How Obama Uses False Media Narratives To Advance His Policies

Posted by Warner Todd Huston Feb 27th 2012 at 9:10 am in Democrats/progressives, Editorialism, GOP, Mainstream Media, Obama, Old media, Politico, Print Journalism, energy, journalism, media bias, newspapers

Last week we all got a great lesson in how the left promotes a lie to make Republicans the enemy and this time President Obama was a chief participant.

This is how the game is played: the left-leaning media establishment makes a claim about how rotten

Republicans are and Obama then echoes the claim and presents it as the true state of Republican opposition to his policies. The result is that we have a partisan opinion foisted on the public as truth about how mean the GOP is to this poor, well-meaning president. A false media narrative is established by the partisan press, politician adds said meme to a policy speech, presto-chango, a political “fact” is born. But it’s all just a partisan hit job masquerading as fact.

We are talking, of course, about President Obama’s claim that the GOP is “licking their chops” over the bad news of high gas prices. This is the line uttered by the president in his most misleading energy speech delivered in Florida on February 23rd.

In that speech, President Obama claimed that Republicans were happy that gas prices were hurting Americans. Obama intended to show that Republicans didn’t care that America was hurting, happy they could use it as a political tool to hurt the president and his well-meaning policies.

Here is what he said:

“Some politicians, they see this as a political opportunity. I know you’re shocked by that. Last week the lead story in one newspaper said, ‘Gasoline prices are on the rise and Republicans are licking their chops.’ That’s a quote. That was the lead. Licking their chops. Only in politics do people root for bad news. Do they greet bad news so enthusiastically.”

Note how Obama uses the partisan slam, published in “one newspaper” written by a left-wing writer and presents this as fact about how Republicans feel about rising gas prices. Note that Obama didn’t quote any actual Republican saying rising gas prices is a good thing. He quoted one of his own follower’s partisan claims and then assigned that false narrative to his political enemies.

In your college debate class you’d call this a strawman argument. Using the claim of a partisan to represent the enemy’s position is what the rest of us usually call a lie.

This “one newspaper” from which Obama claims to quote is likely the left-leaning website Politico whose February 16th story begins with the line, “Gasoline prices are on the rise, and Republicans are licking their chops.”

It was Politico that said Republicans are “licking their chops,” not any Republicans.


Tellingly, not one of the reports in the news over the ensuing days tried to track down what “one newspaper” Obama was claiming to quote. It almost seems as if the rest of the Old Media assumed he was lying about the quote, but didn’t much care anyway because the slam on Republicans was too good to check.

Obama continued with his false narrative:

“You pay more, they’re licking their chops. And you can bet that since it’s an election year, they’re already dusting off their three-point plan for $2 gas. And I’ll save you the suspense. Step one is to drill and step two is to drill and then step three is to keep drilling. We heard the same line in 2007 when I was running for president. We hear the same thing every year. We’ve heard the same thing for 30 years. Well, the American people aren’t stupid. They know that’s not a plan, especially since we’re already drilling. That’s a bumper sticker, it’s not a strategy to solve our energy problem.”

Investor’s Business Daily called this a “whopper” of a speech and noted at least five areas that Obama simply didn’t tell America the whole truth.

In fact, the president has been one of the biggest cheerleaders for higher energy prices.

Over at Rat’s Blog, Michael notes that gasoline was at a low of $1.91 a gallon in some parts of the country when he took office, now gas it’s about $3.39 per gallon, he gives us a very useful list of Obama’s real energy policies, ideas that are tailor made to increase our gas prices and hurt America.

Some of Obama’s latest policies:

• December 1, 2010 – Obama re-imposes and expands the moratorium on offshore energy production. Gas is $2.86 a gallon.
• January 2, 2011 – TIME reports that the Obama Regime issued the first in a series of regulations designed to unilaterally impose a national energy tax. Gas is $3.05 a gallon.
• May 5, 2011 – The Regime issues a formal statement opposing House-passed Restarting American Offshore Leasing Now Act (H.R. 1230), and Putting the Gulf of Mexico Back to Work Act (H.R. 1229) legislation designed to jumpstart American energy production, address rising gas prices, and help create new jobs. Gas is $3.96 a gallon.
• June 21, 2011 – The Regime opposes the House-passed Jobs & Energy Permitting Act that would unlock an estimated 27 billion barrels of oil and 132 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Gas is $3.65 a gallon.
• November 8, 2011 – The Regime releases a plan for a five-year moratorium on offshore energy production, placing “some of the most promising energy resources in the world off-limits,” according to the House Natural Resources Committee. Gas is $3.42 a gallon.
• January 18, 2012 – Obama rejects the bipartisan Keystone XL pipeline and the more than 20,000 jobs that would come with it. Gas is $3.39 a gallon.

Michael has more to the list at his site.

Let us also not forget that Obama was earnestly attempting to make our electric prices “necessarily skyrocket” back in 2007 when he was running for president. This president has a long track record of trying to hurt America with higher energy prices.

