds
himself in. He is trying to use words to change the political
weather, but the more he speaks, the more ridiculous his arguments
appear.
He told the senators that "they needed to get out there,
get out of Washington, out of the echo chamber." This is laughable
when this past August is recalled. Democrats went home to their
states and districts and found town halls jammed with ObamaCare
opponents. Then Obama urged them to disregard the voters.
They did so, and their political peril is palpable. Now he is
telling them to hold more town halls.
That’s not amazing as
Obama’s rewrite of budget history, which somehow ignores that the budget
deficit was $161 billion in 2007 and now stands at $1.6 trillion, a
staggering number that is spooking markets. "We’ve also got to get
back to fiscal responsibility," he told the senators, and the listeners
outside the room howled. Not only is Obama not persuading the
public of his ideas or his leadership skills, he is shrinking before
their very eyes. It is a poor impersonation of Jon Lovitz, with
Obama thinking, "that’s the ticket!" with every paragraph he utters.
Obama does seem to realize that blaming President Bush, which was
never very presidential to begin with, has become almost a sign of
adolescence. He is thus pivoting from blaming his predecessor to
blaming the Congressional GOP. Obama told the senators that they
had had to face more filibusters in a single year than all of the
filibusters of the 1950s and 1960s combined, and blamed the Republicans
for obstructionism. Of course this is nonsense. Not a single
successful partisan filibuster was mounted in 2009, which is not
surprising because after Arlen Specter’s switch, the GOP totaled 40
votes. A handful of Obama nominees languished because significant
numbers of Democrats joined Republicans in opposing them, but the idea
that obstructionism prevailed throughout 2009 is risible, and Obama who
claims 60 votes is just not enough is risible as well.
The
entire meeting was comedy though it was intended as drama, and Obama
left thinking he’d had another great day, just as he thinks he won his
debate with Republicans the Friday before.
While Obama pats
himself on the back, however, the unemployment numbers climbed, the
budget deficit shocked, the markets tanked and Iran threatened.
Obama is in a bubble of words and surrounded by "advisors" who are
clearly overmatched by the world. Even Republicans have to hope a
shuffle is ahead for the senior staff, and that some experienced
leadership is brought to 1600. The country is in a difficult
place, and unlike a debate tournament, losing a few rounds has enormous
consequences.
We have to hope that Obama recognizes that his
speech offensive has become offensive, and that what really needs to be
done is some work. Beginning with a red pen and his absurd budget.
When he asks his party to do anything remotely difficult --and that does
not include demanding ruinous taxes on the small businesses they so
obviously disdain and in some cases despise-- people may begin to listen
again.
Or perhaps not. Obama may already be in reruns in
most voters minds, which makes for a long three years ahead.
The Fantasy
Lie
Would somebody please inform this egomaniac that there
ain't no such thing as the "Office of the President Elect."
Especially when he is not yet the president elect. That won't
happen until after the Electoral College convenes on December 15th and the
Electors vote. The results are then presented to a joint session
of Congress on January 6, 2009. Objections may be presented and heard.
Then Congress certifies the votes. Only then would Obama be
the "president elect.
Since Obama resigned his seat in the US Senate, he is, at this time, an
unemployed private citizen, with no power and no authority -- just
arrogance.
And, there's that damned seal again. I fully
expect Obama to have a military uniform (with 6 stars, of course) that
he can wear when he's acting in the role of Commander-in-Chief (what an
absolutely repulsive thought).
Obama Just Making It Up
Thomas Lifson
says the descent of Barack Obama's image from messiah to con man is
accelerating, to the point where even the New York Times is onto the
game. Peter Baker, whose Sunday Times interview with Obama has
already made headlines (Golly gee, who knew that there was no such thing
as a shovel ready job?) calls out a presidential fabrication:
In speech after speech lately, President
Obama has vowed to oppose a Republican proposal "to cut education by
20 percent," a reduction that would "eliminate 200,000 children from
Head Start programs" and "reduce financial aid for eight million
college students." Except that strictly speaking, the
Republicans have made no such proposal....
