The Obama Fox Warns Us About Shadowy Right Winged Chickens!

Humor for the weekend.



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The economic  idiot who wrote the rebuttal to my LTE, which was printed, should read this. (See 1 below.)
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Obama warned the nation about shadowy right wing groups.  That has proven to be the equivalent of the fox warning about the chickens!

Obama and his economic and civil rights policies will destroy us faster than the shadowy characters coming from the right. (See 2 below.)
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Now this is a president:

This is fun to watch no politics just laughs

   

The Problem with Socks by Barbara Bush - YouTube

A delightful video that will make you smile.

What I wrote to Barbara Bush:

Mrs Barbara Bush                                          June 7, 2013

P.O. Box 

Houston, Texas 77279- 9798

Dear Mrs, Bush:

Lynn just forwarded your delightful ‘sox’ video!

Tell that husband of yours to keep "soxing  it to them.’

Delighted he is doing better.  Said a prayer at our Synagogue when he was in the hospital.

Having just turned 80 myself and living in Savannah we do not wear socks.

Stay well.

I am now praying for our country because this president, like the proverbial king, actually has no clothes!

As Always,

Dick

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New York Times denies it softened its criticism of Obama. So does this make the 'angry gray lady' racist? (See 3 and 3a below.)

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Cindy Simpson expects the drip, drip, drip will soon turn into an avalanche. (See 4 below.)
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The Italian version of Obama and Clinton's relationship.  (See 5 below.)
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Dick
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1)The global bond-market collapse is here… Japan falls apart… Why this sovereign debt crisis will be different than Europe's… Introducing a new type of 'fidiot'… Our government lies, steals, and murders? No, really?…

By Porter Stansberry


 Well… surprise, surprise, surprise… apparently you can't borrow endless sums of money and then print hundreds of billions of new dollars to pay off your foreign creditors.

 The Japanese bond market has collapsed over the past few weeks. I (Porter) am going to give you the details below. But I don't want you to get lost in the mind-numbing figures. You can sum them up very simply: the Japanese government's debts have grown so large (almost 250% of GDP) that for the last several months, the government has been forced to borrow additional sums merely to meet its interest payments.

Thus, the country is literally bankrupt. Japan, as the most indebted large democracy, is a likely place for the global bond-market panic to begin. So I believe the situation deserves your full attention.

 Rather than cut the size of their government and reduce their borrowing, the Japanese have taken a page from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's playbook. Japan's central bank has been printing huge sums of money. And it's been buying government debt to help finance the country's huge deficits (which equal 10% of its gross domestic product).

Keep in mind, interest rates on 10-year Japanese bonds were already well below 0.5%. The result of this enormous money and credit stimulus was predictable: Stock prices have gone up (at least temporarily). And consumption has increased since people would rather spend money now before prices start going up. The problem, of course, is that when you're bankrupt and you begin to deliberately destroy the value of your currency, everyone begins to sell it. The yen is collapsing. And Japan has begun to suffer a trade deficit for the first time in living memory. Investors are now fleeing the Japanese bond market in a near panic.


 Finally, we see the Keynesian lie laid bare. Japan's efforts to "stimulate" its economy with unlimited government borrowing and central-bank printing aren't working out so well for anyone who lent the poor bastards any money. We've been warning of this ultimate end game since 2008. It's the same scenario we've described as the "End of America" because the U.S. dollar undergirds the entire global system of sovereign credit/paper money.

What caused the panic in Japan is simple to understand. For the first time in modern history, Japan began to run a serious trade deficit, forcing it to get foreign financing for its government bonds. It's easier for America to get foreign financing because more than 60% of the world's bank reserves are held in dollars. It's much harder for the Japanese to get foreigners to invest in a bankrupt government that's printing money as fast as it can. No wonder, right?

The point you've got to remember is that America will only keep this privilege as long as it's solvent. Not many people understand that limitation today. And that's why I'm so worried.

 Believe it or not, governments are just like everyone else… They can't borrow unlimited amounts of money. And central banks can't print unlimited amounts of money without putting their bond and capital markets at serious risk.

