It is no surprise to find out that politicians have been known (on occasion) to stretch the truth just a bit.  During his election campaign, President H. W. Bush famously told the American people there would be “No New Taxes”… and later reneged on that promise.  Shortly thereafter Bill Clinton with the most serious of faces told American People “I did not have sex with that woman”.  That later turned out to be untrue… but it was by no means the first time a politician had lied to save his career.  Bush 41 paid a political price for his misstatement; Clinton, aside from losing his law license, emerged from his “misstatement” with a political legacy largely intact.

President Obama has recently been caught in his own mis-statement.  During the long campaign for heath care reform, Obama clearly explained to the American people that health care reform (and the fees associated with it) were not taxes.  In fact, Obama told George Sephanopoulos in an interview “For us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase.”  When Stephanopoulos pointed to a dictionary to explain that a fee charged by the government met the definition of a tax, Obama replied by saying, “I absolutely reject that notion.”

But that was when Obama was willing to say or do anything to get the American people on his side (incidentally, the American people sided against Obamacare by significant margins… cries which fell on deaf ears in Congress).  Now that the law is in place, the administration’s tune has changed.  In a recent brief by the Justice department defending the constitutionality of the health care law, Eric Holder (Obama’s Attorney General) is arguing that the provisions requiring people to pay fines is “a valid exercise” of Congress’ taxing power.

Furthermore, in order to get enough votes to pass the bill, Obama ‘promised’… in the form of an executive order… that the health care plan would not fund abortions… an order which has now been violated by his own administration in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New Mexico.  I can hear a bunch of liberals reading this begin to whine: ”But that wasn’t really a promise… it was just an executive order that can be rescinded at any time“… REALLY.  That’s your argument?  In the real world… a piece of paper saying your legislation won’t fund abortions is a promise it won’t fund abortions… and Obama has just lied to the American people about it.

Jeffery Kuhner in the Washington Times actually makes a great point about what Obama is doing to the country with this renege on abortion funding:  bottom line… it’s an ugly thing:

Pro-lifers are now compelled to have their tax dollars used to subsidize insurance plans that allow for the murder of unborn children. This is more than state-sanctioned infanticide. It violates the conscience rights of religious citizens. Traditionalists – evangelicals, Catholics, Baptists, Muslims, Orthodox Jews – have been made complicit in an abomination that goes against their deepest religious values. As the law is implemented (as in Pennsylvania) the consequences of the abortion provisions will become increasingly apparent. The result will be a cultural civil war. Pro-lifers will become deeply alienated from society; among many, a secession of the heart is taking place.

And this is from the president who was supposed to UNITE the country.  Yet another lie told us by a fawning media.

Now, what affect will these lies have on the Obama administration?  Well, if history is any indicator, I think it reasonable to say that the American people don’t like to be tricked into supporting a politician or piece of legislation.  They don’t like to feel like they were used… feel like their vote or support valued so cheaply by politicians wanting to make a quick political “buck”.  Its one thing if a politician lies about his personal life… it is quite another when he lies about his policies.  If you look at the Bush41 comparison, Obama’s re-election chances are not good.  Given his record not just on the economy… but on the basis of his own standards of performance… he deserves to loose.

via Changing Tune, Administration Defends Insurance Mandate as a Tax – NYTimes.com.

Paul Campos, writing over at the “Lawyers Guns & Money” blog has a piece I highly recommend reviewing if you feel at all inclined. While he unearths little more about Kagan’s political beliefs than was revealed in the nomination hearings, he does begin to show us a picture of Kagan’s past that has not received the attention it probably should receive… but who in the mainstream media would we really expect to do this kind of research anyway?  I can’t think of anyone.  Whatever the piece’s weaknesses, I think anyone would agree with me that the piece is certainly compelling journalism.

I found two things particularly interesting about Kagan after reading the piece:  First, her ability to land not just good jobs… but great jobs… is really astonishing.  If you ever doubted the ability of connections to influence your career, you had best rid yourself of that notion immediately.  Second, it surprised me just how deeply Kagan is connected to Washington Elite… both because of her connections to the Clinton administration as well as those she gained as dean at harvard – a position she appeared to be quite unqualified for albeit groomed for it seems.

Campos concludes thusly:

Indeed, Obama’s nomination of Kagan suggests that, for all his talk of “change,” he is himself at heart a comfortable denizen of Establishment America – that place where people with the right sorts of resumes rotate profitably between Wall Street, Washington, and the Ivy League, while praising each other for having “good judgment,” and being “reasonable” and “non-partisan.”

The relative ease with which Elena Kagan is being confirmed to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court illustrates the extent to which Establishment America believes that a member of the club in good standing – someone who has gone to the right schools, and gotten the right kinds of jobs, and befriended the right sorts of people – can be counted on to do the right thing, even though her own legal and political views remain largely unknown. Naturally, from the establishment’s perspective, the right thing is to do nothing that might seriously disturb any of the social arrangements that continue to serve its interests so well. And in the end, Obama’s faith in Kagan is most likely based on a well-warranted belief that, as a Supreme Court justice, she will prove to be as acceptable to that establishment as Obama himself.

While this isn’t really that harsh of a critique… It certainly is not praise… and does not indicate to me Kagan will be much more than a dependable liberal vote on the court… which is exactly what Obama wants.

Elections have consequences people… you gotta remember that.

Obama must really have a distain for the average Israeli citizen.  In a recent interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, when asked why he thought so many Israeli’s felt anxiety toward him, he responded, “some of it may just be the fact that my middle name is Hussein, and that creates suspicion.”

