More Leaks, More Lies … and the Usual Confusion
Many misleading statements come out of the White House, the Congress, the judiciary, and the media–the four branches of government–every day. When the president says “Assad must go,” and then does nothing to accomplish that goal, it is obvious that the statement was deceptive, and that deception is every bit as serious as those surrounding the gunrunning scandal. Indeed, by encouraging opponents of the Syrian regime to believe that the United States is really going to help them, the president in all likelihood has contributed to the casualty toll. To that deception we now have yet another, a story designed to have us believe that the CIA is actually doing something serious to support the Syrian opposition. But if you read the story, you find that it only says the CIA is “helping allies decide” whether to help fight Assad, and if so, which elements in the opposition. It’s a deception designed to support the earlier deception, and the same New York Times that gave us the first one thoughtfully gave us the second as well.
So, once again, misleading information was fed to the press, and the press did not track down the facts. Nor did Congress, for that matter, nor any pundit that I can find. Indeed, so far as I can tell, the “leaks” have been taken as gospel by most everyone, even though a bit of research (phone calls, for the most part) and a dash of common sense show the opposite.
It’s tempting to blame the confusion on politics, and certainly there is a political component. But don’t underestimate the enormous power of sloth in these matters. Tracking down the truth is hard work, and writing it requires a bit of courage as well, especially when the herd has bought into a deception.
As Joshua Reynolds so marvelously put it, “there is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.”
yet another must read article from the pen of Michael Ledeen
What we need is an entrepreneur who will print and sell bumper-stickers that read: “Obama and Holder lied and 300 Mexicans died.” or “Obama and Holder: Fast and Furious…with the truth!”
Perhaps it’s time we start playing the game the way the Left plays it. The difference is that we will have truth on our side.
While as a rule I eschew plastering my Dodge 3500 with political stickers (except for my Gladsten Flag given to me by my local Tea Party), these are two I would proudly display.
The Ten Commandments of The Self-Exalted One;
1. Always say whatever He thinks makes Him look good.
2. Never tell the Enemy what He really intends to do to them.
3. Always remember that any American who didn’t vote for Him is the Enemy.
4. There are no enemies in Islam, simply friends He hasn’t sufficiently kowtowed to yet.
5. Everything is the fault of Western Civilization.
6. When in doubt, refer to Commandment 5.
7. Only tell His most ardent supporters what He really thinks, about anything or anybody. (“Bitter Clingers” are absolutely not in this category.)
8. “Thinking” is far inferior to “feeling” and “believing”.
9. When things go wrong, blame somebody else.
and the most important Commandment of all;
10. Nothing Is Ever The Self-Exalted One’s Fault.
If you keep these items firmly in mind, you will understand why The One only tells the truth once in a blue moon- and then demands that somebody paint it some other color.
clear ether
eon
Great list eon!
Mr Ledeen is a serious man, so I am going to write a completely serious post.
Pretty much everybody knows that lying is a big part of politics, as it is a big part of daily life. People and politicians lie all the time because we all need to remain on (relatively) friendly terms with a wide group of people, many of whom we don’t really agree with or want to spend time with, yet we must still spend time with them. Moreover, there is a huge category of lies that nobody really objects to. Maybe the wife does look kind of fat in that dress, or maybe the husband is no longer quite as virile as he used to be. If we spoke the truth all the time, then the wheels of civility and the wheels of politics would quickly grind to a halt.
BUT, we also expect that our close associates and the major political figures in our country will LIVE truthful lives. If I discover that my wife has a secret second life, then I have a right to be upset. Very upset. And if we had discovered that George Bush was actually the son of an itinerant grifter and had plotted for years to impose a progressive agenda on the country after getting elected as a conservative republican, we would have a right to be upset. Very upset. Actually, I’m not too pleased with Mr. Bush because I think in certain areas, he danced pretty close to that line. Even so, I have a lot of confidence that he is Bush Sr’s son and that he loves and respects his country.
But obama’s entire career is BASED on deceipt. He has actively lied through his teeth about virtually everything he has ever done or promised, from his political philosophy to what he intended to do, to who his lifetime associates have been, right down to misrepresenting an insurance dispute his mother had before she died.