Sooner or later, investors do recognize the inevitability of inflation… And sooner or later, they panic. Investors know it's better to panic first than to panic last. That's exactly what's happening in Japan right now.

 None of this should surprise anyone. The entire history of sovereign finance is essentially the story of governments that borrow too much and then try to print the debts away. (They all fail, of course… Otherwise, Zimbabwe would be Switzerland.)

The funny thing is these events have surprised a lot of the world's bankers. So for the remainder of this Friday Digest, I will refer to this cohort of well-dressed fools asfidiots.

 Maybe you're familiar with the slang term "fidiot": An extremely foolish person whose antics and failures are better pared with an expletive. I propose a more precise meaning that's applicable to a smaller subset. In economic circles, fidiots are those semi-financially literate people who believe the various inflationary schemes (also called "Keynesian approaches") employed by the world's central bankers are likely to work. Even more stupidly, they believe a massive expansion of the world's sovereign credit system is likely to lead to deflation.

 I'm sure you know the fidiots I'm talking about. These are the folks who've been bidding up the U.S. Treasury market. These folks have been talking down the price of gold and gold-mining stocks. Even now, the fidiots are still paying much more than par for dodgy U.S. corporate bonds. At their most recent peak, fidiots were paying, on average, an all-time-record price above par ($106 last month) for junk bonds. Remember… these pieces of paper are usually priced by the creditworthiness of the company that issues the debt and the likelihood of lower interest rates in the future.

I believe future generations will view the current market for high-yield bonds as a prime example of the fidiot madness that has gripped the world's markets since September, when the Federal Reserve began the monthly printing and purchase of $85 billion worth of government debt.

 You might recall roughly one month ago, I warned you about the ongoing fidiotinsanity of the world's bond markets. I said it was "without a doubt the single greatest threat to your wealth you will ever face." I explained exactly why:

The U.S. bond market – particularly junk bonds – is going to crash. When this crash occurs, it will be the largest destruction of wealth in history. There has never been a bigger bubble in U.S. bonds.

The timing of these kinds of watershed changes to investor perception is always uncertain. But it is guaranteed to happen. As I wrote:

I believe we'll see a real panic in the corporate bond market at some point in the next year. I expect the average price of non-investment-grade debt (aka junk bonds) to fall 50%. Investment-grade bonds will fall substantially, too. (I'd estimate something around 25%.) This is going to wipe out a huge amount of capital… and believe me… it's 100% guaranteed to happen.

 Bonds, especially junk bonds, have been falling almost every day since I wrote those words. The chart below shows you the prices of the leading U.S. junk bonds, as measured by the iShares iBoxx High Yield Corporate Bond (HYG) exchange-traded fund – one of the most popular ways of investing in high-yield bonds. Believe me, the recent correction here is only the beginning.


 Now… about those numbers I promised. Over the last two decades, Japan's government has piled up $14.6 trillion in debt. That's roughly 250% of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) – far worse than Greece's 165% or America's 107%. Japan continues to run an annual government deficit of nearly 10% of GDP. Half of every yen spent by the government is borrowed. Meanwhile, tax revenues have been declining for more than two decades.

There is no way Japan can repay these debts. Today, with interest rates still extremely low, the government must spend 24% of its tax revenues on interest payments.

 There was never any doubt that Japan would default. But… with 95% of its government debt held in the hands of domestic borrowers, the fidiot opinion was that the bond market would never collapse. Japan's latest finance minister has promised to continue printing money until the inflation rate goes above 2% – but how much above 2%, he doesn't know, nor can he control.

The result was predictable, to anyone who actually manages his own money (as opposed to other people's money). The local Japanese bondholders are selling, in droves. Even pension funds are selling – something the fidiots thought would never happen.

 Today, the same fidiots around the world are telling people that Japan is an aberration… And they'll tell you that as the system of sovereign credit in Japan collapses, fixed-income investors will flee to safety and buy more U.S. Treasurys and European sovereign debt.

This move, they say, will mirror what happened during the last sovereign crisis in Europe: Everyone will flee to the dollar. Gold will fall. U.S. long bond yields will fall. The U.S. dollar will rise. U.S. sovereign bonds will rise. Inflation will fall. And deflation will become a big risk. Don't laugh. That's what these guys think.

