Corzine UNTOUCHED - Unbelievable

(File)
MF GLOBAL CEO & TOP OBAMA BUNDLER WILL MOST LIKELY AVOID CRIMINAL CHARGES, BIPARTISAN
SHOCK ENSUES
Posted on August 16, 2012 at 6:02pm by  Becket Adams

A criminal investigation into the demise of MF Global and the mysterious disappearance of $1.2 billion in client funds
has concluded that “chaos and porous risk controls,” rather than fraud, is to blame — so criminal charges probably won‘t
be brought against the firm’s former CEO and key Obama fundraising bundler Jon Corzine, the New York Times reports.

The reaction to this news has been both angry and bipartisan.

“At this point, it is clear that people like Corzine, and Lloyd Blankfein could put on masks and start sticking up fruit
stands all over lower Manhattan, and get away with it because of  ‘the difficulty in prosecuting crimes like these,’” writes
Charles P. Pierce on the Esquire blog.

“It always seemed … inevitable that there was never a chance that former MF Global CEO Jon Corzine would be
criminally charged over his failed stewardship of the firm,” Jim Kim writes for Fierce Finance.

“Because in the Banana republic of the crave, no bundles can ever go to jail, no matter how heinous the crime,” writers at Zero Hedge grumble.

As reported previously on TheBlaze, disaster struck when MF Global executives, chief among them Corzine, made terribly risky bets on European investments.

When these bets didn’t pay off, sources say money was shifted from customer accounts to cover the losses.
Eventually, the entire system broke down and, when everything came to a screeching halt, an estimated $1.2 billion had gone missing.

When asked by a
congressional panel where the money went, all Corzine could do was shrug and say, “I don’t know.”

And the investigating team can’t find anything?

“How could prosecutors drop a case where over one billion dollars in client money has gone missing , and where a CEO is throwing his hands up and saying he has
no clue?” writes Halah Touryalai for Forbes.

“It’s possible that Corzine had no idea that his own firm had started raiding customer accounts to cover Corzine’s own bad bets on EU debt … but it stretches the
imagination to believe it,” writes Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey.

Over at The Atlantic, they were similarly skeptical and disturbed by the news:

Of course, if the company‘s bankruptcy is the result of incompetence rather than theft that won’t make those who were burned by
it feel any better. Nor will it help ease the fears of anti-Wall Street types who already believe the financial industry is a wasteland
of greed and corruption.

Meanwhile, the more “outspoken” critics of the MF Global disaster were less muted in their response to today’s news.  
“Well it looks like another Wall Street firm that put customers in jeopardy will escape criminal prosecution,” the Huffington Post fumed.

“Crimes were unequivocally committed and I will do whatever I can to continue to do the government’s job for it and help see justice done,” James Catulis, a lawyer
representing several MF Global clients whose money has gone missing, told CNBC.

“Jon Corzine is an ex-senator, ex-governor — well-connected — I walk away thinking, ‘If you’re one of those elites, you’re above the law,’” said CNBC’s Rick Santelli.

Watch Santelli discuss his thoughts on the latest chapter in the MF Global debacle [via CNBC]:

But here is the kicker in all of this: In what the Times calls an effort to “rebuild his image” and reconnect with “his passion for trading,”

Corzine is seriously considering
starting another hedge fund. Yes, the man who sat at the helm of MF Global when billions of dollars in customer funds went missing is looking to get back into a line
of business where people are supposed to trust him with their money.

In response to this bit of news, Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi joked that the location for Corzine’s new HQ would probably be “right next to OJ‘s home for battered
women and Jeff Dahmer’s Bed & Breakfast.”

\Follow Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) on Twitter
Front page photo source: the AP.

Noone to be Charged in MF - BMB YAB

No One Will Charged With a Crime for the MF Global Collapse

Authorities are winding down their criminal investigation of the failed brokarage firm, MF Global, and despite the lack of oversight and the loss of more than $1 billion in customer funds, it now seems unlikely that anyone at the firm will face criminal charges. 

RELATED: GOP Will Get to Grill Jon Corzine in Congress

The New York Times is reporting this morning that after ten months of investigation by federal prosecutors, sources say there isn't even enough evidence to charge any of the firm's executives in a criminal probe. The company may have failed spectacularly when it came to oversight and risk management, but the losses cannot be chalked up to outright fraud.

