Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
Thanks to the new biography of our current chief executive by David Maraniss, Barack Obama: The Story, we now know that much of what our current chief executive us told us about his pre-White House life was, simply, false. Except that, if you had read the New York Times on July 14 of last year, you would have known that already--if you had read a story that the Times buried on p. 14, and then never followed up, that is.
Over at Commentary, Jonathan Tobin explains:
The fables Obama seems to have told about his alienation, his girlfriends and the rest of his over-intellectualized voyage of self-discovery [as detailed in the David Maraniss book] actually pale in comparison to the whopper he told when running for election in 2008 that his mother died because she had been denied coverage and treatment of her disease. [Janny] Scott [of the New York Times] revealed that in fact the expenses relating to her cancer had been paid by her insurance. Though she had a separate and totally unrelated dispute relating to disability coverage, Scott’s research proved that Obama’s statement during the 2008 presidential debate was fiction:
"For my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they’re saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment, there’s something fundamentally wrong about that."
It bears repeating that the president knew this account was false because he served as his mother’s attorney in all her dealings with the insurance company.
When the Times ran that story (on page 14 rather than on the front page), the White House chose not to deny the truth of Scott’s reporting. But that didn’t stop the Obama campaign from refloating the same falsehoods about Ms. Dunham having perished for lack of insurance coverage in an autobiographical campaign film narrated by Tom Hanks. Not only has the president never apologized for lying to the American people about his mother’s plight, he rightly assumed that even though the truth was uncovered by the New York Times, neither that paper nor the rest of the mainstream media would follow up on it as they undoubtedly would had a Republican ever tried to sell the voters such a transparent whopper.
The President of the United States is a purveyor of blatant untruths, and the New York Times knows it. As tidy an instance as you could ever hope to see of the morality of the left: As long as it advances politically correct aims, anything at all is permissible.
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Jul '11
Re: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
What's a complete disregard for truth or ethics compared to defeating conservatives, religious folks, and capitalism?
May '10
Re: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
Sadly, Peter, I doubt many conservatives understand just how true that statement is. I have highlighted the key word.
This is a President who has yet to be unleashed. If he is allowed to escape the constraints of law, his lack of moral restraint will soon become terribly apparent to all.
Look at what Pelosi said this week. Look at what his Hollywood supporters have said. The barbarians are within the gates. They don't care about us, even at the most basic levels.
Edited on June 22, 2012 at 6:02amRe: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
Aaron Miller
Sadly, Peter, I doubt many conservatives understand just how true that statement is. I have highlighted the key word.
This is a President who has yet to be unleashed. If he is allowed to escape the constraints of law, his lack ofmoralrestraint will soon become terribly apparent to all.
Look at what Pelosi said this week. Look at what his Hollywood supporters have said. The barbarians are within the gates. They don't care about us, even at the most basic levels. · 8 minutes ago
Edited 7 minutes ago
Alas, alas, Aaron, I agree with every word.
Jun '12
Re: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
All the news that fits the Prince.
Jun '10
Re: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
It's a good thing that Canada has so much oil. Obama might invade and occupy Canada in October, for distraction's sake, except that he'd gain a lot of surplus crude oil that he couldn't make disappear, so that we'd forget about it and buy solar cells. :)
Jun '10
Re: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
In World War II, Winston Churchill said, " In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." Of course, he was speaking about things like misleading the Nazis (e.g., the fake army supposedly led by General Patton prior to D-Day), and his purpose was to rid the world of an aggressive, genocidal enemy.
In the case of Obama and the NYT, Obama is so important, so transformational, that his lies do not matter, even though they are not the bodyguard of any critical truth, and the only purpose the lies advance is the continuation of a failed presidency.
World War II or the Obama presidency: which is valuable enough to justify a bodyguard of lies?
Jul '11
Re: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
So what is worse here. A pathological liar for a president, the papers and media that cover for him and promote falsehoods, the sheep that believe the lies, or the people who learn the truth and turn away because they despise right wingers?
Mar '11
Re: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
Hmm, yes, and Bill Ayers was just a guy in the neighbourhood, right?
Jun '12
Re: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
Should I really be surprised at this point that he's now essentially lied on his mother's grave for political gain? I suppose not, but wow.
