Remember the Left going on and on about President Bush’s supposedly “illegal” and “unilateral” Iraq war? When, in reality, the Bush administration had gone to great lengths to obtain (and did obtain) authorization for Iraq from both Congress and the U.N.

Even Senator Obama got in on the act, saying later in 2007 that “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” His words were correct – but again, irrelevant to the Bush case (since Bush had Congressional, bipartisan approval).

Then President Obama felt like bombing Libya out of the blue (no terrorist threat was involved – until after Ghaddafi was gone). And he sought no authorization from Congress. Did the Left care? A little; but really not much.

President Peace Prize also went on to embroil the U.S. in wars in Syria and Ukraine – unilaterally and with no authorization. And to blow any gains of the Iraq war, allowing ISIS to take hold; an event that President Orwell referred to as his having “ended the war”.

Now that he has done so, he proposes to resume the Iraq war. Except this time, he finally wants authorization first. I suppose that’s nice of him. I suppose we must be grateful, to such a terribly great man, for the small graces that he grants to us, his subjects.

In October 2013, I noted that the U.S. national debt leapt over $300 billion – the day after they raised the debt ceiling. It went from $16.75 trillion to $17.08 trillion, just days after President Obama had publicly lied that “…raising the debt ceiling…is not raising our debt. This does not add a dime to our debt.”

Update: Today, the U.S. national debt is about $18.01 trillion (or as this post is being written, $18,005,549,328,561.45).

$18 trillion! Up from $10.63 trillion when Obama took office on January 21, 2009. The Obama administration is 70% of the way to doubling the U.S. national debt – and still has two years to run!

But here’s the fishy part. Officially, the U.S. budget deficit for FY2014 was only $483 billion. If that’s true, our debt should have gone up a lot less. It should be just over $17.5 trillion.

There are two basic ways to measure the deficit.

1. The official number: What the government budget states as revenue minus spending.
2. The reality check: What the government had to borrow, to actually pay its bills.

Let’s take a look at the second one. I don’t have the exact numbers for the U.S. national debt for FY2014′s beginning vs. ending. But it should be obvious that, with the debt increasing by about $1 trillion from late October 2013 to end of November 2014, the real FY2014 deficit (covering twelve months from start of October 2013 to end of September 2014) had to be something larger than $483 billion. Otherwise, the FY2015 deficit would have to be $500 billion in just the last two months alone; and it isn’t.

So if an Obama supporter tries to say “The Dear Leader has reduced the deficit to $483 billion!”, you say: Then why did the national debt rise by roughly a trillion, over that same period? BALONEY.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration has found yet another way of lying to us. I’m becoming convinced that all of the ‘headline’ statistics put out by this administration are manipulated to the point where they’re a fraud, at least partly.

First off, we here at GayPatriot are in favor of legal immigrants and controlled, legal immigration from other countries. We simply oppose *illegal* immigration because of the importance of border security in the age of terrorism; and because it’s illegal. The people who have done it began their American journey by consciously breaking America’s laws.

As President Obama unilaterally suspended deportations of certain illegal aliens in 2012, and then last week expanded it to millions more, he has made clear what his priorities are not:

• Enforcing the law, as passed by previous Congresses and signed by previous Presidents: Not a priority.
• Defending U.S. borders: Not a priority. (Has Obama seriously tried to improve border security? Of course not.)
• Following the Constitution: Not a priority.
• Saving taxpayer money: Not a priority.
• Being true to his own previous statements and promises: Not a priority. Per link above, “In a Telemundo interview in September 2013, for example, Obama said that if he were to broaden the exception he made in 2012…’then essentially, I would be ignoring the law in a way that I think would be very difficult to defend legally.’”
• Racial and/or human sensitivity: Not a priority. Obama publicly reduced the people affected by his order to their supposed roles as people “who pick our fruit and make our beds.” (Guess he never makes his own bed, or cleans his own home? I do.)

Any of the first three points above – and certainly, all of the first three together – are violations of the President’s oath of office and grounds for impeachment. But let’s face it: as V has suggested, impeachment will never happen.

I blame the media because this is what you get, when a biased media covers for an egotistical President relentlessly: Hubris. Lawlessness. Government that is willfully, impeachably unconstitutional. With no accountability.

