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Where Are the Cries of ‘Obama Lied, Jobs Died’?
His and his administration’s whoppers are super-sized, yet the press still focuses on Bush.
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.
Admission to this very exclusive club requires the repeated ability to get through the Three Steps of Super-Sized Lying with most of your perceived credibility somehow still intact:
- The president and his administration must have the nerve to state what they know is an obvious falsehood without betraying any hint that he or they realize it is false, and in a way that causes virtually all who hear it to instinctively believe it.
- Sadly, more often than not, Step 1 is enough, because the second step requires actual follow-up by someone who heard it. That someone has to discover, document, and prove beyond doubt that the statement or contention made by the president or his administration is not true.
- Sometimes Step 2 occurs, but the truth-teller’s proof gets little or no attention. But if it does, the third step requires the president and his administration to cling to their guns, so to speak, using a variety of tactics that effectively amount to saying, “Who are you going to believe, us or the irrefutable evidence?”
Critics can say what they will about George W. Bush’s accomplishments or lack thereof, but if they’re honest — an unfortunately dubious proposition — they’ll have to admit that he and his administration almost never engaged in the three-step process to which this administration is virtually addicted.
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Tom Blumer owns a training and development company based in Mason, Ohio, outside of Cincinnati. He presents personal finance-related workshops and speeches at companies, and runs BizzyBlog.com.
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79 Comments
1. LeighB:There are a lot of people saying this, just not in the MSM. He lies, has bad ideas on the economy, embarrasses himself and the US with his ignorance of protocol(what to give and when to bow).
I’ll give him credit in one area, he is not even trying to be the President of all the people. In some weird way, I’m OK with that because he’s consistent.
May 21, 2009 - 3:24 am 2. Well Educated Cad:And I’m surprised why?
If The One took a chain saw to children in an orphanage, the press would applaude him for using an environmentally friendly 4 stroke chain saw and claim that Bush just sat in Texas and “let those children die”.
May 21, 2009 - 3:43 am 3. D-wah:The title said it all.
May 21, 2009 - 4:28 am 4. The Skipper:I’m counting down the days till the 2012 general election. Maybe by that time his left wing, goose stepping admirers will realize what he has done to this great land.
May 21, 2009 - 4:29 am 5. Bilgeman:Mr. Blumer:
“His and his administration’s whoppers are super-sized, yet the press still focuses on Bush.”
At this point could it be sheer force of habit?
But, hey, it beats actually reporting on the lies and flip-flops being passed by the Undocumented Worker-in-Chief, right?
I mean, who could possibly keep track of so many falsehoods?
May 21, 2009 - 5:32 am 6. K:But what are we all doing to stop the press from getting away with this? Complacency seems to be the real problem in America. Are we protesting? Writing the advertisers letters to let them know we are not going to support them with our business? Are we sharing this lack of information in the media with as many people as possible or just grumbling about it here on blogs? Are we all so afraid of backlash that we won’t speak out publically?
I just mentioned the birth certificate question to a friend recently and she had never even heard of any potential issue about Zero’s birth certificate. Maybe this isn’t the most important topic, but it should have been questioned much more publicly than it was. I have a feeling she may not know about Zero’s affiliations with certain undesirables either due to the lack of media coverage prior to the election.
It is unacceptable for our media to focus on the former president when there are so many questions about the current one.
May 21, 2009 - 5:39 am 7. sclemens:See if this rings a bell. It is from Chris Argyris, Harvard Business School professor, in an article published in the Harvard Business Review titled Skilled Incompetence, Sept-Oct 1986, p74.
In the article, Argyris mentions four easy steps to chaos:
1. Designing a clearly ambiguous message
2. Ignoring any inconsistencies in the message
3. Making the ambiguity and inconsistency in the message undiscussable
4. Making this undiscussability also undisscussable.
This is taking place on such a grand scale with so many willing participants, it is tragic.
May 21, 2009 - 5:55 am 8. fear Obama:Obama would never lie to us!
He promised to create hundreds of thousands of jobs.
European car manufacture Fiat is happy and hiring more people.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/07/fiat_500_possib.php
China is happy and hiring more people.
http://www.toyotanation.com/forum/t165705.html
Japan is happy and hiring more people.
http://automobiles.honda.com/insight-hybrid/
Ford is happy and could hire more people.
So he really didn’t lie about creating more jobs.
I do need a load of concrete blocks for a sub job in the basement.
I guess I could take them home in my green car- three blocks at a time.
May 21, 2009 - 6:08 am 9. AThinkingPerson:We’re beating a dead horse here. Just today the Fed came out with numbers that showed the economy is SHRINKING at twice the rate the administration predicted and then you have the unemployment rates at record highs this week. It’s nothing but more and more bad news and yet his defenders still paint the US a picture of nothing but sunshine and rainbows. Why? Because they must or else they’ll look like idiots. Why do his defenders on PJM still continue their defense of him? Because they must or they’ll look like imbeciles for buying into his campaign BS.
We all know what a tragedy this administration ALREADY is and we just passed the 100 days mark. When TeleBama is now taking advice from Cheney, we all know that calling TeleBama Carter II is a putdown to Carter (if that’s possible). So, the media will continue to laud Obama and Michelle and their pets and what they’re wearing until the masses appear with lit torches.
I actually heard a person mention “Constitutional Convention” on MSNBC of all places. It’s getting that bad.
May 21, 2009 - 6:25 am 10. Gary Wolf:It is well known that propaganda is more successful when it is based on outlandish contradictions and lies. Lying just a little bit arouses people’s suspicions. Going all the way enables the construction of an entire alternate universe. “Newspeak,” if you will.
