Obama's Hypocrisy Goes Into Hyperdrive

Voters the world around are quite accustomed to hypocritical politicians; being a plausible-sounding hypocrite seems to be part of the job description.

This moral failing is enthusiastically bipartisan.  We're all aware of Newt Gingrich's adulterous affair at the very same time that he was impeaching Bill Clinton for his perjury inspired by the same sin, and Mark Foley expounding family values while seeking homosexual liaisons with Congressional pages.

It was perfectly appropriate for Nancy Pelosi's Democrats to condemn the ruling Republicans during the 2006 campaign: the Republicans weren't living up to their promises, and as Jack Abramoff's conviction illustrated, there was real corruption in Congress.  The fact that Pelosi's bunch has been far more corrupt and immeasurably more venal doesn't make their earlier accusations false; the 2006 Republicans deserved to lose.  We can only hope that the 2010 Republicans have learned their lesson.

No, accusing opponents of wrongdoing when you're doing the same thing is standard procedure.

What's not standard procedure is what Barack Obama is doing now: accusing others of crimes which they have not done, and which Obama has.  Sometimes this is called "projecting," as in mistakenly projecting your own flaws onto others.  In earlier days, commentators would have used the term "bearing false witness."  Either way, it's a new and appalling development for our political culture, and a deeply corrosive one.

Now in reruns.

Those Evil Foreign Dollars!

The roots of this awful lie go back to Obama's notorious State of the Union address when he falsely claimed that the Supreme Court's campaign-finance ruling had opened the doors to foreign influences:

The Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests -- including foreign companies -- to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, and worse, by foreign entities.

Even ABC News had to admit the Presidential distortion: Federal law still forbids foreign companies from spending on American elections and the Supreme Court pointedly let that law stand.  American corporations have free-speech rights in American campaigns; foreign ones don't.

Yes, American corporations often have foreign subsidiaries; so do American unions, and Mr. Obama doesn't mind in the least their billions in help for him.  For that matter, the Democrats seem to eagerly welcome actual foreign people into this country without regard for law, order, or immigration procedures and hope that they'll vote regardless of any right to do so.

But Mr. Obama's slander struck a nerve.  Americans do not like to think that foreigners are affecting their elections; when a British newspaper encouraged its readership to write to Americans urging a vote for Kerry in 2004, exactly the opposite resulted.  All America heard Obama's accusation; in one of the precious few sorrows of the mainstream media's long slide into irrelevance, very few saw its debunking.

What happens when someone gets away with something?  They figure they can do it again, only more so!  And that's just what Obama did, this time turning his guns on America's largest small-business organization, the Chamber of Commerce.  The Wall Street Journal reports:

...the liberal blog ThinkProgress, run by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, reported that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had collected some $300,000 in annual dues from foreign companies. Since the money went into the Chamber's general fund, the allegation is that it could have been used to pay for political ads, which would violate a ban on foreign companies participating in American elections. The Chamber says it uses no foreign money for its political activities and goes to great lengths to raise separate funds for political purposes. That didn't stop President Obama from raising the issue in a Maryland speech last week, saying that "groups that receive foreign money are spending huge sums to influence American elections."

Vice President Joe Biden picked up the ball and ran with it, directly challenging the Chamber to 'fess up to that dirty foreign money.  Unfortunately, as the overenthusiastic Joe has yet to learn, it's not wise to overplay a bluff: the Chamber responded in the kind of blunt words we need to hear more of.  How much foreign money do they spend on elections?

"Zero. As in, 'Not a single cent,'" wrote Tom Collamore, senior vice president of Communications and Strategy from the Chamber of Commerce in an e-mail with "And the Answer Is ..." as its subject line.

"We accept the vice president's challenge here and now, and are happy to provide our answer," Collamore added.

Once again the administration is being called out for its blatant mendacity.  It is illegal to use foreign money on political ads; it always has been, and the Supreme Court has no objection to that particular prohibition.  The Chamber of Commerce has ample funds from American businesses, thank you very much, and has no need of foreign money, as even the liberal New York Times had to admit.

Unlike... Obama and his fellow Democrats.

Oh, What A Tangled Web

So, Obama's grandstanding has given the Chamber a golden opportunity to proclaim and prove its all-Americanness, and without even needing to explicitly say so, to underscore Obama's own un-American beliefs (which have no relation to his birthplace wherever that might be).  In and of itself, that's a pretty spectacular own-goal.

Far worse: in the 2008 election, Obama himself illegally accepted foreign donations, including money from terrorists, which have never been returned or even apologized for.  His website, contrary to standard security practice for ordinary non-political Internet financial transactions, intentionally disabled all fraud-preventing address checking and had no restriction to US addresses as the law requires.  To see a presidential candidate's "Donate" page merrily offering Iran as an option should shake us right down to our boots.

Quoth the law - which, let us remind you, the Supreme Court let stand:

...the Act prohibits knowingly soliciting, accepting or receiving contributions or donations from foreign nationals. In this context, "knowingly" means that a person:

• Has actual knowledge that the funds solicited, accepted, or received are from a foreign national;
• Is aware of facts that would lead a reasonable person to believe that the funds solicited, accepted, or received are likely to be from a foreign national;
• Is aware of facts that would lead a reasonable person to inquire whether the source of the funds solicited, accepted or received is a foreign national...

Beyond Practicing To Deceive

What Mr. Obama did is not a mistake. What he and his minions did is not an error or miscommunication.  This is not even normal hypocrisy as we've seen since the dawn of politics.

The Obama administration is making a long-term habit of what we can only describe as Hitler's Big Lie strategy: telling a lie so utterly false, so infamously slanderous, that no normal person would ever believe that anybody could falsely say such a thing - so it must be true.

It worked great for Hitler.  Unfortunately for Mr. Obama, we've all seen this movie before.  In 2010 Americans are a whole lot more cynical and skeptical than 1930s Germans were and we also have the Internet which can expose lies that the mainstream media touches only with kid gloves.

Let us be clear: we are not saying that Mr. Obama is the same as Hitler.  He is not.  Hitler murdered countless millions of innocents; so far as we are aware, Mr. Obama has not bumped off even one, though he doesn't mind his allies doing it as long as the victims are too small to vote.

We are also not saying that Mr. Obama is either foreign or a Muslim - though when he identifies himself as a citizen of the world and says that America is just as unique as everywhere else, one has good cause to wonder exactly what's in his heart.

What he is, is a shameless liar.  So was Bill Clinton, but at least ol' Slick Willie generally tried to keep his lies confined to areas where they were difficult to prove.  After all, how was he to know that Monica didn't do her laundry?

Mr. Obama - yes, like Hitler - believes his own powers of rhetoric to be stronger than provable, demonstrable facts.  When he opens his mouth, it is to say, "Who are you gonna believe - me, or your lyin' eyes?"

Unemployment continues to climb - yet "the recession is over" and the billions of wasted stimulus dollars were successful.

Our allies have tired of Mr. Obama's contempt for them and our enemies spit in our faces knowing there will be no consequence - yet Mr. Obama still claims to be healing the world and restoring American honor.

Most notoriously, Obama said that his health-care reform would reduce the deficit, increase insurance coverage, lower prices,  not mess up anyone's coverage that they liked, not cover illegal aliens, and not spend taxpayer funds on abortion - but every day brings new proof to the contrary.

Will the liberal media report the truth?  There are a few shamefaced admissions of reality, a welcome sign albeit desperately tardy.

When will the urgently-needed howl of outrage and fury begin?  The American people are raising their voices, with or without the news media.  Will the media catch up with the masses?  Or will the masses walk alone?