RELATED: Jon Corzine Had Board Approval to Ignore His Risk Officer's Advice

The company placed a grossly outsized bet (more than $6 billion worth) on the health of the European debt market last year and when it went south, the firm "borrowed" money from the accounts of its customers to try and salvage its own losses. Most of the blame for those trades fell on its CEO (and ex-New Jersey governor) Jon Corzine, and while his reputation and firm are ruined, it seems he will escape any legal sanction. He could still face massive civil lawsuits or fines from regulators who have a lower standard than a criminal prosecution, but jail isn't in the cards.

RELATED: Corzine 'Simply Doesn't Know' Where MF Global's Money Went

Of course, if the company's bankruptcy is the result of incompetence rather than theft that won't make those who were burned by it feel any better. Nor will it help ease the fears of anti-Wall Street types who already believe the financial industry is a wasteland of greed and corruption. Those waiting to see bankers and traders hauled away in handcuffs are going to have to keep waiting a little longer.

Liberal Hypocracy

Our Not So Best and Not So Brightest

 Posted By Victor Davis Hanson On August 12, 2012 @ 11:00 pm In Uncategorized | 219 Comments

 Our civilization is under assault. Those who have taken upon themselves to direct it are instead doing their own part to destroy it.

From Eliot Spitzer to Elizabeth Warren to Fareed Zakaria — what is wrong with our elites? Do they assume that because they are on record for the proverbial people, or because they have been branded with an Ivy League degree, or because they are habitués of the centers of power between New York and Washington, or because they write for the old (but now money-losing) blue-chip brands (Time magazine, the New York Times, etc.), or because we see them on public and cable TV, or because they rule us from the highest echelons of government that they are exempt from the sorts of common ethical constraints that the rest of us must adhere to — at least if a society as sophisticated as ours is to work?

I understand that there is a special genre of conservative Christian hypocrites — a Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, or Ted Haggard — who preach fire and brimstone about the very sins they indulge in.  The Republican primary was in some ways a circus as the media had a field day pointing out the ethical inconsistencies of the candidates. But here I am talking about secular elites across the cultural spectrum who simply do not live by their own rules, and yet are often granted exemption for their transgressions because of their own liberal piety — and a more calibrated assumption that the world of blue America (i.e., the media, the government, the arts, the foundations, the legal profession, and Hollywood) will not hold them to account.

Take affirmative action. Over-the-top and crude Ward Churchill at least bought the buckskin and beads to play out his con as an American Indian activist with various other associated academic frauds. But Elizabeth Warren’s “Cherokee”-constructed pedigree was far more subtle — and the sort of lie that Harvard could handle. She more wisely kept to the fast lane of tasteful liberal one-percenters, as she parlayed a false claim of Indian ancestry ^[1] into a Harvard professorship. So whereas Churchill is now a much-lampooned figure,
Warren may be headed to the U.S. Senate. To say that Elizabeth Warren is and was untruthful, and yet was a law professor who was supposed to inculcate respect for our jurisprudence, is to incur the charge of being a right-wing bigot.  But reflect: how can someone who faked an entire identity — and one aimed at providing an edge in hiring to the disadvantage of others — not be completely ostracized?

Again, Warren was successful precisely because she wore no beads or headband and did not affect a tribal name — the sort of hocus-pocus that makes faculty lounge liberals uncomfortable. It was precisely because she looked exactly like a blond, pink Harvard progressive that Warren’s constructed minority fraud was so effective.

Why would a Fareed Zakaria lift the work of someone else? Time constraints? Carelessness? Amnesia over how and why he reached his present perch? Do such columnists farm out their research ^[2] or outlines to assistants? Or do they think their liberal credentials outweigh reasonable audit of what they write? Steal from someone else and take a month off work? Even my copper wire thieves out here on the farm would have to pay a bit more if they were caught. Their last theft was about $70 worth of conduit, but I imagine Time pays lots more per Zakaria column.

Or why did Maureen Dowd think she could lift some sentences ^[3] from someone else and then claim she got them from a friend’s email — especially given her hyper-criticism of less-liberal others? And did she not guess rightly that no one would really care? After all, do we remember the Pulitzer Prize winning Team of Rivals ^[4] or the fact that far earlier Doris Kearns Goodwin was a confessed plagiarist ^[5]? When I pick up the Selma Enterprise, I do not expect the cub reporter to steal her report of a DUI accident verbatim from the Fresno Bee. Should I?

Why did Barack Obama think, in Rigoberta Menchu or Greg Mortenson fashion, that he could more or less make up ^[6] most of the key details in his own autobiography? Again, think of it: the current president of the United States fabricated much of the information about his own life, in ways designed to enhance his self-serving narrative of  America’s racial insensitivity. But then again, for over a decade the president allowed his literary biography to claim that he was born in Kenya ^[7]. His political opponents who claimed just that were written off as unhinged; but are we to think of the president himself as a birther?