Now, for some comic relief from this Orwellian administration:
http://awolcivilization.com/
May 21, 2009 - 6:43 am 11. Paul from Hamburg:The entire WMD argument is actually much simpler than you present: We believed the Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction because he had already used them. Personally, I think the weapons are still there. Iraq is a giant sandbox. In 2003, US forces found several MIG and SUKOI jet fighters from the Iraq Air Force buried in the sand. With GPS technology, you can bury something anywhere, memorize some coordinates and not have to worry about anyone seeing an incriminating map.
May 21, 2009 - 7:13 am 12. A. Nonymous:#4 You mean 2016, don’t you? I don’t think there’s any doubt that the same bunch that put him in office in ‘08 will return him there in ‘12. Unfortunately.
May 21, 2009 - 7:16 am 13. Sebastian Shaw:Not a word from the MSM since most of them living inside Obama’s anal cavity for his 4 year term; the media has invested their crumbling credibility on Obama’s success. The irony is eventually the media will turn upon their plastic creation when their God-like template is never realized & Obama makes too may serious mistakes.
May 21, 2009 - 7:26 am 14. sheesh:12 the nonymous . . . Right you are! 8 years to create the mess. 8 years to fix it. It’s only fair.
May 21, 2009 - 7:26 am 15. Войска ПВО:If one Google’s the BDS-laced commentaries on how Bush was destroying the economy during his eight years, one finds references to staggering jobless claim numbers like — oh — 225,000 or 186,000 or less that are pointed to as a sign that the economy was tanking. These were in the years following 9/11. There was even one wild-eyed assertion that Bush’s reign caused 19,000 jobs to be lost “last week”. (Let’s see, 19,000 times 4.333 is what again?)
A few weeks ago, we were treated to the newspeak that the jobless claims had dwindled to some 500,000 plus and this half-a-mil was the harbiner of some Obama-esque Spring.
Cue the robins to sing and flowers to bloom.
Now the Fed predicts a further slide, and signs are pointing to a malaise-like trudge back to normalcy over the next two years.
When I figure out how to mine the wealth at the BLS website, I should like to assemble an analysis of how the First Empty Suit, President Training Pants and his bad-hair-job treasury secretary has torpedoed the great vessel that is American commerce.
Until then, we tolerate an MSM who entreat the Teleprompter-in-Chief to tell them what enchants him about the office he now holds.
May 21, 2009 - 7:27 am 16. Bob:In addition to Paul’s post…
May 21, 2009 - 7:57 am 17. jrp61356:It has been known that hours before the first bombs fell on Iraq that Saddam had ‘tractor-trailers of money’ moved into Syria. I read from someplace, but cannot find the article again, that the amount of money that was removed would fit into a van, yet a caravan of tractor trailers left the country. It is conceivable that these were also moving WMD’s and got buried somewhere in Syria. I am astonished that I have never read this analogy anywhere, and I have thought of it for years since the invasion.
#11: I have had the same thought – that WMDs are still buried deep somewhere inside Iraq. And yes, the lunatic Hussein used WMDs against the Kurds a few years back, so he did indeed possess such weapons and demonstrated that he wasn’t hesitant about using them.
#12: Perish the thought. We can only hope that by 2012, enough people in this country will have come to the realization that Zero is nothing more than a make-believe president who is in way, way over his head. Naturally, a large part of that election will depend on whom the GOP gets to run against him.
May 21, 2009 - 8:02 am 18. Meryl:Part of the problem in refuting the big lies (step 2) is that they are coming so fast and furious, it’s difficult to respond.
The telling of a lie is a lot speedier and easy that the refuting of it.
May 21, 2009 - 8:03 am 19. TOhio:The American media is:
1. Communist News Network (CNN)
2. National Brainwashing Corporation (NBC)
3. America’s Brainwashing Corporation (ABC)
4. Communist Brainwashing System (CBS)
5. My Special Neanderthal Brainwashing Corporation (MSNBC) for people whose IQs are very low and are easily fooled and led.
Hmmm…is it no surprise that they are in agreement with Obama and everything he does?
May 21, 2009 - 8:07 am 20. HRPKathy:I’m sure Hoover claimed it was Coolidge’s fault. See how well it worked for him.
I’m not at all worried that The Zero will serve only one term. His policies are flawed and destructive and ultimately as in the days of Hoover and Carter, the country will vote their pocketbooks. The press is not helping Obama with their subjective blindness, if they don’t check his insanity, the results will soon be undeniable. They are as flawed as he is. And to quote Shakespeare, all of the “Out out damned spot”s in the world won’t make it go away.
It’s surviving until 2012 that is the question. Let’s start with a new Congress in 2010.
May 21, 2009 - 8:12 am 21. David W. Lincoln:Remember the Youtube clip that started with the White House Press Gallery sitting when then President Bush entered the Press Gallery, and ended with
them standing up for Obambi.
They are setting the pace as to which group has the least amount of credibility in the history of the human race.
Put another way, if you want a used car salesman to look good, just put the used car salesman next to a member of the MSM.
May 21, 2009 - 8:12 am 22. anton:I recall the endless cries from the MSM about the terrible economic situation when the economy grew at 2-3% per year during most of W’s time in office. Now we are treated to “great news!!” when the rate of decline slows; it is sort of like being told that the ship isn’t sinking as fast as it was last month. Yippee!!!!!
16. Bob: Remember that reactor that the Israelis blew up a little while ago, I wonder where they were planning on getting the fuel from? Did they already have it?
May 21, 2009 - 8:17 am 23. Whitey:Who crying? Uh, you are. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
I love this example of a whopper:
“In February, Obama, in a Peoria, Illinois, visit, said in a speech that Caterpillar CEO Jim Owens had told him the previous day that “if Congress passes our [stimulus] plan, this company will be able to rehire some of the folks who were just laid off.” The truth is that Owens “told Obama he could rehire people if a ‘responsible stimulus bill is passed and the economy gets going again.’” Who do you believe, Barack Obama or a CEO and the congressman who later spoke with Mr. Owens?”
