UPDATED Handy review of Obama's lies from 2008 to the present

I was thinking this week that it is a pity no one is keeping a Web site or page listing Obama’s lies. It would require a considerable staff — maybe dear Andrew Breitbart would consider adding “Big Lie” to his stable of “Big” blogs (Big Hollywood, Big Government, Big Journalism) — but it is a resource that would help conservatives win the hearts and minds of the independent voters needed for victory. That’s assuming we will have elections in November 2010, which I do not think is a correct assumption. I think the vast right-wing conspiracy should get on a plan for how to assure that elections will be held AND how to respond if they are not. Because when Obama says he takes unpopular positions because he doesn’t care if he’s a one-term president, you should assume he’s just announced he doesn’t care whether you like him because by hook or by crook, he’s going to be president-for-life.

Since this post is about Obama’s lies from 2008 to the present, let me point out Obama’s prevarication pattern:

  1. In accordance with the rules of Saul Alinsky, he finds out what his marks want to hear.
  2. Obama tells his marks what they want to hear.
  3. The marks relax because Obama has told them he agrees with them — thus demonstrating his wisdom and prudence — and they give him their trust. They also — and this is crucial — then stop paying attention to what he says because you can trust a truthful man to keep his word and don’t have to keep track of what he says 100 percent of the time to ensure his promises and statements are consistent with one another. Oops.
  4. Obama then makes promises to the marks of what he will do in exchange for their money and work on his behalf.
  5. The marks give their money and work for Obama.
  6. Obama makes promises to another group of marks that are irreconcilable with his promises to the first group. The second group gloats that THEY are the ones Obama truly loves.
  7. Obama doesn’t deliver on his promises and instead only does what is best for himself.
  8. Sometimes the marks get restless about this. To bring the marks back into line, Obama filibusters, race baits, hate mongers, sneers superciliously, befogs and gaslights them, or vows he will keep his word in an ever-receding future.
  9. If the marks still don’t obey and toe the line, Obama and his minions threaten them with their ultimate weapson: if they do not conform, the evil conservatives will get them and condemn them to a life of making the most of themselves and their opportunities and enjoying the fruits of their own labors. The horror!
  10. Repeat steps 1 – 9.

Obama is never concerned that his falsehoods hurt people because he is a sociopath — which means he has no conscience — and a narcissist.

OK, so the best review of Obama’s lies from 2008 to the present was written this week by Victor Davis Hanson and published at the National Review Online. The following is a sample — be sure to read the whole thing:

Perhaps most Americans also were only mildly irked that Obama demagogued the Bush anti-terror protocols during the campaign, only to continue unchanged precisely those practices that he had most fiercely railed against — tribunals, renditions, Predators, the continuing presence in Iraq.

And perhaps most Americans did not believe Obama when he promised to close Guantanamo within a year and to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court in New York — and they were right. These too were isolated Obama untruths.

Then some of us were troubled that Obama had once decried passage of health-care reform by mere 51 percent majorities — only to do precisely that last weekend. Candidate Obama likewise damned the use of executive orders to countermand legislative action — and then did just that on matters of abortion and Obamacare. Chalk it up to the Chicago style of the ends justifying any means necessary.

So was anyone surprised that the health-care bill did not sit on the president’s desk for five days before the signing, as he once bragged would be the new administration’s policy, for reasons of transparency? And wasn’t that reminiscent of his continued, but reneged on, pledges to air all the health-care debates on C-SPAN?

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.

Conservatives know that Obama in particular, and Democrats in general, are assisted in fooling a lot of the people a lot of the time by the fact that the mainstream media do not cover stories revealing Leftist/liberal corruption, totalitarian tendencies or anything that presents conservatism fairly. After I started reading conservative blogs and conservative journalists online pretty much the minute Sen. McCain announced Gov. Sarah Palin would be his running mate in August 2008, I was absolutely horrified at how much information had been kept from me to ensure my obedience and support of liberalism/Leftism for the empowerment of Leftist elites.

Update, 3/27/10, Sat.: Prof. William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection reviews the economic devastation wrought by the passage of Obamacare in less than a week after being signed into law on Tuesday. He links to Doug Ross, who explains that union workers will lose their cushy health coverage by the end of 2010:

Remember how the President endlessly bragged that health care reform would never — never! — impact your existing health plans? You know, the “if you like your plan, you can keep it” shtick? Well, I know this comes as a shock, but he lied.