Related:"I actually believe my own
bullshit." Barack Obama (quoted) in Renegade
Obama And Cameras
Jonathan Last
is reporting that among the many strange moments in Barack Obama's
post-election
press conference last week was this self-pitying complaint from the
leader of the free world:
"Those letters that I read every night, some
of them just break my heart. Some of them provide me encouragement
and inspiration. But nobody is filming me reading those letters. And
so it’s hard, I think, for people to get a sense of, well, how is he
taking in all this information?"
One of the nice things about being president,
however, is that if you want to have someone filming your private,
introspective moments, well, you can hook that up. Barely 48 hours
after Obama complained about people not being able to see him reading
letters -- lo and behold! -- the White House's blog
posted a moving (and beautifully scored and produced) six minute
video about how Obama reads ten letters every day. The cameras
film him not just reading the letters, but reading some of them aloud.
If the mid-term election was really just about the White House
failing to communicate effectively, problem solved!
However, that
video was actually
first posted in August of 2009, so there were actually cameras
filming him all along.
Barack Obama made his
cameo on Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters Wednesday to try and test
some scientific legends. But it’s Reason.tv who is busting Obama’s
own popular myths:
Too Good To Believe
In one of the most memorable moments from the
Tragedy in Tucson memorial last night, and captured in video, Obama told the pep
rally audience that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords had opened her eyes for the
first time on Wednesday night.
It was very emotional moment.
But, it was also a lie.
The Sonoran Chronicle posted
a report on January 9,
2011, by cachocurt, entitled, "Giffords survives the night; can open
eyes."
Dr. Rhee, Chief Trauma Surgeon at the University Medical
Center, said at a press conference on Sunday, that in terms of being
shot in the head, this is "about as good as it’s going to get."
Giffords can open her eyes, but because she is on a ventilator she can’t
speak, said Rhee.
Obama The Deceiver
Jeffrey Kuhner says Obama is trying to
reposition himself as a moderate. His State of the Union address
was aimed at convincing the public that he is serious about fiscal
responsibility and reining in out-of-control budget deficits. His
public relations offensive boils down to one seminal theme: Socialism is
out; centrism is in.
Hence, Obama called for a freeze on
discretionary spending affecting numerous domestic agencies. He
wants to work with Republicans to "fix" his health care overhaul -- to
reform it, not repeal it. He has a newfound opposition to
earmarks. He is a champion of bipartisan consensus building.
Don’t buy it. The address was an obvious attempt to con the
electorate into forgetting not only the past two years, but Obama‘s real
agenda: the transformation of America into a social democratic state.
His "spending freeze" is nothing more than smoke and mirrors -- a clumsy
attempt to look serious about the looming debt crisis. His
"freeze" would not only lock in the record-high levels of spending
implemented by the administration, it would fail to make any dent in
runaway entitlements and other costly programs -- which are the real
threats to our national solvency.
Obama is a fantasist. His
demands for a spending freeze are akin to rearranging the deck chairs on
the Titanic. The American economy is about to crash upon the rocks
of fiscal reality. The day after his address, the Congressional
Budget Office released the estimate for this year’s budget deficit: $1.5
trillion. This is the largest deficit in U.S. history, and it
comes on top of Obama‘s previous trillion-dollar blowouts. He is
burying America under a mountain of red ink. He is not only
fiscally reckless, but morally bankrupt. His spend-and-borrow
policies are mortgaging future generations -- saddling them with a
massive debt that will be almost impossible to repay.
Under
Obama‘s watch, America is being reduced to a second-class nation.
Our trade deficits are huge. The dollar is plummeting.
Investment capital and businesses are fleeing. The economy remains
stagnant. Unemployment is high. Power and wealth are slowly
shifting toward the East -- especially China.
It is no accident
that Obama deliberately singled out Beijing for praise in his address,
welcoming the rise of the communist giant. As America amasses more
debt, the Chinese are buying up our Treasury bonds. China is
financing our orgy of deficit spending. The result: Washington is
becoming an economic vassal of Beijing. Obama -- slowly but surely
-- is undermining U.S. national sovereignty, making America increasingly
dependent upon Chinese largesse. This is the ultimate price for
becoming the world’s largest debtor nation. We no longer control
our own destiny. Uncle Sam now bows to the Red Dragon.
