WS Journal: Postmodern President Obama Rejects Objective Reality; Favors Deceit and Dishonesty

The Postmodern President

The challenge is finding anything his campaign says

that is true.

Opinion page, Wall Street Journal:

President Obama spent his formative years in academia, so he’s no doubt familiar with postmodernism, the literary theory that rejects objective reality and insists instead that everything is a matter of interpretation and relative “truth.” At any rate he’s running the first postmodern Presidential campaign, now organized almost exclusively around allegations about his opponent that bear no relation to the observable universe.

 

The most important document of this new approach to politics may be this week’s now famous TV commercial in which a man on camera accuses Mitt Romney of killing his wife. (The man’s late wife, not Ann.) The spot features a Missouri steelworker called Joe Soptic, who recounts how Bain Capital bought his plant and eventually closed it, costing him his job and health benefits. “A short time after that,” he says, Ilyona Soptic was diagnosed with cancer. “I don’t know how long she was sick and I think maybe she didn’t say anything because she knew we couldn’t afford the insurance.”

He continues: “There was nothing they could do for her. And she passed away in 22 days. I do not think Mitt Romney realizes what he’s done to anyone, and furthermore I do not think Mitt Romney is concerned.”

It’s a sad tale, affectingly told. The production values are also excellent, courtesy of Priorities USA Action, Mr. Obama’s super PAC that ostensibly doesn’t coordinate with his campaign. But its notions about cause and effect are, well, novel.

Bain bought the struggling company GST Steel in 1993 and held the investment in a turnaround bid throughout Mr. Romney’s tenure as CEO, which ended in 1999. He had been gone from Bain for two years when the mill went bankrupt, in 2001, amid a larger competitive upheaval that reshaped the U.S. steel industry. Mr. Soptic’s wife died five years later, in 2006.

Mr. Soptic also revealed to CNN that when he worked at GST, his wife had her own health insurance policy through a thrift store job, which she lost after an injury in 2002 or 2003. By then he’d been hired somewhere else, but that plan didn’t cover spouses.

So Mr. Romney is to blame because of decisions he didn’t make at a business he didn’t run that may or may not have set in train a series of random unconnected events many years apart that included Ilyona Soptic’s illness. Even more culpable is the butterfly in Peking that flapped its wings and forever altered the course of history.

At least the Obamateers didn’t suggest that Mr. Romney was the direct biological cause of her cancer. Perhaps they are saving that charge for October, given that a routine Democratic theme is that Republicans are in favor of killing people. After all, the most substantive liberal critique of Paul Ryan’s budget is an ad depicting his stand-in literally flinging an old lady in a wheelchair off a cliff.

The other day Nancy Pelosi said the GOP believes there should be “no government role” in food safety and “They do not want to spend money to do that.” Therefore the Republican Party is “the E. coli club” that Ms. Pelosi implied wants to poison children.

Riffing as only the postmodernists can, the House Minority Leader sat for a separate session with the Huffington Post to declare that “Harry Reid made a statement that is true. Somebody told him. It is a fact.” What she means by “fact” is that the Senate Majority Leader asserts with zero proof that Mr. Romney got away with paying no taxes for a decade, which is “true” because he says an anonymous investor called to say so. If the food inspectors ever went by Reid-Pelosi evidentiary standards, we’d all be dead.

The same pattern tessellates across the entire Obama campaign, from former White House counsel Bob Bauer’s insinuation in July that Mr. Romney is a “felon,” to the Tax Policy Center’s white paper that makes up tax details that Mr. Romney has explicitly disowned, to hanging economic claims on the preposterous analysis of a columnist no one has ever heard of, to the President’s serial genuflections about Mr. Romney’s “sincere beliefs” that neither he nor any other normal person actually hold.

Mr. Obama likes to claim everything he does is unprecedented, and in this case that happens to be true—true in the old-fashioned, not postmodern, sense.