 You can believe the fidiots if you want. I have to admit, they've been right (about U.S. sovereign bonds) for far longer than I thought was possible. But here's the thing… they can't be right forever. No one in his right mind should want to own the obligations of a bankrupt sovereign borrower. And eventually, no one will.

And since America is every bit as broke as the Japanese, I think it is far more likely that the world's fidiots will finally be revealed as such. After all, the world's savers will reason… if Japan's entire economy can fall apart because of a huge sovereign debt bubble… why can't ours?

 And so, I repeat my warnings of the last several years. We are in the late, terminal stages of the U.S. dollar/paper-money reserve system. Soon people around the world will question what the dollar is really worth. They will ask themselves why they hold their savings in a paper currency that's backed by nothing more than another bankrupt Western democracy… one that wastes nearly all of its resources on useless military adventures and a social welfare system that's riddled with fraud and abuse.

The answers won't be good for our country, which has grown totally dependent on foreign creditors. So when you're watching the collapse of Japan, just remember: 95% of Japan's sovereign debt is held by the Japanese people. They're merely bankrupting themselves. In America, roughly 40% of our government and agency (mortgage) debt is held by foreign investors – mostly the Chinese. You can bet their selling won't be so orderly.

 When this house of cards finally collapses, the holders of dollars, euros, and yen will suffer a giant wipeout. Gold, the currency central banks cannot print, will double, maybe even triple in price. That's why I encourage everyone to hold a large allocation of gold. But take your position soon…

Contrary to popular perception, the supply of real gold is vanishing – quickly.

Millions of people, perhaps even you, are "buying" gold investments without ever seeing, holding, or possessing this gold in any way. This enables companies to sell gold in the form of certificates and shares for which the actual bullion doesn't really exist.

 Mark my words: In the next few years, scandals will erupt all around the world. It's going to send shockwaves through the industry. "Share" gold investments like exchange-traded funds could get hit hard, whether they really have the gold to back up their shares or not.

Lots of people are going to be sadly disappointed and hurt financially, when it becomes clear that not everyone's gold is safe, secure, and accounted for. Even if you haven't invested in gold, you need to be aware of this story. I've put together a full presentation on how you can get prepared and protect yourself. 

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2)

An IRS Political Timeline

President Obama spent months in 2010 warning Americans about the 'threat' to democracy posed by conservative groups, right at the time the IRS began targeting these groups

By Kim Strassel

Perhaps the only useful part of the inspector general's audit of the IRS was its timeline. We know that it was August 2010 when the IRS issued its first "Be On the Lookout" list, flagging applications containing key conservative words and issues. The criteria would expand in the months to come.

What else was happening in the summer and fall of 2010? The Obama administration and its allies continue to suggest the IRS was working in some political vacuum. What they'd rather everyone forget is that the IRS's first BOLO list coincided with their own attack against "shadowy" or "front" conservative groups that they claimed were rigging the electoral system.

Below is a more relevant timeline, a political one, which seeks to remind readers of the context in which the IRS targeting happened.

Aug. 9, 2010: In Texas, President Obama for the first time publicly names a group he is obsessed with—Americans for Prosperity (founded by the Koch Brothers)—and warns about conservative groups. Taking up a cry that had until then largely been confined to left-wing media and activists, he says: "Right now all around this country there are groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity, who are running millions of dollars of ads . . . And they don't have to say who exactly the Americans for Prosperity are. You don't know if it's a foreign-controlled corporation."

Aug. 11: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sends out a fundraising email warning about "Karl Rove-inspired shadow groups."

Aug. 21: Mr. Obama devotes his weekly radio address to the threat of "attack ads run by shadowy groups with harmless-sounding names. We don't know who's behind these ads and we don't know who's paying for them. . . . You don't know if it's a foreign-controlled corporation. . . . The only people who don't want to disclose the truth are people with something to hide."

