It's time for a reality check ...

Cold, calculating and dishonest

You expect a certain amount of lying from politicians, and Machiavellian maneuvering.  But you don’t expect the media to aid and abet such misrepresentations and naked attempts to seize power; you expect the media to do their job and expose such things. 

For some reason, Obama is immune from being exposed for bald-faced lies.  He’s also touted as the second coming by the media, when the truth is he’s more like Hugo Chavez than any of his predecessors, save perhaps Richard Nixon. 

Yet even Nixon – and his imperial presidency – would have blanched at some of the things Obama’s trying to pull off.   And in the end, the media did do its job on Nixon and exposed him for his reckless disregard for the law, for using the power of the government to attack his enemies, and for lying to the American people.

That’s apparently not going to happen to Obama.  He gets a pass.  And a pat on the back.

Probably like many, I can hardly listen to the news or read the daily paper anymore without being astonished that he gets away with so much. 

He makes statements that are absolutely false, and nobody challenges them.  He engages in petty, ad hominem attacks on his opponents and he’s praised for his leadership.  He ignores and stops enforcement of duly-passed laws and regulations he doesn’t agree with, for purely political purposes, and nobody sees anything wrong with that.  He bypasses Congress and the courts time and again with Presidential Orders and the media lauds him for “doing the right thing.”  He refuses to accept any responsibility for errors and he’s held up as a victim of past Administrations.  He can’t do anything wrong. 

The Democrat-controlled Senate is equally Teflon coated.  They haven’t passed a budget in years.  They’ve killed practically every Republican House bill – on jobs, the economy, whatever – on arrival.  Still, the media buys their claim that the real problem is obstructionists in the Republican-controlled House. 

It’s incredible.  Seriously, in the true meaning of the word – it’s not credible.  Nobody in the media seems to care.

For example, the other day Obama was railing against a measure in Michigan to make it a right-to-work state.  Which means only that you couldn’t be forced to pay union dues or join a union if you didn’t want to, as a condition of employment. That sounds like a pretty fair arrangement to most and over 20 other states are already right-to-work states. 

But what did Obama say?  He told the audience of union workers that he was opposed to laws like this that eliminated collective-bargaining rights, and that laws like this were designed to give workers the “right to work – for less.”    

Of course the union folks erupted in cheers.  He’s their man, right or wrong. 

In this case, he was wrong.  Dead wrong.   There’s nothing in the Michigan law that has anything to do with collective-bargaining rights.  Nor is there anything in it that has anything to do with wages.  Obama knew that.  So obviously he lied, blatantly and effortlessly. 

The news reporters covering the event knew he was wrong.  So did the network anchors that ran a clip of the event.  They all knew he lied.  Nobody said a peep.    

This isn’t an isolated event.  It’s a pattern.    

When he promised that families making less than $200,000 a year wouldn’t see their taxes go up, he lied.  Now he’s upped that to $250,000, and that’s still a lie.  Taxes are certainly going up for everyone and he knows that. 

When he promised that nobody’s premiums would go up under ObamaCare, and in fact would go down, that was a lie; premiums have soared since the bill passed. 

He said that if he were allowed to spend close to a trillion dollars in stimulus money, most of that would go to improving our infrastructure.  That too was lie.  Most of the stimulus money went to keep public workers employed and had almost no discernible effect on the economy.

When he claimed to have “saved” the auto industry and kept the car companies out of bankruptcy, that’s a laughable lie.  GM and Chrysler went into bankruptcy anyway, still owe taxpayers billions, and the only people “saved” in the auto industry were the unions – they got a big chunk of ownership for nothing while stock and bond holders were shafted.  (By the way, Ford didn’t need saving, didn’t take any government money, and is still doing just fine without government support.)

When he pledged that he wouldn’t have lobbyists in his Administration, he lied. 

When he pledged to have the most open and transparent Administration in history, he lied.

And it's not as if he was simply mistaken at the time and didn't know things wouldn't turn out the way he planned.  Or that he was taken out of context.  He knew upfront he was lying in every case.  Plain and simple.  So that makes it a conscious decision -- a premeditated lie.

It just goes on and on.  It’s so obvious.  Yet nobody – save Fox News and the WSJ – ever takes him to task on stuff like this. 

Now we are faced with the fiscal cliff.  The media generally keeps positioning this as a battle between Republicans who want to preserve tax cuts for "the rich," and Obama who wants the rich to pay higher taxes while extending the middle-class tax cuts from the Bush era.  However, it's not that simple.

But it serves Obama's interests to appear as if it's that black and white -- good guys versus greedy bad guys.   And if it serves Obama's interests, then the media is all on board.

The reality is that Republicans want to balance tax cuts with cuts in spending.  They want to extend the middle-class tax cuts but also start to tackle runaway spending on entitlements.  And instead of raising rates on the rich, they want to start limiting deductions.  Net/net, they will come up with about the same new revenues from the well-off as Obama is seeking, but in a more nuanced way.  Yes the truly rich will pay more under Republican plans -- a point the media ignores because it doesn't serve Obama's narrative.  But spending should also be on the table.

Seems like there would be room to compromise.

Yet is Obama really trying to come to some compromise?  Of course not, and publicly he's holding to the media's line that the stalemate is all about taxing the rich: he simply wants to increase taxes on households making more than $250,000 a year and Republicans are blocking him.  But as you now know, Republicans are caving on that already; only the mechanism for doing that is up for debate.

Meanwhile, he’s added to the negotiations that he wants the ability to raise the debt ceiling at will, without Congress’ approval – which he knows is a non-starter.  He refuses to deal with entitlement reform in particular, and spending in general.  And he wants to preserve the payroll tax deduction for employees, which takes money from Social Security -- the reason why many Republicans think that's a bad idea.    

In short, he’s not willing to give in on anything.  In fact, he’s made it even more unlikely to get a deal in time. 

He knows that taxing the rich more is pretty much a done deal.  The only quibbling is how it's done.  So that's not a sticking point -- he's going to get the money from them and appease his supporters.

If that's not the hold up in getting to a deal, what is?  Why add a bunch of extra baggage when you've already gotten the big issue you claimed was critical to reaching a deal?  

I think it's intentional – he wants us to go over the cliff.  And he wants to do that for purely political reasons. 

If the economy craters under higher taxes on everyone and unemployment zooms because of cuts to defense spending, he’ll claim it’s not his fault – it’s the Republicans who refused to “compromise” by not accepting all of his demands.   

By creating a new economic disaster and dropping it at the feet of Republicans, he won’t have to worry about being accountable for his past 4 years of economic mismanagement and out of control spending.   It’s a win/win for him.   He gets the sympathy; Republicans get the blame. 

Then he can come back in a role he feels fully suited for – savior.  He’ll push to keep some of the defense cuts – because the Democrats want to cut defense spending anyway.  He’ll push to restore the Bush tax cuts for everybody but the wealthy – only now he’ll take credit since they will be “Obama Tax Cuts.”  And he’ll end up getting almost everything he wanted anyway, while the public will blame the Republicans for any fallout. 

The bizarre part of it is that he will get away with it.  Again.    

And almost no one in the media will expose how callous, cold, and dishonest Obama’s been throughout the entire process.  They haven't done it in the past 4 years.  There's no reason to believe that will change.