I think that I should have boasted that I was born in Lund, Sweden, and dated the insensitive daughter of an agribusiness magnate, to make my past account of small farm life more effective.  But then again, Vice President Joe Biden is likewise a plagiarist — who lifted an entire section of a speech from British Laborite Neil Kinnock ^[8], a “lapse” that recalled Biden’s earlier plagiarism ^[9] in law school.

I thought Trent Lott should have stepped down for praising 100-year-old Strom Thurmond at his birthday fest in ways that could have suggested support ^[10] for Thurmond’s earlier creed of racial segregation. But what does it take for his liberal counterpart — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid — to quit? Declare the Iraq war lost ^[11] in the midst of a surge to save it? Claim that Barack Obama is a light-skinned black who can turn on and off his black accent ^[12]? Defame an African-American member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission a “sh-t stirrer”? ^[13] Or in McCarthyesque style fantasize that “someone” heard a rumor ^[14] that Romney did not pay taxes, and hence Romney must release a decade of returns to “prove” that he is not a tax cheat — and this from a man who became a millionaire while in public office and has not released a single year of his own returns? The treatment of Lott versus the treatment of Reid reminds one of the quite different fates of Alberto Gonzales and Eric Holder; the former was grilled by Congress to the point of being forced out, while the latter simply called his accusers racists and ignored what followed.

Liberal penance explains why Timothy Geithner apparently thought that he need not pay his full income tax obligations — in a way a CEO of Chick-fil-A or Amway might never dare. If there is a problem with white redneck crime, will a mayor call in the racist Klan in the way Rahm Emanuel welcomed to Chicago Louis Farrakhan ^[15]? Why worry whether Hilda Solis had a lien on the family business ^[16], when she issues a video invitation to illegal aliens to report their unfair employers to the Labor Department? And why did television host Eliot Spitzer, the white-collar crime fighter, think he could employ prostitutes with impunity while governor — and, if caught, expect to end up as a cable TV news host? Or why did John Edwards, of “two Americas” fame, preach populism while enjoying the one-percent lifestyle (well aside from the lies about his campaign-subsidized girlfriend)? Or why did John Kerry both advocate higher taxes and yet seek to avoid them by docking his luxury yacht in a different state?

Or why, more recently, did Obama campaign guru Stephanie Cutter assume that she could simply lie on national television ^[17] by stating that she did not know the circumstances behind the Joe Soptic “Romney-cancer” ad? She knew that earlier she was on tape outlining the Soptic narrative, so did she think she could claim ignorance on TV, blast her critics in the days to come, and then go back on as usual, given her efforts to extend the Obama agenda? Stranger still, she is probably right about all of those assumptions. I expect her in a week to be on television accusing her opponents of lying, with a press aiding and abetting her. Why does wealthy Andrea Mitchell yell at us for being illiberal, when she could instead yell at her husband, who was far more embedded in Wall Street than any Tea-Party pizza store owner?

Did David Plouffe really think his mediocre speaking skills or so-so knowledge of communications would win $100,000 a pop on the international lecture circuit — on the eve of his assuming a key role in the White House?
 Hope and change? No revolving door? What sort of ad would Plouffe have run, had a top Romney aide been hired to speak by a company doing business with Iran? And isn’t $100,000 in an afternoon sort of one-percent-ish — the sort of unfair, Costa del Sol-like privilege that Obama is trying to rectify?

In most of these cases, the above are servants of the progressive cause. They operate on assumption that they are our self-appointed censors, vigilant to spot class, race, or gender bias and unfairness among those less well-branded. But as our morals police, they do not fear any policing of themselves.
Never is there any assumption that John Edwards’s attacks on the wealthy mean that he should not live in a ridiculous, self-indulgent mansion or hire on a groupie with other people’s money. It made perfect sense that the green moralist Al Gore should have enjoyed one of the most energy-guzzling homes in Tennessee, or from time to time played boorish “crazed sex poodle” with his call-up masseuse. Elizabeth Warren is knee-deep in the world of the one-percent, in part because she knows how to work the system of exemption that assumes loud liberal credentials allow one to live a life quite differently from the one professed.