So I don’t find it amusing, or even truthful, for somebody like Mr Ledeen, who obviously knows better, to imply that obama isn’t all that dissimilar from all the other politicians we have had for the last few hundred years. He isn’t. He is orders of magnitude more devious and contemptable than ANYBODY who preceded him, including Bill Clinton, who took lying to previously unforeseen heights.
And I don’t like to hear that it’s the media’s fault, either, although think they should be hung en masse. Yes they should lift a finger occasionally to unmask the universe of deceipt, but they aren’t the core problem. obama is. If he had said what he intended to do and then gone about dimantling capitalism and democracy, I would say, well, at least he announced himself. I don’t like it but the majority rules. But he didn’t and he doesn’t. He lies, all the time, every time. And it’s not anything like what the other President’s have done. Nothing like them at all.
“…but they aren’t the core problem. obama is”
Because we are Americans and taught to be strongly in favor of representative government, we keep dodging away from the real issue. Obama isn’t the core problem. The real core problem is all those people who voted for Obama the first time and who will still be around to vote, election after election, into the indefinite future.
I disagree that it’s the people’s problem. In fact, it’s a ludicrous assertion.
When you have a pack of thousands of jackels who schemed for decades to control the media and did it; when you have full-scale, funded by billions, thought out for generation political strategy to obfuscate the truth and decieve the public; when you have a shield of lies as thick as the ocean coming from people most citizens expect to be honest; when you have an opposition party that rolls over like a dieing dog and says nothing….sorry pal, it ain’t the people’s fault.
Sure, I wish the public was more aware. We all do. But don’t blame the con on the marks. Blame it on the con man.
Obama’s problem is that he is not as good a liar as Bill Clinton. Clinton could keep all his lies straight. O can’t.
Also, I agree entirely with XYZ.
“the son of an itinerant grifter and had plotted for years to impose a progressive agenda on the country”
Sounds like Bill Clinton, aka, Willaim Jefferson Blythe III, a con man son of a con man.
Look Bill Clinton, at the beginning of his presidency obtained files from the FBI on all of his opponents. He fired every single prosecutor but two, including one investigating him personally. If that has ever been topped in American political history, I’m not aware of it.
Even Obama isn’t the “core problem”.
That problem is the progressive agenda, and the dogmas of the Democratic Party. Those are exactly the things which have been on display in this Administration, and going back to 2006 when the Democrats regained control of both houses of Congress.
Everything Obama has done is doctrinaire progressive Democrat dogma, from start to finish. The fact that exactly none of it works in the real world tells you how well-thought-out those dogmas are.
(They are of course not based on “thought” at all, but on “feelings”, prejudices, arrogance, and a bottomless lust for power combined with an equally bottomless hatred of our civilization.)
What the Democrats would love you for doing at this juncture is blaming it all on Obama. One of their standard forms of self-delusion when they lose an election is “Our message didn’t get out”. (Even with the entire MSM as their Greek chorus.) Another is ” We had the wrong messenger”. (They choose each one, so what does that say about their collective IQ?)
They always need an alibi. Because the dogma, being dogma, may never be questioned, in any way.
And they particularly do not want you concluding that everything going wrong is the result of them, with Obama as their standard bearer, putting into practice every theory they have fantasized about using to run the world for the last century or more. They really, really don’t want you coming to that conclusion.
No, if they have to lose, they want you to blame the guy in front. After all, they can always find another point man.
And do the same thing to you all over again, in the belief that this time it will work.
If it doesn’t… they’ll just blame you, again.
And punish you accordingly, of course. It’s all they know.
cheers
eon
It is staggering, isn’t it? That national socialists always believe THEY are the ones WE’VE been waiting for. I suppose there’s a very good reason they don’t like communism being taught in schools anymore. That is, the bad parts of it (are there any good parts?) because nobody likes to remember failure. Communism/socialism is all about failure. I give you Greece, Spain, etc. To say nothing of the USSR and red China which is playing at a weird sort of fascism.
But when I see the mentally disordered “leaders” we have such as Brack, Hitlery, Reid, La-La-Pelousy, et al I can only think of the people I went to high school with who consistently and regularly had f***ed up ideas and when they would express them, got looks of derision and laughed at. Yet now they hold the seats of power in our nation. So I guess there’s something to the expression, “There’s a sucker born every minute”.