What no one appears to be pointing out is that DemCare specifically targets private sector union members first. Because of the dizzying new regulations imposed by the new law, “industrial concerns [and/or] those with unionized employees, say the end of the deduction could force them to … curtail or even cancel them [health benefits],” according to The Los Angeles Times. That’s right: most union retirees will have their cushy plans slammed by DemCare through changes in the tax code.

Update, 3/31/10, Wed.: Jim Geraghty at National Review Online posted a long list of Obama’s lies this week, with links as documenation, charitably continuing to call them “promises with expiration dates.” He’s missing important lies to the gay and lesbian community — for example, after gay donors stopped giving last spring, Obama made big noises about all sorts of rights he could provide by executive order to gay and lesbian federal employees, including a long, specific list. Come to find that in the small print of Obama’s promise was that his order would provide only rights that would not conflict with the Defense of Marriage Act, which included pretty much everything on the publicized list except the right to extended leave to care for a life partner. Woohoo. Pledges of support for gay equality twice were followed by devastatingly thorough amicus briefs filed by Eric Holder against gay rights plaintiffs — including one filed last October about two weeks after addressing the Human Rights Campaign at a big fundraising dinner where Obama pledged to work for homosexual equality.

Update, 4/1/10, Thurs.:

Thank you, Prof. William Jacobson, of Legal Insurrection, for linking this post today and for making A Conservative Lesbian the blog of the day! See his post, “Droll, baby, droll” for links to the Left’s cries of betrayal by Obama this week.

And thank goodness this week we seem to have hit a critical mass of people who have figured out Obama’s pattern of appearing to agree with his opposition and requiring immediate concessions from them in exchange for concessions from him in the distant future. Obama wants to ram his economy-destroying cap-and-trade legislation through the Senate and therefore needs to lull Republicans and conservatives into a false sense of security. His gambit was to claim to approve of offshore drilling. No sale!

Energy expert and former governor of Alaska Sarah Palin PWNS Obama at National Review Online with a slapdown entitled, “Stall, baby, stall.” It begins as follows:

Many Americans fear that President Obama’s new energy proposal is once again “all talk and no real action,” this time in an effort to shore up fading support for the Democrats’ job-killing cap-and-trade (a.k.a. cap-and-tax) proposals. Behind the rhetoric lie new drilling bans and leasing delays; soon to follow are burdensome new environmental regulations. Instead of “drill, baby, drill,” the more you look into this the more you realize it’s “stall, baby, stall.”

Obamacare has no privacy protections for electronic medical records

Megan Kelly reminds viewers that an Obama supporter in Ohio’s state government used her access to government databases to publicize embarrassing details of the private life of Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, aka “Joe the Plumber.” Oh, and remember WHY the Obama campaign did that? Recall that Obama came to his neighborhood for a photo op and Joe asked him a question. The Obama campaign set out to destroy Joe the Plumber because Obama’s answer revealed his socialist beliefs — the ones Obama and everyone supporting him denied he had until they admitted this week that Obama ran on a platform of socialism.

Note to my dear liberal gentle readers — I know you’re there! — this is a capitalism and liberty vs. socialism and statism argument. Until Obamacare passed, under capitalism and liberty, our government and economy were structured to create the conditions for individuals to make the most of themselves — liberty — and taxes were kept low enough so individuals could get the capital to make their dreams come true AND keep enough of the money they made to have incentive to do everything necessary to realize their dreams — capitalism.

Socialism sounds benign superficially because it appears to create a more comprehensive safety net than capitalism does. However, this requires the surrender to the state of the liberty to make individual choices. The state then plans and dominates virtually every aspect of your life — statism. However, a few individual bureaucrats and politicians are NOT as smart as the combined intelligence of all individuals having the liberty to fulfill their full potential. So statism turns to be malignant because it crushes individual initiative and stagnates the economy. That is why conservatives supported healthcare reform that preserved liberty and capitalism and fought Obamacare, which imposes socialism and statism on America.