In short, our top pundits, our political elites, our very president all believe that they can blast the unfairness of high capitalism while doing everything in their power to enjoy its dividends — and demand an ethical standard from others that they habitually do not meet themselves. It is as if the more left-wing one sounds, the more anti-left-wing his tastes; the more the ethicist lectures on morality, the more he is likely to be unethical; the more green an advocate, the less likely the 800-square foot cottage replete with recycled water, a solar toilet, and 70-degree hot water. The only mystery here is whether there is some sort of logical connection. Does the profession of cosmic morality by design allow one to enjoy without guilt quite earthly sins? Why do super-rich liberals not like the Tea-Party upper-middle-class entrepreneurs? Are the latter in no need of liberal condescension? Do they not have quite enough money to show exquisite taste? Or are they grubby, too close to the struggle for a buck?

Two final notes on why all this matters. 

First, when the left-wing media ceases to scrutinize public figures, the latter are emboldened to fabricate, cheat, plagiarize, and flat out lie. It is not that there are not conservative hypocrites, just that the present system makes it far harder for them to get away with these failings. (Imagine the press reaction to a Romney autobiography full of untruths; a Paul Ryan with a yacht docked in a no-tax harbor; a Charles Krauthammer lifting entire paragraphs from the work of others).

Second, all of the above are part of an elite establishment that is supposed to set standards for emulation, but instead only coarsens civilization. Why tell the truth, hoi polloi, when everyone from Bill Clinton to Stephanie Cutter will not? Can we determine what is true and false, when we have no idea in Time magazine or in a presidential memoir whether the sentence is copied from someone else or simply made up? If the governor frequents prostitutes, how can there be a law against prostitution? After Elizabeth Warren, how can there exist such a thing as affirmative action? Cannot every white male in America assert that he has high cheek bones and so deserves a leg up on any other white male stupid enough not to claim his great-great-grandmother was a Cherokee?

Our civilization is under assault. Those who have taken upon themselves to direct it are instead doing their own part to destroy it.

Blam Senior Citizens A Liberal "Fesses Up" - But Gives No Plan

America's Protected Class Stands In The Way Sensible Budgeting

By ROBERT J. SAMUELSON
Posted 08/15/2012 06:07 PM ET

Judging by the political reaction, you'd think that Paul Ryan's budget takes a meat ax to Medicare and threatens economic havoc for the elderly.

Just the opposite is true: the Ryan budget spares older people from almost any change or sacrifice — and that's the problem. We have (and, to be fair, this is mainly the doing of Democrats and their intellectual apologists) made those 65 and over into a politically protected class, of which nothing is expected and everything is given.

It is impossible to have an honest debate about the budget — and government's size and role — unless this changes, because aiding the elderly is now the main thing the federal government does. If you remove that, fearing a backlash from the 50 million or so Social Security and Medicare recipients, you condemn yourself to bad choices:

(a) You can't deal with deficits, which may crowd out productive investment and risk a financial crisis;
(b) you must dramatically squeeze the rest of government, including the social safety net, defense and research; or
(c) you must raise taxes sharply, which may further slow the economy.

Even now the size of the problem isn't fully appreciated. Here's one indicator: Under plausible assumptions, including "full employment" and cutting defense and non-defense discretionary spending by a third, the Congressional Budget Office projects a 2023 deficit equal to 6.75% of the economy. Covering that would require $1 trillion more in taxes, a hike one third higher than the 1970-2011 average.

 Let me now assert the caveats: At 66, I am not against older Americans. I don't want to dismantle Social Security and Medicare. But I do want these programs modernized — to reflect longer life expectancy and the elderly's greater wealth; to lighten the burden on the young (whose taxes support these programs, because almost nothing has been "saved" to pay for them); and to protect government's other functions. Finally, it should be possible to discuss these issues candidly, without being accused of "throwing Grandma under the bus."

It isn't now. Democrats' relentless campaigns against Republicans as threatening to "destroy" Social Security and Medicare have succeeded at intimidation — and, oddly, Ryan is proof.

There are two Ryans: what I call the good Ryan and the bad Ryan. Probably more than anyone in Washington, the good Ryan has highlighted long-term deficits' potential harm to our children and grandchildren. The bad Ryan has fashioned an unrealistic and undesirable budget by trying to accommodate both liberal dogma (don't cut Social Security and Medicare benefits) and conservative dogma (don't raise taxes). Any sensible plan must do both.

Governed by these constraints, Ryan's budget would:

(1) Impose no Social Security cuts — that's 20% of federal spending off the table.

(2) Delay any major change in Medicare until 2023, when recipients could choose either a voucher plan or "traditional" Medicare — that's another 16% of spending unaddressed for a decade.

(3) Convert the federal share of Medicaid (federal-state health insurance for the poor) into a block grant to states, and then increase the grant annually at a lower rate than at present.