Edited on June 22, 2012 at 8:15amMay '12
Re: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
It seems Joe Wilson was speaking in the general, not the specific.
Oct '10
Re: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
If "leadership" means anything, the liar-in-chief deserves the greatest opprobrium. But it's not pathological behavior. It's part and parcel of his Alinskite training and the Alinsky-style campaign he has been waging against the United States since becoming an adult.
BTW - the second group (main stream media) is a circle that fits inside and the larger circle of the fourth group (people who turn away from the truth).
May '10
Re: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
The 2008 obama campaign was the most dishonest in history.
May '10
Re: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
And omission is their most dastardly form of lying. Obama's house deal with that Rezco guy would alone have been a front page scandal for a Palin and enough to derail her entire career. Ditto Michelle O's $375 grand/ yr hospital "job" once her husband gained state senator status. Meanwhile all positive, humazing stories about Romney -- and there are many -- go unreported.
Dec '10
Re: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
The answer is the media. The media made Barack Obama possible. It was dereliction of duty to withhold the truth from the public during the 2008 campaign. But, it is outright treason to refuse to scrutinize the man, his motives, and his methods, now that he holds the most power of any single human being on the planet.
The press is supposed to be protected from abuse of that power by the 1st Amendment so that the public may be informed. Instead, the press is using the 1st Amendment to protect its status as the propaganda arm of the president. The Constitution becomes just another piece of paper when the people it is intended to govern behave unethically, en masse, within the instruments it defines.
We're in deep trouble because of the media. I see no solution, but I thank God every day for new media.
Jan '11
Re: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
A short reflection about the media ...
The point is that I work for a client - it's his dime, after all.
That's a loose parallel with the myth of the news media. We're the client, and they monitor, investigate, and report on our behalf.
But consider the difference in politics and the news media, where the public (ostensibly) is the client. The media absolutely refuses to report anything detrimental to Obama. They won't investigate stories of obvious incompetence or corruption. The public screams for investigation, but the media do nothing.
What does that reveal? That we're not the client.
May '12
Re: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
KC -
I can't think of any country off hand where the press--if not outright beholden to political institution--considers the public as the client, and informs them as such.
At least in the USA, it's possible for citizen lambda to discover the truth by sampling largely and widely among a variety sources, and there are many in this age, since there is no censorship of the individual. Yet.
Aug '10
Re: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
When you have no real resume and are too lazy to have any legitimate accomplishments you need to fabricate events to make it appear that you are competent.
Let's face it, when it comes to competency, Obama makes Prince Charles look like Churchill.
May '10
Re: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
What's next?
Mar '12
Re: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
I listened to O'Bama and found him, at best, disingenuous. I listened a bit more and found that he had little to no connection with the truth.
I listened to Moral Swamp NBC (and others of that ilk) and found that they were purveyors of the same type of dishonesty, and in his camp to boot.
I found those same people at Moral Swamp using terms like tea baggers (a sexual reference) to justify their position and show their loyalty to people like O'Bama, not by facts, but by slander.
I actually wondered why the advertisers would support this crap, but then the advertisers probably agreed, or were being supported by actions by the O'Bama government and were therefore co-opted by our tax dollars and the hands that doled those dollars out.
Jun '12
Re: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
Having read Bernard Goldberg's book Bias, I tend toward the understanding that most people working in the MSM are basically honest and hard working. I see no grand conspiracy, no complicit hidden agenda; more a natural inclination to prefer leftist points of view, and an editorial process that leans toward a liberal interpretation and organization of news events.
The MSM did not properly vet Obama, because they believed he was fated to rescue this country from (what they saw as) the crass corruption and dirty dealings of the Bush/Cheney years. Obama cast the aura of a messiah, and they fell, enthralled before him. Did you watch his 2008 victory speech? It was not a campaign rally, it was a religious experience, a pentecostal revival.
Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, and the Obama faithful projected their deepest desires on the brilliantly backlit blank screen of his campaign message: undefinite hope and undefined change.
Fortunately for us, messiahs don't last long in Washington: our politics are too corrosive, the aura too fleeting, and the faithful too easily distracted. The MSM are just waking up and starting to realize their mistake.
Edited on June 22, 2012 at 4:49pm