But speaking of the media, I must give some credit where it’s due. In the past, I’ve often noted that Jay Carney was Obama’s paid liar, and he probably still is, on some level. But even he admits that Obama is “literally” doing what he promised not to do. Also, credit the Washington Post for noticing how Obama’s pretense of innocence happens to be a lie.

So, what do you think Congressional Republicans will do with the illegal-immigration issue, from here? Up to now, GOP leaders have been soft on the issue of border security.

They’ve also been eager to be perceived (in the media, etc.) as pro-Latino. But I’m thinking that Obama just took all of that ground away from them: there is no possible way, now, that GOP leaders can ever be perceived as more pro-illegal immigrant or pro-Latino than Obama.

In that sense, Obama just took away any incentive that GOP leaders would have for compromising with him. I think that will blow up in Obama’s face. And I think he has just proven to the voters that Democrats truly don’t give a hoot about border security.(*)

NB: The first version of this post misquoted Obama slightly; the quote has been corrected.
(*) Again, because of its glaring absence from the Democrats’ real set of concerns.

Hat Tip: Senator Rand Paul

Obama’s “Deferred Action” for illegal immigrants who supposedly were brought here as children was rationalized on the basis that “Children shouldn’t be punished for the actions of their parents.” But his new Executive Amnesty is going to legalize their lawbreaking parents, too.

I think the lesson here is that leftists lie about everything all the time. The first lie was just the tip for the other lies to follow.

Courtesy of ZH, a picture is worth a thousand words:

Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping stand together – away from President Obama.

Other news: Jonathan Gruber, Obamacare’s architect, brags about voter “stupidity” (his word) and how excellently he exploited it:

The conservative group American Commitment posted Jonathan Gruber’s remarks, reportedly from an Oct. 17, 2013, event, on YouTube.

“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” says the MIT economist who helped write Obamacare. “And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass.”

Ed Morrissey’s piece gives you the video, and Ed adds:

Gruber goes a little farther than that. He tells the crowd that the bill was written to fake out the CBO — which is the Congress’ own analytical group. “This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes,” Gruber tells the audience with a smile. “If CBO scores the mandate as taxes, the bill dies.”…

Democrats insisted that CBO’s initial scoring showed that the bill was deficit-neutral in its first ten years, thanks to…dodges like trawling revenue before making outlays a few years later. How much else did Democrats lie to get that initially positive scoring? How much else are Democrats still hiding about the ACA and the HHS implementation of it?

And now HHS tells us that they’re projecting Obamacare’s 2015 enrollment to be kind of a failure.

Last, but not least: Yes, the media helped Obama cover up his flailing on Benghazi.

The day after the Benghazi attack, Obama gave an interview to Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes (CBS) where he pointedly refused to call the attack terrorism. But later, in a debate with Mitt Romney, Obama claimed that he had always been prompt in calling it terrorism. Obama spoke falsely. And CBS helped him, by hiding the relevant interview clip – until after the election.

UPDATE: A report that when Democrat senators need to know White House plans or positions, they ask MSNBC. (Which shows Obama’s isolation, as well as MSNBC’s deep subservience to the White House.) Via Citizens News.

HotAir pointed out yesterday that “Consistent liberals” are most likely to block others on social media for disagreeing with them politically.

Hence, my question. I’m honestly divided. In this complicated world, we’ve all known some lefties who are plain jerks, while some other lefties may be fairly nice people – apart from their never wanting to hear or know of any information that could make them question their prejudices.

I ran into the second kind of person just the other night, at my dad’s. “Cynthia” is a highly-educated neighbor in his retirement community, very nice in terms of watching out for my dad’s disabled girlfriend, and with a pleasant demeanor. So far, “not a jerk.”

But narrow-minded. As one example, she’ll dismiss (as in, will not hear) any information of Sarah Palin being anything other than a total dummy. Which is funny because the prominent Obama supporter and former “green jobs czar”, Van Jones, has now admitted in essence that the Left lied to people about Palin in the 2008 campaign:

“Sarah Palin .. people forget. She had the Democratic party shaking in our boots in 2008. She came out, she gave that speech at the convention. That was, hands down, one of the best convention speeches – not by a woman, by anybody in 2008. People were running for the hills…

Now it can be told! Now it can be told! We were scared!”