That’s a whopper of a lie? Obviously Obama believes his stimulus plan is responsible and will get the economy going again. His ommision of those details aren’t a lie, it’s an assumption. Regardless, this is the best you got?
WHAAAAAAAA HWHAAAAAAA
Poor babies. Being the minority sucks, huh?
May 21, 2009 - 8:42 am 24. jrp61356:#20: My sentiments exactly! As I have stated on other blogs here at Pajamas Media, we can begin digging out of this mess by throwing the blowhard, mindless liberals overboard (along with their RINO buddies) next year, then finish the job in 2012 by sending the Community Organizer back to Chicago.
May 21, 2009 - 8:43 am 25. LBC:LOL…. #21
May 21, 2009 - 8:45 am 26. anton:“If you want a used car salesman to look good, just put the used car salesman next to a member of the MSM”
The MSM and a whole lot of others! Hollyweirdies, ACORN disciples, oh, I could go on, but, my time is too valuable!
Looking forward to seeing ACORN being thrown under the Bus any day now. Or maybe a few sacrificial lambs in the organization, so our dear Leader can say this disgusting organization has been purged..
Yeah, the tangled web is weaving fast. Along with the lies, corruption and all. The only question is, will there be some true conservatives who will be there to lead the way…only hope they have the strength, fortitude and courage. There are a lot of us who are ready to stand behind them and lead our Nation back to it roots of freedom. God Bless America
23. Whitey:
Deliberate editing of a quote or deliberate misquoting is the same as lying. He omits portions of Owen’s styatement to make the stimulus bill more appealing.
An example; Guy drops a car at a used car lot saying “It got in a wreck and caught fire so I had to have it repaired, repainted and professional smoke damage clean-up”. The unscrupulous salesman puts the car on the lot with a sign saying “Freshly Painted, Professionally Cleaned”. The statement by the salesman is a misquote of the truth and thus a lie.
Too bad there isn’t a Carfax for politicians.
May 21, 2009 - 8:51 am 27. Locutus:The columnist [Charles Hrauthammer] is less impressed by the current state of the conservative resistance.
“It’s completely incoherent, fractured and inconsistent,” he said, calling the recent anti-tax tea parties “a perfect example.”
“They were ostensibly about taxes. Obama hasn’t raised taxes as of now by a penny. So what was all that about? It was a natural pushback by people who have sense of the government expanding rapidly in its size and control,” Krauthammer said. “It was simply an inchoate reaction, the sort of thing that happens very early on in a very important and consequential presidency.”
Read more: “Barack Obama’s biggest critic: Charles Krauthammer – Ben Smith – POLITICO.com” – http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22743_Page2.html#ixzz0G9uT8HPK&A
May 21, 2009 - 9:28 am 28. Whitey:26 Anton: You’re right, this is a WHOPPER of a lie. Failure to mention that the stimulus would need to be responsible and effective before rehiring at CAT would occur is 100% deception.
Keep it up and you too will earn the “right wing wacko” moniker. Nevermind, I hereby grant this moniker to all of you here. Congratulations. DHS will be contacting you shortly.
May 21, 2009 - 9:37 am 29. David W. Lincoln:The youtube clip I referred to in response 21 is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VAfJyzN3ak
May 21, 2009 - 9:50 am 30. MarkD:It’s only been 4 months. Look, I loathe the guy, and I think he’s wrong on the issues, and I think the direction is downward, and the media is part of his campaign which is ongoing.
However, his popularity is dwindling as people catch on. The waste in TARP, and the rising unemployment can’t be hidden.
Assuming you’re an undecided voter, in 2010, what will you do? Reelect the guys who have controlled Congress for the past 6 years, two of them by supermajority with their presiedent at the helm; or blame Bush and give them more time, when the trend is clearly downward?
I don’t know about you, but I have a problem with the guys who control Congress getting more time than it took to win WWII to fix economic problems that happened on their watch.
May 21, 2009 - 9:58 am 31. Brian Richard Allen:“” … the hope expressed by (then Vice-President, Richard) Cheney, in 2002 that: ‘My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators,’ was absolutely accurate.
As Ray Charles could see in every picture of passionately happy Iraqis greeting Americans and in the fact that in the early days there were virtually no refugees — all of the Iraqis stayed at home — we WERE greeted as liberators.
To turn that around and for al Qaeda, our very own dhimmicrat party and its Ba’ath rump allies to convince the Iraqis that Americans were week, were planning to go home — and would lose — took almost two years of the worst possible screwing around and screwing up by America’s real enemy: — the self-annointed, self-appointed and self-perpetuating basta*d-offspring of the Soviet agents, Alger Hiss et al who comprise Foggy Bottom’s execrable brahmanas. Ably assisted by that gang’s carefully-cloned clueless clot Foreign-er Service-ers — and aided and abetted by the perfumed-princeling permanent Peter Principle poster person and then principle projector of the Foggy Gang’s psychopathology, Powell. Which pathetic poor way-above-his-pay-grade person also, lest we forget, doubled as the Bush Administration’s main mess-media leaker.
Brian Richard Allen
May 21, 2009 - 9:59 am 32. Professor Guvinoff:Los Angeles – Califubambicated 90028
And the Far Abroad
It’s easy to get carried away during an auction. Once in a while, some guy keeps bidding up, without having thought much about whether he really wanted the item so much, nor whether he could afford at such a high price. Either of these would require reflection, which is hard to come by once you convinced yourself you are dealing with a flattering emergency.
Suddenly, the last competing bidder quits, and the guy gets the thing he did not want at the price he could not afford.