The upshot of this whole speech is that Obama used the claims of liberals about what Republicans think, presented that false narrative as “fact,” then lambasted Republicans based on those false claims. On top of that he went on with his speech ignoring his own actions that contributed to the problem he is pretending he’ll solve, then presented policy ideas to “fix” the problem he arguably caused.

Yet, no one in the media points out this false line of attack. The Old Media merely reported it straight on as if it were all simply a fact-based policy speech instead of a screed full of calumnies and lies. But this is the way

Obama carries on in every speech he makes. He makes false claims of his enemies then goes on as if the claims are fact.

When will the media call this president on his nonsense?

Big Journalism

Progressives and the Politics of Victimhood

Derek Hunter 


Charles M. Blow, communist, er, columnist for The New York Times, pulled back the curtain on the progressive mindset a little this week, as much as there is a mind behind it. Upon hearing something Mitt Romney said about single parents, Blow, who apparently is one, took exception. On Twitter he sent out the following:

Let me just tell you this Mitt "Muddle Mouth": I'm a single parent and my kids are *amazing*! Stick that in your magic underwear.

For those who don’t know, the website Buzzfeed describes the “magic underwear” this way, “Mormon men and women wear "temple garments" beneath their clothes as a reminder of their religious commitments, a rough equivalent of Jews' yarmulkes or tzitzit.”

That, of course, makes Blow’s tweet an attack on Romney’s Mormon faith, done willingly and before the whole world.  At a time when ESPN fires a writer for using the common phrase “Chink in the Armor” to describe a bad game by Jeremy Lin because Lin happens to be Asian, you’d think the blowback on Blow would be swift. You would be wrong. There was no blowback – or at least none to speak of.

Had Blow been anything but a progressive, the media would have opened up on him like he was Pat Buchanan, and justifiably so. But if you’re a leftist you’re allowed to be a bigot. It’s practically required.

In the progressive world people can’t be looked at as individuals. They must be divided and subdivided so the “professional Left” can set about making them victims when it suits their needs. It’s the hyphenated Americans, the gender Americans, the Americans who like to do this with their genitals. It’s the ones with this color skin, or that color skin, it’s this one and that one and blah, blah.

They create these groups, then tell people to identify with “their groups,” so, when a member of that group is the victim of something, it’s an affront to all of them.

It’s the mentality that created a group called the Asian American Journalist Association and emboldened it, without invitation, to release guidelines for how the media needs to cover Jeremy Lin. See, you can’t treat Jeremy Lin like any other human being, or even any other basketball player. He’s different. His ancestors were of Asian descent.

As such, phrases such as “chink in the armor,” though common for decades as a cliché about someone being discovered to not be perfect, can’t be used to describe his first sub-par performance because this previously unheard of group says so.

Their release says, “As NBA player Jeremy Lin's prowess on the court continues to attract international attention and grab headlines, AAJA would like to remind media outlets about relevance and context regarding coverage of race.”  See, Lin is not first a person or even a basketball player; he is a member of a race.

Has the AAJA been asked by Lin to lay these guidelines? No.

The group issued seven points of “Danger Zones” of which the rest of the world needs to be aware when talking about Lin, each more insane than the last.

It also listed some biographical information, the first point of which is the most telling. It reads, in part:

Jeremy Lin is Asian American, not Asian (more specifically, Taiwanese American). It's an important distinction and one that should be considered before any references to former NBA players such as Yao Ming and Wang Zhizhi, who were Chinese.

Not only do the group have to divide Lin from everyone else by pointing out he’s of Asian descent, it subdivides him to Taiwanese.

It continues … “It's an important distinction and one that should be considered before any references to former NBA players such as Yao Ming and Wang Zhizhi, who were Chinese.” Who gives a damn?

If you’re a fan of the Knicks, you care that he’s good. If you’re a fan of whoever is playing the Knicks, you care that he’s good for the opposite reason. If you didn’t care about the Knicks, or basketball, before someone with your ethnic background started playing for them and doing well, the problem is yours, not some poor schlub writer for ESPN.

But that schlub from ESPN paid with his job because he didn’t refer to Jeremy Lin the way people not Jeremy Lin want Jeremy Lin referred to.

By dividing people into groups, progressives are able to easily manipulate people. If a group you’ve been taught you’re a part of is the “victim” of an affront, it’s easy to rile you up. This is not to say there aren’t instances of bigotry by individuals against other individuals. It’s to say jackassery by one against another is nothing more than that. Unless you’re trying to remove the individual and create a collective mindset to advance an agenda…

Progressive create or exacerbate issues based on the groups they’ve created, demonize conservatives as the cause of, or obstruction to the solution for, the problem and, with the willing help of the media, manipulate people too busy to pay close enough attention into thinking they’re trying to help. But progressives never help.

Umpteen trillion dollars into the war on poverty we have just as much poverty. Try to change anything about these failed progressive programs, such as incentivizing work or attempting to curb abuse, and progressives will mobilize the necessary groups to cry racisim, sexism or whatever ism they need to create to get the needed outrage. It’s a sick game that traps people in poverty, ruins lives and families and actually harms people. But it does do one important thing – it creates a bloc of voters almost uniformly ready to vote, unthinkingly, for their oppressors.

