How many times can an administration circle the wagons in efforts to avoid disclosing truth, before it finally disappears into a seething vortex of its own making? Ever since the first day that Osama’s “most open administration ever” pulled its moving van up to the front door of the White House, voters have been treated to an endless campaign of silence, prevarication, smarmy denials and showers of red herrings. There comes a point at which even the supportive public hits critical mass with all the dishonesty and stonewalling, and the defections begin.
We have arrived. The impending election is as likely to be a referendum on the Obama administration’s reticence to be forthcoming as it is on any other factor. People readily forgive mistakes and even ineptitude. We respect the difficult challenges that come with the Oval Office, even as Morgan Freeman intones so morosely in the President’s new commercial. Yet, voters aren’t so beneficent when it comes to outright deception.
Right from the beginning, voters were treated to issues and complications surrounding President Obama’s rise to power. I don’t consider myself a “birther“, but if the president had simply and clearly addressed the matter without all the cloak-and-dagger garbage and the political intervention of his henchman the governor of Hawaii, I’d gladly ignore the claim as ridiculous. But I can’t, because the process of laying the matter to rest was bungled badly and is now so fraught with irregularities and a dearth of legal documentation that it raises more questions than it answered. The Keystone Cops could have handled the matter better.
Leaving that aside, there’s the spectre of Fast And Furious. Attorney General Eric Holder has made it his personal mission to obfuscate the truth of that insipid program and the tragedy that befell as a result. Darrell Issa has repeatedly issued subpoenas that the Justice Department has ignored, until they can complete the destruction of pertinent evidence, select the fall guys, and rehearse the story line so everybody sings off the same sheet music (except for those chosen to fall on their swords). Dead men don’t sing.
Solyndra’s spectacular implosion looms large, begging explanation. Why was a risky start-up in an unproven, volatile sector loaned $500 million taxpayer dollars when the private sector didn’t see enough merit to finance it? Even the Department of Energy and the OMB recommended against loaning the money to Solyndra. The Bush administration rejected it. Yet Obama pushed it through. Why was that taxpayer loan then subordinated to all other lienholders, so that when all the golden parachutes of failure opened you and I were left with the debt? The White House’s response? Silence. You don’t bite the hand that bundles for you.
The litany goes on. Where did all the “stimulus” trillions go? Who benefited? The big labor unions did, because the President in his Executive Order 13502 made it a requirement that anyone bidding for public construction contracts of $25 million or more must submit to union representation of its employees. Non-union thugs need not apply. The White House is mum on this unholy marriage, even though the evidence is everywhere. The same alliance caused the death of the Keystone pipeline.
As the Benghazi terror attack unfolded, the administration grabbed at what we all know now was a convenient lie, and used that lie (the You Tube video) to blame the murder of American citizens ON American citizens. We were told that our intolerance of Islam caused the deaths in Benghazi and the violent assault on the embassy in Cairo. Hillary Clinton, the Queen of Cynicism, looked into the agonized eyes of slain Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods’ father Charles, and vowed that “we will do everything in our power to bring the maker of that video to justice.” What about the killers? Is it the administration’s position that the Al Qaeda killers are victims of religious discrimination? Are they therefore not responsible for their actions? This brazen and premeditated untruth, along with the lies piling up around the fact that the embassy in Libya had repeatedly been denied additional security, is likely to be the linchpin that brings down this presidency.
When administration lies result in American body bags as they have in both Libya and the Mexican border, the cup of public dissatisfaction runneth over. When voters stop trusting you, they also stop voting for you.
George Custer underestimated the Sioux nations, to his peril. Mr. Obama has made the same mistake, and this should be his last stand as well. We have had more than enough.
Image: Mitch Boyer marker at Little Big Horn Battlefield National Monument; courtesy of Mfo316; public domain