This is very much like Obama’s behavior. It feels so good at first! He keeps arrogating himself of superior judgment and morality, systematically planting the seeds of resentment among the patriots he so condescendingly neglects (you know, the “bible-and-guns clingers”, ususally out of sight, out of mind, and so pitifully out of intellectual options…)
When the US president sees himself as an aristocrat, the spirit of the US constitution itself is under attack. The guy who is supposed to be a constitutional expert is going to learn painfully about things he professes to master.
Read the constitution, join the tea parties, and support the bill of federalism! Don’t bail out the guy who got carried away!
May 21, 2009 - 10:25 am 33. anton:28. Whitey:
Hey, that was a well-reason refutation of my statement. I am aghast at your probity.
Go back to Kos where name-calling and threats are SOP.
May 21, 2009 - 10:39 am 34. baltbuc:Mr. Blumer:
May 21, 2009 - 10:40 am 35. karlstro1:Let’s also remember that these lies are pouring forth within the first 100 days or so of Obama’s first term. How many more will we see by the end of four years or (God help us) 8 years?
I am really sick and tired of the Bush bashing. The election is over. The Almighty one is in the White House and Congress is in the hands of socialist. What’s their problem with the constant bashing. It’s over! They have created a much bigger mess than this constant pointing fingers at someone who is gone. We are in deep and serious trouble with job losses and the tremendous amount of spending for a stimulus that is not working. Jeeeeezzzzz
May 21, 2009 - 10:42 am 36. Mike:sclemens:
There is a book “Bad Leadership” that also proves to be applicable to Obama. The author classifies bad leaders into 2 forms: incompetent and unethical.
Obama has already shown qualities of both. I would put Obama’s whoppers in the unethical category, and his naivete in the incompetent category. The naivete is telling. He still has not successfully communicated what will happen with Guatanamo, after his speech today, and after the proclamation in his second day in office.
Also, he continues the habit of using straw men in his rhetoric. Friends and enemies alike are watching these performances, and they will see this habit for what it is, a sign of weakness. If Obama cannot honestly debate an issue, he is setting us up for challenges that will put the country at risk. The irony is that the risks associated with weak leadership are far more tangible and important than the symbolism of closing Guatanamo.
May 21, 2009 - 12:04 pm 37. anton:36. Mike:
The lies are needed to cover the incompetence. The ego is so large that he cannot admit to mistakes and refuses to aknowledge any backtracking on promises.
Ahh yes, the worst of both worlds.
May 21, 2009 - 12:18 pm 38. myth buster:Hey Whitey! If that’s what the definition of a right-wing wacko is, I happily embrace the title!
May 21, 2009 - 12:30 pm 39. Wacko:proud to be a right wing wacko if that is what is takes to stop the spending nonsense my children’s grandchildren will have to pay off.
May 21, 2009 - 1:48 pm 40. Increase Mather:The press are sooooooo bad…they have come full circle….now they are funny-bad.
Turn on…say, ABC or NPR…..listen to the “news”…and LOL.
They are actually laughable…their “stories” are based on the premise that Obama is the savior…I mean, Pravada, in its heyday sounded like these folks.
LOL.
May 21, 2009 - 2:03 pm 41. Rachel Peepers:Mr. Blumer,
Loved the subhead from the great article: “Where Are the Cries of ‘Obama Lied, Jobs Died”?
I’ve been trying to do a word play on “Bush lied, people died”, and the best I came up with was, “We goofed, Bush told the truth.” Which I put into one of my recent rants on PJM.
Incidentally, there’s been a lot of comments about one of my recent town newspaper editorials that pretty much skewers brother Obama.
When I comment to the commenters, do I have permission to use any part of your article? If I don’t hear from you, of course, I won’t. Regards, Rachel
May 21, 2009 - 2:12 pm 42. Sebastian Shaw:President Obama will never he made any BIG mistakes; his unbalanced ego manifested in his malignant narcissism gives plenty of reasons. Furthermore, why does Obama always interject HIMSELF into his speeches particularly when it is not needed? The cult of personality is propigated & encouraged by Obama & magnified by the compliant MSM. What happens when the MSM eventually turns on their messiah? Obama will retaliate & eventually shatter from the attention his craves. The United States of America & we, the American people, get the short end of the stick in the end.
May 21, 2009 - 2:20 pm 43. jrp61356:Count me in as a right-wing wacko (and a Southern one, at that)! Recent polls show that the number of people who identify themselves as being Republicans is somewhere between 20-25%. I don’t care if the figures get down to 5% – still, count me in! I will not abandon my conservative principles and cross over to the dark side just to be “part of the crowd.” I can’t escape the feeling that the house of cards that Zero and his gang of thugs is building will come crashing down one day. I just hope it doesn’t take the entire country with it.
May 21, 2009 - 2:21 pm 44. Sebastian Shaw:President Obama’s bush bashing is on borrowed time; he cannot keep blaming President Bush for Obama’s mistakes. In many ways, Obama reminds me of a spoiled rich brat who always got everything he ever wanted by his parents.
May 21, 2009 - 2:23 pm 45. MachiasPrivateer:Do you know that the photo released by the White House of the VC-25 (AKA Air Force One) flying by the Statue of Liberty is indeed a Photoshop job?
The relative positioning of the photo plane (nominally an F-16) and the VC-25 are such that the fighter needed to be at about 3:15 high. The videos of the planes flying about New York Harbor never show this orientation simultaneously with them flying approximately northeast, so that the whole side of the VC-25 is in sunlight at 10:30 EDT. The picture does not match the video.
This is a test of Premise 2 above. The truth gets told but will anybody notice?
May 21, 2009 - 2:28 pm 46. Robohobo:Why do the Lefties come to a site like this to just bait others? They act like little bullies in the school yard.
