Our Executive Chef is getting ready to dish out the largest helping of despair in the history of the country. Until now I have regarded Obama as just an empty suit. I know he has the radial associations that would make an AlQaeda foot soldier blush, but he is always willing to throw them under the bus the second they start compromise his aura (i.e. Reverand Wright and Van Jones). Fast forward to today. I am angry as hell like most reasonable Americans. This executive chef is actually willing to sacrifice the health and stability of our nation to his ego. He is a megalomaniac and a moron. Americans want jobs - not handouts. As I watch Nancy Pelosi talk about how this is such a historic point in our history I can draw only one conclusion: Our representatives just spit in our soup.

Obama promised any health care legislation would be bipartisan. Give me a break. He promised it would be deficit neutral. Not even close. It may be for the first ten years, but then it will explode the deficit. He said no new taxes for people making under $250,000 a year. This legislation burdens them with enormous new taxes. All Presidents renege on campaign promises, but this a read my lips moment. 

When Charlie Gibson looked down his nose over the top of his bifocals and asked Sarah Palin about the Bush Doctrine it was a certainty that the policy would be the first casualty of the Obama administration if he was elected. For most Americans the doctrine was an unknown reference used by journalists to describe the Bush philosophy that our allies were either with us or against us in the war on terror. The way that Gibson posed the question it was clear that he meant it as a “gotcha” and it worked as Sarah Palin suddenly didn’t look like Presidential material. 

When the Obama administration was inaugurated the agenda immediately changed to one of engagement with our enemies. That was all part of the Obama vision of a more inclusive world order. No surprise. What is perhaps most astounding is that the Obama Administration would adopt the Bush Doctrine for their domestic policy. The attacks on Fox News, The US Chamber of Commerce, greedy doctors, profiteering health Insurers, Republicans,  Town hall participants and anybody else that objects their domestic agenda is a shocking development not seen since the Nixon administration. Humana was actually ordered to stop sending out mail to their insurance holders warning them that they might lose services if the current version of Obama care passes. Then came the assault on Fox News for not being a news organization. Can you imagine if Bush froze out all news outlets, except Fox News? And what about the attacks to marginalize those our own citizenry for attending tea parties and town hall meetings, many of whom voted for Obama. That is the environment that we now find ourselves. 

The irony gets thicker. When the Nobel committee bestowed the Nobel Peace Prize on Obama and then defended itself against the outcry that he had not done anything in his short career cited how he has embraced the Muslim world. Were they ignorant that a pattern was developing in US domestic policy that made enemies of those with domestic dissent? The problem is that when a White House trys to put down dissent in a democracy through disengagement and vilification is no longer the Bush Doctrine, but a weak form of Fascism. 

Given Obama’s campaign promises of transparency and the end of divisive politics it is a shocking turn of events. The question is whether it is a lack of confidence in their own agenda, Chicago style politics, or a page out of the Chavez’s play book. We should all be anxious and vigilant about this irony, because it can easily transform into tragedy. 

  Fox News and the Us Chamber of Commerce draw the ire of the White House for not signing on to an agenda. The White House sends out Robert Gibbs who is only slightly more inept than he is disingenuous when he asserts that Fox is not a news organization at all. For all of those who voted for Obama I have two words for you: Buyer Beware. A lot of witches hung from their neck in Salem.   While the White House’s current demonization is more of a statement of stupidity than political acumen it is no laughing matter.   Fox new will be fine. Their ratings will rise and advertisers will go where they can get the most eyeballs. Fortunately,  The US Chamber of Commerce and Fox have deep pockets and the power to fight back. The real question is what happens to those that do not have the resources to defend themselves? When Bill Clinton said that “I did not have sexual relations with that woman”, the only thing that saved Monica Lewinsky from ruin was a genetic souvenir. Got yours?

When President Obama brought up the personal narratives of two people in his joint address to both houses of congress he got both stories substantively wrong. As a lawyer President Obama should have known that when the brother of a woman who later corrected the facts of one of the narratives would never pass the muster of a basic legal test. Proximate cause is one of the most basic legal tests that lawyers use to determine potential liability and damages. For instances, “but for” Jim who left a banana peel in the doorway, Bob would not have fell and broke his hip. The “but for” test in the case of a man who temporarily lost his insurance and then died four years later not only does not pass the proximate cause test, but it does not even pass the smell test. No physician or attorney can attribute a cause and effect separated by four years in time and space. So why did he do it? Is he a bad lawyer? For sure. No lawyer would play so fast and loose with the facts. Is he a bad politician? Well, he is President of the United States so he was savvy enough to get elected. But that was before he had to deal in facts. He was selling change you can believe in, which is like selling hair tonic to bald people. Everybody wants to believe. There are most certainly thousands of health insurance nightmares that he could have exploited. So why would he choose to recast two narratives to make a point? Well, I think he is to busy campaigning to get involved in the details, but that’s just conjecture. Maybe it was a lousy staffer. He doesn’t have bad hair days. I could go on for days speculating. The fact is that no good lawyer or politician would open themselves up to such a gaff when his whole health care agenda was riding on the speech, unless of course he knew no one would bother fact check. Maybe he knows something we don’t – like Fox news and the Wall Street Journal are the only outlet that still have journalistic ethics.