Flimflam.
Defined as:
1. Nonsense; humbug.
2. A deception; a swindle.
3. To swindle; cheat.
Well, now. What do we have here?
Back there on June 15, 2012, there was a considerable commotion involving President Obama as he made an announcement in the Rose Garden of the White House.
Remember?
On a nice, sunny day the President suddenly appeared in front of the carefully assembled White House press corps to announce that he was granting amnesty to undocumented immigrants. After running through his highly controversial reasoning — critics hotly charged that he was wrongly using an executive order to end-run Congress for the sake of election year politics — the President said (bold emphasis mine):
Over the next few months, eligible individuals who do not present a risk to national security or public safety will be able to request temporary relief from deportation proceedings and apply for work authorization.
Which is to say, as the Pew Research Center noted here, using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau, somewhere around 1.7 million new workers were abruptly dumped into the U.S. job market.
Remember the kerfuffle over Neil Munro?
The Daily Caller reporter who angered the President by trying to ask a question about all of this? The President claimed he was being interrupted, then kept reading — and finally finished, stalked back to the Oval Office with Mr. Munro’s lone voice echoing as the President’s back receded?
To refresh, take a look here at this clip from Hannity in which the clip is replayed and Munro is interviewed.
What was the very last question that Mr. Munro shouted at the departing President’s back?
That’s right. As reflected in the official White House transcript, it was this question:
Q. What about American workers who are unemployed while you import foreigners?
Now flash forward to last Friday’s highly controversial announcement from the Obama Department of Labor that the unemployment rate has dropped under 8% (to 7.8%) for the first time in 44 months. Amazingly, the dip below 8% came with just a little over a month to go before Mr. Obama’s fate is decided by voters. The announcement was immediately derided in this fashion by legendary ex-General Electric chairman Jack Welch, who Tweeted:
Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can’t debate so change numbers.
First, a hat tip to reader Ken Rohrbaugh, a former college classmate turned eagle-eyed CPA out there in the beautiful swing state of Colorado.
Mr. Rohrbaugh makes the obvious point that a CPA would instantly spot.
If the Obama administration announces in June that 1.7 million new workers are being added to the American workforce. Then announces in September that only 114,000 jobs have been created in September — how can the unemployment rate possibly drop?
What happed to all those newly work permitted Americans? Did all 1.7 million suddenly get jobs in a suddenly hot economy? Which would require a job increase of some 15 times that 114,000? Obviously not.
While Mr. Munro’s videotaped tangle with the president may be what many remember, fewer may recall that Munro (who called the high unemployment rate “extraordinary” in his Hannity appearance) wrote about the issue of adding so many new workers into the workforce and what it would do to the unemployment rate.
Wrote Munro later that same day of June 15 after his attempt to question the President:
The announcement of the decision comes at a time of record unemployment among low-skilled workers, Hispanics and African-Americans.
For example, less than 50 percent of younger African-Americans have full-time jobs, according to data provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Unemployment among Hispanics, youth and African-Americans rose in May, according to the BLS.
All correct.
Take a look at this report from ABC News on August 15, the first day applicants could actually show up to apply and legally jump into the American employment pool — where they will be officially counted. There is Diane Sawyer introducing this story by saying (bold emphasis mine):
“All day long images like these have been pouring into our newsroom. Tens of thousands of undocumented young immigrants coming out of the shadows. This is the day the President’s new initiative begins to take hold giving them a chance at the legal right to work and live openly in this country…. the lines stretched into the distance.”
Reporter David Wright talks as cameras pan those “tens of thousands” filmed in various cities across America, “the lines stretched into the distance.”
Take a look at this report from Chicago’s WMAQ, and proudly uploaded by Chicago’s Democratic (and Hispanic) Congressman Luis Gutierrez, which has an aerial shot of what it says is some 12,000 undocumented immigrants signing up for the right to jump in the U.S. pool of unemployed Americans. Gutierrez is in the clip calling the location for the event the new Ellis Island. And that was just in Chicago.
So.
How can the addition of these 1.7 million new workers plunging into the already high pool of the unemployed in June — miraculously lower the unemployment rate by September?
Obviously, they can’t.
Not to get too graphic, but what happened when that tsunami hit the coastline of Japan a while back? Right. This happens.
Too much water suddenly surging inside the natural coastline caused — shocker — the water level to rise. Abruptly, water was abruptly flooding everywhere, tossing cars, buildings, and everything else every place else. A siren alarm goes off, a frantic voice is heard on a loud speaker as the water level rises — and rises and rises and rises.
Now take another look at those photos shown on ABC News and WMAQ. Those ABC photos and the WMAQ aerial shots are literally the equivalent of an unemployment tsunami suddenly hitting the United States.