Go back to where you came from and leave the polite discussion to the adults. (Frakkin’ kids.)
May 21, 2009 - 2:30 pm 47. Will:Barak Hussein Obama is doing exactly what a true Communist would do in his position,convert the US to Socialism as quickly as posible. If you don’t believe that,just stick around a little while.
May 21, 2009 - 3:28 pm 48. LeighB:“Obama reminds me of a spoiled rich brat who always got everything he ever wanted by his parents.”
SS 43: I certainly with part of your statement, indeed spoiled and a brat. What Barry reminds me of kids who were told over and over again that they were “special”, “the best”,”the brightest”. Now the MSM has taken over telling him the same thing. It makes me want to go to counseling for him. ;-| Who knows, maybe Obamacare will pay for it so I can.
May 21, 2009 - 3:31 pm 49. LeighB:Uh-oh, there is a missing “is” in my previous post. And “agree” is missing in the first sentence of the second paragraph. Egads, here is what I meant to post:
“Obama reminds me of a spoiled rich brat who always got everything he ever wanted by his parents.”
SS 43: I certainly agree with part of your statement, indeed spoiled and a brat. What Barry reminds me of is kids who were told over and over again that they were “special”, “the best”,”the brightest”. Now the MSM has taken over telling him the same thing. It makes me want to go to counseling for him.
Who knows, maybe Obamacare will pay for it so I can.
May 21, 2009 - 3:34 pm 50. Bob from Virginia:A lot of people here seem incredibly naive about the possibility of getting rid of Obama after 4 years. You seem to be forgetting that most voters have never experienced the horror of major war or depression, or even really hard times, hence their innocent acceptance of an obvious unicorn salesman like Obama. In short the electorate is immature and that will not change in four years. The majority of the electorate do not vote on the basis of knowledge or history but rather or the same criteria used to pick a winner on American Idol.
Note he has already stated that attacking Iran’s nuclear program is not an option thereby almost certainly assuring massive death. Did anyone notice; his approval ratings are over 60%, rather than a demand that he be hung, that is why Obama will be re-elected.
May 21, 2009 - 4:55 pm 51. Ed Wallis:I’m just waiting (OKAY…salivating…) for the ads with d’OHbama saying
– we just can’t keep living on debt and borrowed money (however the exact words he used to express this were…) –
with all sorts of LIAR LIAR PANTS ON FIRE, contemporary breadline photos, “*H*Y*P*O*C*R*I*T*E*” screen overlays and the such.
heh.
May 21, 2009 - 5:29 pm 52. stuggo:Until we get a handle on the MSM all is lost, and we will be knee deep in socialism for the next generation. Perhaps the tea-parties could be a good venue for directing outrage at the media, and their bias, rather than Obama, and his excessive spending. I know this sounds crazy, but you have to admit that going after the media on a wide scale has never been done before.
I just want the MSM to be hugely embarrassed . I want them to be exposed like SNL did so well in the primary, but in a more dramatic fashion that will have a lasting affect.
At the correspondents dinner Obama stated, “You all voted for me” with a rousing applause from the crowded room. This is what you would expect in Communist Cuba or North Korea,but not in the USA.
The MSM needs to know, we are mad as hell, and we are not going to take it anymore.
May 21, 2009 - 5:41 pm 53. BC:I dunno, maybe we should wait until Obama makes up a pile of BS excuses to invade the wrong country and fill up it up with dead civilians, as well having 4000+ on our side returning home in flag draped coffins, not to mention the 30,000+ wounded, many of whom will never be healed.
Let me futilely attempt to make this very clear for the slow and uncomprehending among you — Obama could be 10x worst than how the most rabid right wing nutcases portray him, and he will still be at least 10x better than Bush.
May 21, 2009 - 5:49 pm 54. AThinkingPerson:#53 BC: If tanking the economy and spending us into a recession, throwing the dignity of the US in the trash, taking over the automakers, taking over the banks, selling out our liberties to the UN and bringing terrorists home to US soil is “better” than President Bush who kept us safe for 8 years and held onto his ideals in the face of a liberal tsunami, well, you have bigger problems than just being an Obama lackie. You have apparently already sold out your ability to actually think rationally and are beyond any sort of reasoning. Sorry.
PS… All your chatter about dead civilians (you conveniently forgot the Americans who died in the World Trade Centers), you neglected to note how now TeleBama is following Bush’s policies in the Middle East. Where’s your anger at Dear Leader BC? Might you be a party-line hypocrite?
May 21, 2009 - 6:40 pm 55. sheesh:54 atp . . . I’ll just pick off a couple for fun . . .
“tanking the economy and spending us into a recession” is Obama’s fault?
When did the current recession begin? (Careful, some people know the answer.)
“(Bush) held onto his ideals in the face of a liberal tsunami”
You call having a rubber stamp Republican House and Senate for six years a liberal tsunami?
“All your chatter about dead civilians (you conveniently forgot the Americans who died in the World Trade Centers)”
No Iraqis, dead or alive, military or civilian, had anything to do with the World Trade Centers.
You need to pick a new name, cuz you one dum mollycholly.
May 21, 2009 - 7:22 pm 56. LJG:If you want the truth about Saddam’s WMD’s read the book ‘Saddam’s Secrets’ by General Georges Sada of the Iraqi Air Force. As he describes, the WMD stock piles were moved to Syria in the months before the invasion. They had them but had the time to hide them.
May 21, 2009 - 7:53 pm 57. Tom Blumer:#42, by all means. You should credit direct quotes of course, but if you’ve got the arguments down in your own words, go with it.