Week of Aug. 23: The New Yorker's Jane Mayer authors a hit piece on the Koch brothers, entitled "Covert Operations," in which she accuses them of funding "political front groups." The piece repeats the White House theme, with Ms. Mayer claiming the Kochs have created "slippery organizations with generic-sounding names" that have "made it difficult to ascertain the extent of their influence in Washington."

Aug. 27: White House economist Austan Goolsbee, in a background briefing with reporters, accuses Koch industries of being a pass-through entity that does "not pay corporate income tax." The Treasury inspector general investigates how it is that Mr. Goolsbee might have confidential tax information. The report has never been released.

This same week, the Democratic Party files a complaint with the IRS claiming the Americans for Prosperity Foundation is violating its tax-exempt status.

Sept. 2: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee warns on its website that the Kochs have "funneled their money into right-wing shadow groups."

Sept. 16: Mr. Obama, in Connecticut, repeats that a "foreign-controlled entity" might be funding "millions of dollars of attack ads." Four days later, in Philadelphia, he again says the problem is that "nobody knows" who is behind conservative groups.

Sept. 21: Sam Stein, in his Huffington Post article "Obama, Dems Try to Make Shadowy Conservative Groups a Problem for Conservatives," writes that a "senior administration official" had "urged a small gathering of reporters to start writing on what he deemed 'the most insidious power grab that we have seen in a very long time.' "

Sept. 22: In New York City, Mr. Obama warns that conservative groups "pose as non-for-profit, social welfare and trade groups," even though they are "guided by seasoned Republican political operatives" who might be funded by a "foreign-controlled corporation."

Sept. 26: On ABC's "This Week," Obama senior adviser David Axelrod declares outright that the "benign-sounding Americans for Prosperity, the American Crossroads Fund" are "front groups for foreign-controlled companies."

Sept. 28: The president, in Wisconsin, again warns about conservative organizations "posing as nonprofit groups." Sen. Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, writes to the IRS demanding it investigate nonprofits. The letter names conservative organizations.

On Oct. 14, Mr. Obama calls these groups "a problem for democracy." On Oct. 22, he slams those who "hide behind these front groups." On Oct. 25, he upgrades them to a "threat to our democracy." On Oct. 26, he decries groups engaged in "unsupervised spending."

These were not off-the-cuff remarks. They were repeated by the White House and echoed by its allies in campaign events, emails, social media and TV ads. The president of the United States spent months warning the country that "shadowy," conservative "front" groups—"posing" as tax-exempt entities and illegally controlled by "foreign" players—were engaged in "unsupervised" spending that posed a "threat" to democracy. Yet we are to believe that a few rogue IRS employees just happened during that time to begin systematically targeting conservative groups? A mere coincidence that among the things the IRS demanded of these groups were "copies of any contracts with and training materials provided by Americans for Prosperity"?

This newspaper reported Thursday that Cincinnati IRS employees are now telling investigators that they took their orders from Washington. For anyone with a memory of 2010 politics, that was obvious from the start.

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3)

NY Times Denies Softening Scathing Editorial on Obama White House

By Todd Beamon

The New York Times denied on Friday that it had softened its scathing editorial blasting the Obama administration for collecting the telephone records of millions of Verizon customers.

In the editorial, first published late Thursday afternoon, the Times said the White House had “now lost all credibility” after reports that the National Security Agency had been gathering phone records of millions of U.S. customers of Verizon under a top-secret court order issued in April.

But by 9 p.m., the sentence had been changed to say, “The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue,” a much softer tone than previously published.

“We thought it was obvious that we were talking about the administration’s credibility on this particular issue — secrecy and surveillance,” Andrew Rosenthal, the editorial page editor, told the Times’ “Public Editor’s Journal” blog on Friday. “But it soon became obvious that some well-meaning people were not understanding that, so we thought that we should clarify it.

“We think issue by issue,” he added. “We didn’t intend a blanket condemnation.”

The editorial received prominent display on Newsmax and other websites — even making the rounds on Capitol Hill.

Rosenthal rejected accusations that the Times had back-pedaled its attack on the Obama administration.

“We didn’t soften it one iota from its original intent,” he said, noting that it was not unusual to update online versions of editorials to reflect new developments.