Our point isn’t that politics is often brutal and unfair. That’s always been so. And it isn’t that Mr. Obama promised to elevate the national conversation for an era of partisan comity. Dumping that 2008 pose was inevitable.

The point is that more than any President we can recall, Mr. Obama isn’t trying to persuade voters that he deserves to stay in office because of his philosophy, record or positive vision for the country. Rather, his case is that he deserves re-election because Mr. Romney is worse, and he is so very much worse because of things that were invented in the West Wing but are detached from reality.

The entire theory of the Obama campaign seems to be that the more outrageous the claim the better, because the more you repeat it the more the media will talk about it, and the lie will achieve a kind legendary truth.

***

A postmodern postscript: The Obama campaign was at first more than happy to slipstream behind the Priorities USA smear, refusing to disavow the cancer ad and deflecting questions by claiming not to “know the specifics” (Robert Gibbs) or “know the facts” (deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter). But even their professions of ignorance turn out to be false.

In May, Mr. Soptic appeared in an official Obama for America ad—”I’m Barack Obama, and I approve this message,” it concluded. Mr. Soptic told reporters his life story on a conference call, hosted by the Obama campaign and . . . Ms. Cutter.

Your president, Barack Hussein Obama campaigning like a 3rd World Thug

Welcome to the Barack Hussein Campaign relying on total American voter 3rd World ignorance:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/08/10/priorities_usa_tv_ad_scrap_steel.html

There is no conscience in the Marxist.    To the Marxist their is no belief in anything higher than   Marxism’s task  making people equal in their suffering.

When will the killings begin?

Minnesota’s Effort to Save Marriage rather than making it irrelevant

Dear Marriage Supporter, Lakeville 911: What’s your emergency? Caller, Allison stay-at-home mom and homeschool parent from Lakeville, Minnesota:  There is a man outside my home calling me vulgar names because I told him I would not sign his petition in support of gay marriage and against the Marriage Protection Amendment that defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Chick-fil-A ‘kiss’ day marred by ‘Tastes like hate’ graffiti Torrance police said the vandalism at a local Chick-fil-A restaurant last week amid the ongoing national debate about the chief executive’s opposition to gay marriage is under investigation. But no arrests have been made, even though an artist reportedly took responsibility for the vandalism. This week the Minnesota for Marriage Campaign office received 26 calls in thirty minutes from one caller who admitted to police she was only trying to scare staff and tie up campaign office phone lines. These are just a few of hundreds of examples of cowardly intimidation in Minnesota and throughout the country we have seen gay marriage activists employ towards people who support traditional marriage. Why is this behavior acceptable? It would be front-page news if traditional marriage supporters were yelling vulgarity’s at non-threatening stay-at-home moms or spraying graffiti with traditional marriage messages on local businesses that were against the Marriage Protection Amendment.  Make no mistake, under no circumstances will the Minnesota for Marriage campaign tolerate or encourage such behavior from our supporters. We will lead by example.  We need your help, though. Gay activists will continue to employ their intimidation and their “George Soros” like liberals will fund their ridiculous TV ads that claim that Minnesota’s economy will somehow suffer because of the marriage amendment or that gay people won’t be able to leave their property to loved ones. We can win this November if we get our message out. A week of television ads will cost us about $350,000. Will you please donate $3.50, $35, $350 or even $3,500 to help us fund our message? Not only do we need your financial support, but we need you as “boots on the ground” – you can make phone calls from home using our state-of-the-art phone banking system, organize neighborhood canvasing and register people to vote in your church. Please email Minnesota for Marriage Grassroots Coordinator Tim Gould at Tim@MinnesotaForMarriage.com and we’ll get you started. Although the Marriage Protection Amendment infuses passion please remember when making phone calls and door knocking: 1)    Always be respectful, especially if you encounter someone who is opposed         to the amendment. 2)    Do not ever insult or threaten anyone. We are supporting God’s definition of         marriage and we must do so in love. 3)    Do not intimidate or harass anyone over the phone or in-person. There is         no place for such conduct in our campaign. Here are things to remember that will work:                1. Approach everyone in love and with a genuine spirit of enthusiasm                    for marriage.                2. Be an energetic and passionate advocate.                3. Provide us with the information we need to evaluate the likelihood                    of a voter being on our side.                4. Encourage strong supporters of the amendment to get involved and                    volunteer. With your help, we can and will win this in November. Thank you for your continued support. Sincerely, Andy Parrish Deputy Campaign Manager P.S. If you can’t donate money today – every phone call you make from the comfort and safety of your home saves the campaign $0.80 so making 90 phone calls is the equivalent of a $72.00 donation. Prepared and paid for by Minnesota for Marriage, 2355 Fairview Ave N, Box 301, Roseville, MN 55113, in support of the Minnesota Marriage Protection Amendment

