Just a few more rogue agents of the Obamanation...

[4est_4est_Gump]

In the home stretch of the 2012 presidential campaign, from August to September, the unemployment rate fell sharply — raising eyebrows from Wall Street to Washington.

The decline — from 8.1 percent in August to 7.8 percent in September — might not have been all it seemed. The numbers, according to a reliable source, were manipulated.

And the Census Bureau, which does the unemployment survey, knew it.

Just two years before the presidential election, the Census Bureau had caught an employee fabricating data that went into the unemployment report, which is one of the most closely watched measures of the economy.

And a knowledgeable source says the deception went beyond that one employee — that it escalated at the time President Obama was seeking reelection in 2012 and continues today.

http://nypost.com/2013/11/18/census-faked-2012-election-jobs-report/

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

A Nation of Noble Liars...

"If ACA navigators on occasion have urged poor applicants to fudge on their eligibility, what is the big deal?"

Obama’s Noble Lies
Stop worrying whether the president’s statements conform to ossified standards of truth.
Victor Davis Hanson, NRO
NOVEMBER 19, 2013 4:00 AM

What is the common denominator of the Obama administration’s serial scandals — the Justice Department’s spying on AP, the IRS targeting of conservative groups, the NSA surveillance, the lies about Benghazi and the ACA — and much of the White House damage-control rhetoric? In a word: the advancement of postmodern notions of justice at the expense of traditional truth.

By the 1980s, in law schools, university social-science departments, and the humanities in general, the old relativist idea of Plato’s noble lies was given a new French facelift. Traditional morality and ethics were dismissed as arbitrary constructs, predicated on privileged notions of race, class, and gender. The new moral architecture did not rely on archaic abidance by the niceties of “truth,” which simply reinforced traditional oppressive hierarchies.

Instead, social justice by definition transcended the sham of traditional ideas of truth and falsity. The true became the advocacy of fairness, while the real lie was the reactionary adherence to a set of oppressive norms. All this was faculty-lounge fluff, but soon it filtered out into the larger culture.

In this regard, it was understandable that the New York Times characterized the president’s not telling the truth on over 20 occasions as cases of “misspeaking.” Translated, that means he lied but his lies were really true: Misspeaking means that Obama was not sensitive enough to those of us still mired in calcified definitions of true and false. The privileged still cross t’s and dot i’s; their victims have no such luxury.

...

In the postmodern world of the New York Times and Barack Obama, again, “truth” is a relative concept. For reactionaries stuck in ossified notions of absolute truth, perhaps indeed Obama did “misspeak.” But for progressives of our brave new world, Obama was all along speaking truth to power merely by using linguistic gymnastics to advance a larger good — the idea that the privileged who had managed to acquire good health insurance should at last pay more in order to cover those who in the past undeservedly had been deprived of commensurate coverage.

If ACA navigators on occasion have urged poor applicants to fudge on their eligibility, what is the big deal? Are those really lies — given that the system that reduced some Americans to poverty and the status of the uninsured is one big lie to begin with? When “regulations” are enforced about voter IDs, Obamaphones, or eligibility for disability insurance and food stamps, poor people suffer; when they are ignored, the real truth emerges and a higher justice is served.

Of course, the apparently clueless who had bought certain types of insurance did not realize that they had “subpar” or “junk” plans issued by “bad-apple insurers.” Again, how could the president be accused of lying when he was helping the uninformed to be released from their “crap” coverage in order to purchase the superior Obamacare product? As Obama put it, “So the majority of folks will end up being better off, of course, because the website’s not workin’ right, they don’t necessarily know it.”

When U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice lied five times on national television about the Benghazi deaths, followed by Hillary Clinton over the coffins of the dead men and yet again by Barack Obama at the United Nations, they were not really telling untruths. Rather, Rice was merely blaming the reactionary bigot Nakoula Basseley Nakoula for his unenlightened views on Islam, which had earned understandable outrage. Can anyone deny that Nakoula was insensitive?

