The New York Times published a report with some pretty astonishing claims about Benghazi.  Following is a link to the original article:

http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/benghazi/?hp#/?chapt=0

This is how the best news organization on the planet investigated Benghazi:

Months of investigation by The New York Times, centered on extensive interviews with Libyans in Benghazi 

In other words they asked the people who attacked us what motivated them.  However, there is little mention of interviewing the Americans who were on the ground at the time.  Nice!

In some cases the author had to ignore his own findings to reach his conclusion.   For example the author said that one of the prime suspects was Ahmed Abu Khattala:

In this case, a central figure in the attack was an eccentric, malcontent militia leader, Ahmed Abu Khattala, according to numerous Libyans present at the time. 

The author claims that Ahmed Abu Khattala had no association with al-Qaeda or any other terrorist groups:

Abu Khattala declared openly and often that he placed the United States not far behind Colonel Qaddafi on his list of infidel enemies. But he had no known affiliations with terrorist groups, and he had escaped scrutiny from the 20-person C.I.A. station in Benghazi that was set up to monitor the local situation.

Yet the author provides clear evidence that this conclusion is absurd with the following paragraph in the same article:

Mr. Abu Khattala had become well known in Benghazi for his role in the killing of a rebel general, and then for declaring that his fellow Islamists were insufficiently committed to theocracy. He made no secret of his readiness to use violence against Western interests. One of his allies, the leader of Benghazi’s most overtly anti-Western militia, Ansar al-Shariah, boasted a few months before the attack that his fighters could “flatten” the American Mission. Surveillance of the American compound appears to have been underway at least 12 hours before the assault started.

So I looked up his “non-terrorist” buddy who was the leader of Ansar al-Shariah.  Perhaps this is the guy we just captured in Libya.  If so, his name is Saifallah Benahssine and he is a top leader in Ansar al-Shariah.  Following is a link describing the capture:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/30/saifallah-benahssine-captured_n_4518378.html

…the capture of such as high-ranking Tunisian Islamist militant in Libya would indicate close ties among Islamist groups across North Africa. In October, U.S. forces captured a top al Qaeda suspect in a raid in Tripoli.

A former fighter in Afghanistan, Benahssine had declared loyalty to al Qaeda and was accused of inciting an attack on the U.S. embassy in Tunisia in September 2012.

In other words the man who had “no known affiliations with terrorist groups” was an acknowledged ally of Ansar al-Shariah who has a known association with al Qaeda. 

The theory that this was a spontaneous act largely inspired by the video is also debunked by the authors own words.  He admits that Ansar al-Shariah was planning to attack the mission months before the actual assault.  He also admits that they were conducting surveillance of the mission at least 12 hours before the attack.  That was before the video was even shown on Egyptian television.    It is bad enough when you ignore facts published elsewhere.  It is insane to ignore facts you publish yourself.

Here we have the ultimate magic video.  This video was so vile that it inspired people to plan an assault months before they even knew the video existed.  Talk about a miraculous ability to influence people.

The big question for me is why would the New York Times do this?  I mean this is really pathetic and the entire article was slammed almost immediately.  This is not just biased, this is stupid.    Frankly it smells of desperation.

The New York Times knows that Republicans are going to hammer Hillary on Benghazi.  No one even pretends that security at the Benghazi mission was adequate.  As Secretary of State, that falls fully on Hillary.  The only question is whether she was just oblivious or did this rise to the level of dereliction of duty?  No one, and I mean no one, is arguing that Hilary was on top of this.

So the liberal left is desperately seeking an exit for Hillary.  This theory is hopelessly thin, but it’s all they have.  Perhaps if they can convince people this was really just about a video after all, no one will blame Hillary.

Then I realized that this is about more than Hillary.  The liberal left only loves Hillary because they think she is a winner.  Look how quickly they dumped her for Obama.  To really evaluate Hillary as a candidate, you have to look at the strength of the opposition.  She gets 68% of the Democratic vote, but only because all of the other potential candidates are hopeless.  Joe Biden is in second place, followed by Elizabeth Warren, Andrew Cuomo and people you probably don’t even know.  Things are so bad that some Democrats are even talking about Jerry Brown.   Now that would be desperate.