This is not a slave mentality; slaves yearned to be free and independent. This is the mentality most closely associated with monarchy. In monarchies, peasants were told their king was chosen by God, and he had their best interests at heart. Thus, they accepted it when king stole their property and liberty and sent them off to war over ego. They were told their king was their caretaker, when, in fact, he was their oppressor.

It’s the prefect progressive style of government. And it has no room for dissent.

Progressives spent so much time and energy creating this group mentality, they have no time or patience for those who refuse to conform. Be a black, gay or female conservative, and you not only don’t qualify for the victim status afforded others, you’re purposefully, and gleefully, targeted by the very tactics those groups were allegedly created to prevent.

There is virtually nothing of a racist, sexist or homophobic nature that a progressive can say to or about a conservative that will illicit any ill will from fellow progressives, either in or out of the media. Sickeningly, the perpetrators are often rewarded. Al Sharpton, noted bigot, inciter of riots and inspiration of murderers (Google Freddy’s Fashion Mart), who made his name pulling a hoax against police based on race, now has a daily hour-long TV show on the progressives MSNBC.

Sharpton’s past is not anything sane people dispute, yet his hiring went largely unquestioned in the media. No one resigned from NBC News out of protest over the tainting of their brand because Sharpton’s politics and tactics ARE their brand.

Were Sharpton’s politics unknown, or if he were – gasp – conservative, and he’d written, “Chink in the Armor,” he would’ve been fired. Since his views are known, and shared by the vast majority of those in position to take a stand against him, he is granted a platform to spread his lies.

The same goes for Charles Blow.

There was no outcry from the Times’ editorial staff or readers that Blow should be fired. We don’t even know if there was any pressure on him to apologize.  The entirety of their anemic response was limited to AFTER Blow tweeted an “I shouldn’t have done it” non-apology apology a day and a half later, and reads, “It is enough. We are in agreement with him that the comment was inappropriate and we're glad he acknowledged it.” To put it another way, they wish Blow would save that sort of talk for where it’s appropriate – Upper East Side cocktail parties where everyone agrees and no one will talk about it it outside the room.

Blow never mention it again or actually use words like “I’m sorry,” just moved on like it never happened. And why should he? He’s a progressive, after all, which means he thinks correctly. Besides, there are more important issues to discuss, such as contraception.

I kid, of course. Contraception is, however, conceptually important because progressives are trying to screw all of us.

A Final Note

We’ve been hearing so much about contraception lately you’d think this country was a brothel. You’d think breast cancer, heart disease, diabetes, etc., were irrelevant as far as women’s health concerns go when compared to the mortal threat of pregnancy.

To match their made up crisis, progressives created their own statistics. This week they started throwing around that 99 percent of women use or have used birth control. If that’s the case, what’s the problem? It’s certainly not an access problem if 99 out of every 100 women in the country have, or had, no problem getting birth control. It’s a laziness problem on behalf of the remaining women.

But progressives won’t point that out; it doesn’t advance the agenda.

That’s why you get the cast of propagandists on Morning Joe talking about Republicans trying to deny access to contraception to women. Joe Scarborogh, who should know better, Mika Brzenzinski, who mostly seems like she knows nothing, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY, who does know better, were talking this week about how Republicans and religious conservatives were trying to deny women access to contraception.

This reminded me of a tweet I sent out recently on the subject that goes like this: Upon hearing this outrage, I set off to my local drug store to put a stop to it. To my shock, I saw women buying birth control WITHOUT any help from the government, paying for it out of their own pocket, and exiting the store without being assaulted by any religious groups. I didn’t think that could happen in America today.

I’m not going to write any more about this topic, I covered why it’s a threat to liberty two weeks ago, but I will point out this is what you get on MSNBC. Even its “moderate” show, Morning Joe, is as radical as all the others; it’s just that the hosts there do it with a smile – and bring on “conservatives” more interested in being liked and invited back than winning an argument.

Whatever name you want to give it, it ain’t honest, and it ain’t journalism.

That is all. Go about your week.
Townhall

A Forced Marriage of Church and State

February 26, 2012
By Fay Voshell

The Obama administration is seeking to achieve a forced marriage of Church and State, a loveless arrangement that has been attempted before.

During the Middle Ages, the political power advantage most often lay with the Church.  Such was the power of the Church that pope Gregory VII forced Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV to stand in the snow and to kneel before the pope begging forgiveness as an act of penance for defying the Holy See. 

But this time, the power advantage lies with President Obama and the executive branch, not the Catholic Church.  This time, the scene resembles Henry VIII's successful challenge of the Church when he defied the Pope, discarding his wife Katherine of Aragon, marrying Anne Boleyn, seizing the monasteries in 1537, confiscating the Church's wealth and declaring himself head of the Church of England.

The result was the toppling of the supremacy of the Church and the establishment of the supremacy of the state.

In like manner, the Obama administration is asserting the primacy of its own political/religious weltanschauung, a garbled pastiche of radical secularism sugar coated with liberation theology, a paradigm which now seeks marriage of church and state-advantage to the state. 

