Calling someone a liar is a serious accusation. This is why, aside from the unwritten contract allowing for mutual prevarication, politicians are so reluctant to do it. And not just anyone is a liar. Legend has it that our first president said, "I cannot tell a lie," but, being only human, G.W. no doubt could and certainly did, at some point. A liar, however, is someone who lives and breathes the lie; someone who specializes in the art of artifice; someone to whom lying is his first recourse, not his last. Such a man is Barack Obama.
In four years, Obama has gone from "change you can believe in" to a man you simply cannot believe. And it's not just Benghazi-gate, although that's a good place to start. With the recently revealed emails showing that the White House was told a mere two hours after the attack that it was a terrorist act, no reasonable person can still conclude that the Obama administration was honest in its aftermath. And the claim that the violence was sparked by some anti-Islamic film wasn't just a lie - it was a liar's lie.
It was dumb.
It was obvious that it would eventually blow up in the administration's face and make Benghazi into the scandal it has now become. But such things are only obvious to the intellect; at issue here are instincts.
Of course, since the Obama administration had failed to provide requested security for our Libyan diplomats despite previous attacks on their consulate and the approach of 9/11's anniversary, the president had a vested political interest in suppressing the truth. This made the Benghazi-gate lie one of callousness and convenience, not malice. But then there is the matter of Hampton University in Virginia.
The speech Obama gave there on June 5, 2007 received a bit of attention recently before being dismissed as "old news." But perhaps nothing reveals the president's character better.
Appearing before a mostly black audience and speaking Ebonics-style (despite never having lived in a black community), Obama accused the federal government of showing cruel indifference to the primarily black victims of Hurricane Katrina. The evidence, he claimed, involved something called the Stafford Act, which requires a locality receiving federal disaster relief to provide 10 percent as much money as Washington does. And as Obama worked the crowd, he said:
When 9/11 happened in New York City, they waived the Stafford Act. ...And that was the right thing to do. When Hurricane Andrew struck in Florida, people said, 'Look at this devastation; we don't expect you to come up with your own money. Here, here's the money to rebuild...because you're part of the American family.' What's happening down in New Orleans?! Where's your dollar?! Where's your Stafford Act money?! Makes no sense. ...Tells me that somehow the [black] people down in New Orleans they don't care about as much.
This is Racial Grievance 101, the main course offering of a community organizer (agitator?). And it's no small matter, as stoking the fires of racial and ethnic hatred has cost scores of millions of lives throughout history. Yet, isn't there something to be said about raising awareness of injustice? Well, now for the rest of the story.
Barely two weeks before Obama gave the Hampton U. speech, the US Senate had in fact waived the Stafford Act for New Orleans. Moreover, that city ended up receiving more aid than Florida and NYC combined. But that's not all. As Thomas Sowell wrote:
Unlike Jeremiah Wright's church, the U.S. Senate keeps a record of who was there on a given day. The Congressional Record for May 24, 2007 shows Senator Barack Obama present that day and voting on the bill that waived the Stafford Act requirement. Moreover, he was one of just 14 Senators who voted against - repeat, AGAINST - the legislation which included the waiver.
Absolutely mind boggling. Obama votes against the bill that includes the waiver designed to help people about whom he purports to care. Yet the bill passes despite his resistance. Obama nonetheless appears before a black audience not two weeks later and claims that the waiver for aid was never granted. Even more damnably, he clearly implies that this is due to white "racism."
Then there is the most ironic chapter in the Obama Annals of Artifice. It's common to dismiss those who question the president's origins as cranks and con men, but, as American Thinker pointed out, Obama was "the original birther."
This refers to the revelation in May of this year that Obama's former literary agency, Acton & Dystel, printed a promotional booklet in 1991 that touted Obama as having been "born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii." Note that this was a polished volume created at great expense by a professional outfit, and there is only one source from which its agents could have gotten the notion that Obama was born in Kenya: Obama himself.
Thus, it's hard to escape the conclusion that the president has lied about his birthplace - either when claiming more recently that he was born in Hawaii or, far more likely, when claiming in 1991 that he wasn't. And it's easy to understand why he would've claimed the latter. By the '90s, having exotic origins could truly enhance your cachet and hence your marketability. And this little twist on truth was small potatoes for a guy willing to disgorge lies designed to foment racial unrest.