There is, of course, another possibility.  It is possible that the New York Times really believes this story.  That, perhaps, is the most frightening option of all.

TDM

I am sure most of you are aware of the “Tourist” ship trapped in the Antarctic Ice.  This is now starting to look like a serious situation.  So far, two ice breakers have failed to free the ship and a third does not appear to be doing much better.  The good news is that they have a helicopter on board.  The bad news is that they may have to evacuate everyone and abandon the ship.

But what makes this interesting is that this was another foolish Arctic/Antarctic expedition fueled by illusionary dreams of global warming.  Even global warming advocates admit that the Antarctic ice is not melting, but this group of people wanted to repeat the measurements taken by the Mawson Expedition in 1911.  Following is a link to the expedition website:

http://www.spiritofmawson.com/

The Australasian Antarctic Expedition – the AAE – will truly meld science and adventure, repeating century old measurements to discover and communicate the changes taking place in this remote and pristine environment.

One can guarantee that they were desperately searching for proof of global warming.  Why is it, if global warming has been proven beyond dispute that scientists are always searching for more evidence?

Here’s what they left out.  The 1911 Mawson expedition was a total disaster.  The following blog from the Smithsonian describes it as the worst Antarctic expedition ever:

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/2012/01/the-most-terrible-polar-exploration-ever-douglas-mawsons-antarctic-journey/

Mawson barely survived and the rest of his crew all died.  When he finally made it back to his base camp, it was just in time to see the supply ship heading back to Australia.  Mawson ended up spending another winter in Antarctica.

In the meantime this new expedition is now trapped in the ice, miles short of where Mawson landed in 1911.  They are blocked by 75 miles of ice.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/antarctica-live/2013/dec/29/antarctica-expedition-ice-wait-rescue

I wonder if anyone in the New York Times will notice that 75 miles of more ice is not exactly evidence of global warming.

By the war, the Aurora, the ship that brought Mawson to Antarctica was a wooden sail boat with a hull that had been reinforced by steel.  This is not exactly the modern ice breakers we see currently in action.  If they were trying to replicate this trip with a ship similar to the Aurora they would definitely be in serious trouble.

TDM

Kellie Pickler is in Afghanistan for Christmas, again.  This is her seventh USO tour.  It is quite clear that Kellie Pickler is a very special person.  So I have decided to award her the “Golden Pickler Award.”  God Bless Kellie Pickler.  We need more like her.

Kellie Pickle reminded me of another singer.  It was Christmas Day, 1969, Pleiku AB.  My day started, just like any other day, with a 0400 takeoff on a combat mission. It ended with a rocket attack.   It wasn’t a particularly good day.  But that night, in a crowded club full of enlisted men, I witnessed a miracle.  There was a female singer from Australia.  She had entertained for the troops in World War II, so she looked pretty old to us.  We weren’t expecting much.  Then she started singing the same songs she had performed so many years before.  The room fell into hushed silence.   By the time she was done there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.  Her voice was incredible, but it was a lot more than that.  Every man in that room would have preferred to be somewhere else.   The most popular song in that club on any other night was “I Wanna Go Home.”  We felt more than a little abandoned by the American people.  By singing those old songs this woman reminded of us a time when troops actually were supported back home.  She reminded us of the way it was and the way it should have been.  It touched my soul.

This was the year of Woodstock.  I don’t know what Woodstock meant to you, but to me it was about a million people, stoned on sex, drugs and alcohol having a great time bad mouthing those of us fighting for them in Vietnam.  The World War II vets got Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas.”  We got Country Joe McDonald and “Feel Like I’m Fixin To Die:”

Well come on all of you big strong men, 
Uncle Sam needs your help again,
He got himself in a terrible jam,
Way down yonder in Vietnam,
Put down your books and pick up a gun,
We’re gonna have a whole lotta fun

And its 1,2,3 what are we fighting for?
Don’t ask me I don’t give a damn,
The next stop is Vietnam,
And its 5,6,7 open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain’t no time to wonder why,
WHOOPEE we’re all gonna die

Our own generation had turned on us.  At best, we were considered losers.  At worse, war criminals.  The contrast with those songs from World War II could not have been starker.