It has arbitrarily demanded that all Christian institutions provide health insurance policies which cover abortifacients, sterilization and the "morning after" pill.  By so doing, it has completely gutted the First Amendment and has attempted to subjugate the Church's carefully crafted and centuries-old tenets of faith to state doctrine.

As during the time of Henry VIII, the Church and State are now to become one, with the state's religious/political viewpoints reigning supreme. The carefully wrought differentiation between the two and the guarantees of religious freedom America once knew are dangerously jeopardized.

The President and his allies have been able to promote the potential union of church and state for a number of reasons.  But the chief means of achieving their dangerous enterprise has been the clever utilization of an exoskeleton of supra-constitutional agencies and institutions, a gigantic bureaucracy which is not answerable to the electorate, but instead to the executive branch. Bureaucratic rulemaking is now grabbing power for state. The advent and implementation of the Health and Human Services Affordable Care Act has granted the president unparalleled means of asserting state authority over religious institutions.

Formerly restrained in some measure by presidents who had at least a minimal understanding of and respect for the Constitution, the full use of the bureaucracy for nefarious purposes only awaited a president who regarded the Constitution as a relic of the past and an obstacle to his goals for fundamentally transforming America.

Such a man has risen to the presidency; and such a man has made it clear he regards the Church as presently constituted and constitutionally protected as unilaterally subservient to the almighty state. He has made it abundantly clear that the power of the state is to be uninhibited by constitutional restraints, in order he achieve goals foreign to the prevailing national ethos, which is still largely conservative and Christian in nature.

We are seeing the culmination of a decades' long and tireless campaign to expel free and varied Christian discourse from the public square, Christian symbols from public spaces and Christian mores from public institutions -- except for the occasions in which our President gives homilies at the annual Prayer Breakfast, serving up rehearsed liberation theology along with the bacon and eggs.

All organizations now are to sing from the same statist hymnbook. 

But the state could not have attempted subjecting all Christian institutions to state power unless the Church had exhibited philosophical and theological weaknesses which have encouraged the state's predations.  The Catholic Church, along with most Main Line denominations, has indulged in a long flirtation with leftist leaning liberation theology.  It has been in bed for decades with theology which has incorporated socialist and Marxist doctrines and tactics.

Theologians such as Gustavos Gutierrez, a Peruvian priest whose well meaning concern for the poor led him to develop a theology interpreted through the eyes of the downtrodden, was to find his theology was quickly co-opted by socialist/Marxist terminology and action, personified but not limited to leaders such as Father CamiloTorres, who preached the need of revolution for implementing radical changes in economic, social and political structures. 

The goal of the radical liberation theologian is anti-hierarchical and seeks to remove power from the rich, redistributing monies and power among the poor.  Torres, along with other Catholic leaders, including Pope Paul VI, severely critiqued the free market economic system, regarding it an inherently oppressive.  Sin was redefined as a social rather than personal act; and redemption was seen as societal rather than individual -- a view our president shares.

Essentially, the core tenets of Latin American liberation theology as interpreted by the American thinker James Cone and President Obama's former pastor, the infamous Jeremiah Wright of "God damn America" fame, are the beliefs of our current president and his allies, though the emphasis is much more on the socialist/Marxist praxis than on the biblical admonitions concerning personal and unforced charity to and compassion for the poor.

But the other result of the influence of liberation theology has been that the Catholic Church now has a large leftist contingent which is anti-free market, pro socialist/Marxist, and pro-state. This radical contingent is in alignment with the president's plan for social change, including as it was and is to be effectuated through the Health and Human Services Affordable Care Act.

Encouraged by Vatican II, which sought to allow more power to the laity, many American Catholics were and are pushing for radical societal change which would disestablish existing hierarchical orders and institutions -- including, ironically, those of the Church itself.  But while a large contingent of the Church has been leaning left on economic and some social issues, most retained conservative stances concerning other social issues such as abortion, gay marriage, abortifacient birth control measures, euthanasia and sterilization. 

Now the Church knows that for this administration, splitting the conscience into two competing and inherently irreconcilable world views isn't possible.  The Church must choose either to hold fast to her conscience and to maintain her religious freedom or be absorbed by the state's socialist agenda.

Essentially, the church is caught on the horns of an irreconcilable dilemma of her own making; namely, an attempt at a syncretism of the theologically irreconcilable.  The leftist socialist/Marxist tenets of liberation theology which the church has increasingly absorbed views the human being as essentially material and salvation as societal change -- change which is to be effectuated by force of revolution and state power. 

On the other hand, the Church's adherence to pro-life values, the sanctity of marriage; her stance against euthanasia, the value placed on all human life from conception until death, her dedication to religious freedom and freedom of conscience indicate her devotion to the idea that human life is ultimately, chiefly and eternally spiritual. 