This brings us to the presidential debates. It's fine to fact-check, to reveal that Obama really did lie about the decline in oil production on federal lands, tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas, middle-class tax cuts, Egyptians' newfound love for America, and a Status of Forces agreement. But at some point it's a bit like trying to itemize the libations of a guy who has crashed both your cars, squanders the family funds on booze, staggers home in the wee hours, and is a continual embarrassment around the neighbors. You no longer need to prove that certain individual drinks were imbibed; it's painfully clear that the individual is a drinker.
While hard-core partisans will remain in denial on our drunk-on-power president, good people, who generally have a desire to be polite, should realize that politeness becomes vice when it obscures truth. And if we don't wish to descend into dishonesty ourselves - the intellectual variety - we need to acknowledge that the truth about Barack Obama is that he simply cannot tell it.
My kids are like your kids, they don't like to go to bed.
They like to run as hard as they can, deny they are tired, and then collapse in a heap.
I thought I had all their bedtime stall tactics figured out. One more glass of water, one more story, one more imaginary bug that must be cleared from the room, less winged insect panic ensue, etc.
But then they launched a new offensive.
Right before I head back downstairs and shut the door, they've started to say, "Could I have one more hug please, Daddy?"
Genius!
What am I some sort of no-hug-giving monster? Who can withstand that? What happens in that moment is you teeter at the door, knowing they're gaming you, but then you start to think about that song "Cat's in the Cradle" and think to yourself, "I bet they won't want hugs when they're teenagers. What if I die in my sleep and this is the last hug I get to give them? I better hug them while I can! Dust in the wind!"
So then you hug them one more time.
I thought that was it, I thought that was the peak of their game, but I was wrong. You know what an even better move is, especially on a Christian parent? When your kids say, "Could we pray one more time please?"
Now they're not stalling, they're soul searching. They're trying to be in the bed, but not of the bed.
Well played, children. Well played, indeed.
At 8:46am this morning, ten years ago, murderous jihadists crashedAmerican Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
At 9:03am this morning, ten years ago, murderous jihadists crashedUnited Airlines Flight 175 into the South Tower of the World Trade Center.
At 9:37am this morning, ten years ago, murderous jihadists crashedAmerican Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon.
At 10:15am this morning, ten years ago, the official notification of thedowning of United Airlines Flight 93 into a field at Shanksville, Pa. by murderous jihadists was received by the feds.
This is a day to honor the 2,977 innocent men, women, and childrenslaughtered by evil Islamic jihadists — and to vow that “Never again” remains America’s operational stance, not an empty slogan.
Remembrance is worthless without resolve. Resolve is useless without action.Lan astaslem: Arabic for “I will not submit/surrender”
I wrote the following column nine years ago, on the 2nd anniversary of the 9/11 jihadi attacks. Too much of it remains true today.
Spitting on their gravesby Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate9/10/03
Across the nation, public officials will strike somber poses and shed television-friendly tears and bow their blow-dried heads in memory of the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
They’ll hold hands, light candles, and pass around a plateful of platitudes: “Never forget,” they’ll intone. “Let’s roll,” they’ll thunder. “God bless America,” they’ll warble in perfect harmony.
They’ll assure us that they are committed to fighting terror and securing our borders and doing whatever it takes to protect the homeland from another horrific mass murder at the hands of freedom-hating fanatics. And then?
And then, from Washington state to Washington, D.C., they’ll go back to work, roll up their sleeves, and spit on the graves of the 9/11 dead.
Your pious city councilwoman will return to the office to draft a resolution condemning the common-sense detention and deportation of Middle Eastern illegal aliens suspected of terrorism.
Your politically correct police chief will refuse to cooperate with federal authorities in criminal investigations of illegal visa overstayers and border-crossers and ship-jumpers.
Your pandering mayor will stealthily renew his policy of preventing city employees from reporting illegal aliens.
Your indignant local librarian will promote fear-mongering and misinformation about the Patriot Act.
Your regional Chamber of Commerce president will join forces with Canadian and Mexican government representatives to put business interests ahead of border enforcement.