When we did get home, it was even worse.  World War II movies are about heroes and great battles.  Vietnam movies are about drug crazed psychotic murderers.   The heroes chosen by our generation were veterans of the anti-war movement like Bill Clinton and John Kerry.  They got it very wrong.  The real heroes of our generation have their names etched in Granite on the Vietnam Memorial Wall.

It has gotten better.  At least the liberal left now blames everything on George Bush instead of the troops.  In addition, even Vietnam Veterans are getting more recognition. It is no longer unusual for me to have someone thank me for my service.   When Vietnam veterans greet one another we often say: “welcome home”  instead of  “thank you for your service.” Now you know why.

I now realize, after all those years, that the Australian woman singing for us in Pleiku understood all along.  I don’t even know her name, but I will always be grateful.

TDM

Sometimes the individuals around us, who have no words, are the most eloquent of all.  We have a miniature schnauzer named Molly.  We think she is pretty bright, for a dog, but there are issues.  Whenever anyone comes to our door Molly goes nuts.  She barks like there is no tomorrow.  But, if anyone is playing close attention, her wagging tail quickly reveals that she is just excited to meet new friends.  The only risk a burglar would have invading our house would be getting licked to death.  We have tried various methods to fix this, but none of them work. This is primarily because we, her guardians, are stupid.  For example we tried throwing her a treat to shut her up.  The theory was that she would be too busy eating to bark.  It kinda sorta worked, but then we told this to a dog trainer who just laughed.  He said, “So, you reward her for bad behavior?”  Guilty as charged.

We finally decided that this is just who Molly is.  She loves everyone, and when you think about it, that is not a bad thing.  I sometimes think God sent us dogs to give us a practical example of the unconditional love of Christ.  That, after all is the essence of Molly.  She loves us no matter what we do.  Oh she can get upset if we forget to feed her, and she certainly will let us know when we have delayed too long in letting her go outside, but there is nothing that can really separate us from the love of Molly.  When I come home, she always goes nuts.  At times she almost cries.  She looks up at me with those sad eyes that say, “Touch me.”  When I do touch her, particularly when I scratch her behind the ears, she cannot contain her excitement.  She literally shakes her head as if this is just too much joy to bear.

I sometimes think Christ is just like that, but we are too distracted to notice.  God is always available, always ready and willing to love us, and just like Molly, he is asking us to touch Him.  And when we do, we are embraced with the unconditional love of almighty God.  Who or what can compete with that?

As I said, sometimes those without words have the most to.say.

Have a Molly Molly Christmas.

TDM

I am not exactly a fan of “Duck Dynasty.“  I have only watched part of two shows.  I primarily can’t stand any reality TV show, so this is nothing personal.  I am amused at the wild success of the show which obviously has an enormous following.  Every time I turn around there seems to be another “Duck Dynasty” product.  Obviously these guys are world class at taking advantage of name recognition.  That probably means they are a lot smarter than you think.

Now Daddy Duck, Phil Robertson, got his wings clipped for speaking his mind about homosexuality.  I read the transcript of his interview and can understand why the LGBT community was offended.  No one likes to be labeled as sinful.  I suspect even people who realize they are sinful are offended when this is pointed out by someone else.  It is hard to avoid coming across as “holier than thou” when you focus on sins you consider to be a problem for someone else.

The LGBT community is particularly upset at being compared to bestiality.  On that they probably have a point.  As far as I can tell, most people who have sex with animals as a hobby choose an animal of the opposite sex.  Just saying!   In addition, most animals that breed successfully are actually heterosexual.