(4) Increase most other federal spending, including defense, only by inflation after 2023, a formula that makes no allowance for population growth and could lead to "real" cuts because wages and compensation typically outpace inflation.

(5) Hold taxes at 19% of GDP after 2025, just above the 18% average of the past 40 years.

(6) Cut deficits but not balance the budget until 2040.

This budget would have devastating consequences. Increasing non-Social Security and health spending only at the rate of inflation would gradually shrink most other federal programs. (From 2011 to 2030, these other programs would decline by more than half, from 12.5% of GDP to 5.75%, projects the CBO.) Defense cuts could verge on unilateral disarmament. States and localities would suffer, as the value of federal grants shriveled. The FBI, the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies starve.

By contrast, the elderly would be mainly spared. Spending on them in 2030 would drop only slightly, estimates the CBO. Despite this, Obama warns that Republicans "would end Medicare as we know it." Liberal pundits say the GOP would "kill" Medicare. It is this cynical fear-mongering that poisons debate. One reason Democrats won't change entitlements is that defending them is so politically rewarding. This, as much as Republican tax intransigence, underlies the stalemate.

There are no painless cures for deficits. But all cures are unnecessarily hard and harsh because we maintain a protected class excluded from any solution.

Secrets of Obama

5 ‘Devastating Secrets’ the Obama Admin Has Allegedly Fought to Keep From the American Public

     Has the Obama administration desperately tried to hide “devastating secrets” from the American people? This is a question that JudicialWatch President Tom Fitton affirmatively answers in his new book, “The Corruption Chronicles.” In an exclusive interview with TheBlaze, he recently outlined some of the most pervasive details and issues that administration officials have allegedly attempted to hide from the public.

Fitton said that he was motivated to put the book together after looking over all of the materials that JudicialWatch, a non-profit devoted to education and transparency, had compiled over the years.

“To place Obama in context, you have to go back through the Bush and Clinton administrations,” he explained. “The book traces the arc of corruption in the Clinton administration through the Bush presidency, where you had this explosion of government secrecy…”
While the book spans the three administrations, Fitton contends that his organization had enough material on the Obama years, alone, to provide more than one volume on corruption. But throughout the interview, he also made it a point to highlight the fact that “corruption and big government and big secrecy…didn’t begin with Obama and [they] won’t end with Obama.”

From the bailouts — which started under President George W. Bush — to the Fast and Furious scandal, Fitton’s book covers it all, while highlighting the often-corrupt ways in which Washington operates. It’s a book that he believes every American should read. Even Democrats and liberals, who may typically find themselves turned-off by JudicialWatch’s conservative views, will likely be surprised to find that the book also takes aim at Bush’s policies.

“You can’t rely on Congress and the media and the typical branches of government to provide oversight,” Fitton said. “You have to take it into your own hands. JudicialWatch is showing that.”

Considering that this is an election year — and considering that Obama is a key figure analyzed in the book — TheBlaze asked the author to highlight the five most pervasive secrets that the president’s administration has tried to conceal. Here they are:


1) Fast and Furious:  A press release for the book promises that readers will, “See the truth behind the scandal code-named Fast and Furious, a government program that supplied thousands of firearms to murderous criminals in Mexico — and for which Attorney General Eric Holder was convicted of contempt of Congress (and now possible disbarment!).”

TheBlaze has covered this scandal in detail, with our most recent story detailing a high-ranking Mexican drug cartel operative’s claim that Fast and Furious isn’t what many people think it is. While many on the left deem the scandal surrounding the operation politically-motivated, there’s no doubt that the administration — particularly Holder — has gone to great lengths to ensure that some documentation remains out of reach.


2) White House Czars: When Obama first entered office, his use of so-called “czars” came under fire. Fitton claims that their activities are among the most protected elements within the administration. The press release for the book encourages readers: “Be appalled by the Constitution-defying czars – appointed by the president or his administration, the current count is 45.”

In 2011, JudicialWatch completed a report about these public officials. The executive summary explains some of the issues with these individuals, who were appointed by Obama and his staffers:

This Judicial Watch Special Report examines President Obama’s unprecedented appointment and use of unconfirmed and unaccountable policy advisors or “czars” throughout his administration. Presidents typically have advisors with whom they can discuss and devise policy initiatives. In recent years, however, presidential advisors have taken on powerful new roles in the government without undergoing the process of Senate confirmation.

Unaccountable czars, many working in the White House, are being given unprecedented authority over major aspects of government policy. As is discussed herein, President Obama has appointed a number of controversial persons to czar posts, a few of whom have subsequently resigned. Others remain, despite controversy.