But I guess that might be because dreams can be stronger than reality. Even in those biographies about people who made it in spite of all the barriers they faced, we all want the protagonist to succeed. I speak, not of our current rendition of government, specifically, in that “we want them to succeed”, no. I speak of the utopianists who want desperately for their lives to be “fixed” and the horn-of-plenty to spill its contents all over them. The dream of an easy life, unbounded leisure and free stuff.
Another irony is watching those who demand free stuff and seeing how incredibly selfish they are. Kind of an object lesson for all to see.
Right now 46% of this nation pays no taxes. When the people learn they can vote themselves money from the treasury, we are lost as a nation. Since Johnson’s time we have been fast approaching this end. The “I wants” will always exceed the number of “I haves”. It’s in the DNA. But the desire is supposed to work by making an “I want” get off their ass and “go GET” in the sense that they should EARN it.
Welfare is legitimized theft. As are most taxes nowadays and, historically, that’s pretty much all they’ve been. Our system only works when the people in power believe in the rules set forth to operate under. This administration doesn’t. They hate the Constitution and therefore, ignore it, unless it suits their racist agenda.
We’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. In human terms, it’s always hard to see the enemy that approaches slowly and acts like a friend. Most recognize the ones that come fast with pointed swords but what’s most startling to me, through ALL of this, is the complete and utter lack of cynicism on the part of Americans who also lack in suspicion of salesmen.
The suckers outnumbered the ones who kept their money in their wallets in 2008.
Yes, as I keep saying, Roger is Always Right, and he is right to say that Obama is a liar. And then? And then it is up to us and others to dig out the truth, to debunk the lies, and to defeat him. Of course the media are culpable, along with the other branches of government. I document this in the discussion of “leaks.” And it’s Congress’s fault, too, for failing to use its investigatory power to inform us. And it’s the pundits’ fault, too, for swallowing whole the leaks.
Folks aren’t fulfilling their obligations…
The fact that Obama seemed to support the rebels and then sat back and watched does have some historical precedent. Stalin, after all, re-invaded Poland in January 1944. By late July Soviet troops reached the eastern suburbs of Warsaw and the Polish language Soviet radio called on Poles to “re-take Warsaw.” The Germans dug-in and Stalin held back his troops. The Germans slaughtered the Polish resistance; Stalin didn’t enter Warsaw until January 1945.
Ditto for Eisenhower in 1956 during the Hungarian Revolution.
No, Jack, not quite. Stalin literally camped on Warsaw’s door step with 500,000 troops and chose to do nothing so that the Germans could do Stalin a favor and kill those Poles whom Stalin anticipated would quickly take up arms against the Soviet Army. Stalin was right insofar as the Poles were concerned.
Eisenhower had no contingent borders with Hungary in 1956. Austria was neutral and would not permit NATO troops on its soil. All of Hungary’s remaining borders were with other Warsaw Pact nations. So, in order to help Hungary, how ever much that might have been a “feel good” idea at the time, that would have resulted in war with the USSR.
spinoneone – The Hungarians thought the US would help them. Ask them; I’m married to one. If we weren’t going to intervene – for the reasons you lay out, which are good ones – then we should not have led them to believe we would help them.
One doesn’t have to go back to Stalin or Eisenhower to find evidence of political leaders believing in the dictum “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” and then leaving the “friend” hung out to dry.
Obama, by “ordering” Assad to leave the building, certainly encouraged Syrian rebels to declare themselves in public. When Assad, unlike Elvis, did not leave, Obama watched as the rebs got slaughtered.
George H.W. Bush (Bush Sr.), after Desert Storm, encouraged the Shias of Iraq to rise against Saddam. When they did, Bush turned coy and the uprising got slaughtered.
Contrast all this with Reagan. American policy during the Cold War was not just about “containing” the Soviet war machine. It was also about telling the suppressed people in eastern Europe that they had a “friend” in America. But apart from “Ich bin ein Berliner” and Radio Free Europe and Pershing missiles, precious little was done. Along came Reagan and eye-balling Gorbachev (who eveybody agrees was a nice guy who wanted to help) across the Brandenburg Gate, hollered “Tear down this wall”. No false appeal to the people to “rise up”, yet a bodyblow to the regime which hastened its demise.