But there is more going on here.  This is not just about reducing or eliminating discrimination against the LGBT community.  This is about forcing people to adopt the LGBT world view, with no tolerance for anyone with a different opinion.  It is no longer acceptable, in the minds of the liberal left, for anyone to have a different opinion.  We have seen this before.  No one is “holier than thou” than the people who are offended by anyone who they think is “holier than thou.” 

But this time they may have picked on the wrong guy.  It turns out that clipping Phil Robertson’s wings ruffled a lot of feathers.  A ton of people are coming to his defense and the backlash is growing by the minute.  According to Breitbart.com the boycott A & E blog already has over 500,000 likes.  Yikes!

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2013/12/19/Boycott-AE-page

I can pretty much guarantee that some of the top executives at A & E are now fully aware that they stepped in it big time.  This is the typical left wing liberal mistake.  They are always shocked to find out that a whole lot of people don’t agree with their delusional view of the world.

This actually could be fun to watch.  “Duck Duck Goose.”

TDM

By now most of us are familiar with the Sign Language Interpreter who stood next to Obama and other World Leaders at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela.  It turned out that this man didn’t actually know sign language.  That apparently was not a requirement for the position.  The Saturday Night Live skit about this is beyond hysterical.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/theoval/2013/12/16/obama-saturday-night-live-mandela-raul-castro/4037637/

This guy never even thought he was competent.  He just realized that it wasn’t necessary to actually know how to do the job.  In the following interview he explained that no one really cared if he was competent.  He just needed to get one job and from then on people assumed that he was qualified for the next one.  It is an amazing story that borders on hilarious.

http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/sarahbritten/2013/12/13/the-eloquence-of-the-fake-signing-man/

The parallel between the fake interpreter and Obama is interesting.

In South Africa, the signing man told the world, you don’t actually have to know what you are doing in order to get a job. You don’t have to have any ability whatsoever, as long as it looks, to most, as though you can go through the motions — whether you are a teacher, a police officer, a bureaucrat, a government official or (as some have suggested) a state president.

This is true when running for President of the United States as long as you are a liberal Democrat

There are those who see through you and complain, but they are ignored.

How many times did people try and warn us about Obama?

You stand there and tell us that the appearance of something becomes more important than the substance of it.

The main stream media bought into the Obama myth hook line and sinker.  People assumed he was competent because people assumed he was competent.

Your obvious inability to do your job does not prevent you from getting ahead, until you reach the most prominent stage in the world, and then pretending suddenly isn’t enough. Too many people noticed — too many people who couldn’t just be dismissed because of their politics or race, which is how criticism is normally dealt with.

Obama got away with this because anyone who dared criticize him was labeled as racist.  No one bothered to find out the truth.

The author is astonished at the culture of incompetence in South Africa.  This is pretty amazing.  People wonder how this guy managed to be the interpreter for all those world leaders.  But I have to ask the obvious question.  If this is bad, and it is beyond bad, isn’t it a lot worse to elect someone totally incompetent to be President of the United States?  There was zero evidence that Obama was competent when he ran in 2008.  There was even less evidence that he was competent when he ran for re-election in 2012.  Yet no one noticed the obvious until the obvious became too obvious to ignore.  Now we have a President of the United States who will be in office for at least three more years and no one in either party even pretends that he is up to the job.  That is a lot bigger problem than an incompetent interpreter.

What could possibly make this worse?  Easy.  Vice President Joe Biden is next in line..

In some ways one could make a better case for Thamsanqu Jantjie.  At least he knew he was incompetent.

TDM

Republicans, Democrats and the main stream media are all thrilled with the new budget deal.  Republicans are pleased because they feared another budget showdown would hurt them politically.  Republicans believe Democrats are poised for a landslide loss in 2014 because of ObamaCare and they don’t want to risk distracting from that.  Democrats are happy because they get to continue spending money and they get to raise taxes.  The main stream media is satisfied because they believe continuation of the status quo is the highest value.

However, the only people who should matter just got shafted.  No one in either party thinks this is a good budget.  They know we are on borrowed time and this budget solves nothing.  The problem was just kicked farther down the road, to be dealt with later, at a much higher cost.  Once again our elected representatives put their own interests ahead of the American people.