Their activities and their exact roles, Fitton says, are secretive in nature.

3) Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac: The third secret involves government-sponsored mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Fitton told TheBlaze that “never before has so much money been spent with so little oversight.” In February, TheBlaze reported that millions in taxpayer funds were used to defend three executives associated with the company. This, of course, is only one of the many stories surrounding Fannie and Freddie.

Considering that both institutions were essentially taken over by the U.S. government in 2008, JudicialWatch maintains that documents pertaining to political donations, for instance, are subject to FOIA requests. But the administration has claimed that there is no need for either Freddie or Fannie to release these documents.

4) Details Surrounding the Bin Laden Raid: Fitton claims that the Obama administration has maintained secrecy over details surrounding the raid that killed terrorist Osama bin Laden. Late last month, UPI reported that JudicialWatch had filed a FOIA lawsuit against the U.S. Navy for information about the raid. The organization is seeking details about ”any funeral ceremony, rite or ritual” that was performed before bin Laden’s burial at sea.

The group is also seeking any and all communications and records surrounding the terrorist’s funeral. Here’s what Fitton told UPI in relation to the case:

President Barack Obama ”is playing politics with bin Laden’s death and ignoring the rule of law — especially the transparency laws that his appointees violate with impunity…I suspect the Obama administration is embarrassed by the burial ceremony, which explains our having to go to court to get basic information about this important piece of history.”

 5) Justice Elena Kagan’s Role in Crafting ObamaCare: Despite the fact that the Supreme Court has made its voice heard on Obamacare, many still have questions about Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan‘s early role in discussing the legislation’s path to the high court. Politico explains the debate surrounding Kagan, particularly when it comes to her potential role in defending health care:
Conservative groups like Judicial Watch and the Media Research Council, along with some Republican lawmakers, pressed Kagan to recuse herself. They noted her exchanges of emails about the law with colleagues, and they suspected she was involved in administration discussions about legal strategy to respond to the case. Administration officials insisted she avoided all substantive discussions about the Justice Department’s efforts to plan a defense of the law.

The basic concern on the part of those calling for Kagan’s recusal seemed to be that she would effectively rubber-stamp the Obama health care law.

“I think the reason she was appointed was to provide votes like this on ‘Obamacare,’” Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said Tuesday.
In the end, some have defended Kagan, claiming that she actually broke with Democrats over her agreement with Chief Justice John Roberts that the Medicaid expansion is unconstitutional. Still, she supported the majority of the controversial law.
In November 2011, JudicialWatch obtained documents from Kagan’s time as U.S. solicitor general that the group claims raised questions about her involvement in Department of Justice discussions about Obamacare. The group filed a FOIA lawsuit in an attempt to secure documents from Kagan’s pre-Supreme Court post to assess whether there was a conflict of interest in her involvement in the high court’s review of the individual mandate.

These are just some of the secrets that were purportedly concealed by the Obama administration. You can read about the rest in Fitton’s “The Corruption Chronicles.”

Finding anything that's True - from O

The Postmodern President

The challenge is finding anything his campaign says that is true.

President Obama spent his formative years in academia, so he's no doubt familiar with postmodernism, the literary theory that rejects objective reality and insists instead that everything is a matter of interpretation and relative "truth." At any rate he's running the first postmodern Presidential campaign, now organized almost exclusively around allegations about his opponent that bear no relation to the observable universe.

***

The most important document of this new approach to politics may be this week's now famous TV commercial in which a man on camera accuses Mitt Romney of killing his wife. (The man's late wife, not Ann.) The spot features a Missouri steelworker called Joe Soptic, who recounts how Bain Capital bought his plant and eventually closed it, costing him his job and health benefits. "A short time after that," he says, Ilyona Soptic was diagnosed with cancer. "I don't know how long she was sick and I think maybe she didn't say anything because she knew we couldn't afford the insurance."

He continues: "There was nothing they could do for her. And she passed away in 22 days. I do not think Mitt Romney realizes what he's done to anyone, and furthermore I do not think Mitt Romney is concerned."

It's a sad tale, affectingly told. The production values are also excellent, courtesy of Priorities USA Action, Mr. Obama's super PAC that ostensibly doesn't coordinate with his campaign. But its notions about cause and effect are, well, novel.

Bain bought the struggling company GST Steel in 1993 and held the investment in a turnaround bid throughout Mr. Romney's tenure as CEO, which ended in 1999. He had been gone from Bain for two years when the mill went bankrupt, in 2001, amid a larger competitive upheaval that reshaped the U.S. steel industry. Mr. Soptic's wife died five years later, in 2006.

