Watching the political arena for the past week has been terribly frustrating for a sane, logical thinker – and hopefully this includes nearly all Americans. The blatant lies and the desperate spins generated from the “left” have been absolutely frightening. Of course, the lies and spins are the left’s desperate attempts to keep the White House in 2012. What’s extremely sad for them is that they don’t have a prayer of keeping the White House without creating lies, spinning obvious negatives into self-reported positives, and keeping the nation’s minds from where they should be just before the election – on the current economic state of the nation as well as on President Barack Obama’s record during his first term.
Most recently, take a look at the “leftist” spin on the June 2012 unemployment rate report released on Friday from the U.S. Department of Labor. The DOL reported that the unemployment rate fell back from 8.2% to 8.3%, and the Obama administration and its delusional followers are saying “Wow! You see the progress we’re making?” Unbelievable.
Then the chairman of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers Alan Krueger shouted out via his blog that the figure should be 8.254% instead of 8.3%. If anything, Krueger’s shout out only gave the story regarding the nation’s continued horrendous unemployment rate more attention, and he would have served Obama’s image better by simply keeping his personal calculations to himself.
Another story – which scarcely saw the light of daily newspapers and news programs recently – attacks one of Obama’s self-proclaimed biggest accomplishments of his presidency. Though Obama would say Henry Ford had nothing to do with building it, this story has to do with the automobile industry. For the past couple of years, the president has forced Americans into believing that his automobile industry bailout was a huge success. He went as far as to say on June 2, 2011: “Chrysler has repaid every dime and more of what it owes American taxpayers for their support during my presidency.” He would have been better off, image-wise, if he had skipped his payback statement all together. The truth is that an analysis of that statement shows wordplay to the president’s advantage as he didn’t refer to the total auto bailout which has not even come close to being paid back.
He thought he was clever snuck in sneaking in the phrase “during my presidency” and the word “Chrysler” because he knows that money owed to the government from the auto industry en masse has a long way to go before it should be complimented for paying back its debt. Even the compliment to Chrysler is shady because that auto company still owes money for pre-Obama White House loans which Obama supported – and Obama knows this, too. The truth is that the bailout beneficiaries in the auto industry are still severely indebted – monetarily – to the American taxpayer. The assertion that the bailout was a huge success when it hasn’t been in terms of payback is more than misleading.
Why promote a twisted or spun version of the truth? Obviously, to make the president look good when the truth is that the industry still has a very long way to go in paying back what the country could use in its bank account to pay off some of its bills right now.
Then, of course, there was last week’s attempt by Harry Reid to tell unsubstantiated tales about Mitt Romney not having paid taxes for ten years. The Nevada senator – who has allegedly turned his meager senator’s salary into multi-millions of dollars and has never released an income tax return of his own to the public – is refusing to substantiate his Romney tax announcement to the media and to his fellow-congressmen on the U.S. Senate’s floor. That allegation didn’t sound correct right from the start because it is all based on Reid saying, “My office got a phone call…” By now, most of us have figured out that the caller – if there even was one – dialed the wrong number.
Apparently the lies and spins from the “left” aren’t going to stop until Election Day – but at least the American public can stop listening to them.
About Scott Paulson
Scott Paulson writes political commentary for Examiner.com and teaches English at a community college in the Chicago area. The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of CBS Local.