None
of this matters to Obama. At his core, he is a radical leftist who
seeks to dismantle capitalism and the achievements of the Reagan
revolution -- low taxes, deregulation and the reassertion of American
exceptionalism.
Deception is
a tool to Socialists. Obama has no problem, whatsoever, in
blatantly lying to the American people if it achieves his socialist
agenda. He's been lying to us since the day he announced.
Obama is an evil man, surrounded by evil men.
Obama "Simply Misunderstands"
Susan Jones
is reporting that Republican Gov. Scott Walker released a statement
after Obama referred to the union protests in Wisconsin while addressing
a governors' meeting in Washington, saying:
"I don't think it does anybody any good when
public employees are denigrated or vilified or their rights are
infringed upon. We need to attract the best and the brightest
to public service. These times demand it."
In response, Gov. Walker said:
I'm sure the President knows that most
federal employees do not have collective bargaining for wages and
benefits while our plan allows it for base pay. And I'm sure
the President knows that the average federal worker pays twice as
much for health insurance as what we are asking for in Wisconsin.
At least I would hope he knows these facts.
Furthermore, I’m
sure the President knows that we have repeatedly praised the more
than 300,000 government workers who come to work every day in
Wisconsin.
I’m sure that President Obama simply
misunderstands the issues in Wisconsin, and isn’t acting like the
union bosses in saying one thing and doing another.
No, governor.
Obama always says one thing and does another. He's a liar.
As politicians go, Obama may be the greatest liar ever -- and he's
not very good at it.
The thing is, the ObamaMedia covers for his
lies. They call them misstatements, and twist and turn themselves
into logic pretzels to cover for his mendacity.
Check this out! If one Googles -- obama misspoke -- they will
receive 65,000 results. Page, after page, after page, after page,
of lies, and all reported in the ObamaMedia as "misstatements."
Obama can saying anything in the firm knowledge that no matter how
outrageous the lie is, the ObamaMedia will cover for him.
Revising History
David Limbaugh
asks, can
you imagine how insufferable Obama would be about his record in office
if he actually had abundant positive accomplishments? Have we ever
seen a starker contrast between a politician's record and his
self-assessment of it? It's not as though he just avoids or
downplays his failures. It's more like he showcases them, but only
after completely revising history to put his actions in a favorable
light.
I have this recurring dream where I'm watching
Obama give a speech and he makes a claim about his record wholly at odds
with what we have witnessed and I have to question my memory. Did
he just say what I think he said, or did I miss a word or phrase that
would have changed the meaning to something far less inaccurate -- and
outrageously absurd? The trouble is, these are not dreams.
The most recent example was
his speech on immigration. Perhaps he figured he'd received enough
of a "bounce" from the bin Laden strike to ratchet up his militant
rhetoric against border enforcement advocates. Last year, through
the Arizona law, they were subjecting to possible arrest "legals" who
were just out with their families for ice cream. Now they want to
protect the border with a moat full of alligators, but the people who
are truly in jeopardy, as Texas Gov. Rick Perry pointed out, are those
on the border who have to deal with the reality of deadly Mexican drug
cartels.
Here's where my "dream" comes in. While
ridiculing the patriots who are simply trying to enforce the law, he
claims that he is already doing so with vigor. He says that
violence in El Paso is decreasing and that the border towns are among
the safest in America, implying that his policies are directly
responsible for the decline, but how can Obama make a causal connection
between his border policies and so-called improved security?
Remember, this is the same guy who told Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl that he
would not assist with border security because it would remove any
incentive for the GOP to work with him on "comprehensive immigration
reform."
Any decline in apprehensions, says Perry, is due
to the depressed state of the economy and fewer people trying to cross
over in pursuit of jobs. "The drug cartels haven't slowed down a
bit. They're still continuing to use our southern border as a base
of operation. We're seeing more and more of our citizens, for
instance in south Texas in the last 30 days ... our ranchers ... being
threatened, and I'm not talking about threatened verbally, I'm talking
shot at. You're going to see United States citizens killed if this
administration does not take border security seriously. They
don't."