What difference did it make who actually shot and killed four Americans and why, when the U.S. government so clearly and forcefully had come down on the right side in condemning and then jailing an Islamophobe? If Nakoula did not incite this particular riot in Libya, his venomous video surely could have, and, in fact, it might have elsewhere. What difference did the trivial circumstances of the Benghazi violence make in the larger pursuit of religious tolerance?

What really was the problem with the IRS tax-exempt division? Sticklers for detail might object that perhaps Lois Lerner & Co. improperly denied tax-exempt status to perceived reactionary groups. But is anyone denying that the tea-party affiliates were reactionary, or that they needed to be advised that they could not simply voice their odious views at government expense?

Right and wrong, like truth and lies, are calcified concepts in service to a rigged world of discrimination. If those who enjoy privilege are upset that a mild regulation was bypassed, well, too bad: It was worth it to prevent the Tea Party from derailing the reelection efforts of a progressive president. And if the IRS overpaid $132 billion in earned-income tax credits to those with low incomes, again, why the outrage? These are details that pale in comparison to the larger picture of social justice: Did or did not the poor at last receive some help from the government? Were or were not reactionary groups prevented from promulgating their untruths about a progressive president?

Does anyone deny that James Rosen works for Fox News and that Fox News opposes social justice? And why the outcry when subversive AP reporters suffered a little of what millions of the far less privileged suffer every day? Who cares whether reset with Russia was achieved, given that no one denies that the president wanted better relations with Russia? If Obama wanted Guantanamo closed, then it is virtually closed. Does anyone believe that Obama wanted unemployment to stay over 7 percent or GDP growth below 2 percent? Why then does it matter that what he said would happen — the deficit halved by the end of his first term — did not happen? If he wanted to halve the deficit, but found out that doing so would only hurt the deserving, then what does it matter if he doubled it instead?

To obsessive-compulsive accountants, perhaps the Pigford agricultural payouts were fraudulent, but who can deny that many of the poor recipients might have wished to farm? And if they had wished to farm, they might well have been discouraged to do so in discriminatory fashion by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. So what difference does it make if a few thousand potential victims claimed they were actual victims?

The Left, which cares for humanity and strives for fairness and equality, has earned the moral right of exemption from one-dimensional truth. The Right, which focuses on the liberty of the selfish individual to do what he pleases against the collective interest, has not.





All of the above also goes for illegal immigration. The term “illegal alien” itself is misleading. Only reactionaries could believe that someone from south of the border is an alien or that anyone who broke a law to arrive here, and has broken more to stay, is doing so illegally. These are linguistic niceties that disguise a greater truth. Poorer indigenous people from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America should not be categorized by an arbitrarily designated and constructed border, when they have an inherent right to go and live where they please, especially given their suffering and exploitation while working in the U.S. In matters of social justice, there is no room for constructed notions of alien or citizen, illegal or legal, immigrant or native. If the laws that enhance privileges of race and class are “broken,” then that is to the good, given the greater issues of social justice at stake. Building a house without a permit is illegal; signing an affidavit affirming that one is a citizen when one is not is at most an “infraction” or a “civil” infringement.

Postmodern lying is also at the heart of arbitrarily discarding settled law. Do we really care when capitalists remind us that elite bondholder creditors, not union working people, had prior contractual preference in the Chrysler bailout? Who do we think wrote such contractual law in the first place, and for what purpose?

Or does it matter that from time to time that the president simply chooses not to enforce settled law, whether by granting amnesties or by dropping elements of his own health-care law — given that he is interested in a higher law that rests on fairness for the many rather than privilege for the few? Who wrote the Defense of Marriage Act and for what purpose matters in deciding whether it should be enforced; the fact that it was enacted by Congress and signed by the president does not.

Worrying whether Barack Obama lied about the implementation of Obamacare or about Benghazi, or for that matter about closing Guantanamo, halving the deficit, ending the revolving door, or reducing unemployment, is a fruitless exercise. Obama says what he must to advance the cause of social justice, and he leaves the less enlightened to argue over whether his advocacy conforms to their own ossified standards of truth — oblivious that the president has long ago left them far behind in his quest for a larger justice.

