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Obama’s “Big Lies” Get Bigger
A Commentary by Howard Rich
in Political Commentary

Friday, October 22, 2010

While you can’t fool “all of the people, all of the time,” it is surprisingly easy to fool a sufficient number of them to get elected.

“People will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”

That’s an excerpt from a World War II-era military intelligence report – a document which explored the psychological profile of one of our nation’s (and the world’s) most dangerous enemies. It also represents perhaps the most succinct encapsulation of the modern-day propaganda method commonly referred to as “The Big Lie.”

Who was the subject of this particular intelligence report? Adolf Hitler.

And while history is unlikely to witness a repeat of anything approaching the horrific genocidal barbarism perpetrated by the murderous Nazi “New Order,” that doesn’t mean American politicians of both parties aren’t still employing the same propaganda techniques utilized by its reviled leader.

In fact, after Bush Republicans used “The Big Lie” to grow government and rack up huge deficits (while telling us they were for “limited government and less spending”), President Barack Obama is now using it to expand government further and rack up even larger deficits under the banner of “hope and change.”

Of course Americans still searching for “hope” amidst our ongoing economic malaise know that the only real “change” has been the cost of these lies – which keeps adding up at the expense of our liberties.

How many “Big Lies” has Obama told? Frankly, it’s becoming difficult to keep track of them.

Most recently, the top actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid – a pair of programs that shouldn’t even exist in the first place – revealed that millions of American seniors will have to pay increased out-of-pocket health care costs next year for “less generous benefit packages” as a direct result of Obamacare.

This is due to government’s failure to acknowledge basic economic realities – which is already costing taxpayers hundreds of billions each year (even as these programs’ unfunded liabilities continue to soar).

Last month, a Kaiser Family Foundation report showed that family health care costs are up by 14 percent in 2010 – with even larger increases forecast for future years, again as a result of Obamacare.

“Health reform mandates new levels of coverage that will increase employers’ costs at least until 2014,” a Kaiser analyst noted.

Beyond higher costs, “Obamacare” is already reneging on government promises regarding prescription drug plans – another benefit that never should have been subsidized by taxpayers. According to a study released earlier this year by Avalare Heath, as many as 3.7 million seniors could be forced out of their prescription drug coverage under the new law next year – ostensibly so the government can provide them with “more meaningful choices.”

All across the country, Obamacare’s costly new mandates are driving Americans out of their existing coverage and forcing them to pay increased out-of-pocket expenses – perpetuating the worst inefficiencies of government-run health care.

“This much is clear: If the law with its expensive mandates remains on the books, millions of Americans are going to lose the health care plans they have now — plans the president repeatedly promised they could keep,” Jeff Jacoby of The Boston Globe wrote recently. Obviously, these ill effects don’t even begin to address the damage done by Obamacare’s individual mandates and costly tax hikes – which not only trample on the Constitution but also violate Obama’s promise not to raise taxes on Americans earning less than $200,000.

Of course we’ve been lied to by this administration before. Obama promised to bring transparency and accountability to government, but then he negotiated his health care bill in secret so that he could steer billions of dollars to his biggest labor union supporters. Then Obama removed new disclosure requirements for these union leaders – making it impossible for the public to know how they’re spending all of this taxpayer-funded largesse.

And who can forget “The Big Lie” of Obama’s so-called stimulus plan – which administration officials said would save or create more than 3 million jobs and keep unemployment below 8 percent? Clearly those assumptions – along with Vice President Joe Biden’s promised “Summer of Recovery” – were diversions designed to fool the American people.

As America heads to the polls in November, let’s hope we don’t get fooled again. We’ve had an elegant sufficiency of “Big Lies,” now what we need are real citizen leaders who are willing to tell us the simple truth about all of these unsustainable programs.

The author is chairman of Americans for Limited Government.

See Other Political Commentary .

It's a lie — except when Obama says it
by Timothy P. Carney
| December 05, 2018 08:13 AM

" The Truth Matters Now More Than Ever" is not just the design on a $300 graphic tee, it is also a new motto the New York Times adopted after former President Barack Obama left office. This timing highlighted the unavoidable truth that the news media slumbered through the Obama years.

The sharp eye and investigative fervor the news media takes towards Trump today is a great thing. Too bad it was absent during Obama. To show this, I often use an example from my beat in the early years, lobbying.

