Another Global Warming Oops Moment, and it’s a dilly
January 27th, 2012, 9:48 am · posted by Mark Landsbaum

The Wall Street Journal has a letter today signed by 16 noteworthy scientists who wanted to go on the record about global warming. What they had to say constitutes today’s Global Warming Oops Moment, one of those delightful public displays that reveal the emperor has no clothes.

We quote:

“Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.”

Oops. As we so enjoy saying.

It’s sad that the bullies who run the global warming scare machine have intimidated so many for so long, threatening to label any critics as cranks and not real scientists, even cutting them off from tenure, funding and membership and publishing in journals. But thuggery sooner or later is exposed and courage sooner or later overcomes it. Here’s one of those tipping points, as delineated in the WSJ letter:

“Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job. “

What’s this remind you of? If the old Soviet system comes to mind, you’re correct. Also from the letter:

“… we have seen it before—for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.”

As we have written for years, global warming alarmism is not and never has been about the earth heating up dangerously, which it isn’t. It’s always been about control and money – their control over your money.

It seems these 16 scientists understand this motivation:

“Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word ‘incontrovertible’ from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question ‘cui bono?’ Or the modern update, “Follow the money.”

Did we say Oops?

Incidentally, these scientists also echo our long-standing observation that global warming simply isn’t dangerously warming the earth, and hasn’t at all this century.

“Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 ‘Climategate’ email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: ‘The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.’ But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.

“The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.”

We have to repeat, Oops!

Hey, anyone in a hurry to scuttle the economic engine of our society so we can subsidize these masters of deceit and fraud? Count up the things government tells you that you must do – and pay for – because of global warming. Subsidizing Solyndra, and countless others, is just the tip of the iceberg.

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RELATED POSTS:

• Playing global warming games with glaciers
• Global warming quote of the day
• Republican 11th commandment apparently has been amended, if not revoked
• Cap and trade tax ahead
• Global warming report card: not what you might expect
• 2011 global warming wrap up

I used to live in Orange County and loved the Register.

I miss it even more reading this guy.

He’s got another short piece that supports the one above (Bob Lutz being one of the best engineers in America):

Global warming quote of the day
January 26th, 2012, 4:51 pm · · posted by Mark Landsbaum

It’s been a few days since our last Global Warming Quote of the Day, and because our readers probably have yearned for another, we bring you without further ado, today’s Global Warming Quote of the Day.

“I don’t pursue the electrification of the automobile out of any fear I might have of planetary meltdown. First of all, you have to realize that carbon dioxide is a trace gas, one of most minimal gases in atmosphere. If you believe in the greenhouse effect, you should realize that methane, also known as bovine flatulence, has more than 20 times the power of CO2, and yet nobody talks about it. More than 98 percent of CO2 is from natural causes—just two percent is from humans, and mostly from stationary sources. And just a fifth of the human-caused emissions are from the global automotive sector. You could plug up the spark plug holes of every car and truck on the planet with cement and it would be a rounding error as far as CO2 production is concerned.

“The whole thing [blaming cars for global warming] is outrageous, and the purpose is to create an artificial scarcity of fossil fuel to raise prices and get alternative fuels, which cost way more, to start paying off.” - Bob Lutz, former vice chairman of General Motors.

These words came when Lutz was asked to give context to words he previously had uttered regarding global warming. You recall what he said then, right?

He said global warming was “a crock of *$%*#@.”

There’s a great article that explains what Bob Lutz was saying available here called “An Inconvenient Truth.”  If you read it you will begin to understand the incredibly deceitful bait and switch that global warming alarmism truly is.

Here is the real science of “global warming” posted on What’s Up With That:

What in the world is going on with global temperatures?
Posted on January 26, 2012by Anthony Watts

Multiple indicators show global temperatures headed down this month, and fast.

by Joe D’Aleo, CCM, AMS Fellow

As shown above (see the datapoint in the square box), the UAH AMSU daily temperatures are the coldest for the globe at 600mb of all the years tracked since 2002 (warmest 2010, previously coldest 2009).

The new Dr. Ryan Maue reanalysis based global temperature anomalies has declined dramatically this month – almost a full degree Celsius!

Forecasts for temperature 8 days in advance are appended to the reanalysis values.