 

[Ishmael]

And as I recall there were more than a few of us that commented on the 'books being cooked.' Of course we pointed at the BLS, little did we know it was the Census folks. And that goes right to the core of a lot of problems.

Ishmael

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

And as I recall there were more than a few of us that commented on the 'books being cooked.' Of course we pointed at the BLS, little did we know it was the Census folks. And that goes right to the core of a lot of problems.

Ishmael

It was for all the right reasons, it was a good cause, it was for our benefit, Obamacare has to be protected at any and all cost, agents at the IRS, er, I mean Census Bureau, were just protecting their health insurance waivers because they like their current plan too...

It was probably both agencies cooking the books; this mental illness has become systemic.

 

[RobDownSouth]

How are your efforts to repeal Obamacare coming along, my friend?

Hmmm?

Still think you have a chance to take Murica back to the bad old days?

*chuckle*

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The King of Liars has reemerged from his burrow under the latrines...



The rogue regime MUST BE DEFENDED!


~hurl feces~

 

[RobDownSouth]

Seriously, do you think you have a chance to repeal Obamacare in the next two years? Four years?

Hmmmmmm?

*chuckle*

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

You go poo-monkey!

 

[miles]

The King of Liars has reemerged from his burrow under the latrines...



The rogue regime MUST BE DEFENDED!


~hurl feces~

Did you notice he tried catching the feces instead of dodging them?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

He eats those words of sh..., er, uh, wit...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Lying is what all the cool, popular kids at school do.

After all, "Cherokee" Elizabeth Warren is grading their papers...

Barack Obama has been hammered by the botched rollout of the Affordable Care Act, with disapproval of his job performance reaching a career high, opposition to the new healthcare law up sharply and evidence of potential fallout in the midterm elections a year off.

The president’s job approval rating has fallen to 42 percent in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, down 13 percentage points this year and 6 points in the past month to match the lowest of his presidency. Fifty-five percent disapprove, a record. And 70 percent say the country’s headed seriously off on the wrong track – up 13 points since May to the most in two years.

From the lying, racist ABC news...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Barack Obama is the coolest president we’ve had since John F. Kennedy, at least according to conventional standards for such things. Obama has always been a brand as much as a politician, one that has been perceived as sleek, smart, and up to date.

Then along came HealthCare.gov. Its failure to launch is a signal event in the long political battle over Obamacare and perhaps an inflection point in the president’s image. It’s hard to maintain a sense of truly being on the cutting edge of change when you can’t build a website.

Obama’s cool was, in part, an artifact of world-class marketing. Graphic designer Michael Bierut writes in the book Designing Obama (yes, there’s such a book) of how impressed he was watching Obama rallies in 2008: “The awe-inspiring part was the way all the signs were faithfully, and beautifully, set in Hoefler & Frere-Jones’s typeface Gotham.” If only the folks at Health and Human Services were consumed with such attention to detail.

The tech community loves the president, and his presidential campaigns have been exercises in technological mastery far outstripping the competition. The Romney campaign’s humiliation was made complete last year with the spectacular Election Day failure of its voter-tracking system ORCA, which crashed without having been properly tested (and it wasn’t even run by Kathleen Sebelius).

The Obama team’s technological prowess reinforced the sense that it owned the future. Except it had no bearing on how the president would or could run the government. We’ve now learned that the president doesn’t know how to make a government website work, or know to check to see if it’s going to work. “Neither he and I are technology geeks,” Vice President Joe Biden explained the other day, “and we assumed that it was up and ready to run.”

When selling the prospective glories of his website, President Obama compared it to Travelocity and Amazon, leaders in a private sector that is highly flexible and reactive and where failure means extinction. Government is nothing like that. It never has been and never will be. It is plodding and bureaucratic, beholden to political imperatives and often stuck in practices that make no sense.

...

At the end of the day, the president has been a dazzling frontman for what is, in essence, the Department of Motor Vehicles. He has created a glittering image of hope and change that has little to do with a rumbling, ramshackle federal government that is still largely built along mid-20th-century lines. Instead of imbuing government with his sense of cool, he has been left apologizing for a government failure that profoundly runs against the zeitgeist.