Barack Obama said in his first State of the Union address, "we have excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs." This was false. Obama had hired at least 40 lobbyists for policymaking jobs by the time he said this, including a Goldman Sachs lobbyist as chief of staff at Treasury, and a Swiss banker lobbyist at the IRS. Yet when the New York Times wrote up his speech, they referred to that discussion of lobbyists without mentioning the brazen lie. When the Washington Post more recently "counted" Obama's lies, they didn't count that lie, because Obama had excluded some lobbyists.

That's like me saying "I have excluded cookies from my diet," and then justifying my devouring of Chips Ahoy, Mint Milanos, and Samoas by saying "I have excluded Candy Corn Oreos and Famous Amos from my diet."

Obama simply was not held to the same standard as other political figures. Sometimes the very same claim could get a "True" rating from fact checkers when Obama said it, and a "False" claim when someone else said it. I'm not exaggerating here.

Consider the light-bulb law. Obama on the campaign trail promised to outlaw traditional incandescents. During the 2008 campaign, though, George W. Bush signed a law that effectively banned traditional incandescents by setting efficiency standards the old-fashioned bulbs couldn't meet.

So how did PolitiFact write this up?

To a claim by a conservative group that "Democrats voted to ban our conventional lights bulbs," Politifact wrote:

First off, it's not accurate to pin the law entirely to Democrats. It's true that more Democrats than Republicans voted for the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. But it got a measure of bipartisan support and it was signed by Republican President George W. Bush.

More importantly, we found the law does not ban incandescent light bulbs.

Okay, fair enough. But then check out this "Obameter" post.

Checking in on Obama's campaign season promise " I will immediately sign a law that begins to phase out all incandescent light bulbs," PolitiFact, had they followed the standard they used when judging a conservative group would have said (A) Obama didn't sign any such bill, and (B) more importantly, it doesn't phase out incandescent light bulbs.

But no, Obama gets held to a lower standard. PolitiFact's Obameter called that a "promise kept."

In short, if a conservative says Obama and his party banned incandescent bulbs, our fact checkers call you a liar. If Obama says he and his party banned incandescent bulbs, our fact checkers applaud him.

Donald Trump has been flogging the truth and twisting facts since the day he arrived in the Oval Office. But anyone who expected more candor from him as president than on the campaign trail was criminally naive. The real mystery nowadays is why the media seeks to expunge the falsehoods of prior presidents.

“Trump’s Lies versus Obama’s” was the headline in a Sunday Review New York Times piece aiming to drive a final coffin nail into Trump’s credibility. The Times claimed Trump has already “told nearly six times as many falsehoods as Obama did during his entire (8-year) presidency.” The columnists seem so distraught that it is surprising the article is not in all caps.

But the Times’ list of falsehoods is itself a charade with gaping Montana-sized holes.

Has the Times forgotten about Edward Snowden? Obama responded to Snowden’s stunning revelations of the National Security Agency’s vacuuming up millions of Americans’ personal data by going on the Jay Leno Show and proclaiming: “There is no spying on Americans.” But NSA’s definition of “terrorist suspect” was so ludicrously broad that it includes anyone “searching the web for suspicious stuff” (maybe including presidential lies). Obama’s verbal defenses of NSA spying collapsed like a row of houses of cards.

In early 2009, Obama visited Mexico and, in a spiel calling for the renewal of the assault weapon ban, asserted that “more than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States.” This vastly overstated the actual problem, since that statistic measured only firearms that Mexican authorities sent to the U.S. for tracing.

GOP lawmaker calls for second special counsel to investigate alleged anti-Trump bias in FBI https://t.co/o894CV1s8z pic.twitter.com/m8bbTAXc9z
— The Hill (@thehill) December 17, 2017

His administration then acted as if 90 percent was a goal, not a lie, launching a secret Fast and Furious gunwalking operation masterminded by the Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agency, deluging Mexican drug gangs with high-powered weapons. At least 150 Mexicans were killed by guns illegally sent south of the border with Obama administration approval.

Obama’s animosity to the Second Amendment spurred some of his most farcical whoppers. In July 2016, Obama asserted: “We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book.” Glocks are the Lexus of handguns, and a person could buy hundreds of volumes of used books via Amazon for the price of a Glock.

A year earlier, Obama bewailed “neighborhoods where it’s easier for you to buy a handgun and clips than it is for you to buy a fresh vegetable.” Obama never offered a single example of a locale where carrots are rarer than .38 Specials. But his false claim helped frighten clueless suburbanites to support Obama’s anti-gun agenda.

The Times column lists only one Obama falsehood on the Affordable Care Act: “If you like your doctor, you'll be able to keep your doctor; if you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan.” Obama’s dozens of variations and recitals of this lie were disregarded. The Times also ignored the fact that the ObamaCare legislation was carefully crafted to con Congress and the public. As its intellectual godfather, MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, explained:

“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically, that was really, really critical to get this thing to pass.”