Human beings, the Church has always believed, are deeply flawed but ultimately redeemable through repentance for sins and faith in the salvific work of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

The latter belief being, of course, the ultimate and ineradicable; the absolutely foundational premise of the church throughout its two thousand year long existence before its theology was partly hijacked by contemporary Marxist/social and economic analysis and practice. 

Reconciliation of the two world views is impossible. Briefly put, it is impossible for the Church to Christianize and baptize a world view which is inherently atheistic and materialistic.

The Church, by taking on the impossible and erroneous task of spiritualizing and obliquely or openly advocating and effectuating the premises of socialism and Marxism, has left itself wide open to the present situation in which she finds her core spiritual values challenged and usurped by the state.

The church has in times past reached an impasse when attempts at syncretism have proved impossible, as the Reformation showed and the current situation in America shows now. 

But thank God the Church, even when in the grip of philosophies alien to her ethos, has been prone to outbreaks of Christianity which recover her ancient and estimable two thousand year old heritage.

Thank God for the earnest rebellion of men and women of conscience, then and now.  Certainly the church needs spiritual rebels similar to Martin Luther, John Calvin and others who stood up and rebelled against the corruption of the Church's core values and doctrines, with results that reverberate to this day.

May such spiritual rebels rise up, and may the Church be victorious against the current onslaught of the State.

As in the long run, she always has been.

Fay Voshell is the recipient of Princeton Theological Seminary's Charles Hodge Award for excellence in systematic theology.  She is a frequent contributor to American Thinker and may be reached at fvoshell@yahoo.com.

American Thinker

The Obama White House Is Campaign Central

by Of Thee I Sing 1776 

Every White House has, for a long time, had an office occupied by a “senior advisor” whose sole task it is to make sure the President gets re-elected.  We certainly have no problem with that.  After all, politics is to Washington as air and water are to the planet.   Judging from the decisions that have emanated from this White House, however, it appears that politics and the next election constitute the primary business being conducted at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Where to begin?  Let’s start with the so-called budget the White House has forwarded to the Senate.  The reader is reminded that the United States Senate, under the leadership (or lack thereof) of Senate Majority Leader Reid, has refused to consider a budget for over three years.  Even when the Republican minority last year introduced in the Senate the identical bill sent to it by the White House, the Majority leader refused to schedule it for a vote.  Why? Because the White House never intended it to be voted upon.  The year before, the Senate (with its Democratic majority) voted 97 to 0 against the White House budget proposal.  Why?

Once again, because the President didn’t send his budget proposal to the Senate to be acted upon.  The White House merely has used the budgeting process (or lack thereof) for campaign fluff.  US law actually requires that the Congress enact a budget each year. The House of Representatives, following the 2010 mid-term elections, has been sending a budget to the Senate, and, in our judgment, a well-reasoned budget at that.  It then becomes the Senate’s responsibility to enact a budget and for the two legislative bodies to iron out the differences in conference.  Not with this Senate.

The President’s so-called budget proposal is largely a platform for his tax-the-rich campaign mantra. It’s a great re-election strategy. He, essentially, ignores the nation’s primary imperative, which is to bring some sanity to our entitlement mentality before the weight of our entitlements quite literally breaks the bank.  The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) now forecasts that in just another eight years the combined Social Security Old Age and Disability Trust Funds will be about $800 billion short of what the Social Security Administration projected it would be just last year.  This is very serious stuff with dire implications for those workers who are fast closing in on their retirement years.


The President claimed in his budget address about $850 billion in savings from ending the wars and then says he will steer some $230 billion of that to highways.

Well, with all due respect, there is no dividend from ending wars for which the government borrowed to pay. Common sense tells us we would have to keep borrowing that amount of money in order to spend it somewhere else.

Counting the end of wars as a dividend is like a student coming out of college loaded with debt and aching to buy things, says Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “When you finish college, you don’t suddenly have thousands of dollars a year to spend elsewhere — in fact, you have to find a way to pay back your loans.’’

MacGuineas says, “Drawing down spending on wars that were already set to wind down and that were deficit-financed in the first place should not be considered savings.’’  We should hasten to add that President Bush had his own bag of accounting tricks to obfuscate the cost of the wars.

Perhaps, most disingenuous was the President’s assumption of healthy growth in years ahead, with GDP growth predicted to reach 4 percent in 2014 and 4.2 percent in 2015.  He really had no choice, as all of his deficit and debt reduction projections fall apart without strong economic growth. A strong pro growth message is essential for a president seeking re-election, but this is, of course, a remarkably growth averse administration. The President talks growth but pursues policies that are antithetical to growth. Reputable private forecasts are not nearly as rosy as the administration’s assumptions, and their track record tends to be better. They are generally forecasting a percentage point lower or close to that, a huge difference, and they don’t see reaching 4 percent growth in the foreseeable future.

Last year, the administration built its proposed budget on a projection of 2.7 percent growth in 2011; it turned out to be 1.7. The forecast for 2012 was 3.6 percent, which the White House lowered in the new budget to 3 percent. IHS Global Insight, a leading forecaster in Lexington, Massachusetts, projects 2.1 percent.