Rich Lowry, NRO

 

[RobDownSouth]

I asked you guys a while back if you were being forced by Obamacare to change your existing health care policy.

You never responded.
Vetteman never responded.
Busybody never responded.
Miles never responded.
Dazzle never responded.
Beco never responded.
Imalickin never responded.
Landslider2000 never responded.

Why do you suppose no one responded?

 

[Ishmael]

Let's be honest about this predicament. Previous congresses and administrations set themselves up for this when they authorized the overly intrusive 'Family Surveys.' The census people came around and the public said, "WTF???? Go piss up a rope." But the census folks had quotas to meet. They were placed in an impossible situation that could only end up in the corruption of the numbers that the government uses to figure damn near everything, redistricting, unemployment, etc.

It will be interesting to see how congress deals with this latest fiasco. If history is a guide they'll start requiring even more intrusive data along with civil/criminal penalties targeted at the populace completely forgetting that that is exactly what led to non-compliance to begin with.

Of course it will lead to an uptick in one segment of the economy. The census bureau will now be able to hire and train sworn agents which will need arms and ammunition.

Ishmael

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Now moobs, switch back to the Jenn14 alt so that you can make it look like the President is still the coolest, most popular kid on the block with all the best ideas...




... then switch back and start saying really nasty things about everyone's children.

Go ahead, Palinize this thread too!



You do more damage to Obama that all of us together by taking the mask off of who comprises the Obamanation.

Dance monkey-boy, dance and fling your toxic Democrat poo!

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Let's be honest about this predicament. Previous congresses and administrations set themselves up for this when they authorized the overly intrusive 'Family Surveys.' The census people came around and the public said, "WTF???? Go piss up a rope." But the census folks had quotas to meet. They were placed in an impossible situation that could only end up in the corruption of the numbers that the government uses to figure damn near everything, redistricting, unemployment, etc.

It will be interesting to see how congress deals with this latest fiasco. If history is a guide they'll start requiring even more intrusive data along with civil/criminal penalties targeted at the populace completely forgetting that that is exactly what led to non-compliance to begin with.

Of course it will lead to an uptick in one segment of the economy. The census bureau will now be able to hire and train sworn agents which will need arms and ammunition.

Ishmael

I can see the next run on ammunition...

It's still harder than all getout to buy as much as a brick of .22 shells.

 

[RobDownSouth]

You seem bitter this morning.

More bitter than usual.

Everything okay at home?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The Fourth Branch, the Bureaucratic Oligarchy, is seizing control and directing politics.



What can Congress even do when they are faced with a sea of nameless bureautechs who can simply make up law as they go along? They have reduced themselves to the political equivalent of an appendix.

An inflamed appendix...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Devastating Polls for Obama and Obamacare
The president’s approval and credibility are slipping.
Michael Barone, NRO
NOVEMBER 19, 2013 12:00 AM

‘The Affordable Care Act’s political position has deteriorated dramatically over the last week.” That, coming from longtime Obamacare cheerleader and Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein, was pretty strong language. And it was only Wednesday.

That was the day after the release of a devastating Quinnipiac national poll. It showed Barack Obama’s approval rating at 39 percent, with his disapproval rating at 54 percent — sharply down from 45 percent approval and 49 percent disapproval on October 1, the day the government shutdown began and HealthCare.gov went into (limited) operation.

Democrats hoped that Republicans would take a shellacking in public opinion for the October 1–16 government shutdown. They did, briefly. But Quinnipiac’s survey, conducted three weeks after the shutdown ended, indicated that the Obamacare rollout inflicted much more damage on the Democratic brand — and the party’s leader.

Quinnipiac’s numbers on Obamacare were also exactly the same as their numbers on Obama: 49 percent favored the health-care legislation, 55 percent were opposed. Moreover, a near majority — 46 percent — said the president knowingly deceived them when he assured Americans over and over that they could keep their health-insurance plans.