It must help the Democrats that their most officially ‘educated’ supporters are among their most dogmatically-gullible supporters. The Democrats can lie to such people and they won’t even care. For another example, we have President Obama’s recent admission that the Democrat candidates who are staying distant from him this year are engaged in a lie:

Well look, here’s the bottom line. We’ve got a tough map. A lot of the states are contested this time are states that I didn’t win. And so some of the candidates there – it is difficult for them to have me in the state…

The bottom line is though, these are all folks who vote with me. They have supported my agenda in Congress…These are folks who are strong allies and supporters of me, and you know, I tell them, I said, ‘you know what? You do what you need to do to win.’

Dogmatically-gullible people: They enable the Democrats to get away with it. Some of them are jerks, some of them are nice – but narrow-minded.

This is everywhere, and with reason: President Obama makes rare campaign trail appearance, people leave early.

That is,

• People bought tickets to the rally and then didn’t care what he had to say, and
• The “mainstream” media were willing to report the fact.

P.S. Yes, he basically lied about the economy. Maybe at least some people are getting tired of the lies?

Barack H. Obama, putting down the Bush administration for allegedly being unprepared for the avian flu:

Via Patterico.

UPDATE: Powerline points out Obama’s political desperation. He recently said this:

I actually believe that capitalism is the greatest force for prosperity and opportunity the world has ever known. And I believe in private enterprise — not government, but innovators and risk-takers and makers and doers — driving job creation.

It’s not that Obama is lying – there’s nothing new, in Obama lying about his own beliefs. It’s that he’s now lying to pretend some sort of admiration for capitalism. How are the mighty fallen! Remember him saying in better times how we’ve got to “spread the wealth around”? And wanting to tell business owners, “You didn’t build that!”

Obama says US ‘underestimated’ rise of ISIS, admits ‘contradictory’ Syria policy:

President Obama acknowledged Sunday that U.S. intelligence officials “underestimated” the threat posed by the Islamic State and overestimated the Iraqi army’s capacity to defeat the militant group…

Let’s be clear: Officials who were chosen and supported by Obama. The administration of Barack Hussein Obama underestimated ISIS.

Or else, we can make this entry #39,422 in the files of “Obama pretends that he hasn’t been president all these years”. In the interview, Obama goes on to also blame Iraq’s PM al-Maliki for the problems; never himself.

One more thing. Does Obama still have the U.S. backing the world’s evil dictators? It seems so:

Obama also acknowledged that the U.S. is dealing with a conundrum in Syria, as the U.S.-led military campaign against the Islamic State is helping Syrian President Bashar Assad, whom the U.N. has accused of war crimes.

“I recognize the contradiction in a contradictory land and a contradictory circumstance,” Obama said…

Bush practically would have been impeached, for saying that. (And Bush wouldn’t have said it because Bush did what he could, to push U.S. policy in the direction of overthrowing the world’s evil dictators.)

One more thing. Has Obama made it a thing of the past, that the U.S. might strike its enemies pre-emptively (or perhaps unilaterally, as the Left calls it)? Not so much:

Obama called the threat from the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, and other terror groups a more “immediate concern that has to be dealt with…” “…in terms of immediate threats to the United States, ISIL, Khorasan Group — those folks could kill Americans,” he said…

Both groups have been targeted by U.S. airstrikes in recent days…

Barack Obama: Just what the Left always *accused* Bush of being. And of course, the media lets him get away with it.

UPDATE: Some Democrats agree that it was the Obama White House, more than the U.S. intelligence community, which underestimated ISIS.

Former Rear Admiral Joe Sestak, a two-term Democratic member of the House of Representatives…appeared to surprise his MSNBC interlocutor when he noted that the only people who got ISIS wrong work in the Obama administration.

“If you remember back in January and February, the head — the general, the Defense Intelligence Agency, actually testified before the House and Senate that in 2014, ISIS would take over large swaths of territory,” the Navy veteran asserted. “In fact, at the time he testified, they had already seized Ramadi and Fallujah — 35 miles from Baghdad.”

A decade ago, Fallujah was a crucial victory for the Marines (some of whom gave their lives) against an earlier version of ISIS. I guess Obama threw it back.

UPDATE: A report that Obama was warned about ISIS in 2012. As Ed Morrissey puts it:

…the US intelligence community told him of the danger at the same time Obama ridiculed Mitt Romney during the presidential debates…for wanting a residual force in Iraq to prevent exactly what Romney warned would happen.

…surprised I even can log in here anymore
Sorry to be away so long, but this one came to me in a flash and figured I’d put it together (amateurishly) and throw it up:

Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from The Ranch)

The official position of the Obama State Department is that the Islamic State has absolutely nothing to do with Islam.