Mr. Soptic also revealed to CNN that when he worked at GST, his wife had her own health insurance policy through a thrift store job, which she lost after an injury in 2002 or 2003. By then he'd been hired somewhere else, but that plan didn't cover spouses.

So Mr. Romney is to blame because of decisions he didn't make at a business he didn't run that may or may not have set in train a series of random unconnected events many years apart that included Ilyona Soptic's illness. Even more culpable is the butterfly in Peking that flapped its wings and forever altered the course of history.

At least the Obamateers didn't suggest that Mr. Romney was the direct biological cause of her cancer. Perhaps they are saving that charge for October, given that a routine Democratic theme is that Republicans are in favor of killing people. After all, the most substantive liberal critique of Paul Ryan's budget is an ad depicting his stand-in literally flinging an old lady in a wheelchair off a cliff.

The other day Nancy Pelosi said the GOP believes there should be "no government role" in food safety and "They do not want to spend money to do that." Therefore the Republican Party is "the E. coli club" that Ms. Pelosi implied wants to poison children.

Riffing as only the postmodernists can, the House Minority Leader sat for a separate session with the Huffington Post to declare that "

Harry Reid made a statement that is true. Somebody told him. It is a fact." What she means by "fact" is that the Senate Majority Leader asserts with zero proof that Mr. Romney got away with paying no taxes for a decade, which is "true" because he says an anonymous investor called to say so. If the food inspectors ever went by Reid-Pelosi evidentiary standards, we'd all be dead.
 
The same pattern tessellates across the entire Obama campaign, from former White House counsel Bob Bauer's insinuation in July that Mr. Romney is a "felon," to the Tax Policy Center's white paper that makes up tax details that Mr. Romney has explicitly disowned, to hanging economic claims on the preposterous analysis of a columnist no one has ever heard of, to the President's serial genuflections about Mr. Romney's "sincere beliefs" that neither he nor any other normal person actually hold.

Mr. Obama likes to claim everything he does is unprecedented, and in this case that happens to be true—true in the old-fashioned, not postmodern, sense.

Our point isn't that politics is often brutal and unfair. That's always been so. And it isn't that Mr. Obama promised to elevate the national conversation for an era of partisan comity. Dumping that 2008 pose was inevitable.

The point is that more than any President we can recall, Mr. Obama isn't trying to persuade voters that he deserves to stay in office because of his philosophy, record or positive vision for the country. Rather, his case is that he deserves re-election because Mr. Romney is worse, and he is so very much worse because of things that were invented in the West Wing but are detached from reality.

The entire theory of the Obama campaign seems to be that the more outrageous the claim the better, because the more you repeat it the more the media will talk about it, and the lie will achieve a kind legendary truth.

***

A postmodern postscript: The Obama campaign was at first more than happy to slipstream behind the Priorities USA smear, refusing to disavow the cancer ad and deflecting questions by claiming not to "know the specifics" (Robert Gibbs) or "know the facts" (deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter). But even their professions of ignorance turn out to be false.

In May, Mr. Soptic appeared in an official Obama for America ad—"I'm Barack Obama, and I approve this message," it concluded. Mr. Soptic told reporters his life story on a conference call, hosted by the Obama campaign and . . . Ms. Cutter.

A version of this article appeared August 10, 2012, on page A10 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Postmodern President.

Noonan : How to Beat Obama BELIEVE

Noonan: A Nation That Believes Nothing

Romney doesn't need to talk about America becoming like Europe—he needs to warn us about America becoming like California.

• By PEGGY NOONAN

It's been a week marked by mistakes, some new and some continuing.

The pro-Obama Super PAC ad that essentially blames Mitt Romney for a woman's death from cancer is over the line, and if it's allowed to stand the personal attacks that have marked the presidential campaign will probably get worse. If the president rebukes the PAC and renounces the ad—and he should, and he'd look better doing it than not doing it—then we'll all know there's an ethical floor below which
things can't sink. The ad was a mistake for a number of reasons, one being that it makes the president look perfidious and weak:

"Mudslinging is all we've got." It also may finally injure his much vaunted likability ratings.
 

Conservative critics are correct that the Romney campaign's pushback was weak. When someone suggests in the public arena that you are a killer you do have to respond with some force. Since media outlets have already pointed out the ad's claim is false, no one would think it out of bounds if Mr. Romney hit back with indignation and disgust.

Actually, that would be a public service. The ad's cynicism contributes to a phenomenon that increases each year, and that is that we are becoming a nation that believes nothing. Not in nothing, but nothing we're told by anyone in supposed authority.