There are few names a president can be called that are more damaging than “liar.”

Change you can believe in?


You'd better HOPE he was lying, because the alternative, incompetence, will kill the party.

 

[miles]

Obama = The Thief in Chief.

 

[Ishmael]

The Fourth Branch, the Bureaucratic Oligarchy, is seizing control and directing politics.



What can Congress even do when they are faced with a sea of nameless bureautechs who can simply make up law as they go along? They have reduced themselves to the political equivalent of an appendix.

An inflamed appendix...

Sadly that is the truth of the matter. And why the founders envisioned a limited government. All one has to do to see the results of a bloated bureaucracy is to look at the the former Soviet Union..............of Venezuela................or Cuba.............or Argentina.............or China before they untangled their bureaucracy. (And the final chapter for China hasn't been written yet. They are quickly running up against their economic stops while governmental corruption runs rampant and 'one size fits all' solutions start failing.)

Ishmael

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

... then, the party purges begin as the pile of loot begins to dwindle.



"We, the Living"

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Let's be honest about this predicament. Previous congresses and administrations set themselves up for this when they authorized the overly intrusive 'Family Surveys.' The census people came around and the public said, "WTF???? Go piss up a rope." But the census folks had quotas to meet. They were placed in an impossible situation that could only end up in the corruption of the numbers that the government uses to figure damn near everything, redistricting, unemployment, etc.

It will be interesting to see how congress deals with this latest fiasco. If history is a guide they'll start requiring even more intrusive data along with civil/criminal penalties targeted at the populace completely forgetting that that is exactly what led to non-compliance to begin with.

Of course it will lead to an uptick in one segment of the economy. The census bureau will now be able to hire and train sworn agents which will need arms and ammunition.

Ishmael

When I did my genealogy I collided with a puzzle, all of my relatives in one family group switched race from white to black, between 1860 and 1870. So I talked to some historian friends about it, and they sold me a clue. Whites couldn't vote in 1870 (in Florida), nor could Indians, so they told the census enumerator they were black.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Let's take Barack Obama at his word -- a stretch certainly for anyone who would lie about his own mother's death to score partisan points will lie about...well, anything. But let's put the most positive spin on what President Obama has been conveying to his fellow Americans. One can try to be optimistic even in these perilous times -- it is one of the great traits of being American.

Barack Obama and those who serve at his whim have declared that he knew nothing about the IRS witch-hunt of Republicans, spying by the NSA on Americans and foreign leaders, Fast and Furious, ObamaCare website problems, that he actually set red lines regarding Syria (though he denied it later), security problems at the Benghazi consulate, and spying on the Associated Press. When asked, Obama has asserted that he learned about all these problems only after reading about them in the media. Who knew our presidents would model themselves after Sergeant Schultz on the old Hogan Heroes television series (Obama has admitted he watched a lot of television when he was younger -- and some with reason believe he still does).

What conclusions can be drawn from these excuses? One is immediately apparent: the sequester did not go far and deep enough. After all, we are spending hundreds of billions of dollars and the president of the United States has to rely on newspapers to be informed of what is happening in his own administration. Time to outsource everything to people who work for peanuts -- such as bloggers (yours truly, for one example -- I would like to see a return on, or of, my taxes).

But the second conclusion is more pointed: we have elected (twice!) a derelict as president.

Years ago I questioned Barack Obama's work ethic. Quite simply, I found there was none. My conclusion was based on viewing his entire record -- not just the many examples of "voting present" while serving as a state legislator in Springfield. These are part-time positions (thankfully) as was his part-time gig as a constitutional law lecturer. Come to think of it, Obama specializes in a part-time approach towards all his "jobs" and that is fitting since he is turning millions of Americans into part-time workers. Who knew? He is one of us after all.

Barack Obama is not a policy wonk as was Bill Clinton. Nor is he a decider-in-chief, as was George Bush. Now one could argue that that Clinton had wrong policies and Bush made wrong decisions -- but they were both hard-working presidents.

Compare and contrast them to Barack Obama.

