Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

That old school yard taunt comes to mind as President Obama continues to pretzel the truth beyond recognition regarding his energy record.   Power Line does a fine job pairing the president’s claims with the facts.

The president’s best efforts to paint a smiley face on his accomplishments not withstanding, reality is difficult to ignore.  High gasoline prices don’t just cause consumers pain at the pump.  They fuel (pardon the pun) the cost of food and virtually everything that has to be transported.  That being so, the high cost of gas and heating oil should cause inflation to spike.  But, according to the CPI, (Consumer Price Index) inflation is rising at a 3.1 percent annual rate.  Admittedly not a number to instill confidence, but much better than if the items that consumers actually buy on a regular basis were included.  To arrive at the lower number for the ‘core’ inflation rate, gasoline, energy and food were omitted from the calculations.  The American Institute of Economic Research has calculated “Everyday Prices” (i.e. the cost of groceries, prescription medicine, telephone bills etc). These show inflation at  8.1 percent annual rate.

Similarly, the Obama administration fudged unemployment figures.  By counting as unemployed only those actively seeking work, government statisticians came up with 8.3 percent.  Those who have given up looking for work are not counted.  For the Obama administration those hapless folk are invisible.  If they were included the unemployment number would be 15.2 percent.

Remember the Misery Index? That’s the number derived by adding the annual unemployment rate to the annual inflation rate.  The real unemployment rate and the real inflation rate experienced by real people.  The Carter administration hit a record peak of 21.98%.  But those guys were pikers compared to Obama and company.  Do the math.

Then there are the president’s cost estimates for Obama Care and the recent CBO predictions that Obama Care will cost almost twice the original bogus number.  Let’s not even talk about that, Obama isn’t.

Perhaps as disturbing as the deceptions is the mindset they betray.  Obama’s book ‘The Audacity of Hope” might more accurately have been titled, “The Audacity of Arrogance.”  This president apparently believes that Americans are so dumb that he can tell any tall tale anytime and it will be swallowed whole.  Perhaps he has spent too much time listening to the Zuccotti Park Occupiers and thinks them representative of the electorate.  Heaven help this country if he is correct.

However, the latest CBS/NYT survey indicates that the administration is failing the smell test, as in Shakespeare’s line from Hamlet, “something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” The survey found that only 10% of the electorate trusts the federal government to do the right thing most of the time – the lowest level of confidence ever recorded.  It’s not a poll of whether the public’s has confidence in what the administration’s says, but it’s close enough.