ABOUT MINNESOTA FOR MARRIAGE Minnesota for Marriage is a broad coalition of leaders, both inter-faith and people outside the religious community, who support the Minnesota Marriage Amendment and asked the Legislature to place it on the ballot. These leaders have assembled a campaign to ensure this amendment passes.

Comment:   After reading the above, I plant to look up on the internet to find out what, if anything at all, will be recorded about the Gay KGB wing during the 1980s  and 90s called “Act Up”.  

At that time nearly all of their victims, including suicides, were  caused by gays  playing secret police surreptitiously entrapping and exposing gays who weren’t  acknowledging membership  in the gay movement.

With a large population of practicing gays the only thing that mattered  in the world was gay sex.    It was a superior exercise to the ‘norm’ as the gay program went.   It was not only ones right but ones duty to perform.    Practicing every conceivable vulgarity became an aart form among the act-up crowd.    They vehemently opposed traitors…..gays who didn’t celebrate loudly and often their proclivities……in order to make them main stream.

In Britain a year or two ago a wealthy human female married her pet dolphin.

Is there a dolphin mate in your future?

Krauthammer again at His Best:

The case against reelection

by Charles Krauthammer    at   the Washington Post:

There are two ways to run against Barack Obama: stewardship or ideology. You can run against his record or you can run against his ideas.

The stewardship case is pretty straightforward: the worst recovery in U.S. history, 42 consecutive months of 8-plus percent unemployment, declining economic growth – all achieved at a price of an additional $5 trillion of additional debt.

The ideological case is also simple. Just play in toto (and therefore in context) Obama’s Roanoke riff telling small-business owners: “You didn’t build that.” Real credit for your success belongs not to you — you think you did well because of your smarts and sweat? he asked mockingly — but to government that built the infrastructure without which you would have nothing.

Play it. Then ask: Is that the governing philosophy you want for this nation?

Mitt Romney’s preferred argument, however, is stewardship. Are you better off today than you were $5 trillion ago? Look at the wreckage around you. This presidency is a failure. I’m a successful businessman. I know how to fix things. Elect me, etc. etc.

Easy peasy, but highly risky. If you run against Obama’s performance in contrast to your own competence, you stake your case on persona. Is that how you want to compete against an opponent who is not just more likable and immeasurably cooler but spending millions to paint you as an unfeeling, out-of-touch, job-killing, private-equity plutocrat?

The ideological case, on the other hand, is not just appealing to a center-right country with twice as many conservatives as liberals, it is also explanatory. It underpins the stewardship argument. Obama’s ideology — and the program that followed — explains the failure of these four years.

What program? Obama laid it out boldly in a series of major addresses during the first months of his presidency. The roots of the nation’s crisis, he declared, were systemic. Fundamental change was required. He had come to deliver it. Hence his signature legislation:

First, the $831 billion stimulus that was going to “reinvest” in America and bring unemployment below 6 percent. We know about the unemployment. And the investment? Obama loves to cite great federal projects such as the Hoover Dam and the interstate highway system. Fine. Name one thing of any note created by Obama’s Niagara of borrowed money. A modernized electric grid? Ports dredged to receive the larger ships soon to traverse a widened Panama Canal? Nothing of the sort. Solyndra, anyone?