Obama, an out-and-out Liberal, and Bush, an out-and-out Rino, proved not to have the courage of their convictions. Reagan, an out-and-out Conservative, showed us all how it is done.
Reagan’s Brandenberg speech still gives me a Chris Matthew’s like tingle. It is one of the most powerful of speeches, like Roosevelts “Day that shall live in Infamy” or imagine what Lincoln’s “Four Score and Seven Years ago” must have sounded like. Reagan was such a great speaker, and his words from decades ago still inspire while Obama is trying to get his programmers to load his teleprompter with words he can properly pronounce. Obama is much more than a liar, he is actually a composite character of his own imagination just like the people he wrote about in his fictional biography(s). Perhaps Obama really isn’t real, just a reflection; or a focused projection of all the horrors of leftism, a Wizard of Oz with Walter Mitty dreams of Utopia.
Which is why I support the activities in supporting the contras, even if they were illegal. We had comitted ourselves.
” But don’t underestimate the enormous power of sloth in these matters. Tracking down the truth is hard work, and writing it requires a bit of courage as well, especially when the herd has bought into a deception.”
I find it amazing that the mainstream media is doing so little to get to the bottom of the Fast and Furious scandal. They didn’t seem to have any trouble trying to take Nixon down, but when it comes to trying to find out who was responsible for a botched government operation that cost the lives of one American border patrol agent and about 200 Mexicans, they seem oddly silent and very, very, lazy about discovering the truth.
Why is that? Because their man is in office and if they take him down, they would have to admit that they were horribly wrong to have supported him so blindly in 2008. And the mainstream media NEVER admits that it made a mistake, especially when it comes to liberal politicians they adore. THAT is what disgusts me so much about the mainstream media today. Not only are they lazy and not doing their jobs, but they are allowing criminal behavior to continue at the Department of Justice and possibly even the White House. Nobody died in Watergate, but lots of people died here. Shame on the mainstream media for not doing their job and trying to get at the truth. Shame on them all.
“they would have to admit that they were horribly wrong to have supported him so blindly in 2008.”
Who says they were blindly supporting Dear Leader? I say the supported him with full knowledge DL was an America hating, social justice loving, black racist, marxist. They are sympatico with all that DL is which is why they supported him and now obfuscate and defend him.
They would stoop to the lowest levels to support a person with whom they shared the same poltical substance.
The press has the same problem the adults do in “The Emperor’s New Clothes”. Everyone knows the real story, but to admit the reality is to reveal their part in the con. An election will change all that. That is our hope. Hope and change, where have I heard that?
It’s more than a little amusing to me that there is a great hullabaloo in the Force right now over Obama’s many false statements about his own life, but virtually no reaction to the so-called “leaks” about his behavior as president, crucial elements of which are almost certainly false.
There is a threshold to any political action, and it’s level is set through media, or as I prefer to call it: news entertainment. In the wildly successful field of opinion programming, the power of lying has progressively grown and the thresholds truth-telling correction must overcome ever higher.
Prez Barack has killed more straw dogs than the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. He re-packs himself according to contingency by falsely claiming his opposition did this or said that when it’s not factually true, and then “defeats” the fictive wrong with a popular bromide.
Thus we have devolved from a republic to a democracy. Forget his globo-socialist policies, he should be impeached and removed from office for being the biggest liar we’ve ever had in the Oval Office, and that’s a mouthful.
It seems to me, Michael, that Obama doesn’t so much tell a lie…as he IS the lie.
A Fabian Socialism (called a “small c communism by Ayers)is a deceit implanted into the free market society.
Obama learned early on
It was usually an effective tactic, another one of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. They were more than satisfied; they were relieved – such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn’t seem angry all the time.
The “tricks” didn’t stop merely at the doorstep of white society. The “Marxist tricks” were developed over years of observing the two schools of thought battle for strategic prominence. Confrontation vs. stealth.
Obama always favored stealth. In order to become the first Communist President, Obama could not, cannot, and will not admit to his core belief system.
As a Fabian, (named for the Roman general who finally figured out not to plow massive armies into Hannibal’s center only to get outflanked and slaughtered each time), Obama hides his small c communism and then has his conspiratorial Propaganda and Lies Ministry cover for his own deceit. Their deceit, however, is not sloth or laziness. You don’t fail to investigate EVERY claim by accident…only to dig to the center of the earth for the slightest misstep by every Republican, conservative or anti-leftist.