Yup, they actually said that.

Now, a person with reason and common sense at his disposal would hear this and say, “But it’s got Islam right in the name, y’daft bint! You can’t spell ‘Islamic State’ without ‘Islam.’”

But you have to remember something about the Obama Administration; these are the same people who tell us that the “Affordable Care Act” makes health care affordable, and that “the border has never been more secure” as illegals pour across it by the tens of thousands.

I guess they figure since they lie, so does everybody else.

One might have been tempted to think the Obama Administration had hit rock-bottom when they called Bowe Bergdahl’s fellow soldiers liars and “swift-boaters*” for disputing the Administration’s official line that Bergdahl served with “honor and distinction.” (Maybe with the Taliban.) That seemed to be as low they could go.

Then, somebody went and tossed them a shovel.

An administration spokesman (for the Department of Housing and Urban Development) took to Teh Twitters and called those soldiers (the ones that didn’t desert and collaborate with the Taliban)… “psychopaths.”

Name-calling has been the administration’s modus operandi for dealing with critics since Day 1. Curious as to why the president is keeping his college records secret? You’re a “birther.” Skeptical about the president’s Draconian environmental laws? You’re a “climate change denier.” And the perennial catchall for any critic of the president’s policies… “racist!”

Administration insiders apparently believe that criticism of the Bergdahl Affair has nothing to do with honest disagreement about the wisdom of turning loose five of the Taliban’s top generals for one deserter. They honestly believe it all springs from personal animosity toward the president. “[All criticism in the Bergdahl matter] Obama aides say, is in their minds a proxy for the hatred toward the president.”

How simplistic this all is. There are no genuine arguments, only personal animus. Therefore, there is no need to argue in support of policies; simple name-calling of your opponents is sufficient.

* “Swiftboat” – verb. When knowledgeable people reveal an unpleasant truth about a Democrat that contradicts the official party narrative.

Obama just quietly delayed the Individual Mandate.

Earlier, Obama told people who can’t afford the higher rates under Obamacare they should cancel their cable and cell phone. LOL. Remember when his cult believed he was going to pay for their gas and mortage?

2012: Barack Obama declares: “Al Qaeda is on the path to defeat.” He also said.

“I ended the war in Iraq, as I promised. We are transitioning out of Afghanistan. We have gone after the terrorists who actually attacked us 9/11 and decimated al Qaeda.”

“We said that we would go after al Qaeda, and they are on the run and bin Laden is dead.”

“That’s why, working with Joe Biden and our national security team, we’ve been able to decimate al Qaeda.”

“Thanks to sacrifice and service of our brave men and women in uniform, the war in Iraq is over, the war in Afghanistan is winding down, al Qaeda has been decimated, Osama bin Laden is dead.”

“Today, al Qaeda is on its heels and Osama bin Laden is no more.”

2014: Al Qaeda controls more territory than ever in Middle East.

But, by all means, mainstream media, keep obsessing over that bridge thing.

That’s the gist of his speech.

There is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let’s respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes–especially for the wealthy–our economy will grow stronger. Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, well, that’s the price of liberty.

Now, it’s a simple theory. And we have to admit, it’s one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That’s in America’s DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. (Laughter.) But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. (Applause.) It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the ’50s and ’60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade. (Applause.) I mean, understand, it’s not as if we haven’t tried this theory.

It’s the usual Obama campaign speech (the only kind he gives, the man doesn’t do thoughtful), unnamed enemies (“a certain crowd”), strawman arguments (“the market will take care of everything”), mixed in with blatant falsehoods, (“we tried cutting taxes and reducing regulation, and it didn’t work”). It’s a candyfloss of lies, class warfare, and demagoguery but this is what Obamacrats actually believe.  In fact, his crowd of mindless drones lapped it up like an MSDNC panel of Melissa Harris-Perry clones.

And all of it has no more truth or substance than their rumor that Mitt Romney would outlaw tampons. But the low-information voters that have turned the USA into a statist Idiocracy lap it up.

Obama really believes this inanity too, and it drives his policies of massively increased regulation, tax increases, and welfare expansion.

Is President Obama ignorant of how the job market works, or does he cynically exploit the ignorance of his left-wing, “low information” voter base?