He also said that the revised editorial should not have carried an “editor’s note” or some other disclaimer.

“If we had changed the intent of the editorial, it would have been dishonest not to say so,” Rosenthal said. “But that wasn’t the case. We don’t have to run a note every time we make an update."


3a)Angry Old Gray Lady

If it's racist to criticize Obama, what does that say about the New York Times?

By JAMES TARANTO

"The administration has now lost all credibility." That's the New York Times editorial board, using recent news stories about the National Security Agency's antiterror data-mining operations as its latest weapon in the war against the black man in the White House.

OK, that racial reference is a non sequitur. We're trotting out a leftist technique of argumentation in order to make some points in a fun way. We borrowed the language, in fact, from MSNBC's Martin Bashir, sometimes known as the thinking man's Piers Morgan.

On his eponymous program Wednesday, Bashir denounced Rep. Darrell Issa and other congressional Republicans investigating the Internal Revenue Service's efforts to stifle Obama's political opponents during Obama's re-election campaign. AsNewsBusters.org notes, Bashir said: "Despite the complete lack of any evidence linking the President to the targeting of Tea Party groups, Republicans are using it as their latest weapon in the war against the black man in the White House."

He concluded: "So this afternoon we welcome the latest phrase in the lexicon of Republican attacks on this president--the IRS. Three letters that sound so innocent, but we know what you mean." What "we know . . . you mean," incredibly enough, is the worst racial slur in the American vernacular, one so offensive that even the enraged Bashir cannot bring himself to say it. Through the segment, he uses the euphemism "N-word."

There are a few problems here. For one, there is a Butterfieldian quality to Bashir's complaints that Republicans are investigating "despite" the lack of evidence implicating the president. There is sufficient evidence of serious wrongdoing--provided by the IRS itself--to justify an investigation. As to the extent and nature of the president's involvement, those are questions that merit investigation, not answers that preclude it.

For another, by virtue of his position the president is implicated in the IRS scandal even if he himself did nothing illegal or unethical. He is, after all, the president, which means that he is responsible for overseeing all the agencies of the executive branch, including the IRS. The most charitable way to characterize Obama's role in the scandal is as a case of administrative incompetence.

And that is charitable indeed. Our colleague Kim Strassel provides a helpful political timeline in which she shows how Obama and his supporters in Congress and the press spent 2010 trying to stir up a moral panic about conservative organizations. She sums up:

The president of the United States spent months warning the country that "shadowy," conservative "front" groups--"posing" as tax-exempt entities and illegally controlled by "foreign" players--were engaged in "unsupervised" spending that posed a "threat" to democracy. Yet we are to believe that a few rogue IRS employees just happened during that time to begin systematically targeting conservative groups?

Mediaite's Noah Rothman notes one further problem with Bashir's presentation. Bashir cited a 1981 interview with Republican strategist Lee Atwater (who died in 1991). But Bashir dowdified Atwater's comments "in order to make them appear more sinister than they really were."

Here's Bashir's version of the Atwater quote (Bashir said "N-word" where the transcript indicates "n***er"; presumably Atwater used the actual word, the taboo against which was not yet as strong as it is today):

You start out in 1954 by saying, "N***er, n***er, n***er." By 1968 you can't say "n***er"--that hurts you, it backfires. So you say stuff like, forced busing, states' rights, and all that stuff, and you're getting so abstract. Now, you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and the byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites. . . . "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "N***er, n***er."

Here's the context of the quote, as described by Rothman: The interviewer "notes that the fiscal debates of the 1980 campaign--reforming welfare and the food stamp program, for example--have an undeniable racial element to them. Atwater says he's going to answer "as a statistician." Here's what he says, with the parts Bashir omitted in boldface:

You start out in 1954 by saying, "N***er, n***er, n***er." By 1968 you can't say "n***er"--that hurts you, it backfires. So you say stuff like, forced busing, states' rights, and all that stuff, and you're getting so abstract. Now, you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and the byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites. And, subconsciously, maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract and that coded then we're doing away with the racial problem one way or the other, you follow me? "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "N***er, n***er." So any way you look at it, race is coming on the back burner.

