The Horror Of Public Sector Unemployment?

Mr. Obama appeared at a CBS News-sponsored “town hall” at the Newseum in Washington DC on May 12 (CBS story here). Unsurprisingly, jobs was a major focus of the event as Mr. Obama is continuing his fiction of being all about jobs during a “jobless recovery” for which he is directly responsible. Mr. Obama said:

"The reason the unemployment rate is still as high as it is, in part, is because there have been huge layoffs of government workers at the federal level, at the state level, at the local level...Teachers, police officers, firefighters, social workers-- they have really taken it in the chin over the last several months. And so, what we're trying to do is to see if we can stabilize the budget."

I have long marveled at Mr. Obama, according to his sycophants and the media (is there any difference?), the most intelligent man to ever occupy the Oval Office. Yet there exists virtually no tangible evidence or accomplishment to support that contention. He graduated from Harvard Law School and was President of the Harvard Law Review, yet wrote not a single scholarly legal article. He is the supposed author of two (?!) autobiographies before reaching the age of 50, yet there is compelling evidence that he didn’t write either. He served in the Illinois and U.S. Senates, yet there is no record of any significant legislative accomplishment. His grades and other college records have apparently been sealed in a vault in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings or shot into space.

What I suppose I’m saying is I don’t get it. Any other person renowned for intellect can invariably point to a long line of educational and work accomplishments, mileposts on the road to the attainment of a high level of acumen and experience. For such people, there are legions of friends and colleagues spanning decades who can produce concrete examples of their brilliance and accomplishment. Yet Barack Obama, the President of the United States remains an intellectual cypher, his intellect apparent only to his supporters and the Lamestream media (again, I repeat myself), apparently for his ability to read a teleprompter with some small degree of alacrity.

What I find particularly amazing is not only his tendency to spout glaring gaffes, but his propensity to regularly spout blatant lies, lies so obviously false to the reasonably well informed, and so easily disproved, as to make one wonder if he really did lie so openly and unashamedly. Among Mr. Obama’s more famous gaffes (go here for more):

(1) His campaign contention that “I’ve been in 57 states--I think one left to go.”

(2) His Freudian slip: “You’re absolutely right that John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith.”

(3) His comment about a Navy corpse-man.

(4) His apparently belief in the non-existent “Austrian” language.

(5) “The Middle East is obviously an issue that has plagued the region for centuries.”

(6) “Let me be absolutely clear. Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s...”

(7) “On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes--and I see many of them in the audience here today...”

(8) “In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died...” (12 actually died).

(9) “The reforms we seek would bring greater competition choice, savings and inefficiencies to our health care system.”

(10) His recent suggestion that Texas has always been Republican. This would have been a substantial surprise to LBJ, Ann Richards and many other Democrat Texas leaders.

It is, however, his lies that are most disturbing. The most recent example is his quote about the “ huge layoffs of government workers at the federal level, at the state level, at the local level.” As Jim Geraghty of National Review Online (here) notes, this is an amazing, not even remotely correct, absolute lie. The facts are simple and easy to find: We are eight million jobs below the most recent peak private sector employment level, and not only has federal, state and local public sector employment not declined, it has actually increased. So Mr. Obama is not slightly wrong, he’s not merely mistaken, he has not misread or misquoted, he has propounded a bald-faced lie.

Is Mr. Obama so used to saying anything that he finds convenient on any occasion, secure in the knowledge that the press will never call him on it (about how many of the gaffes were you aware?) that he takes no pains to be accurate? In other words, is he simply careless? Is he knowingly and cynically lying in the sure knowledge that the press will not only fail to expose his mendacity but will surely cover for it if necessary? Does he hold the public in such low regard that he believes he can say anything he wants because they’ll believe it? Or is he so narcissistic, so delusional that he actually feels that anything he says is true simply because he says it? Which option would be more disturbing and more destructive to America?

One final suggestion: Mr. Obama actually believes what he said. He actually believes that despite his successful, Herculean efforts to dramatically expand the roster of government employees, their numbers have been, instead, dramatically declining. If so, this speaks to a delusional mind, a mind disengaged from economic reality, a mind unable to understand the basics of economics. It speaks of a man who is utterly incapable, intellectually or philosophically, to do anything other than to spend us into oblivion.

Should we expect less--or more--from a man who sees leading from behind as a virtue? To honorable Americans, lying is a sign of weak, defective character. To Mr. Obama and the press, it would seem to be a personal and political necessity. More’s the pity for us all.