I sort of like, “We goofed, Bush told the troof” (in honor of the 9/11 truthers). :–>
#53, you’re a laugh riot, considering that Obama, as #54 ATP pointed out, is attempting to repeat in Afghanistan what Bush did to win the war in Iraq. I only hope he has the persistence Bush had that ultimately led to victory in Iraq, even after Harry Reid told us it was lost. Now it, and Afghanistan, are Obama’s to lose. I wish I could say that I’m optimistic that Obama will free our troops to win in Afghanistan, and not to backslide in Iraq.
May 21, 2009 - 8:36 pm 58. BC:To “AThinkingPerson”: Bush kept us safe for 8 yrs, eh? That’s right, you guys don’t count the 234 days between when Bush became President and when 9/11 occurred. Only afterwards, but even then you don’t count utterly unnecessary military deaths because….why? Soldiers are suppose to die, unlike civilians? What about those 1 million or so Iraqi civilians? (Despite BS reports stating otherwise — and which are statistically impossible — you can more accurately estimate Iraqi civilian casualties by multiplying the Iraq Body Count total by 10). Oh, they are not of this country, so they don’t count, right? Even if we are to blame? How about the sharp rise in global terrorism and Iran’s growing stature as a threat? Did we really have to enact the Patriot Act and ramp up domestic spying to trade liberty for some suppose security? Didn’t Benjamin Franklin have some unkind words to say about this sort of trade-off?
And Obama is NOT following Bush’s policies — Bush laid a clusterf*ck of clusterf*cks for Obama to deal with and he’s obviously heeding the advice of the generals and his military advisers in trying to strike a balance between just abandoning an unstable, bloody mess of our creation and trying to come out of it all with something, anything positive to point to as to not make all those deaths utterly needless and pointless. I’m personally very glad he, unlike Bush, knows that the Taliban in Afghanistan was always the primary problem, from protecting bin Laden after 9/11 to now causing grief in Pakistan. Iraq was never more than a WTF distraction.
May 21, 2009 - 9:39 pm 59. donttreadonme:2010 brings Congress back into balance – bank on it. No clear majorities either way. BHO will be effectively stymied. 2010 will also see, at the latest, the Greenspan-Bush-Bernanke-Obama plunge of the 10s and 30s Treasuries. No amount of money printing reverses this one. rates WILL go up dramatically, the economy will reach depths that make this recession a cake-walk. And, no, this is not a hyper-inflation, but simply a collapse of buying on the part of our foreign master/creditors. Hell’s bells, today’s treasury rout may be the start of this final death roll. Keep your cash high and dry, have a little gold, begin dollar-cost averaging into the dividend paying side of the market AFTER the DOW goes below 7500 again. Also, encourage your Congressman to support HR1207, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act which is now gathering bi-partisan support. This bill will be the “Glass-Steagal” of this crisis era and those that support it will be regarded by both sides of the political divide as legislative heroes. Your welcome.
May 21, 2009 - 9:50 pm 60. donttreadonme:BC,
May 21, 2009 - 9:53 pm 61. Big Red:Let me make this as clear as I can for you- you could be 10x smarter than you are now and you would still be 10x dumber than a soggy box of matchsticks.
Hate to bust your bubble, Whitey, but those jobs at Cat are never coming back. The EPA told Cat they would have to pay a large fine and reconfigure its line of diesel truck engines to meet tighter emission standards if they wanted to continue making them. Cat decided the new standards would lower the quality of the engines and decided instead to discontinue making them. Too bad, ’cause the Detroit I’m driving now has been a real pain in the a$$. I miss my old Cat.
May 21, 2009 - 10:42 pm 62. cannedjam:If you take Obama’s most recent speech on “torture” and replace all instances of “terrorism” with “the economy” you actually get a pretty scathing rebuke of his own domestic policies. I guess that’s the convenient part of being Obama, you can be intellectually inconsistent, yet simultaneously regarded as a genius.
May 21, 2009 - 11:28 pm 63. BPT:Also: “Obama lied, trees died!”
May 22, 2009 - 1:04 am 64. sheesh:60. donttreadonme: . . . “Let me make this as clear as I can for you- you could be 10x smarter than you are now and you would still be 10x dumber than a soggy box of matchsticks.”
I’m sorry, I don’t get it. Can you explain yourself, please?
May 22, 2009 - 5:37 am 65. BC:To Sheesh: Don’t worry — members of the antiscience party can’t do math since that’s, well, a science.
Anybody here remember how back in 2005 people noticed that the reported violent death rate in Iraq was much lower than the murder rate in many American cities? Since the heavily armed and protected cops in those cities never complained about not having enough side armor in their police Humvees, that really should have been a tip-off that the numbers being reported for Iraqi civilian casualties were gross undercounts.
Towards the end of 2005, Bush was asked about the total umber Iraqis killed and his answer was “30,000, more or less.” At the time, this was about the same number as the Iraq Body Count tally, and much less than a study published in Lancet from a year before that estimated the casualties at 100,000.
A second Lancet study in the fall of 2006 by Johns Hopkins researchers came up with a much higher estimate of between 392,979 and 942,636, with a mean of about 655,000. At the time, the Iraq Body Count was running a range of 43,850 to 48,693.
So who was more right — a peer reviewed study or rough estimates from published news sources? Well, I did a statistical analysis to see if a lower end death tally of 50,000 would make any sense. It didn’t, not in the slightest — no matter how low or high you set Iraq’s murder rate prior to the invasion as a baseline, the 50,000 number would only mean that Iraq, during the height of war, was either still safer than some American cities or else was only 55% less safe than before the war. Since murder rates in US cities can up or down by nearly a factor of 3 with just changes in the economy and policing and such, if you take a conservative estimate of violent war causing the murder/violent death rate to go up by a factor of 10, I then got a civilian casualty estimate (in the fall of 2006, after 3 1/2 yrs of war) of 455,000, which was in the range of that 2nd Lancet study.