Your tuition-thirsty university president will lobby behind closed doors against federal efforts to track foreign students and ensure that they go home when required. Your vote-hungry governor will encourage document fraud through his support of insecure foreign-issued identification cards and driver’s licenses for “undocumented workers.”
Your race card-fearing congressman will court Arab and Muslim special interest groups and donors who have coddled Islamists on college campuses, in prisons, and in the U.S. military in the name of “diversity.”
Your grandstanding senator will block funding for long-delayed homeland defense measures — such as a national entry-exit system to monitor temporary foreign visitors — even as he whines about the need for more money to ensure our safety.
Your incompetent Transportation Security Administration will stonewall pilots who want training to be armed, squander tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on lucrative contracts for weapons-detection equipment that doesn’t work or get used, and continue to ban racial profiling.
Your indifferent Interior Department will look the other way as underequipped and understaffed park rangers along the southwestern border remain vulnerable to drug smugglers and terrorists.
Your bloated Homeland Security Department will keep Clinton-era holdovers in pivotal positions, reduce routine inspections at seaports in the name of efficiency, and continue to shortchange interior enforcement against deportation fugitives and asylum con artists in favor of duct tape tipsheets and cosmetic color-coded alerts.
Your corrupted State Department will appease Saudi terror-backers, reward butt-covering managers, assuage European travel industry tycoons, and continue to defend lax visa screening policies.
Your Democratic presidential candidates will unanimously endorse the very kind of amnesty policies that allowed several al Qaeda operatives to infiltrate this country and hatch terrorist plots.
And your Republican Party elites will continue to spurn immigration enforcement reformers within their own ranks for fear of alienating ethnic constituencies that will never vote for them anyway.
To those who lost their lives on Sept. 11 because their government failed to enforce its borders, laws, and sovereignty, the politicians and bureaucrats and civic leaders will ostentatiously offer one measly day a year of dedication in rhetoric — and 364 days of desecration in deed.
To paraphrase the first Republican president, the world will little note nor long remember what the Democrats said at Charlotte last week. Yet on the eleventh anniversary of the most egregious attack against these United States, we should note and remember the words of vice president Joe Biden.During his speech before the delegates to the Democratic National Convention, Biden said the following in reference to the operation to kill al-Qaeda fugitive Osama bin Laden:
In 2008, Barack Obama made a promise to the American people. He said 'If we have Osama bin Laden in our sights, we will take him out. That has to be our biggest national security priority.' Barack understood that the search for bin Laden was about a lot more than taking a monstrous leader off the battlefield. It was about righting an unspeakable wrong, healing a nearly unbearable wound in America's heart. He also knew the message we had to send to terrorists around the world -- if you attack innocent Americans, we will follow you to the ends of the earth.There is much to unpack in such an insulting group of phrases. Had not bin Laden been "off the battlefield" for almost a decade? Do "the ends of the earth" exclude Iraq? Is the implication that the previous administration -- or any administration -- would not have taken out bin Laden? Why does Biden insist on the patronizing and paternalistic use of "Barack" instead of "President Obama" during his public appearances? Each of these Bidenisms could fill a column of its own.
Yet the most insulting idea within this passage is Biden's assertion that the implied masterful orchestration of the death of bin Laden by president Obama healed the wound of September 11, 2001. That's it. It's all better now. The wound has been cleaned, closed, and healed. Time to move "forward."
No individual, nor the death of any individual -- even an individual as prominent as Osama bin Laden - can heal the wound of September 11, 2001. The horror of that day, the slaughtering of over 3,000 innocents, can never be healed, even with the passage of time. Families were ripped apart. Children were orphaned and can never be made whole. Friends of the pilots and crews of the airplanes that were hijacked grieve deeply. Courageous patriots who volunteered to serve in the military gave their lives to hunt down the perpetrators of the outrage.
The wound flares up when one sees a film made prior to 9/11 that shows the Trade Center towers amid the New York skyline. The wound aches when flying into the city and looking down on lower Manhattan. Do Barack Obama and Joe Biden really believe that the killing of one individual healed those wounds?
