Monday, May 9, 2011

How To Destroy An Administration's Credibility

First, refuse to release an actual birth certificate when you're challenged on your bona-fides to be President during the original campaign. Then, when pressed, release one that is heavily compressed and bears no relationship to an actual simple scan of a piece of paper, leaving plenty of doubt about exactly how it came to be. Once you've done this, be extraordinarily "Presidential" and take cheap shots at a potential political opponent during a Press dinner in a scene more reminiscent of South Park than that befitting a President of The United States.

Next, make lots of noise about how you're not going to Washington to pander to banksters. As soon as you're elected, however, make sure you appoint the man who runs the NY Fed to be your Treasury Secretary.

Tell the public you're going to cut the budget deficit in half within your first term during the campaign, fully-aware that we're headed into the worst recession in decades at the time. As soon as you get in office, nearly triple the deficit spending of your predecessor instead.

Campaign on the horrors of the drug war and the need to stop criminals from shooting people in Mexico in furtherance of this activity. Once in office set up "Project Gunwalker" and "Fast and Furious" allowing more than 1,000 illegally-purchased firearms to be transported to Mexico, some of which are then used to shoot both Americans and Mexicans. Oh, and to make sure the Mexican drug lords can pay for those guns allow a major US bank to launder nearly $400 billion dollars of Mexican drug money and get off with a tiny little fine instead of sending everyone involved in that scam to prison and revoking the bank's charter.

Tell the public you are being elected their President to stand and fight for the "little people." Once in office, however, allow more than 150,000 perjured affidavits to be filed in furtherance of stealing the common man's home, and instead of directing your Justice Department to empanel a grand jury and indict everyone involved work behind the scenes on a sweetheart deal where these very same firms promise - very nicely - not to do it again.

In keeping with the same premise, demand and pass not one but two 2,000 page monstrosities of bills, one attempting to force everyone in the country to buy a thing they may not want to (Health Insurance) and the other claiming to fix "too big to fail" while doing nothing of the sort, refusing to force the unregulated credit default swap and other derivative markets to come under margin supervision and public exchange posting of pricing and spreads. When challenged on the cost-savings of your health reform bill wave your hands, scream and shout - right up until you're caught double-counting alleged savings and your HHS Secretary is forced to admit you did it in a Congressional hearing.

Advocate and get passed a bill called "Cash for Clunkers" that is claimed to be intended to help the auto industry and middle-class America. Ignore the fact that it also caused a huge number of affordable cars and their most-valuable parts to be intentionally destroyed, thereby dramatically increasing the cost of acquiring basic transportation for those who are in the lower economic strata.

Then, after you've done all this, claim to have killed Bin Laden in a SEAL raid, trumpeting the best and finest military units that the world has ever known. Promise to release pictures proving that the most-hunted and wanted man in the history of the United States - the mastermind behind blowing up three buildings with airplanes and attempting to hit a forth - has expired at America's hand. We're shown a picture of a rapt group of military brass and the President himself allegedly watching helmet cameras as the assault takes place, having bravely given the order to "go" on what could have turned into another Blackhawk Down. But as the days wear on the story of a brave combat unit going into a firefight with a mighty terrorist and his minions who shoot at our troops in their heavily-fortified mansion until they draw their last breath begins to crumble.

First, the firefight wasn't so massive. Indeed, we later discover that there was no shooting in the main building at all - that there was only one small skirmish at the guest house. From that point forward nobody fired on our guys at all.

The story of Osama using women as human shields falls apart with equal rapidity. It turns out that he shoved a woman who is allegedly his wife out of the way - and she took a round in the leg in the process.

It then develops that the White House didn't have real-time communication during the raid, despite leading everyone to believe they did.

Next, we learn that Osama didn't have a weapon within his grasp when he was shot and killed. He didn't die trying to repel the assault. He just died. In fact, the narrative changes to him "dying as a coward." Was he trying to reach for a weapon? There were allegedly two in the room with him. We'll never know for sure. Nonetheless, unless he got his fingers on one, he couldn't have shot anyone with an empty hand.