Ain’t math fun?
May 22, 2009 - 7:24 am 66. Tom Blumer:#65:
Lancet has been shown to be scientifically pathetic and totally debunked propaganda.
Just another pack of lies that academics will cite in front of gullible college kids.
May 22, 2009 - 9:22 am 67. BC:To Tom Blumer: No it wasn’t any more than those almost weekly and laughable debunkings of global warming that keep popping up on right wing sites. That John Hopkins review in the link concluded that: “Some minor, ordinary errors in transcription were detected, but they were not of variables that affected the study’s primary mortality analysis or causes of death. The review concluded that the data files used in the study accurately reflect the information collected on the original field surveys.”
The biggest issue was with record keeping: the ID’s of the people surveyed were suppose to be kept anonymous, but, again from that John Hopkins review:
“A review of the original data collection forms revealed that researchers in the field used data collection forms that were different from the form included in the original protocol. The forms included space for the names of respondents or householders, which were recorded on many of the records. Use of the form and collection of names violated the study protocol submitted to the IRB and on which the IRB determined the study was exempt from full human subjects review.
“The paper in The Lancet incorrectly stated that identifying data were not collected. An erratum will be submitted to The Lancet to correct the text of the 2006 paper on this point.
“The review found no evidence that the violations caused harm to any individuals involved in the study and the identifiable information was never out of the possession of the research team. Inclusion of identifiers did not affect the results of the study.”
But since recording people’s names was a huge no-no (especially in a dangerous war zone), the lead investigator, Dr. Gilbert Burnham, was suspended by John Hopkins from having any more “privileges to serve as a principal investigator on projects involving human subjects research.”
Maybe you guys have a very different notion what exactly “debunked” means, eh?
Speaking of right wing mythology (aided by clueless and careless news media reporting), for sh*ts and grins, someone should ask one of your regular contributors, Rand Simberg, what does the *all* of the evidence show regarding another oldie but goodie: those “forged” Killian memos. He, I and some others had a few brisk and lively Usenet discussions regarding what exactly did the real, verifiable evidence actually showed, including– from the official DoD records (including some not exactly widely noted, very belatedly released ones) and the proper formats for Memorandums for Records, to attempts at replicating all the memos with a modern word processor (Johnson only showed the results for one of the memos — ever wondered about the other 5?) and on to the history of common office machines and the use of proportional spacing from those ancient, misty, pre-Apple and IBM PC days. Ah yes, good stuff, but unfortunately water now long under the bridge and into the sea….
May 22, 2009 - 4:48 pm 68. seven:Today Friday Chrysler hearing
Fiat is getting cold feet. the word is deteriorating. The factories are closed, dealers are being cancelled and the word is out that warranties are voided as being unsecured liabilities. Indiana Pension wants to not submit to rape and Chrysler wants them to put up 2 billion if they get a hearing.
This may be the first american bankruptcy that disallows creditors their legal rights to pursue settlement.
I predicted Fiat would get the bigger picture 3 weeks ago.
May 22, 2009 - 7:29 pm 69. Tom Blumer:#67 BC, Lancet is total BS, as demonstrated here.
One of many obvious points:
This doesn’t even pass the stench test, let alone the smell test.
You’re embarrassing yourself.
May 22, 2009 - 8:19 pm 70. Tom Blumer:#68, you’re the second commenter who has said that about Fiat-Chrysler tonight (the other was at another blog).
What’s the source? The other commenter claimed it was Cavuto on Fox but I’m not finding it.
May 22, 2009 - 9:54 pm 71. stuggo:People are beginning to realize this is a faux economy that is being propped up by the Fed, and only resulting in a temporary gain.
Everything the Obama team has on the drawing board for a green economy has already been implemented, and failed in many european nations. Obama likes to use Socialist Spain as an example for a green economy. He fails to mention that Spain’s unemployment rate is 17.2% after several years of green initiatives, and most green jobs having proven to be temporary with minimal help to the overall economy.
Hopefully, the progressive movement in America will be damaged beyond repair after energy costs climb dramatically, and health care treatment becomes an ordeal for many Americans. With one party rule, (totalitarian govt.) it will be impossible to put the blame on anyone, but liberal Democrats.
I certainly do not want this to happen because it will damage America, but this is clearly the direction that we are headed.
Democrats always overreach. Count on it.
.
May 22, 2009 - 11:24 pm 72. BC:To Tom Blumer: that’s the problem with you anti-science, anti-research types — you can’t recognize the difference between stuff that came from serious research and stuff that came from someone’s butt, and that National Journal piece is crap on a stick. The fact is that you’re comparing the results of a long, careful John Hopkins investigation from just this past February to a an article appearing in a second rate conservative magazine (its nonpartisan claim is BS) not exactly known to break stories.
A key admission in that National Journal piece goes: “With Iraq’s central government barely functioning, health services overwhelmed, and political agendas coloring all agencies, no reliable statistics exist so far.
“The Lancet study was based on techniques developed by public health experts to determine rates of illness and death from epidemics and famines in large populations. This ‘cluster’ sampling is a relatively new methodology that attempts to replicate the logic of public opinion polling in Third World locales that lack a telecommunications infrastructure.”
If you think this through, then you should realize that this is essentially saying that the methodology used by Iraq Body Count — primarily news sources — and which Bush had quietly used, would produce the most severe undercount because few reporters are going to venture into the really bad areas of a war zone just to count bodies. But that’s where most of the deaths are going to be, so…. That National Journal piece, however, blithely ignores this in favor of plunging ahead with a lot of dopey reasoning not based on anything other than ignorance of how those types of surveys are conducted in places like Iraq, and how the data collected is processed to account for all possible major variables.