Lady Gaga is first in the billion online video views club

Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga

Mashable reported a couple of days ago that Lady Gaga made history by becoming the first artist to have over one billion views of their online videos according to video analytics company, Visible Measures. I don’t go out or listen to the radio very much, so I had no idea who she was when she was introduced as a speaker at the National Equality March in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 11, 2010. However, the crowd of marchers were mostly in their twenties and thirties and they shouted and waved their arms with joy to greet her. It was a great, mutual love between artist and fans that was a wonder to behold. And then Lady Gaga shook her fist in the direction of the White House — we were in front of the Capitol Building exactly where the Tea Party march had its speeches the month before — and she shouted for Obama to support our equality. And that’s when I fell in love with her, too.

And here is this wonderful video of Lady Gaga at the very beginning of her career, when she was Stefani Germanotta performing two of her own songs at NYU, “Captivated” and “Electric Kiss.” Be sure to watch for the reactions to her performance at the very end:

I KNEW it!

funny graphs and charts
see more Funny Graphs

I bailed on video games, and by corollary, computer games, right out of the gate because of my perception in the 1970’s that “Pong” cheated. Recently, however, having fallen under the corrupting influence of Moe Lane, who loves computer games, I have started to play the Zen version of “Bejeweled Twist,” which is very pretty, very soothing and doesn’t cheat. Plus, I read it increases synchrony in the functioning of the brain, and who doesn’t need that?

Why Obamacare is a threat to marriage

One of the consequences of Obamacare becoming law is that its means-tested benefits will destroy marriage for the middle class the same way that the Great Society welfare state destroyed the black family with financial incentives for staying single.

This information was tucked away in a piece in the New York Times on March 24, “Gays May Still Pay More for Health Coverage,” on the effect of Obamacare on same-sex couples, which is mixed. The following was presented as the good news for same-sex couples, even those legally married under the laws of the states that permit same-sex marriage, because the federal Defense of Marriage Act means their marriage is not recognized by the federal government and they still must file their federal income taxes as single persons (boldfacing mine):

There is arguably a potential upside to not being married. Low to moderate income uninsured partners who are not covered by their own employer or their partner’s may be more likely to receive subsidies on premiums and cost-sharing expenses (which include out-of-pocket expenses like co-payments, coinsurance and deductibles).

After all, since they cannot file joint federal tax returns, their partner’s income would not increase their income to the point where they are no longer eligible. So as long as eligibility depends solely on federal tax returns, their income for subsidy qualification purposes will actually be lower than their true household income.

NOW how do you feel about repealing the federal Defense of Marriage Act?

I predict the means-tested subsidies and cost-sharing in Obamacare will result in middle class straight people finding out that they are better off living together in a “gay marriage” than if they got married. (I think “gay marriage” should be the term for any couple that cannot marry or does not want to marry and instead creates powers-of-attorney, trusts, wills, adoptions, joint tenancy deeds, pre-paid burial arrangements (non-blood relatives cannot make post-mortem funeral arrangements) and other legal and financial instruments to give each other standing and authority in one another’s lives and the right to inherit.)

By the way, Obama and the Senate Democrats made sure to punish same-sex couples in committed relationships by taxing them more than straight married couples under Obamacare. The New York Times piece notes (boldfacing mine):

As it stands, employer-provided health benefits offered to domestic partners are counted as taxable income if the partner is not considered a dependent (the amount of the tax is based on the value of the partner’s coverage paid by the employer). Coverage extended to opposite-sex spouses, however, is not subject to the additional tax.

P.S.

The work linked above, Kay Hymowitz’s landmark essay for the City Journal, Summer 2005, contains an observation that explains why the goal of marriage is socializing (boldfacing mine):

Implicit in Moynihan’s analysis was that marriage orients men and women toward the future, asking them not just to commit to each other but to plan, to earn, to save, and to devote themselves to advancing their children’s prospects. Single mothers in the ghetto, on the other hand, tended to drift into pregnancy, often more than once and by more than one man, and to float through the chaos around them. Such mothers are unlikely to “shape their children’s character and ability” in ways that lead to upward mobility. Separate and unequal families, in other words, meant that blacks would have their liberty, but that they would be strangers to equality. Hence Moynihan’s conclusion: “a national effort towards the problems of Negro Americans must be directed towards the question of family structure.”