Everyone knows what the word spin means; people use it in normal conversation. Everyone knows what going negative is; they talk about it on Real Housewives. Political technicians always think they're magicians whose genius few apprehend, but Americans now always know where the magician hid the rabbit. And we shouldn't be so proud of our skepticism, which has become our cynicism.

Someday we'll be told something true that we need to know and we won't believe that, either.

***

I suspect some conservative used the Romney campaign's listless response as a stand-in for what they'd really like to say to Mr. Romney himself, which is, "Wake up, get mad, be human, we're fighting for our country here!"
Romney is not over-managed by others—he isn't surrounded by what George H.W. Bush called "gurus"—but he over-manages himself. He second guesses, doubts his own instincts. Up to a certain point that's good: Self-possession is a necessary quality in a political leader. But people don't choose a leader based solely on his ability to moderate himself. They're more interested in his confidence in his own judgment, or an ease that signals the candidate has an earned respect for his own instincts.

GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney

Some of the unperturbed sunniness you see modern political figures attempting to enact may be traceable to Ronald Reagan, the happy warrior who set a template for how winners act. But the Reagan of the 1950s and 60s was often indignant, even angry. When he allowed himself to get mad, or knew he should be mad and so decided to feign anger, it was a sight to behold. "I'm paying for this microphone," he famously snapped to the moderator of the 1980 primary campaign debate in Nashua, N.H. He didn't win that crucial state by being sunny.

A lot of politicians misunderstand this part of their art. A few months ago I talked with a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate. I asked to hear the outlines of the candidate's planned appeal to voters. The candidate leaned forward and said with some intensity, "I'm going to tell them I can get along with people. I can work with the other side."

This was a great example of confusing the cart with the horse. Why would anyone vote for you, especially during a crisis, only because you play well with the other children? What are your issues, where do you stand, what will you do when you get to Washington? If you believe in something and mean to move it forward the people will give you a fair hearing, and if you make clear that you hope to make progress with the help of a knack for human relations, that's good too.

But this cult of equability, this enforced, smiley, bland dispassion—Guys, we're in a crisis, you've got to know how to fight, too.

***

And you've got to fight on the issues.

Both candidates wasted some time this week calling each other names in a sort of cheesy, noneffective, goofy way. "Obamaloney." "Romney Hood." Actually goofy isn't the right word because goofy is fun, and there's no wit or slash in what they were doing.
Calling Mr. Romney's economic plans Romney Hood was dim because everyone likes Robin Hood, so Romney Hood sounds kind of like a compliment. Now and then the foes of a candidate accidentally do him a good turn. The Soviets thought they were disparaging Margaret Thatcher when they called her the Iron Lady. She was cold, wouldn't bend, couldn't compromise. The British heard the epithet and thought: Exactly! And exactly what we need!

 An admiring nickname meant as an insult was born. Mr. Romney should go with it, lay out how he'll save taxpayers from the predators of the liberal left and call that Romney Hood.

But he and his supporters should drop the argument that if we don't change our ways we'll wind up like Europe. That's a mistake because

Americans like Europe, and in some complicated ways wouldn't mind being a little more like it. In the past 40 years jumbo jets, reduced fares and rising affluence allowed a lot of Americans, especially the sort who vote, to go there. The great capitals of Europe are glamorous, elegant and old, the outlands are exquisite. What remains of the old Catholic European ethic that business isn't everything, life is everything and it's a sin not to enjoy it, still has a lure. Americans sometimes think of it as they eat their grim salads and drink from their plastic water bottles.

When Americans go to Europe they see everything but the taxes. The taxes are terrible. But that's Europe's business and they'll have to figure it out. Yes what happens there has implications for us but still, they're there and we're here.

What Americans are worried about, take as a warning sign, and are heavily invested in is California—that mythic place where Sutter struck gold, where the movies were invented, where the geniuses of the Internet age planted their flag, built their campuses, changed our world.

We care about California. We read every day of the bankruptcies, the reduced city services, the businesses fleeing. California is going down. How amazing is it that this is happening in the middle of a presidential campaign and our candidates aren't even talking about it?
Mitt Romney should speak about the states that work and the states that don't, why they work and why they don't, and how we have to take the ways that work and apply them nationally.

Barack Obama can't talk about these things. You can't question the blue-state model when your whole campaign promises more blue-state thinking.

But Mr. Romney can talk about it.
Both campaigns are afraid of being serious, of really grappling with the things Americans rightly fear. But there's no safety in not being serious. It only leaves voters wondering if you're even capable of seriousness. Letting them wonder that is a mistake.

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