Another of my "dreams" occurred when Obama
asserted a surreal defense of his offshore drilling policy, claiming
that criticisms of his drilling moratorium and "permitorium" were
unwarranted because oil production had reached new highs.
Well, just as relaxing border
enforcement could not possibly increase border safety, imposing a
virtual freeze on much offshore drilling could not possibly increase the
volume of drilling. As Erik Milito of the American Petroleum
Institute observes, the administration is unfairly taking credit for
long-term decisions that were made long before Obama took office.
"It's completely disingenuous," said Milito, "to say that offshore
production has increased due to anything this administration has done."
Do you not see a pattern here?
It's as if Obama has relied on rhetoric his entire life and has come to
believe that it will prevail over any facts to the contrary.
Policy failures can be mystically converted to successes with a speech
laced with lofty deceit or, if too egregious to deny, can simply be
blamed on Bush. Serendipitous successes can be credited to
policies that were designed to accomplish just the opposite.
So it is that he would have us
believe he's made the border safer because he refuses to make it safer;
he has increased oil production while thwarting it; he revels in
ordering the death of bin Laden, which was made possible by
counterterrorism policies he strenuously opposed and intelligence
gathered from procedures he's now actively seeking to criminalize; he
brags about what he's accomplished in Iraq when he was at the forefront
in opposing policies that led to the successes he is co-opting; he
states that unlike Bush, he is engaging in multilateralism in Libya,
though his international coalition is much smaller than Bush's for Iraq;
and he bases his whole case for ObamaCare on increasing access to health
care, when the inevitable destination of his plan is to grossly decrease
access through rationing.
Just think about what Obama's policy agenda would
look like in a second term when he wouldn't have to play these games
with an eye to re-election.
Israel's 1967 borders
The Blaze
is reporting that after the press filmed a tense joint-statement
session in the Oval Office between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney did his best
to pick up the pieces at the daily press briefing. And the
overarching message to reporters was this: the controversial comments
about Israel returning to its 1967 borders only meant that those borders
should be used as a starting point in negotiations (video).
Former Ambassador to Israel
Ned Walker agreed. He trumpeted that position on Fox in this
video.
But is that really what Obama said? For the
record, here are his remarks from the actual speech:
So while the core
issues of the conflict must be negotiated, the basis of those
negotiations is clear: a viable Palestine, and a secure Israel.
The United States believes that negotiations should result in two
states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and
Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine.
The bordersof Israel and Palestineshould be based on the 1967 lines with mutually
agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established
for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to
govern themselves, and reach their potential, in a sovereign and
contiguous state. [Emphasis added]
Obama got smacked down by
Bibi in front of the whole world, and no amount of spin will ever change
that.
A More Blatant Disregard For The Truth
Dennis Clayson
says the media helped Obama build his house of lies.
Almost all modern governments
have a difficult time with the truth. Typically, however, it was
assumed democracies would be a bit more truthful than dictatorships.
Believing health and literacy data from communist-controlled regimes was
reserved for the foolish and the naive, but an active and open press was
supposed to put some constraints on the leaders of freer societies.
In the United States we have growing evidence this assumption is
beginning to unravel.
In my lifetime, I have never seen a presidency
with a more blatant disregard for the truth than the Obama
administration.
Stop the finger pointing and the childish "Nah,
nah, you did it first" rhetoric. Note that I said "blatant."
Nixon had his problems with the truth, but the press was after him in a
fevered pitch that still puts the old-timers in the press room into a
state of hallowed nostalgia. To a large extent, the press has now
become the PR office of the modern presidency, especially this one.
Barack Obama could stand in a
driving rainstorm and proclaim it a sunny day and the press would not
even bat an eye. If someone at Fox News or an independent blogger
said it was actually raining, they would be attacked as liars and maybe
even as dangerous people whose access to the public should be
restricted.