Rasmussen just ran a survey about the most influential person in the world.   Ted Cruz came in third, behind the Pope and President Obama.  I believe this is because Ted Cruz has proven that he will fight for what he considered to be important, even when there was no chance of victory.  He stood on his feet for all those hours because he could not let ObamaCare go into force without at least putting up a fight.

Peter O’Toole just died.  I couldn’t help but think back on his career and the theme to the Man of Le Mancha.  This was the movie about Don Quixote.  The words of this song are a good reminder that our heroes should not be those who take the easy road out, but rather those who stand and fight for what matters:

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far

To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march into Hell
For a heavenly cause

And I know if I’ll only be true 
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I’m laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star

Don Quixote was chasing imaginary enemies.  Sometimes this is called “Tilting Toward Windmills.”  But this time the enemies are all too real and there is no virtue in pretending there is no threat.   Sometimes, we do reach the unreachable star, but you can’t possibly do that if you are too afraid to try.  Perhaps someone should explain this to the Republican establishment.

TDM

The “Cheese State” has struck again.  When Governor Scott Walker took on the public sector unions in Wisconsin he appeared to be playing with fire.  The backlash was instant and overwhelming.  Remember all those teachers swarming the Capital in Madison.   Liberals fought back with every tool in their bag of tricks.  They even imported paid activists from Chicago.  It didn’t work.  Walker didn’t back down an inch.  So, then Democrats tried to recall him.

Democrats were so sure that voters would reject Walker’s reforms that they were still predicting victory on election night, long after the media had called the election for Scott Walker by a wide margin.  This is typical of the liberal mindset.  They couldn’t bring themselves to believe what was obviously true:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/05/scott-walker-recall-election-results_n_1572532.html

Not only did Walker win that election, the labor unions suffered a serious, potentially fatal defeat.  By July of 2013, The Wisconsin Education Association Council has lost half of its 98,000 members.  It turns out that when given a choice, a lot of people chose not to continue paying dues to a union that often did not represent their best interests:

http://eagnews.org/thousands-of-employees-are-quitting-public-sector-unions-in-wisconsin/

Now Scott Walker has a new plan and it is brilliant.  Instead of giving money to the government, Walker would give money to people and allow them to purchase health care from private insurance companies.   They can just ignore the ObamaCare exchange.  He is still giving people money, which will offend a lot of conservatives, but at least he is giving them a choice in how it is spent.  Even MSNBC is intrigued:

http://www.msnbc.com/the-ed-show/scott-walker-finds-alternative-medicaid

Hmmm.  Let people “choose” between government insurance and private insurance.  What is the world coming to? Ask the government to compete on price and/or service?  Please!

Expect the liberal left and the Obama administration to respond with outrage. But ObamaCare sucks big time and a lot of Democrats are desperately in search of Susan.   Ok, not exactly Susan, but they are desperately searching for a way out.  This will be attractive to at least some of them.  At this point, anything that even looks like a solution will be attractive to them.  Some Democrats in Wisconsin have already signed on to the Walker plan.  And you still don’t believe in miracles?  As they say, any port in a storm and this is one heck of a storm.

There is zero chance the Obama administration can rescue ObamaCare.  They aren’t even ready to admit there’s a problem.  There is no way that you can fix a problem if you won’t even admit there is a problem.  But there is a big problem and it isn’t going away anytime soon.  No amount of main stream media spin can paper over this disaster.  On January 1, 2014, a lot of people are going to wake up to a healthcare hangover that aspirin won’t touch.

Scott Walker has a plan.  It is astonishingly simple, which is why no Democrat even considered it.  The government can’t fix this, so let’s take the money away from the government and give it to someone who can fix it.  This seems pretty obvious to me.

Everyone else is dancing around the real issue.  Walker nailed it on the head.  Government can’t solve the problem when government is the problem.  Take government out of the picture and things suddenly come back into focus.