Second, radical reform of health care that would reduce its ruinously accelerating cost: “Put simply,” he said, “our health-care problem is our deficit problem” — a financial hemorrhage drowning us in debt.

Except that Obamacare adds to spending. The Congressional Budget Office reports that Obamacare will incur $1.68 trillion of new expenditures in its first decade. To say nothing of the price of the uncertainty introduced by an impossibly complex remaking of one-sixth of the economy — discouraging hiring and expansion as trillions of investable private-sector dollars remain sidelined.

The third part of Obama’s promised transformation was energy. His cap-and-trade federal takeover was rejected by his own Democratic Senate. So the war on fossil fuels has been conducted unilaterally by bureaucratic fiat. Regulations that will kill coal. A no-brainer pipeline (Keystone) rejected lest Canadian oil sands be burned. (China will burn them instead.) A drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico that a federal judge severely criticized as illegal.

That was the program — now so unpopular that Obama barely mentions it. Obamacare got exactly two lines in this year’s State of the Union address. Seen any ads touting the stimulus? The drilling moratorium? Keystone?

Ideas matter. The 2010 election, the most ideological since 1980, saw the voters resoundingly reject a Democratic Party that was relentlessly expanding the power, spending, scope and reach of government.

It’s worse now. Those who have struggled to create a family business, a corner restaurant, a medical practice won’t take kindly to being told that their success is a result of government-built roads and bridges.

In 1988, Michael Dukakis famously said, “This election is not about ideology; it’s about competence.” He lost. If Republicans want to win, Obama’s deeply revealing, teleprompter-free you-didn’t-build-that confession of faith needs to be hung around his neck until Election Day. The third consecutive summer-of-recovery-that-never-came is attributable not just to Obama being in over his head but, even more important, to what’s in his head: a government-centered vision of the economy and society, and the policies that flow from it.

Four years of that and this is what you get.

Make the case and you win the White House.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

<:ARTICLE>

More on this debate:

Charles Krauthammer: Did the state make you great?

Carter Eskew: Krauthammer’s Tocquevillian vision of America

It Appears Obama and his Super PAC are ONE, Defying the Law as Usual

 by Scott Johnson in 2012 Presidential Election, Barack Obama

In the Soptic tank

from PowerLine:

“Now that Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter has gone to ground, it might be worth taking a timeout to note the circumstantial evidence suggesting that the Obama campaign may have illegally collaborated/colluded with the Obama Super PAC in the matter of Joseph Soptic. Moe Lane provides an illustrated summary here.

A reader writes:

When listening to Joe Soptic during that conference call with reporters hosted by Stephanie Cutter, it’s obvious that he’s reading from a script.

Would love to know who wrote that. Would love to have been a fly on the wall of his house the day those separate entities, Obama campaign and the Super PAC, were staging his videos.

I would bet my paycheck for a year (after taxes) that those videos and that conference call were all on the same day.

Take a look at Lane’s post over at Redstate.”

Why shouldn’t Obama, Axelrod, and the rest of the honchos in the campaing fight for America’s future, lie, cheat, steal, and break the law at will per usual.  

They pay no consequences for their sins.   Morality in America, just as  freedoms is almost in freefall due to the teachings of the Left at university.    

Nearly everything officially recorded about Barack Hussein Obama is a fraud.    His promises for the American future with him as president which he advertised left and leftier in 2008  were disgusting lies.   Why stop  selling fairy tales  and wishes when you are certain to be rewarded by those who immorally benefit ?   Marxists have always preached that the ends always  justify the means.

Obama is a trained salesman.

Obama is their