Yet Americans are being asked to believe — seriously – that the Obama administration, having generated this human unemployment tsunami, has miraculously caused unemployment to drop?
Yes, they are being asked to believe just that. By no less than President Obama himself.
Right.
Just like the day that tsunami hit Japan and the water level dropped.
Pay no attention to those floating buildings and cars! Move along!
Stop. Stop, stop, STOP!
What did Jeremiah Wright say about Obama and truth telling?
We discussed the Reverend Jeremiah Wright in this space last week, focusing on his relationship with Obama. The Reverend Wright — on tape — told the following story to author Edward Klein of Barack Obama’s belief on telling the truth (in Klein’s bestselling book The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House). The story revolved around Wright’s controversial taped sermons finally bursting into the media in 2008 — and a personal visit by Obama to convince Wright to stop speaking until the election was over. Wright refused (in spite of an offer of $150,000 through an intermediary). Wright recounted his story this way:
Barack said, “I’m sorry you don’t see it the way I do. Do you know what your problem is?'” And I said, “No, what’s my problem?” And he said, “You have to tell the truth.”
Wright’s point: that Obama believed that he, Obama, was excused from telling the truth. In other words, Wright is saying that Barack Obama has no hesitation in lying straight out when needed. Telling the truth is not Obama’s problem — now or, according to Wright, ever.
Not telling the truth.
Where else have we seen this kind of behavior before in the Obama administration?
How about:
• Benghazi. Where the Obama administration spent days — weeks — insisting the attack on the American consulate that killed Ambassador was a spontaneous event and not a planned terrorist attack. Spokesperson after spokesperson — from the President on down through his press secretary, Secretary of State and Ambassador to the United Nations — one person after another boldly told a laughable untruth – pinning the blame not on terrorism but on an Internet video. Now the scramble is on to cover up, with at least one congressional investigation already underway.
• Fast and Furious. Once again, the Justice Department is under fire for a cover-up. Fox’s William La Jeunesse reports three White House national security officials now admit they were briefed on Fast and Furious, contradicting the President. The number of violent crimes committed by these Fast and Furious weapons has shot up from 11, as first claimed, to possibly 28. Third, newly revealed documents indicate a cover-up by the U.S. Attorney’s office to try and conceal the fact that weapons recovered from the murder scene where Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered.
• General Motors. The mantra Joe Biden loves to shout is that “Osama is dead and General Motors is alive.” Well aside from the fact that the attack in Benghazi shows clearly that al Qaeda is alive and well and crowds all over the world are shouting (“Obama, Obama, we are all Osama”) — General Motors wants the government out of its company. Specifically, it wants the government to sell the 27 shares Obama took in the company because company officials have become convinced Obama’s stake is bad for GM’s business. But the government refuses to sell, the Wall Street Journal reports, because the American taxpayer would have to take a financial bath to the tune of some $15 billion. So Biden blithely goes about the business of covering-up yet another embarrassing administration misadventure.
• Lockheed Martin. As reported by ABC News,
Defense contractor Lockheed Martin heeded a request from the White House today — one with political overtones — and announced it will not issue layoff notices to thousands of employees just days before the November presidential election.
Lockheed, one of the biggest employers in the key battleground state of Virginia, previously warned it would have to issue notices to employees, required by law, due to looming defense cuts set to begin to take effect after Jan. 2 because of the failure of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction — the so-called Super-committee, which was created to find a way to cut $1.5 trillion from the federal deficit over the next decade.
Such massive layoffs could have threatened Obama’s standing in the state he won in 2008 and is hoping to carry again this November.
In other words, the White House is quite deliberately demanding of Lockheed that it violate the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. WARN requires companies to notify workers 60 days ahead of time of coming layoffs — but the administration can’t have that because the notices would have been sent out mere days before the election. So — the decision was made to just violate the law. And cover up by pretending there’s nothing amiss.
When you add it all up — what is now obvious to more and more Americans is that just as Reverend Wright has said — this President has a problem telling the truth.
Is there any wonder that on one day in June the President says he’s pouring 1.7 million new people into the job pool — and apparently believes they are one big no-never-mind when tallying the unemployment rate for September?
Is there any wonder there are all manner of cover-up accusations now gaining on the Obama administration — over Libya, Fast and Furious, General Motors, and Lockheed Martin.
What all these things have in common is that they reflect Reverend Wright’s hard-earned lesson — that Barack Obama has a problem telling the truth.
Either that, or there are now 1.7 million formerly undocumented immigrants who have jobs.
So what’s happening here?
Can you say “flimflam”?