Wisconsin.  Pretty darn cold at the moment but one really hot idea.  Get the picture?  Smile at the camera and say “cheese.”   “On Wisconsin!”

TDM

Most people, remotely familiar with our financial markets, know that a large portion of our current problems was the result of deregulation of the insurance and banking industry.  Almost without exception George Bush gets the blame for deregulating the financial markets.  But, this accusation is absurd, because deregulation took place during the Clinton years.  It was passed just in time for Robert Rubin to cash in big time at Citi-Corp.

In case you doubt this, read the transcript of an interview of Bill Clinton by Jay Tapper in 2010:

http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/president-clinton-i-was-wrong-listen

You will notice that the title of this website is “crooks and liars.”  The transcript was published here because Bill Clinton was lying about his own involvement.  But, what Clinton admits is devastating enough.

Well, I think on the derivatives – before the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed, it had been breached. There was already a total merger practically of commercial and investment banking, and really the main thing that the Glass-Steagall Act did was to give us some power to regulate it

Clinton is admitting that the financial crisis was brought about by deregulating the derivatives market.  What he was lying about is his own role in this.  He is also lying about his interest in regulating banks and insurance.  Clinton is now claiming he was “tricked into doing this because Robert Rubin and Larry Summers gave him bad advice.

Clinton even admits that this was the primary cause of our financial problems over the next eight years:

Now, on derivatives, yeah I think they were wrong and I think I was wrong to take it because the argument on derivatives was that these things are expensive and sophisticated and only a handful of investors will buy them and they don’t need any extra protection, and any extra transparency. The money they’re putting up guarantees them transparency. And the flaw in that argument was that first of all sometimes people with a lot of money make stupid decisions and make it without transparency.

 And secondly, the most important flaw was even if less than 1 percent of the total investment community is involved in derivative exchanges, so much money was involved that if they went bad, they could affect a 100 percent of the investments, and indeed a 100 percent of the citizens in countries, not investors, and I was wrong about that. I’ve said that all along. Now, I think if I had tried to regulate them because the Republicans were the majority in the Congress, they would have stopped it. But I wish I should have been caught trying. I mean, that was a mistake I made.

 Charles Ferguson explained the extent of the lie by Clinton in the following article:

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-ferguson/hillary-clinton-documentary_b_4014792.html

Ferguson was the man hired to write the screen play for a puff Hillary documentary on CNN.  He quickly discovered that he could not tell the truth and puff Hillary at the same time.  The following paragraph about Bill Clinton is very revealing:

Mr. Clinton sorrowfully lamented his inability to stop the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which banned all regulation of private (OTC) derivatives trading, and thereby greatly worsened the crisis. Mr. Clinton said that he and Larry Summers had argued with Alan Greenspan, but couldn’t budge him, and then Congress passed the law by a veto-proof supermajority, tying his hands. Well, actually, the reason that the law passed by that overwhelming margin was because of the Clinton Administration’s strong advocacy, including Congressional testimony by Larry Summers and harsh public and private attacks on advocates of regulation by Summers and Robert Rubin.

In the interview with Jay Tapper, Clinton blamed Robert Rubin and Larry Summers.  The same Robert Rubin he called the best Treasury Secretary in history.

Currently, Clinton, Rubin and Summers all claim they were secretly opposed to the strategy they were collectively jamming down people’s throats in the later 1990s.

This is far from a dead subject.  We still aren’t regulating this.  The following article in the Insurance Journal explains how Dodd-Frank is trying to use the Volcker rule to repair some of the damage:

http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2013/12/09/313372.htm

The following paragraph explains the situation quite well:

The view that deregulation of the financial industry in the 1990s was a prime cause of the 2008 crisis resonates with both Democrats and Republicans, and many of their proposed remedies have drawn support in both parties

If both political parties have figured this out, why does the liberal left, Barack Obama and the main stream media continue to get away with blaming all our financial problems on George Bush?  The answer is unfortunately obvious.  Republicans had a majority in the House and the Senate in 1999, so they share much of the blame.  Clinton could not have repealed Glass-Steagall without Republican support.  It was easier for people in both parties to just blame Bush.  This was a bi-partisan mistake.