(The last sentence wasn't included in Rothman's piece; we picked it up from aNewsbusters follow-up.)

Bashir's selective quotation made it sound as if Atwater accepted the interviewer's framing of conservative policy positions as subtle expressions of racism--indeed, as if he were boasting about his skill in making such appeals. In reality he disputed that framing, but he did it in an indirect and abstract way that left him open to malicious distortion, even 32 years later.

There is a continuity between the 1981 interview and the 2013 IRS scandal as framed by Bashir, but it is between the interviewer and Bashir himself. For decades the left has smeared conservatives as racist (and black conservatives in racist terms). One might have thought the election of a black president would be incontrovertible proof that, as Atwater put it way back when, we've done away with the racial problems.

But when you're defending a president who is divisively ideological, lacks administrative competence, and now turns out to be presiding over systematic abuses of power, you need all the help you can get. Hence the charges of "racism" are getting louder and louder, and more and more preposterous. Even if one could show that some of the IRS's victims harbored invidious prejudices, that would not justify the government's abusive treatment of them.

And what about the New York Times? If it's racist for Republicans to criticize Obama harshly, is it any less so for an ultraliberal newspaper to declare, "The administration has now lost all credibility"?

It seems to us it's actually less clear. The next sentence reads: "Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it." That formulation of the "issue" is vast enough to encompass just about everything the president and the administration have done.Well, the editorial board seem to have had second thoughts. As public editor Margaret Sullivanacknowledges, sometime yesterday evening the editorial was quietly softened to add the words "on this issue" after "credibilty." Editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal tells Sullivan the editorial was changed because "we thought that we should clarify it."

Here's another theory: Maybe the Times softened the editorial on the advice of its tax accountants.

President Obama's Dragnet 
Did President Obama's director of national intelligence tell the truth when he testified before Congress a few months ago? National Journal raises some doubt:

Clapper said Thursday that he stood by what he told Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., in March when he said that the National Security Agency does not "wittingly" collect data on millions of Americans.

"What I said was, the NSA does not voyeuristically pore through U.S. citizens' e-mails. I stand by that," Clapper told National Journal in a telephone interview.

On March 12, at a hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Wyden asked Clapper: "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" Clapper responded: "No, sir." When Wyden followed up by asking, "It does not?" Clapper said: "Not wittingly. There are cases where they could, inadvertently perhaps, collect—but not wittingly."

That "No, sir" seems at odds what we have learned this week. Clearly Congress contemplated collecting unclassified clues--collection considered constitutionally condonable. But could Clapper's contradictory comments constitute a crime?

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4)The Obama Avalanche
By Cindy Simpson

Like the grains of sand in the "creepy" sculpture of Obama at the 2012 Democratic National Convention that were blown away by bad weather, it is only a matter of time until the stones constituting the protective wall around the Obama narrative begin to tumble. 

After all, a single pebble can start an avalanche.  The foundation of the Obama image, already weakened by broken promises and a floundering economy, has been seriously rocked by some explosive revelations in the Benghazi and IRS investigations.  Completing a trifecta of "serial shocks," real tremors began when it dawned first on the AP and then the rest of the mainstream media: their hero might not be made of the stuff they've been peddling, and worse, may provide an unflattering image of the place where leftist stuff eventually leads.  The AP's reporting of a potential fourth scandal over secret e-mail addresses might nudge that crucial pebble.

Obama's own narcissism is partly to blame, as he relied too heavily on fickle fans and a lapdog press.  Although we can hardly doubt that old-fashioned Chicago politics reinforced much of Obama's power in wealthy and influential circles, a vast amount of energy was provided by thousands of others -- all the "little people" who go Obama in ways large and small.

There were MoveOn, ACORN and OFA canvassers and volunteers -- those who (knowingly or not) voted, donated, and signed nomination ballots.  Thousands of little people who wore matching t-shirts, held up signs, occupied in tents, and stood in line for Obama Money.