Worse than Biden's myopic psychobabble and careless use of the English language is this administration's coddling and encouragement of the very forces that would jump at the chance to replicate September 11, 2001 by an order of magnitude. Despite its self-depiction as brave jihad-destroyers, the Obama administration's version of "Forward" is jihad outreach and permitting the enemy into our gates with an engraved invitation.
As Andrew C. McCarthy points out in the September 10, 2012 issue of National Review, president Obama was among the first world leaders to send congratulations to Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood on his election to the presidency of Egypt, despite the U.S. Department of Justice proving in 2008 that the Muslim Brotherhood is committed to "eliminating and destroying Western civilization." The Muslim Brotherhood's chief jurist, Yusuf Qaradawi, has stated that Islam will "conquer America" and issued a fatwa that endorsed jihad against U.S. military personnel. For his part, Morsi has called for the release of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the mastermind of the first attack against the World Trade Center in 1993, and the man bin Laden credited with issuing the fatwa for 9/11.
McCarthy also states that the Obama administration welcomed Hani Nour Eldin, a member of the Gama'at-Islamia (the Islamic Group) jihadist group to Washington, D.C., along with Muslim Brotherhood members and fellow Egyptian Islamists. Rahman is emir of the Islamic Group. This cabal was afforded audiences with the Obama's highest-ranking national security advisers. As McCarthy argues, "[t]hrough the alchemy of 'democratic' elections, they're somehow not Islamic supremacists anymore. The Obama administration would have us see them as 'parliamentarians.'"
Indeed, McCarthy notes that when the Muslim Brotherhood began winning elections in Egypt, the administration's national intelligence director, James Clapper, testified to Congress that the Muslim Brotherhood is "largely secular." Pay no attention to the Brotherhood's motto, which reads in part, "Allah is our objective ... the Koran is our law, jihad is our way." McCarthy asserts that the Obama administration consults with the Muslim Brotherhood's U.S. affiliates on counterterrorism policy, and that the Department of Defense, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Homeland Security Department have removed references to Islam from training manuals.
This is of a piece with the administration's reaction, or non-reaction, to the mass murder perpetrated by U.S. Army major Nidal Hasan at Ft. Hood in 2009. Hasan, who had the abbreviation SoA (Soldier of Allah) on his business card, was afforded the benefit of the doubt, the incident classified as an unfortunate incident of workplace violence. Obama's Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano fretted about "anti-Muslim backlash" rather than call the incident what it was: a clear-cut act of Islamic terrorism.
All of that is to say nothing of the administration's weakness concerning Iran's nuclear development, our dithering in Afghanistan as our "friends" continue to murder U.S. military personnel, and the appalling, politically motivated leaks of details concerning the mission that felled bin Laden.
As this presidential campaign continues, it is well to keep Biden's words at the DNC and the contradictory actions of the Obama administration in mind. They want us to believe that Obama made everything all better -- that his bravery alone in the elimination of one man healed the wound of September 11, 2001, and that everything is okay. Given the actions of the Obama administration before and after this amazing feat of mass closure, it is well to ask eleven years on: who will heal this administration's deliberate wounds to the security and honor of our country?
On the campaign trail, President Obama is constantly talking about the importance of technology, but he met his match in an iPhone Sunday.
The president had stopped at a campaign office in Port St. Lucie, Fla., to thank volunteers. Then, for the cameras, Mr. Obama was supposed to call two campaign workers who were out working on his behalf.
But when White House trip director Marvin Nicholson handed the president his personal iPhone, Mr. Obama couldn't get it to work. A reporter who witnessed the scene said the president looked "befuddled."
"It's not clear he knows how to dial on an iPhone," the reporter wrote in a pool report.
Finally, Mr. Obama said, "Oh, I got to dial it in. Hold on, hold on. I can do this. See, I still have a BlackBerry."
The president then "had a little more trouble dialing," the pool report said.
Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig and other diet groups say they are supporting New York City's proposed crackdown on super-sized, sugary drinks.The anti-obesity measure calls for restaurants, movie theaters, sports arenas, food carts and delis to stop selling sodas and other sugary drinks in servings larger than 16 ounces.Mayor Michael Bloomberg says the measure helps fight obesity in a city that spends billions of dollars a year on weight-related health problems.