You don’t watch the radicalization of the DOJ, the delivery of state secrets, the failure to give the American people a mandated budget, the seizure of industries, the shredding of the Constitution and the destruction of our borders…sitting on your hands…because of sloth. You do it because you are a traitor assisting the head traitor.
Again, Michael..I think we make a grave mistake believing that we have caught Obama TELLING a lie…and missing the point that Obama IS the lie. The Orbis Unum crowd here and in Europe are simply Fabian Socialists (small c communists) and if we use that as our starting point…we will have moved into the heart of the jigsaw puzzle…instead of fiddling constantly with the corner pieces. It is a war, an overthrow…the Fabian Socialists against the Free Market Patriots. All over the Western World. And…here at home…as well as in Europe…THEY…are winning.
This is an insightful approach. obama is so much more than a liar. It obscures the truth to imply that it begins and ends with him incessant lies.
He is the lie; the culmination of decades of trench digging by the left. They have been so successful that when he tells a lie, i.e., when he says something, it’s like a tree falling in a virgin forest. It happens, but nobody hears it. Your several examples are spot on. obmama could dismember and eat one of his daughters in the white house and the media would describe it as a family barbeque.
“[W]hatever else he is, he’s a lawyer.” He is not a lawyer, he has a law degree. Lawyers are paid to know the law. Obama has not a clue.
Error, Mr. Ladeen. Obama is not a lawyer. Check Obama’s standing with the Illinois Bar (you can do it on line) and you will find that both Obama and Mrs. Obama surrendered their memberships. Obama was a lawyer. He is no longer. He simply has a law degree, which doesn’t make him a “lawyer.”
I think we need to discern a difference between the average run-of-the-mill liar and a pathological liar. The former weaves his tale of deception with an eye toward not getting caught. He always leaves an escape hatch, measured ambiguity or plausible deniability. On the other hand, the pathological liar spouts off and expects to be believed. When called out, he just shrugs it off, or when pressed, he gets angry and indignant.
Obama’s pathological lying is characteristic of a narcissistic personality disorder. He’s created an entire mythos about himself. We might ask the following questions. Does Obama believe his own lies? Does he even know when he’s lying? Does he persist in lying because he doesn’t care about the truth, or because he expects others to believe him no matter what he says?
I’m not a shrink, but it seems to me what we have here is a pathological personality. As such, normal standards for veracity simply don’t apply. The man lies not to gain advantage, but rather because the pattern has become habitual, a fixed aspect of his personality. The problem for such liars is that when others finally catch on, people just shrug and stop listening. Even members of his own party are starting to arrive at this conclusion.
It’s not whether a particular statement is true or false, it is that what he says bears absolutely no relationship to the truth.
A falsehood may be told for many reasons, some good, some bad, some neutral. If a lie is not evil, and does no harm, it is not really significant.
A liar is a liar. He tells you what will best serve his ends. Evil is at the root of his lies. He seeks to damage people with them, to his own benefit.
Telling a lie and being a liar are two different things.
Obama is a LIAR.
yes, Roger is Always Right. But we need the truth and that requires hard work…which isn’t being performed very much or very well nowadays.
– depressed me, throw in an Italian column — or have you returned to the States?
is the least of it with obama. it’s not because he’s pathological or narcissist either, that’s so weak. he lies because he gets away with lying, and if he’s become fond of himself because folks believe his lies, and refuse not to believe them because they want and prefer to believe him, he’s just acting normal and natural, nothing sick or pathological about it.
the real pathology is the willingness of so many to be deceived, and that’s narcissistic too, since those who choose to believe obama think the world of themselves for doing so, and regard people who dub him a liar to be bad, bad, bad.
so, if his being a liar is the least of it, what’s the big problem with him then? it’s hate. obama’s burning up with hate
for america and americans, whites, christians, jews, and, make no mistake about it, american blacks as well.