The disregard for the truth is so blatant and
automatic that members of the Obama administration don't even bother to
learn the story line before lying. The capture and death of Osama
bin Laden was a good example. Numerous versions of what happened
were given by people who were all supposedly in the same room and who
are thought of as "in the know" in the Obama circle of associates.
The Associated Press even became a little uneasy with the fakery of
photographing Barack Obama announcing the death of bin Laden at one
location while the speech was actually given in another. You could
say that this is just good PR, but this administration engages in this
sort of thing so automatically that even the PR hacks in the press are
becoming uneasy.
This disregard for the truth is also found in two
other areas that should raise concerns. The administration not
only lies about itself, its sycophantic press will lie about anyone or
anything else that happens to cast even the slightest negative shadow on
the administration. The media asked George W. Bush what he thought
of bin Laden's death. Asked about the accuracy of the subsequent
report, a spokesman for the former president replied, "Most of the
quotes are not accurate."
The second problem is in the disconnect between
discourse and actual behavior. For example, at the same time the
White House extols the benefits of ObamaCare -- even proclaiming that
implementation will save money -- his administration is approving
waivers to make certain organizations immune to provisions of the act.
In the last month, over 200 waivers were issued, bringing the total to
1,372 for what the press referred to as the "Democrats' health care
reform law." In the waiver story, the word "Obama" magically
disappeared close to the name of the bill.
It is no longer possible for a
serious person to believe "official" announcements of this government.
The unemployment numbers are fiction. Inflation data have little
relationship to reality. Government assets are purposely
misreported. The projected costs of new laws are fairy tales.
These are matters of accounting, so one can only imagine what the
honesty quotient is of more politically related issues.
This is all made possible by a
media that has turned what its heroes did to Nixon into a myth.
Instead of a search for the truth, they now see the overthrow of a
government and the false glory of imagining themselves as kingmakers.
This conceit has become so strong they ironically have been turned into
PR hacks for the actual kings and queens of our society.
Today's ObamaLie
The Beaufort Observer
asks if Obama is "honesty challenged?"
For some time now we have been
tracking the "inaccurate" statements made by Barack Obama. Seldom
does a week go by that we do not document another inaccurate statement.
What amazes us nearly as much as a guy who would lie constantly without
ever going back and correcting his "misstatements" is a news media that
does not call him out on such dishonesty. But that appears to be
changing.
Just recently, Nancy Morgan, writing in the
American Thinker reviewed the most recent of the lies Obama has engaged
in. She writes:
Accusing someone of
lying is a serious matter. Especially when that someone is the
President of the United States. Charges of that nature should
be leveled based only on absolute proof of a deliberate statement,
intentionally made, whose sole purpose is to deceive. Based on
this criterion, President Obama is a liar. Demonstrably so.
And a disturbing pattern is emerging that allows for the possibility
that our president is a serial liar. Consider:
In just the last month,
Obama has made several statements that are just not so.
Statements made to the American public that were in direct conflict
with known facts.
In April, Obama flatly stated that
implementing ObamaCare will reduce the deficit by $1 trillion.
A day later, the Congressional Budget Office reported that statement
was 'incorrect,' pegging the "deficit savings" at $210 billion over
10 years.
In the same April 15 speech, Obama stated that
the tax burden on the wealthy is the lowest it has been in 50 years.
A simple fact-check proves him wrong. Obama did not correct
his false statement and the media didn't either.
In January of 2009, Obama
stated that it was no longer necessary to kill Osama bin Laden to
win the war against al-Qaeda. On May 1, 2011, after the
successful raid by Navy Seals that killed bin Laden, Obama told the
nation that he made the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden a "top
priority," and had instructed CIA Chief Leon Panetta to make this
job number one. Which statement is correct?
And these illustrations do not
include those involving just lack of transparency, such as about his
background on any number of issues other than his birth
certificate...such as his college records, why he lost his law license
or his "flip-flops" such as how he financed his campaign in 2008
(refusing to be constrained by the Federal election standards after
first promising to participate), or such understandable things as
backtracking on Gitmo. And on and on the list goes.
Rest assured that we will
continue to document the dishonesty coming from Obama and his
administration.