With the nation’s debt to GDP ratio now exceeding 100%, Washington’s habit of simply borrowing whatever it wishes to spend (in excess of its revenue) to fund its profligacy is headed for involuntary rehab.  According to President Obama, the country isn’t spending too much; it’s simply a matter of the wealthy not being taxed enough. It’s all about everyone paying his or her fair share.  Really?  The top 1.0% pays 37.0% of all federal income taxes and the top 2.0% pay just under 50.0% of all federal income taxes, while about half of all tax filers pay no federal income tax at all.  Daniel Henninger in his February 16, 2012, Wall Street Journal column stated:

“No more certain sign exists that a nation has chosen to step off its historic upward path than the creation of wealth taxes.  A nation imposes a wealth tax when it wakes up one day to conclude that it has become embarrassed, rather than proud of, its wealth, which is to say, its national success.”

The strongly pro-growth Simpson-Bowles Commission (appointed by President Obama, apparently as window dressing) addressed our need for tax reform in a sensible and thoughtful way.  We imagine the President’s reaction to the Simpson-Bowles recommendations was somewhat akin to the famous “Scream” image used to promote the horror film by the same name.

Could any decision have been more politically motivated than the decision to reject action on the Keystone pipeline until 2013 or beyond?  Yes, there are environmental considerations that would have been accommodated, but for an administration desperate to find shovel-ready projects, this would be the granddaddy of all shovel ready projects.  It involves thousands of jobs, and an attractive, abundant source of crude oil from our next-door neighbor to the north.  Labor strongly supported the project, but environmentalists said “no” as they so often do whenever industry, in general, and Big Oil in particular support something.  Better the Canadians should pipe it to tankers that will ship the crude to China.

The Keystone Pipeline is not some new project being foisted upon the American public. According to the TransCanada Corporation, the $13 billion Keystone pipeline system would play an important role in linking a secure and growing supply of Canadian crude oil with the largest refining markets in the United States, significantly improving North American security supply.

In June 2010 TransCanada commenced commercial operation of the first phase of the Keystone Pipeline System. Keystone’s first phase was highlighted by the conversion of a natural gas pipeline to a crude oil pipeline and construction of an innovative bullet line that brings the crude oil non-stop from Canada to market hubs in the U.S. Midwest.

Keystone Cushing (Phase II), an extension of the Keystone Pipeline from Steele City, Nebraska to Cushing, Oklahoma went into service in February 2011. The 36-inch pipeline connects to storage and distribution facilities at Cushing, a major crude oil marketing/refining and pipeline hub.

The proposed Keystone Gulf Coast Expansion Project is an approximate 2,673-kilometre (1,661-mile), 36-inch crude oil pipeline that would begin at Hardisty, Alberta and extend southeast through Saskatchewan, Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska. It would incorporate a portion of the Keystone Pipeline (Phase II) through Nebraska and Kansas to serve markets at Cushing, Oklahoma before continuing through Oklahoma to a delivery point near existing terminals in Nederland, Texas to serve the Port Arthur, Texas marketplace.

We understand that pipelines are serious undertakings, and that there are serious environmental issues that must be responsibly addressed.  So are tunnels, highways, bridges, airports and every variety of so-called shovel ready projects.  There are untold thousands of miles of pipeline throughout the country including every metropolitan area in the nation.  Some are very old. Some require repair and replacement, and they are routinely repaired and replaced when necessary. Pipeline construction is something we can do, have done and are doing every day.  There was no legitimate reason to reject this project, except that it caused waves at Campaign Central at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Political imperatives have dictated policy at the Obama White House throughout the President’s first term. 
 That’s why we had the spectacle of Boeing being sued in Federal Court by the NLRB to stop production in South Carolina of the Dreamliner Jet after Boeing had already built a multibillion-dollar plant to construct the plane.

And then there is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) that the President famously proclaimed, “would not add one dime to the deficit…I’ll veto the bill if it adds one dime,” he told us. It may not add a dime, but according to the CBO it will add between a half trillion and a trillion dollars to the deficit by the end of the decade.  That’s more dimes than we care to compute.

And who can forget the President’s eloquent sales pitch when selling his healthcare plan, “if you like your existing health insurance plan you can keep it,” he assured a skeptical public.  Right.  Tell that to the thousands of employees who work for Catholic Charities, hospitals and other church sponsored community service organizations.  Hopefully, the United States Supreme Court will relieve us of Mr. Obama’s major first term signature piece of ill-conceived, poorly understood, ever-encroaching legislation.

By Hal Gershowitz and Stephen Porter

Big Government

Media Skewers Santorum, Romney On Faith, What About Obama?

Posted by Lee Stranahan Feb 25th 2012 at 12:30 pm in Democrats/progressives, GOP, Mainstream Media, Obama, Religion, elections 2012, media bias 

The religion and religious views of Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are all widely known.

They are reported on, discussed, and insulted regularly in the press. On the other hand, discussing President Obama’s religious views is apparently not in the realm of permitted discussion. That’s because Obama’s religious philosophy seems to have a lot more to do with politics than spirituality – and the press doesn’t want you to know anything about it.