Now, what does this tell us about Obama?  Well, it tells us that his impressions of concerned Israeli citizens are of a bunch of people who’s entire impression of him extends no farther than some loose association his middle name has with Israel’s enemies.  To put it slightly differently, Obama supposes Israeli’s negative impressions of him are born out of some underlying Israeli racism or prejudice towards Muslim Middle-Easterners.  This rather simplistic conclusion shouldn’t at all be surprising to those of us who have been following Obama regularly;  in fact, this it is quite reminicent of when Obama posited that Americans might not support him because he “doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”  In other words, Obama’s practice of projecting prejudice on those who oppose him is ingrained in Obama’s logic… its how he views those who disagree with him.

Never does it occur to Obama that Israelis might feel anxious because of his own policies toward israel and his failures to support their sovereignty and security.   Maybe it was Obama’s strong criticism of their settlement policy that caused Israeli concern. Maybe it was candidate Obama’s delusional insistence to negotiate with Iran without any preconditions that made Israelis anxious… Or his weak efforts to prevent Iran from developing Nuclear weapons after insisting during his campaign that a nuclear iran would be “unacceptable”.  Maybe it was the way he humiliated Israeli President Netanyahu at their most recent meeting in the White House.  Any of these reasons would be sufficient for a typical Israeli citizen to feel some anxiety towards Obama… but somehow Obama remains oblivious.

Maybe Obama should try looking beyond his own prejudices in order to understand those who oppose him instead of fabricating the prejudices of his opponents.

The Wall Street Journal had an article on Friday discussing Obama’s declining approval numbers.  I think this quote just about wraps up the reality of the situation:

“As a Democrat and as a woman, I am disappointed in him [Obama],” said poll respondent Melissa Riner, a 42-year-old law clerk from Mesa, Ariz

Referring to the oil spill, Ms. Riner added, “I don’t think he’s handling it. He doesn’t seem to be doing anything. He just talks.”

via Confidence Waning in Obama, U.S. Outlook – WSJ.com.

Populism has had an interesting tradition in the United States.  Theodore Roosevelt found support among the American public with his populist appeals.  In the 1968 Presidential election, George Wallace, a 4 term governor of Alabama won over 13% of the popular vote running on a populist platform.  Even Ross Perot and Ralf Nader, two familiar names in contemporary American politics, have both benefitted from populist appeals — despite their very different ideological principles.

Most surprisingly, Sarah Palin has been credited as re-kindling a populist streak in the American psyche.  But unlike her predecessors, who’s rhetoric has been aimed at large corporations and the injustice of economic inequality, Palin’s rhetoric has largely been aimed at the excesses of government… and the danger its size and power pose to the American people.

This shift in the popuist movement has not gone un-noticed.  Matt Bai, writing for the New York Times, has an interesting piece discussing the evolution of American populism — and has arrived with some surprising conclusions.  According to Bai, there is an undoubtable “underlying shift” in the meaning of American Populism:

Most Democrats, after all, persist in embracing populism as it existed in the early part of the last century — that is, strictly as a function of economic inequality. In this worldview, the oppressed are the poor, and the oppressors are the corporate interests who exploit them. That made sense 75 years ago, when a relatively small number of corporations — oil and coal companies, steel producers, car makers — controlled a vast segment of the work force and when government was a comparatively anemic enterprise. In recent decades, however, as technology has reshaped the economy, more and more Americans have gone to work for smaller or more decentralized employers, or even for themselves, while government has exploded in size and influence.

As the economy changed, and as the corporate entity exercised less influence on the life of the individual, the need for political opposition also decreased.  Even so, Bai does not view this as symptomatic of a philosophical detour.  Although the target of populism is not the same as it once was, the principles and ideals driving the movement continue to be rooted in a certain animosity towards institutions that have become too powerful or too reckless with the lives of the public at large.

[T]oday’s only viable brand of populism… is not principally about the struggling worker versus his corporate master. It is about the individual versus the institution…

You do not have to be working for the minimum wage, after all, to seethe about the effects of the Wall Street meltdown on your retirement savings or the spilled oil creeping toward your shores. You simply have to fear that large institutions generally exercise too much power and too little responsibility in society.

This new American populism is why the federal deficit has emerged as a chief concern for voters, as it did in Mr. Perot’s era — not because it presents an imminent crisis of its own, necessarily, but because it signifies a kind of institutional recklessness, a disconnectedness from the reality of daily life.

Bai makes some other interesting points; if you wish to read the rest of his piece in its entirety, you can do so here: NYTimes.com.

I’ll leave you with this closing question: if anti-trust legislation is needed to prevent private corporations from exercising too much power over the american public, shouldn’t we have an anti-trust system to break up government when it gets too big?

Headline: White House mocks Haywards yachting — and defends Obamas golf outing.

Wow… there are certainly benefits to having a sick day… with all this extra time on my hands I just keep coming across polemic GEMS like this:

Hubristic overestimation of human significance — in this case both for doing harm and correcting it by policy — may be the fundamental reason for broad acceptance of man-made climate change theory… In many ways, belief in climate apocalypse reflects similar moralistic disapproval of “materialist” Western society, and the claim that its wealth has been bought at the expense of others, including now that of “future generations.”

This quasi-religious belief is particularly appealing to the political and bureaucratic classes, because it provides new justifications for intervention to correct the imperfections and ongoing inequities of perpetually demonized capitalism. In a classic example of psychological “projection,” however, alarmists claim that it is their opponents who are tainted by “greed” and “self-interest.”

Read the whole thing here.