Michael, you remind us not to forget “the enormous power of sloth.” You’re right. What is interesting is the fact that all of the slothful journalists in the U.S. have college degrees. They have jobs in the mainstream media and apparently have completely abdicated their task of WORKING at those jobs in order to get the real news. Why do all these college graduates refuse to do the work they were hired to do? We still see plumbers fixing leaks, servers waiting tables, and clerks ringing up sales. But the employed college graduates do nothing, except accept their salaries. The work ethic among the public “intellectuals” of the country has completely disappeared.
Some of Obama’s lies are also attributable to his lack of work ethic. He galavants all over the country. When does he actually talk to heads of executive departments to figure out how to save money? When does he talk to other heads of states in order to plan out how to deal with Syria or Russia or China? When does he talk to members of Congress and read the bills they are writing up in order to determine their potential effectiveness? When does he meet with bankers and industrialists to find out what their real problems are in this bad economy and figure out along with them what the best courses of action are? We see none of these activities on his daily schedule. Quite simply, he does no work in Washington.
I’ve long thought—at least since Clinton got away with the “Big Three” no-no’s: draft dodging, smoking pot, womanizing—that it’s an illusion that America has three branches of government.
Actually, go back to Watergate, when Nixon was caught mucking up, which led to congress arrogating power and the presidency being weakened.
In the USSR they had Pravda, in the USA we have the MSM, who I believe are our true rulers. It’s NOT that they are lazy! One of the essential rules of politics is to get elected, you have to con or convince 51% of the voters.
And, the MSM, at the vital margin, has long been in control. Some people think they are an arm of the Democratic Party, but I think it’s the other way around.
Just ponder on the whole rotten history of the New York Times, from at least Walter Duranty on! As a business, it’s a money loser, but its real PURPOSE, as the One with a finger on the “button”, is to continue to rule.
The NYT, et al, exist to push the “button”, to LIE to its conned slaves, so as to keep in power its puppets, which it basically controls—Obama, Pelosi, Reid, an down to the local state functionary.
In all Absolutisms, there is what’s called the Doctrine of Two Truths. There is the Absolute Truth, and there is truth, so called. There is Absolute reality, and then there are appearances.
Well, D.C. has become a veritable funhouse, with most powerful members of government, whether elected or not, essentially walking and talking “warped mirrors”. Talk about APPEARANCES, and not reality!
Real Reality must prevail, but who knows when and how it will occur? Real Reality is the Absolute Truth. Just like an alcoholic must realize what HE’S doing to himself, by reaching a hellish bottom, and confess, and THEN convert his actions, there must be a similar awakening by the denizens of the MSM. One by one.
I read such a mea culpa today, linked at powerlineblog.com, by a longtime member of the MSM, who’d become disgusted at defending it from liberal bias.
Maybe the dam is breaking.
Reality will mug us all, the MSM included!
I remember when “oxymoron” became the word that was on everybody’s lips. The dumbed down American public is about to get a huge Latin lesson, and I predict the next such word will be—
MEA CULPA!
Kudos Mr.Ladeen
Excellent expose’ Our great leader has been within 20 feet of a Marxist since he was born. He is following the Communist Manifesto line-for-line. Should he get another four years there will be a hammer and sickle flag flying over the White House.
Dare to prepare for a communist revolution coming to your neighborhood.
Right on Mr. Ladeen – WRITE ON!
Respectfully, Yoda@magnifiedview.com
http://www.magnifiedview.com/2010/11/13/cultures-clash-and-civilizations-crash/
I’m not only prepared, I’m there! I live in Maryland…run by the comrades.
Obama and all of his handlers are Communists. This one truth about him will never change. All of his lies and obfuscations are the part and the parcel of who he is and what he faithfully represents. ABO2012
This is classic Stalinism:The state intrudes, then destroys private life.What next? Will Obama will start asking schoolkids to report their parents to the police for criticizing him?
whatever else he is, he’s a lawyer.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe that he surrendered his license to practice law before he ran for office so does that still make him a lawyer?
I just love love it love it…excellent points in this piece!
Yes indeed, people the lazy herd, the unimaginable affected troll of a lying lazy rusted machinery called media has bought the deception from the lying Obama as much as the lying Carter!
Ask any oppressed freedom fighting Syrian or Iranian citizen and get yourselves educated!!!
For the herd, truth is hard to take, ignorance is however enticing. It is easier to blend, to be accepted, to be a part of, harder to take risk, stand out and fight..