Is this a reflection of the stratospheric warming pushing the cold to middle latitudes?

The cross section suggests that initial warm burst has ended. Often they repeat as the cold reloads and dumps again.

The 10mb warmth has only backed off slightly.

Notice at the north pole how temperatures warmed 50C (90F) at 10mb.

See how the warmth at the top has spread north then east then west.

Some lowering of the cold as warmth above presses down.

Meanwhile much of the lower 48 and western Europe is having a mild winter in contrast to recent years. It may end up among the coldest ever in Alaska. With a recent heat wave that I am sure Gerald Meehl at NOAA/NCAR is looking at where temperatures in Fairbanks rose to a balmy -3 (warmest this month), the average monthly temperature is an amazing 16.5F below normal. In Anchroage it has been about 13F below normal with double the normal snowfall.

The Alaska temperatures follow with the PDO. A cold PDO (with cold water offshore) means colder than normal, a warm PDO warmer than normal. Any surprise warming was observed as we moved from the La Nina rich cold PDO before 1977 to the El Ninos and +PDO in the 1980s and 1990s (attributed the CO2 of course). Any surprise with a negative 2 STD PDO and La Ninas, it is brutally cold again.

How will all of this play out in February and March???

BTW, instead of taking a PR cruise to Antarctica during their late summer to see melting ice maybe Hansen, Gore and Trenberth should go to Alaska in mid winter to see their fairy tale collapse as they freeze their tails.

So it’s looking more like an ice age than it is global warming.

James Hanson was one of the pseudo-scientist frauds who predicted an ice age in the 1970s before he started predicting global warming in the 1990s.

It just never ends.  The more wrong global warming religionists are the more they claim that all the science is on their side and everyone who doesn’t agree with them is some kind of heretic.

I’ve written a couple of articles on Obama and his birth certificate and Social Security Number maladies, but have largely refrained because I am neither a lawyer, nor a document expert, nor someone who has the ability to subpoena or even view the actual original documents at issue.

But check out the facts that are being presented in a Georgia quote about whether Obama was legally able to run for president according to that state’s laws (which appears in the context of the following article at the very end):

Below is a summary list of the physical evidence introduced in yesterday’s hearing in GA.

P2. Affidavit of Senior Deportation Officer with the Department of Homeland Security John Sampson, showing that Obama is using Connecticut SSN 042-68-4425

p3. Affidavit of Adobe Illustrator expert Felicito Papa, showing Obama’s alleged true and correct copy of his birth certificate to be a computer generated forgery

P4. Affidavit of witness Linda Jordan, attesting to the fact, that SSN 042-68-4425, used by Obama, does not pass E-Verify

p6. Selective service certificate showing Obama using SSN 042-68-4425 and official printout from Social Security Number Verification Services, showing that 042-68-4425 was never issued to Barack Obama, attached e-mail from Colonel Gregory Hollister

p7. Affidavit of Adobe Illustrator expert Felicito Papa, showing that Obama is using CT SSN 042-68-4425 on his 2009 tax returns

p9. Hawaiian birth certificate 61-00637 of Susan Nordyke, born a few hours after Obama in Kapiolani Hospital, looks completely different from alleged copy of birth certificate of Obama

p10. Passport records of Stanley Ann Dunham Obama, mother of Barack Obama, showing Obama listed in her passport under the name Barack Obama Soebarkah, attached affidavit by Chris Strunk, recipient of Obama’s passport records under FOIA

p11. Barack Obama’s Indonesian school registration card #203, date accepted January 1, 1968, released by the Associated Press in Indonesia, showing him using last name Soetoro and listing citizenship -Indonesia….

For the record, I have no idea what Social Security Number Barack Obama is using.  I frankly hope he doesn’t know mine, either!  But if in fact Barack Obama is using a bogus Connecticut Social Security Number given that his own claim is that he was born in Hawaii, that in and of itself should be utterly devastating and he should be forced to either resign or be removed from office immediately.