From the beginning of Obama's political career, those familiar with his college days, applications, grades, or financing contributed to a "tomb-like silence."  Many declined to recall that Obama sat in Jeremiah Wright's church, socialist New Party meetings, or Bill Ayers's politics-launching living room.  Others applauded Obama's words honoring Derrick Bell and toasting Rashid Khalidi, then hid the videotapes.  Practically no one has come forward from Obama's cloudy past to provide some clarity beyond the "composite" characters and events described in an autobiography that experts assert he didn't write.  His publisher proclaimed for 17 years that Obama was born in Kenya, then finally corrected the "typo" to Hawaii, just in time for a presidential run.

Then there were all of the people who neglected to investigate or report on any of it.  The thousands of media lackeys who covered, censored, and published with a pro-Obama slant as a matter of routine.  Hundreds of journalists and pundits who helped fabricate and protect an image and a message that produced big expectations in the minds of all the little others.

In all likelihood, Obama never personally gave any instructions to (or gave a darn about) any of the little people.  To him, they were but specks to be manipulated, if need be, with crony-club invitations and "fairness cards," government-benefit strings, or motivational lines like "vote for revenge."  For the fellow-traveling press, there were special invitations and interviews and speeches laced with "standard Socialist rhetoric."  In return, the pawns built up and protected his image, cast votes, sent money, hid things, made calls, and mocked opponents.  Others failed to report, snapped haloed pictures, lobbed friendly interview questions, and wrote glowing articles.   

Obama behaved as though he expected and deserved such loyalty.  The rest of us had no problem picturing him in a White House throne room (complete with a practice putting green and basketball hoop), feet up on the desk, window shades drawn to obscure the view of thousands of Tea Partiers on the mall, and live celebrity music turned up full blast to drown out the pesky buzz of New Media. 

We imagine him yawning as he receives late-morning briefings carefully devoid of information that his assistants know he doesn't wish to see.  We envision aides cringing when they can't avoid relaying bad news, drawing straws over who gets to interrupt Obama's golf game or wake him with that 3 a.m. call.  We easily picture Obama giving a nonchalant thumb up or down on pressing issues, with underlings scurrying to interpret the command and get'er done -- on their own and in any way possible.

And while we're continuing to learn that the IRS scandal involved much more than some rogue agents from Cincinnati, it's not difficult to envision other similar incidents, with other government bureaucrats, armed and energized with a mere wink or nod.  Although there probably exists no smoking gun smudged with Obama fingerprints, his henchmen acted likeBarney Fife with a bullet in their pockets.

But now, all the president's yes men who said "yes" are noticing that the shadow of the Obama image may not stretch far enough to cover their backs.  The holes in Obama's transparency promises have allowed some light to shine on some unattractive truths.  Lackeys have become vulnerable and disillusioned, making skepticism extremely contagious.  The truth flushed down the media's memory holes has finally clogged them up, and murky backwater has started swirling around JournoList's ankles, chilling the thrill from running up their legs.

The little people are finding that votes don't translate into immunity from pink slips. Obama fundraiser shields prove ineffective against pitchforks aimed at "the rich."  Newspapers downsize and television ratings slip.  Union labels fail to prevent outsourcing hazards.  And the grim reaper of Obamacare could care less about the D on the yard sign when he puts the huge bill in the mailbox and comes a-knocking at all the little doors.

Now that a growing windstorm begins to blow the Obama-sculpture sand into the public eye, Obama peers down his nose and out of his royal box, on the lookout for a fall guy or two, as he reads innocently, à la Sgt. Schultz, from the teleprompter: "I know nothing."

Before the latest round of implosions, if things ever did start to get a little shaky on the dais, Obama would often animate a straw man or offer a false choice.  Or he'd give shout-outs to victimized law students needing free birth control, professors arrested by policemen acting stupidly, imaginary hoodie-wearing sons, and closet-escaping sports figures.  Obama held fundraisers and parties for the rich and famous, and brought victims or their families to his stage as convenient props. Inconvenient information was often leaked on busy Friday afternoons -- and at times, big, distracting news involving a celebrity or sensational event (made bigger and more distracting by a subservient press) would luckily appear.