A second survey by a UK polling firm called ORB from January of last year raised the civilian casualties even further to about a million, which is about what you would expect if you extrapolate from the 2006 Lancet results and my follow-up statistical analysis.
If you have any friends with math skills, you can have them dupe my statistical results easily enough (my first was done during a Usenet argument): Take the population of Iraq, stick in any murder rate you want from something really low like 1/100,000 (Saudi Arabia, Oman) to a high of say 70/100,000 (Columbia) as an estimate for the prewar violent death rate in Iraq as the baseline. Then from March 20, 2003 to now, try factoring in one of the lower death tallies, like the IBC one, and see how much that raised the average violent death rate since the invasion and compare that with crime statistics of any American city over the past couple of decades and see if the numbers make any sense at all. After doing that, try plugging in a count of 1,000,000 casualties and see if the results then make a little bit more sense for a country at war and not just a place where you just need to be little bit cautious when walking alone at night.
May 23, 2009 - 8:43 am 73. Berlet98:Our “Values” President?
Specifically, what “values” our president holds near and dear to his heart are difficult to define or divine.
Are they the “values” of what he called, “sharing the wealth” and redistributing America’s wealth with those who have done jacksquat to earn it while stripping hard-working Americans of the fruits of their many labors?
Are they the “values” of aborting as many pre-born babies as he can get away with while professing an oh-so-sincere desire to make aborting the innocent a “rarity?”
Are they the “values” of subverting America’s military–and our schools–with homosexuals, undermining our economy with debt that our grandkids will be paying off until they are grandparents, and instituting “green” policies that are as functional as teats on a bull?
Nah, they are the values of his concept of “national security.”
In Obama’s commencement address to the graduates of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, young men and women who couldn’t walk out or extend a middle finger if they wanted a career in our Navy, our president said, “When America strays from our values, it not only undermines the rule of law, it alienates us from our allies, it energizes our adversaries and it endangers our national security and the lives of our troops:” http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.bd0713f4765981d1edbe5b522ce08354.3e1&show_article=1.
That pronouncement was as true as rain and as misleading as only this president can mislead.
Message to Obama: You have demonstrated repeatedly that you have no clue as to America’s true values. You have demonstrated with your silvery tongue that you are adept at talking the talk but when it comes to walking the walk you talked you are inept but supremely confident that your mainstream media lackeys will never expose either your ineptitude nor your true, malevolent purposes.
Our supposed allies are committed to their own survival and prosperity, not ours, except as it serves their purposes. Our known adversaries don’t need to be energized with you in office since you seem to have far more empathy for them than for America. As for our national security I do have to wonder which nation’s values and security you have in mind since they are obviously not ours.
With every day and with every utterance of this president it becomes clearer that 53% of voters made a serious mistake on November 4th, 2008. Whether our nation will ever recover from that error is very questionable.
(http://genelalor.com)
May 23, 2009 - 9:25 pm 74. Tom Blumer:#72 BC – As already stated, Lancet’s work doesn’t even pass the stench test, let alone the smell test.
So says the Wall Street Journal:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119984087808076475.html
…. the Lancet study could hardly be more unreliable. Yet it was trumpeted by the political left because it fit a narrative that they wanted to believe. And it wasn’t challenged by much of the press because it told them what they wanted to hear. The truth was irrelevant.
So says IBDeditorials.com:
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=284342732115035
A 2006 study claiming that more than 600,000 Iraqis had been killed in the war was eagerly embraced by the press. Yet again, journalists’ hatred for President Bush allowed them to be taken in by a fraud.
And then there’s this from NPR, of all places:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17993630
A recent national household survey conducted by The World Health Organization suggests that the number of Iraqi civilians and soldier deaths reached 151,000 between 2003 and 2006. The figure is about one-fourth of the number of deaths estimated in an earlier controversial study.
But keep on embarrassing yourself if you insist.
May 24, 2009 - 3:34 am 75. Pat J:I love this. Folks are talking about exact estimates on Iraqi civilian and military deaths after we invaded Iraq. Does any of this really matter? What does matter is millions of lives destroyed and otherwise disrupted by a war based on a pack of lies.
There is no justification for this war. Iraq was never a threat. There was no link between Iraq and Al Qaida. There were no weapons of mass destuction. There was no yellowcake from Niger.
Obama lied and jobs died? My a**! Bush wrecked the economy, led us into an unholy war, and is responsible for helping recruit a new generation of people that will grow up to hate us. If McCain/Palin had been elected, we’d probably be at war with Iran right now and in the midst of a a global depression. Wake up people.
May 24, 2009 - 6:24 pm 76. Tom Blumer:#75, Pat J:
Obama lied and jobs died? My a**!
What about the Obama’s “will not disrupt lives” lie, followed by plant closings that left tens of thousands without jobs, don’t you understand?
May 25, 2009 - 8:19 am 77. Bill Johnson:Obama is not good for children and other living things.
May 25, 2009 - 4:18 pm 78. KBB:The quickest way to stop the destruction of America is to kick Obama out of office – not impeach him, because he’s never held the office legally – but arrest him for treason. And the quickest way to do that is to press him (and the courts) on the eligibility (birth certificate) issue. It wouldn’t even go to court – it would all be over in the discovery stage. Instead of wringing hands, whining about what he’s doing, let’s cut to the chase and put our efforts into the birth certificate issue.
Jun 14, 2009 - 12:01 am 79. gary:Obama with 4 yrs ahead. It isn’t going to be pretty folks.
Jul 7, 2009 - 10:08 amI think this is his way of destroying America. He is not an American citizen and was never made to prove his citizenship. We will be nuked before this is all over and Obama will be scrathing his head saying “but I tried to get them to like us”