To revile Trump, the column also struggles mightily to resurrect George W. Bush’s credibility. The Times concedes that Bush sought to justify attacking Iraq “by talking about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, which did not exist.” This vastly understates the role of official deceit in hustling that war.

In early 2003, Bush’s speeches continually warned, “If war is forced upon us....” There was never any truth to war being “forced upon us” (except by the White House) but that phrase helped Bush panic audiences still jittery after 9/11. The Center for Public Integrity, which has won two Pulitzer Prizes, compiled a list of 935 lies by Bush and his top appointees on Iraq. Perhaps to preserve the column’s lofty tone, the Times omitted any mention of Bush’s four years of brazenly false denials of authorizing a worldwide torture regime.

The Times’ comparison of Trump and other presidents implies that all lies are equally damnable. The Times ignored all the Obama false promises used to justify his troop surge in Afghanistan (which resulted in more than a thousand dead American troops with nothing to show for the sacrifice) and bombing Libya (which now has slave markets). But killing vast numbers of human beings should require more due diligence than assertions on federal spending for peanut subsidies.

The Times asserts that Trump is seeking to “to make truth irrelevant,” which “is extremely damaging to democracy.” But democracy has also been subverted by the media’s long history of ignoring or absolving presidential lies. For more than a century, the press has groveled the worst when presidents dragged the nation into the biggest perils.

Trump’s lies deserve to be exposed and condemned. But Bush’s and Obama’s lies help explain why only 20 percent of Americans trusted the federal government at the end of Obama’s reign. Pretending America recently had a Golden Age of honest politicians encourages the delusion that toppling Trump is all that is necessary to make the federal government great again.

I'm confused. You doubt that Trump lies more than any other President? Do you live under a rock?

https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2019/11/22/exp-cnn-creative-marketing-all-the-presidents-lies.cnn

As of August 5, 2019, he was at 12091 lies, by October 14, it was 13435. That comes to 19.4 lies per day. So just about every time he speaks, or tweets.

I'm confused. You doubt that Trump lies more than any other President? Do you live under a rock?

https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2019/11/22/exp-cnn-creative-marketing-all-the-presidents-lies.cnn

As of August 5, 2019, he was at 12091 lies, by October 14, it was 13435. That comes to 19.4 lies per day. So just about every time he speaks, or tweets.

I'm confused. You doubt that Trump lies more than any other President? Do you live under a rock?

https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2019/11/22/exp-cnn-creative-marketing-all-the-presidents-lies.cnn

As of August 5, 2019, he was at 12091 lies, by October 14, it was 13435. That comes to 19.4 lies per day. So just about every time he speaks, or tweets.

You guys are so completely misinformedthat you're beyond hope of redemption. I had a conversation with a guy who is fairly apolitical on Thanksgiving. He was of the opinion that we all need to talk to each other. I corrected him, saying that so long as people believe Fox, Brietbart, etc, there is no way to have a productive conversation. I cannot and will not compromise with those who folks, there is no compromise when it comes to the truth. I told him that the those who embrace conspiracy theories, who believe Hannity's lies, etc, must be defeated, even destroyed. That's the only way to preserve our democracy.

All presidents in recent history have lied to the American people; this one is no different. Whether he lies more or less, it's hard to say. I would say he lies a lot more than GWB but not more than Bill Clinton who was, and is, a world class liar. With the ascendance of social media, the truth is more and more difficult to find. Most of us just look for the truth we are most comfortable with. GD

You guys are so completely misinformedthat you're beyond hope of redemption. I had a conversation with a guy who is fairly apolitical on Thanksgiving. He was of the opinion that we all need to talk to each other. I corrected him, saying that so long as people believe Fox, Brietbart, etc, there is no way to have a productive conversation. I cannot and will not compromise with those who folks, there is no compromise when it comes to the truth. I told him that the those who embrace conspiracy theories, who believe Hannity's lies, etc, must be defeated, even destroyed. That's the only way to preserve our democracy.

Ooooo..............Now there's a reliable source. The shock troops of fake nooze.

, there is no compromise when it comes to the truth. I told him that the those who embrace conspiracy theories, who believe Hannity's lies, etc, must be defeated, even destroyed. That's the only way to preserve our democracy.

With the ascendance of social media, the truth is more and more difficult to find.

You guys are so completely misinformedthat you're beyond hope of redemption.