It is the ultimate tragedy that Barack Obama gained and retained power primarily by blaming all our financial problems on George W. Bush. Bush didn’t de-regulate the financial markets, Clinton did that.  It was Bush who tried to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.   He was blocked by Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank, the co-authors of Dodd-Frank.  Talk about hiring the fox to protect the chickens.

We cannot possibly fix the problem until we are ready to tell the truth about the problem.  One important truth is that Republicans currently in the House and/or the Senate who were there in 1999 are part of the problem.  This is the true face of the Republican establishment.

TDM

Arthur Godfrey was a broadcaster and entertainer who lived from 1903 to 1983. He had a unique voice and he was easy to believe.  He claimed that he would never promote a product unless he personally believed in it.  His on-the-air personality was of the friendly next door neighbor you could trust.  Soon people began to feel that “if Godfrey said it, it must be so.”  He sold a lot of stuff and made CBS a ton of money.

At one point, he was considered to be one announcer that everyone trusted.  He also had a voice that was very recognizable and difficult to imitate.  There were rumors that President Dwight Eisenhower asked Godfrey to record several public service announcements to be played on American Television in the event of nuclear war.  Eisenhower believed that Arthur Godfrey, along with Edward R. Morrow, was uniquely qualified to give Americans important information during a time of crisis.  Those rumors turned out to be more than rumors, when in 2004 former CBS President Dr. Frank Stanton confirmed the existence of the tapes during an interview. (Source…conelrad.com)

Like most celebrities, what you see in public does not always match the off-the-air personality.  I won’t go into the gory details, but by the end of his career Arthur Godfrey was a long way from being the most trusted man in America.

Eisenhower was right about one thing.  During a time of crisis, it really matters that people know who to trust.  Many of us still remember when John F. Kennedy spoke on national television about the Cuban missile crisis.  That situation would have been much worse if people were not willing to trust what Kennedy was saying.

Now, if we have a huge crisis, we will be dealing with an administration that cannot be trusted to tell the truth about anything.  There have been too many lies.  That is one reason all the main stream media outlets are running stories about Barack Obama’s Uncle Omar.  Normally no one would care about a 69-year-old man from Kenya who has been living here, illegally, for over 50 years.   Who cares!  But Uncle Omar is headline news because this administration was caught in a bald-faced lie about him.

In August of 2011, Uncle Omar got caught driving while under the influence.  It turned out that he had a deportation notice dating back to 1992.  Uncle Omar allegedly told the police he would just call his nephew in the White House to straighten things out.

At some point the White House went on record saying they would not be involved in Uncle Omar’s case.  They also said that there was no record of Barack Obama ever meeting his uncle.  That was a lie.   Just this week Uncle Omar testified, under oath, that Barack Obama had lived with him for several weeks while getting ready to attend Harvard.  The White House tried to explain the discrepancy by claiming that no one had actually asked Barack Obama about this in 2011.  I doubt that very many people are buying this.

Bill Clinton looked the American people in the eye and lied.  I remember one commentator at the time saying that if Clinton was lying he was through.  That turned out to be wrong.  Ultimately Democratic Senators decided that since Clinton was only lying about sex, it didn’t really matter.  Of course lying always matters, which is why liberal Democrats still try desperately to prove that Bush lied.  The difference between Bush and Clinton is that there is indisputable documentation that Clinton lied and there is indisputable documentation that Bush didn’t lie.  That distinction, however, is lost on many liberal democrats.  They “want” to believe that Bush lied, so they just ignore the facts.

Obama has been caught lying and it is a lie that really matters.  That is why the Uncle Omar story matters.  This country started out with “In God We Trust.”  Then, thanks to the advent of television, we moved to “In Godfrey We Trust.”  Now we are at a point where we don’t know who to trust.  But we do know something very important.  We know we can’t trust Barack Obama.

TDM