I only need to tweak the sentences I boldfaced a little bit to explain the benefit to society of same-sex marriage: it orients lesbians and gays toward the future, asking them not just to commit to each other but to plan, to earn, to save, and to devote themselves to advancing their prospects as a couple and as a family, if they have children. With separate and unequal marriages/unions/families, lesbians and gays may have their liberty, but they are strangers to equality.

Hymowitz’s essay was a response to a New York Times series in 2005 entitled, “Class Matters.” She took issue with the Leftist arguments in the series. The “Moynihan” report cited above is Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s Department of Labor report from 1965 entitled “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” which she calls “the prophetic report [that] prompted civil rights leaders, academics, politicians, and pundits to make a momentous — and, as time has shown, tragically wrong — decision about how to frame the national discussion about poverty.”

Judging from Hymowitz’s essay, the modern race-baiting, racial entitlement and feminist anti-family grievance industries were born of the rage, wounded narcissism and opportunism unleashed in the backlash to Moynihan’s report, which really just said that the goal of marriage and strong families are the foundation for economic prosperity and social advancement. The essence of “the gay agenda” is simply to have the goal of marriage and a family, shouldering all the duties and responsibilities that straight people do, but with a same-sex spouse. This is why I see the quest for homosexual equality as a repudiation of the identity grievance industry, an affirmation of the Moynihan report and an embrace of conservative values.

Update, 3/25/2010, Thurs.:

Thanks to recommendations from Moe Lane (who has video of the author, Kevin Jackson) and Smitty at The Other McCain (who has read the book), The Big Black Lie looks like a timely contribution to the discussion:

Stouffer's should be using Sassy Gay Friends in this campaign


Stouffers To Include Suicide Prevention Tips On Single Serve Microwavable Meals

I have other suicide prevention posts planned but I happened across this one, which was posted tonight at The Onion, so I’m popping it into the line-up.

Oh, and Stouffer’s makes a lot of very tasty frozen dinners. I’ve heard. Imagine how much more successful this campaign would be if Sassy Gay Friends were performing the interventions. Which, naturally, would include a bonus make-over. And cooking lessons. Because Sassy Gay Friends cook from scratch. Oh. Oops.

Watershed: Al Sharpton says Americans voted for socialism by electing Obama

Sharpton on Fox to Geraldo Rivera right after the passage of the Obamacare healthcare reform bill on 3/21/10: “I think that this began the transforming of the country the way the president had promised. This is what he ran on. First of all we have to say that the American public overwhelmingly voted for socialism when they elected Pres. Obama.”

OK, the way I remember Sharpton spinning Obama before Sunday night is denying that Obama is a socialist. However, remember that very few liberals/Leftists understand socialism so all they see is the free lunch without considering that it comes at the cost of liberty, individuality and the conditions required to allow individuals to make the most of themselves. So for Lefties to understand that socialism is going to cramp their style beyond their worst nightmares, we need to pair this video with the insights in Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom.

My Maine man, Andrew Ian Dodge, on repealing Obamacare

I met conservative blogger Andrew Ian Dodge and his wife at CPAC last month and took an instant shine to him (both of them, really). I know, I know, I fall in love with practically everyone at CPAC. We’ll let that be our little secret. Andrew lives in Maine and is a Tea Party organizer there, so Maine TV station WCSH6 interviewed him today in the video above. I think he nailed two of the biggest conservative objections to Obamacare — it does not mandate tort reform and it does not lift the barriers to competition between health insurance companies across state lines.

As it happens, today I ordered two of Andrew’s books from Amazon, shown below for your convenience. (If you buy anything from Amazon after clicking these links, Amazon pays me a small commission but there’s no extra cost to you.)

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'Booth Shot Lincoln' on autoharp

Honest to goodness, first I started looking for “Red River Valley” because of the flooding, but I couldn’t find any version that didn’t make me sob. The House will vote on Obamacare soon, so there’s already a big enough reason to cry today. So then I switched to looking for old-timey music from my hillbilly heritage when it crossed my mind that a friend who plays autoharp recently re-connected with me on Facebook. And when I searched YouTube for autoharp music, this popped up near the top. Well, I live in Bel Air, Maryland, birthplace of John Wilkes Booth, our contribution to the nation’s heritage, so naturally it caught my eye. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. It’s a remarkably bouncy, optimistic little tune, isn’t it?