Imagine if during the Presidental debates some brave journalist asked:

“President Obama; you spent around twenty years as an active, contributing member of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, which is considered to be the most preeminent church in the country preaching they refer to as “Black Liberation Theology”. Since most Americans aren’t familiar with the tenants of Black Liberation Theology, can you briefly explain what it is and broadly explain how it fits your own personal belief structure and where, if at all, you disagree with its teachings.”

This is a perfectly fair question. There is no hidden “gotcha” and it’s based on facts that are not in dispute.

However, there is almost no possibility the press will ever ask it.

Note that the question was not the softball, “President Obama, are you a Christian?” The question of whether or not Barack Obama is a “true Christian” is an unanswerable sideshow, which is exactly why the press loves to focus on it. It deflects from the real issue, which is Obama’s two decades of association with Black Liberation Theology.

Actually, discussing Black Liberation Theology even might lay to rest some of the (silly, in my opinion) discussion about whether Obama is a “secret Muslim,” because one of the motivating factors behind both Black Liberation Theology and Trinity United Church of Christ is a reaction against Muslims (such as Malcolm X) who said that black people should not be Christians; hence Trinity’s use of the slogan “Unashamedly Black, Unapologetically Christian.”

Doesn’t matter though; the press will never ask it. While his association with Trinity United may debatably help establish Barack Obama’s bona fides as a Christian, it also strengthens the claim that Barack Obama is some variant of a Marxist because there’s a clear connection between the ideas of Black Liberation Theology and Marxism.

Note that I said the ideas, not a particular person, such as Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Candidate Obama, with the help of a willing press corps, was able to pull an Alinsky on Rev. Wright – freeze him, focus on one person, make them the issue, then throw them under the bus and let your defenders scream that you’re being attacked for guilt by association.  Wright is another sideshow that avoids the real question.


No, the issue is allowing the President to explain in his own words what Black Liberation Theology is and to give a broad sense of his agreement or disagreement with it. We don’t need hours of theological minutia but the public deserves to hear as much as the philosophy of the church Obama attended, since we already have been deluged with the stories about the religion of the Republican candidates.

Will it ever happen? I don’t see how – but we can always pray for a miracle.

Big Journalism

My Apology to President Karzai on Behalf of Americans

Superior Court asked to boot Obama from ballot

 by Bob Unruh

 A state Superior Court in Georgia is being asked to review and overturn Secretary of State Brian Kemp’s decision, based on a recommendation from an administrative law judge, that Barack Obama’s name be on the state’s 2012 primary ballot.

The appeal to the higher court says the recommendation from the administrative law judge, Michael Malihi, was faulty and that he allegedly to this date has refused to follow the state’s requirements regarding the case.

The appeal has been filed with the Superior Court of Georgia for the County of Fulton by Van Irion, one of several attorneys who presented evidence at a hearing held by Malihi in January.

The plaintiffs argued several points before Malihi, including Obama’s alleged failure to qualify as a “natural born citizen” as required by the U.S. Constitution for presidents. Obama has admitted in his writings his father never was a U.S. citizen, and attorneys argued that the understanding of the Founders, and a subsequent Supreme Court ruling, defines natural-born citizen as the offspring of two citizens of the country at the time of the birth.

Citizens raising concerns include David Farrar, Leah Lax, Thomas Malaren and Laurie Roth, represented by Orly Taitz; David Weldon represented by attorney Van R. Irion of Liberty Legal Foundation; and Carl Swensson and Kevin Richard Powell, represented by J. Mark Hatfield. Cody Judy is raising a challenge because he also wants to be on the ballot. 

Discover what the Constitution’s reference to “natural born citizen” means and whether Barack Obama qualifies, in the ebook version of “Where’s the REAL Birth Certificate?”

Malihi’s decision came without any evidence being presented by Obama or his lawyer after they refused to participate in the required hearing under a state law that mandates all candidates qualify for the office they seek.

The law also allows any voter to raise a challenge, and several did. A hearing was held on their evidence Jan. 26.

Malihi essentially tossed all of the information the plaintiffs and their attorneys presented.

“The court finds the testimony of the witnesses, as well as the exhibits tendered, to be of little, if any, probative value, and thus wholly insufficient to support plaintiffs’ allegations,” he said.

The complaints were raised under a state law that allows voters to challenge the eligibility of candidates on the state’s ballot. It is the states that run elections in the U.S., and national elections are just a compilation of the results of the 50 state elections.

The state law requires “every candidate for federal” office who is certified by the state executive committees of a political party or who files a notice of candidacy “shall meet the constitutional and statutory qualifications for holding the office being sought.”

State law also grants the secretary of state and any “elector who is eligible to vote for a candidate” in the state the authority to raise a challenge to a candidate’s qualifications, the judge determined.

Irion told WND today that he’s asked Malihi why he declined to follow the Georgia Administrative Rules of Procedure 616-1-2-.39, which state, “Upon application by a party, the administrative law judge shall certify the facts to the superior court … for a determination of the appropriate action, including a finding of contempt.”

The attorney had sought that determination, but Malihi apparently ignored the request and the requirements.