In Obama's selective wonderland, though, we're warned to ignore certain "distractions," "sideshows" and "political circuses" -- like the Benghazi investigation.  Obama used remarkably similar language back in April 27, 2011, in a press conference to announce the release of his long-form birth certificate, calling the fuss a "distraction" and a "sideshow" with "carnival barkers."  Obama's press secretary recently implied that questions on Benghazi were similar to birtherism.  Perhaps Obama himself considered Benghazi and his birth certificate somehow equivalent -- either as inconvenient diversions from his transformational agenda, or in the potential for damage to his legacy. 

It was another April 27, in 1961, that President Kennedy gave a speech titled "The President and the Press," which focused on national security and the role of the media.  While JFK joked that a better title might have been "The President Versus the Press," for Obama, decades later, the reality became "The President and His Press."

National security is certainly a valid concern impacting both the Benghazi and AP/Rosen investigations.  But it's difficult to argue that IRS targeting of conservatives or secret e-mail addresses of government bureaucrats had to do with any security other than that surrounding the image and power of Obama and his like-minded cohorts.

Obama reassured his press, and us, that there is no "there there."  His press secretary scoffed at "old news."  Obama's secretary of state whined, "What difference does it make?"  Yet it was Obama himself who once said, "The only people who don't want to disclose the truth are people with something to hide."

Like Whittaker Chambers, who took up his "little sling" that "also hit something else" larger and much more ominous, the first pebbles sliding down in the Obama avalanche could uncover the edges of some things far more serious than the cover-up.

While the GOP argues internally over whether to make the scandals about Obama or not, the issue might wind up being settled for them.  Though this ship seems too big for Obama to steer alone, even his staunchest supporters admit that Obama "runs things."  It remains to be seen whether the nation will continue to allow Obama or his ideology to remain at the helm.

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5)What Clinton Really 

Thought of Obama

By Orlando Sacchielli
However, there has never been good blood between the two. 

Translated By Axel Ndianabo

Edited by Lau­rence Bouvard

Italy - Il Giornale - Original Article (Italian )
Bill Clinton gave an enormous helping hand to Obama during the last election. However, there has never been good blood between the two. In 2008, the former president had supported his wife Hillary’s candidature at the Democratic primaries. The primaries were then won by Obama, who later asserted himself during the presidential election, followed by beating Republican John McCain. Four years on, with Hillary working side by side with Obama as secretary of state, has the former president changed his mind about Obama? Not really, to the point of considering him incompetent and incapable. Despite this contemptuous point of view, Clinton helped Obama during the electoral campaign, in return for endorsement of his wife Hillary for the 2016 election, as the famous American journalist and writer Edward Klein writes in the reissue of his book “The Amateur” (released in May 2012).

Clinton, says Klein, would have liked Hillary to challenge Obama again; Clinton considered the tenant of the White House not up to the task. However, it would have been potentially devastating for the Democrats to renounce their own president, hampering his race for a second term.

In his book, Klein quotes statements that close allies attribute to Clinton: “I’ve heard more from Bush, asking my advice than I’ve heard from Obama. I have no relationship with the president — none whatsoever. Obama doesn’t know how to be president. He doesn’t know how the world works. He is incompetent. He’s an amateur.” Clinton was pressured to make the agreement, confirmed in the summer of 2012, by David Axelrod, Obama’s most important political adviser, who was worried by the growing support for Romney. This “moderate” support from Clinton would have been decisive for Obama, starting from the famous speech in Charlotte to the Democratic Convention, all based on the economy and on the numbers.

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According to “The Amateur,” once the election was over, Obama reconsidered and let Clinton know that he would be neutral in 2016, “as befits every outgoing president.” The step back was probably due to pressure from Joe Biden, who wishes to run himself. Clinton became furious, to the point of asking — and getting — from CBS a farewell interview for Hillary on her years spent at the Department of State, heralding potentially embarrassing content for the presidency. Obama understood that the risk was too high and reluctantly confirmed the commitment made earlier, by agreeing to take part in a joint interview with Hillary, also on CBS. Will the not-so-secret deal hold? We will know very soon...