To top it all off, the body of the alleged Osama Bin Laden was then, as the President said, treated with the respect due a Muslim but, in his words, carted off to the Carl Vinson and tossed off the fantail into the sea. The people I've spoken with who are familiar with Muslim burial customs have made clear that except in extreme circumstances burial at sea is not acceptable in any way. Of course my personal view is that he should have been wrapped in bacon and trolled on a line as shark-bait behind the ship, mostly as an object lesson to anyone who might try to emulate him, seeing as radical Muslims would view such a demise as a one-way immediate and permanent trip to Hell. I'm clearly in the minority on this point, but I view a dead man as just a corpse, and if we can get deterrent value from him after he's expired it should be seriously considered.

Finally, despite this all happening within a few hours' time a positive DNA match was obtained prior to the original press conference, proving that it was Osama. Plausible? Maybe - one-hour testing has been demonstrated. If anyone has it in field-usable form, our military probably does. And if that's not enough we were promised that photograph so we could all see that indeed Osama is dead - a photograph that has now been claimed to be withheld so we don't "spike the football" (in the President's words) - never mind that the same sort of murderous bastards that blew up our buildings thought nothing of publishing a video of them sawing off Nick Berg's head.

I have no doubt that the raid took place, and I have no particular reason to doubt that Osama met his maker last weekend. After all, there were plenty of witnesses in Pakistan who have gone on the air to testify that a raid did take place, never mind the fact that we seem to have broken one of our rather-secret helicopters in the process. Our SEALs performed admirably - but then again, that's who they are and what they do. I've said it before and will again - if any of the team is ever in this area, the beer is on me.

I'm also reasonably certain Bin Laden burning in Hell right now.

Will the conspiracy-minded folks be satisfied at this point? No. But that lack of satisfaction is Obama's responsibility, and nobody else's. That we shot some people in that compound is without question. That we lost a chopper doing it is also without question. There are those who believe Bin Laden has been dead for a long time; after all he was rumored to have end-state renal failure and it's damn hard to undergo dialysis in a cave somewhere.

That this Administration can't get its story straight should not be a surprise. Virtually every other word that has passed Obama's lips since he was elected has been proved to be a bald-faced and puerile lie. The problem with lying is that you have to keep track of all the bull**** you spew lest you contradict yourself and then the gig is up.

There are more questions than answers that have come out of this raid, and answers to those questions are being dodged. How, for example, is it that Osama lives in relative comfort right under the Pakistani equivalent of West Point without detection? Did we really waterboard the guy who led us to the courier? Did Obama order and go ahead with that waterboarding after selling America on him as a President in no small part by promising never to use that sort of technique? Was Bin Laden really living in Pakistan in that mansion for several years? Who are these Pakistanis anyway - are they our friends or are they really harboring not only Bin Laden but the Taliban generally, while we are handing them billions of dollars in "assistance"? Wouldn't it be "delicious" if we were directly and indirectly funding the very bastards who are trying to kill us?

Where's the chopper remnants? Why haven't we gotten the wreckage back? If the Pakistanis are our friends in trying to fight terrorism, what's the problem with returning our nation's property? How sure are we that all the Pakistani nuclear weapons (they are believed to have over 100 of them) are all secure and accounted for - and will stay that way? Oh, and what the hell do we intend to do about all that? Wait for a mushroom cloud over an American city? These are questions we as Americans should be demanding from our leadership - right here, right now, today.

Should we, as Americans, be confident in our leaders? I'm quite confident that whatever mission our men and women in uniform are given, they'll execute it. The SEALs proved that once again last weekend. But that our military can and does faithfully execute orders doesn't make the orders they're given, the rules of engagement and the missions handed out intelligent. If the man in the left seat of our nation is a bumbling narcissistic idiot, we're in trouble.

Exactly who is Barack Obama, and why should anyone - in this nation or otherwise, given his proved record of lies and intentional butt-****s that have been handed out on a serial basis to the American people - take him and the Administration in general seriously?

We're well past the point where that question should be asked in public.

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