He told WND that Malihi never had the authority to decide the contempt issue, but the court rules require him to certify facts to the Superior Court.

“We made our application for him to do that several days before his ruling … Malihi should have certified the facts alleged to the other court immediately. … Yet he sat on our request for days, then continued to sit on it after his ruling. When we inquired, the silence was deafening. We didn’t hear back at all. This is from a court that had previously responded to e-mails within hours, or even minutes, on every other occasion. Four days later we e-mailed again.”

He called the Malihi court’s explanation that it no longer had jurisdiction because the case had been advanced to a higher level unbelievable.

Irion’s motion for a finding of contempt explains Obama and his attorney “willfully defied” the order of the court to appear and testify during the Jan. 26 hearing.

“On the eve of the hearing, defendant’s attorney sent a letter directly to the Secretary of State of Georgia, with copies sent to this court and attorneys for the plaintiff. Defendant’s letter requested that the Secretary of State halt the proceedings of this court. The letter ended with a statement that the defendant and his attorney would suspend all further participation in the proceedings of this court pending a response from the Secretary of State. Later the same day, during the evening of January 25, the Secretary of State responded to the defendant via a letter with copies to this court and counsel for the plaintiff. The Secretary of State’s letter informed the defendant that the Secretary of State lacked authority under Georgia law to suspend this court’s proceedings. The letter concluded by warning the defendant that any failure to participate in further proceedings of this Court would be at the Defendant’s peril,” the motion explains.

Still, Obama and his attorney refused to participate, creating “a direct threat to the rule of law,” the attorney said.

“The defendant’s action represents a public denial of the authority of this court, the laws of this state, and the judicial branch of government as a whole. Such open denial of a separate branch of government by a sitting president amounts to no less than a declaration of total dictatorial authority,” he said.

Filed just yesterday with the Superior Court was a motion for emergency stay of Kemp’s rubber-stamp approval of Malihi’s decision.

“At issue is nothing less than the enforcement or loss of constitutional rule of law,” he submitted to the court.

“The petitioner’s right to live in a constitutional republic will be lost if the clearest terms of the U.S. Constitution will not be enforced by the judicial branch of government.”

He said if the judiciary does not take the appropriate action, “it would confirm that the judicial branch is now unwilling to enforce the clearest and most basic requirements of the U.S. Constitution.”

His appeal explains that Malihi’s opinion defies logic.

“[His] conclusion runs contrary to common sense, violates venerable rules of constitutional construction followed by the U.S. Supreme Court since its inception, and violates the explicit holding of the Supreme Court case relied upon. Had the drafters of the Constitution intended all people born in the U.S. to be considered natural born citizens, the 14th Amendment would not have been necessary. Had the drafters of the 14th Amendment intended that amendment to alter the Article II definition of natural born citizen, they would have clearly stated so. Yet the term ‘natural born citizen’ is not found anywhere within the 14th Amendment. The amendment also makes no reference to Article II. The [Malihi] ruling, therefore, violates rules of construction that the OSAH had itself relied upon just days earlier in the same litigation,” the brief explains.

It explains Malihi also ignored a Supreme Court precedent in favor of a non-binding opinion from Indiana.
Irion also argues that his client’s rights to live in a constitutional republic are being compromised when provisions of the Constitution are ignored. He noted the argument from Obama earlier in the case that he won the 2008 election.

“Contrary to popular opinion, voters are not the final arbiters of whether an individual is qualified to hold office. In a constitutional republic the power of the majority is limited and cannot infringe upon constitutionally protected rights of a minority,” the brief argues. “The Constitution is an anti-majoritarian document; meaning that it protects individuals from invasions and usurpations by the majority.”

Top constitutional expert Herb Titus contends that a “natural-born citizen” is born of parents who were U.S. citizens at the time of the birth. The argument also is supported by a 19th-century U.S. Supreme Court decision, Minor vs. Happersett in 1875. The case includes one of very few references in the nation’s archives that addresses the definition of “natural-born citizen.”

That case states: “The Constitution does not in words say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.”

An extensive analysis of the issue was conducted by Titus, who has taught constitutional law, common law and other subjects for 30 years at five different American Bar Association-approved law schools. He also was the founding dean of the College of Law at Regent University, a trial attorney and special assistant U.S. attorney in the Department of Justice.

“‘Natural born citizen’ in relation to the office of president, and whether someone is eligible, was in the Constitution from the very beginning,” he said. “Another way of putting it; there is a law of the nature of citizenship. If you are a natural born citizen, you are a citizen according to the law of nature, not according to any positive statement in a Constitution or in a statute, but because of the very nature of your birth and the very nature of nations.”

If you “go back and look at what the law of nature would be or would require … that’s precisely what a natural born citizen is …. is one who is born to a father and mother each of whom is a citizen of the U.S. or whatever other country,” he said.

“Now what we’ve learned from the Hawaii birth certificate is that Mr. Obama’s father was not a citizen of the United States. His mother was, but he doesn’t qualify as a natural born citizen for the office of president.”

WND