Obama had almost no role in a lot of initiatives associated with him -- the boondoggle stimulus, the green energy schemes, the Affordable Care Act. This legislation was crafted by the usual suspects -- all Democrats (Reid, Baucus, and Pelosi). He was relegated to being a mere cheerleader when it came to the stimulus -- to such an extent that Speaker of the House Pelosi muted him on a conference call so he would not interfere with the real work being done by others . If only all Americans could have such a button.

Obamacare has become the short-handed way of referring to the work done by others -- not the first time nor the last time Barack Obama has claimed credit for the labors of others (after all, he "got" Bin Laden, right? While others were risking their lives, he was playing cards with his "body man.")

Even the Washington Post noted early on that Senator Obama had a habit of "embellishing" his role in major pieces of legislation. This practice followed him to the White House when there was any success to be claimed. But what has also followed him has been his lack of a work ethic.

He has consistently failed to submit budgets on time, an "unprecedented disrespect for the law." He has punted on just about every foreign and defense policy that has presented itself during his five years as president, a non-policy that one of his aides has triumphantly declared as "leading from behind" -- as in behind Russia, China, Assad, jihadists, and Iranian mad mullahs. We are way behind them so I guess that is just defining success down. If being behind is a mark of success, Obama has succeeded beyond Vladimir Putin's wildest dreams, destroying alliances and America's leadership of the world.

While Americans serving their nation were being murdered in Libya, he was sleeping comfortably before jetting off in Air Force One for yet another fundraising jaunt.

...

Early on his tenure he stopped attending daily economic briefings, despite endless public relation pivots to the economy and declarations from his wife and others that he works tirelessly to boost jobs and growth

He has skipped most daily intelligence briefings (one could crack a joke about lack of intelligence if the consequences were not so damaging, possibly including the tragic deaths of Americans in Benghazi); and, despite Benghazi and other terror-related attacks in America, over 40% of the Department of Homeland Security senior leadership positions are vacant because Barack Obama has not bothered to nominate people to fill them, so writes Michael McCaul in "Nobody's Home at Homeland Security".

...

The decision-making process in the White House is so dysfunctional (see How Obama Makes Decisions) that the courtiers that surround him have simplified the process for him to a grade-school level: multiple choice check off boxes . Even this procedure may be too taxing for the man who cannot tax us enough: he ordered his first Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, and every Chief of Staff that has followed him to "cut down the number of decisions I have to make" In other words, he will vote present.

...

Valerie Jarrett, the power beyond the throne, "Rasputin" to some on Capitol Hill and the worst presidential adviser ever serves as his ego-protector in the White House (see Ed Klein's The Amateur), and offered this worshipful description of Barack Obama:

I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is. . . . He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the ability -- the extraordinary, uncanny ability -- to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense out of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually. . . . So what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. . . . He's been bored to death his whole life. He's just too talented to do what ordinary people do."

"He's just too talented to do what ordinary people do" (such as work and tell the truth?). Now we know why Jarrett has special Secret Service protection: self-abasement and adoration to that extreme is a rare and precious quality.

Barack Obama showers that adoration on himself, course. Five years ago, before he was even elected president, he had the audacity to boast:

"I think that I'm a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I'll tell you right now that I'm gonna think I'm a better political director than my political director."

...

This is one more reason to lop off entire levels of the federal government. What good are all those staffers when we have Barack at the top? If he doesn't listen to them, why have them on the payroll?

Conversely, there are other activities that don't bore him and that he will devote time and energy towards: giving partisan speeches, attending fundraisers where his ring can be kissed, playing hoops with NBA stars, watching a lot of television, especially sports, and is faithful watcher of SportsCenter (he can spend time on that show's minutiae but not on, say, the status of Affordable Care Act implementation?), enjoying private concerts in the East Room, vacationing in deluxe resorts, hanging out with Hollywood celebrities.

And when the weather is nice and the yearning begins, Barack Obama can run the presidency from the golf course.

Ed Lasky, American Thinker

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

He's probably grading himself as a B+ at this point...