If economics has two consistent findings, they are:

1. Rent control messes up a city’s rental market, driving rents *up* (and rental quality down) over time.
2. Raising the minimum wage kills low-end jobs, the ones held by young and/or poor people.

You can prove (2) to yourself with a simple thought-experiment. Imagine we raised the federal minimum wage from its present $7.25/hour to, say, $25. Would McDonald’s or any other restaurant, large or small, be able to stay in business?

They might, if they adopt Applebee’s new “Waiter Terminator”.

The E La Carte Presto tablets – powered by Intel – will allow patrons to pay from their seats while also adding food and beverages to their existing orders…

The Presto tablets, which were developed at MIT, have been “ruggedized” to deal with the spills and rowdy children…

DineEquity said it might consider introducing the tablets at its IHOP restaurant chain as well. The company joins many others in the industry that have begun incorporating technology into the customer experience.

When government forces wages up, it forces businesses to kill jobs: either by the business dying, or by its replacing workers with technology (a.k.a. capital). The restaurant industry has technology waiting in the wings.

As if to defy that reality, last week Obama tweeted his base the following total falsehood:

Hence, my question. (more…)

DC – i.e., government employees – got richer compared to the rest of America. What also happened back then was a newly-Democrat Congress adding hundreds of billions to government spending, followed of course by President Obama and his 2009 “Porkulus”.

Via Zero Hedge, who suggests that Obama should maybe keep this in mind when he gives his speeches on inequality.

UPDATE (from Dan):  Here’s something to chew on, Jeff, the difference between the governing class and Americans may be considerably greater than this graph suggests.  Bear in mind the vast differences in income in the District itself with many blighted areas in the North- and Southeast quadrants of the city.  And if incomes there would be pulling down the overall average, some folks living in Northwest (and the gentrified areas around Capitol Hill) would be earning far more than this graph suggests.

Current Yahoo! headine, Obama: Economic fairness ‘frayed’:

President Barack Obama prodded Congress to raise wages and secure the social safety net as he issued an overarching appeal Wednesday to correct inequalities that he said make it harder for a child in the United States to escape poverty. “That should offend all of us,” he declared. “We are a better country than this.”

Obama argued that the dream of upward economic mobility is breaking down and that the growing income gap is a “defining challenge of our time.”

“The basic bargain at the heart of our economy has frayed,” the president said…

This is an example of the Left’s classic tactic, “poison as food, poison as antidote”. First the Left creates/worsens problems with their dysfunctional policies; then they position themselves (or, even more dysfunctional left-wing policies) as the supposed solution.

In this case, President Obama’s own policies create/worsen the inequality he decries. As I’ve discussed in my “Recovery for the One Percent” series here, here, here and here.

For any lefties reading this, who need the reminder:

• Raising the minimum wage costs people jobs.
• Big Government denies opportunity to the working poor.
• High government spending hurts the economy and stops new businesses from being formed, as do high regulation and taxes.
• Quantitative Easing bails out (or subsidizes) the One Percent, at the expense of the poor and middle-class.

All policies increased, maintained or advocated by Your Obama.

To be clear, the problems didn’t start with Obama; but he has worsened them.

From Mona Charen’s new column:

Remember President Barack Obama’s mother? …The moving and infuriating story was a staple on the 2008 campaign trail. His mother had insurance, he explained, but when she came down with cancer, her insurance company claimed her disease was a “pre-existing condition” and refused to pay…In a debate with Sen. John McCain, Obama said: “For my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they’re saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment, there’s something fundamentally wrong about that.”

There would be, if it had been true. But when New York Times reporter Janny Scott researched the issue for her biography of the president’s mother, she discovered letters proving beyond doubt that Cigna never denied Stanley Ann Dunham coverage for her disease. The dispute was over a disability plan…

The White House did not deny Scott’s account, but shrugged it off…

The Dunham tale was meant to personify the hundreds of thousands — or millions — of Americans who were “dumped” by insurance companies when they became sick. This is an invented tale, and might have been rebutted by the insurance industry if they hadn’t gotten into bed with Obama in 2010 in return for millions of coerced new customers…

There’s more; RTWT.

Charen touches on a great point: The insurance companies are at fault, but not for the Left’s mythical reasons. The real fault is that Obamacare is based on coercion: forcing people to do business with the insurance companies, when people might choose not to. That is immoral. Obama was wrong to propose it, the Democrats were wrong to impose it, and the insurance companies were wrong to go along with it.