January 27, 2012
Georgia Ballot Challenge: Obama Walks On By
By Cindy Simpson and Alan P. Halbert

Two AT writers attended yesterday’s hearing in Georgia over President Obama’s eligibility for the presidential ballot. Cindy Simpson writes:

President Obama has a habit of turning his back and walking away from those with whom he disagrees, as recently discovered by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer. Professor John Lott, in an interview with Teri O’Brien, recalled similar experiences with Obama while at the University of Chicago.

Ms. O’Brien commented to Professor Lott: “Gods don’t debate. They just issue decrees.”

And apparently they also tend to place themselves above the law.

On January 26, I was in Atlanta to observe the hearings on the challenges to Obama’s eligibility to appear on Georgia’s 2012 ballot. In two previous American Thinker blog posts, “The Birthers Went Down to Georgia” and “Georgia on Obama’s Mind,” I described the content and history of the cases.

The courtroom was crowded to maximum capacity; however, the table for the defense was notably vacant. The defendant, Obama himself, was also not in attendance, even though the judge last week refused to quash the subpoena requesting his presence. Judge Michael Malihi, in his denial, stated:

…Defendant fails to provide any legal authority to support his motion to quash the subpoena to attend. Defendant’s motion suggests that no President should be compelled to attend a Court hearing. This may be correct. But Defendant has failed to enlighten the Court with any legal authority…evidencing why his attendance is “unreasonable or oppressive, or that the testimony… [is] irrelevant, immaterial, or cumulative and unnecessary…”

Obama’s attorney, Michael Jablonski, had warned of his absence in a defiant and last-minute move on the afternoon of January 25, via a letter he sent to Georgia’s Secretary of State Brian Kemp. He requested that Kemp “bring an end to this baseless, costly and unproductive hearing by withdrawing the original hearing request as improvidently issued.” Jablonski’s letter concluded: “We await your taking the requested action, and as we do so, we will, of course, suspend further participation in these proceedings, including the hearing scheduled for January 26.”

A few hours later, the blogosphere lit up with the news that Secretary Kemp had responded with a letter stating that the hearings would continue on the 26^th as scheduled, and concluded with the warning: “…if you and your client choose to suspend your participation in the OSAH proceedings, please understand that you do so at your own peril.”

And the hearings did proceed, although approximately 20 minutes late, after Judge Malihi requested a pre-hearing conference with all of the attorneys in his chambers.

Van Irion of the Liberty Legal Foundation presented his case first, followed by J. Mark Hatfield and Orly Taitz. Irion’s argument focused on the definition of “natural born” citizen in the holding of Minor v Happersett and the principle of “statutory construction” in the interpretation of the 14^th amendment. Hatfield added the fact that the Interpretations of the Immigration and Naturalization Service recognize the delineation between “natural born” and “native-born” citizenship.

Orly Taitz also ably presented her evidence regarding the legitimacy of Obama’s birth certificate and questions surrounding his Social Security number, even though she was rushed by the judge on several occasions, shortening her planned two-hour presentation by half.

After only two hours for three hearings that most spectators had expected to take several, Judge Malihi asked the attorneys to file briefs by February 5 and dismissed the courtroom. No date has been set for his decision.

Rumors began flying around the blogosphere almost immediately — primarily one that the judge had informed the attorneys, in the pre-hearing conference, that he intended to enter a default judgment against Obama. If true, that would essentially mean that yet another action against Obama’s eligibility has resulted in no decision on the merits.

Under Georgia law, the Secretary of State had properly deferred the ballot challenges to the OSAH for the court’s opinion, and the determination of whether or not Obama’s name will appear on the Georgia ballot ultimately rests with the Secretary.

Regardless of the outcome in Georgia, it appears that Obama has openly shown his disregard for the laws of that state. According to Irion, Obama has also “decided that he is above the Courts, the law, and the Constitution. He has just indicated…that he is not subject to their authority. This is the true story from today, yet almost no one will report it.”

Obama has deliberately turned his back, and walked on by.

And most of the media has followed along right behind him.

Alan P. Halbert also attended the hearing and writes:

Obama Declares he is Above Georgia’s Election Laws

Several back-to-back hearings were held on Thursday the 26^th of January 2012 on the status of whether President Obama is Constitutionally eligible under Article II Sec 1 requirements as a “Natural Born Citizen” and appear on the Georgia primary presidential ballot. This came about by several Citizens filing challenges to Obama being placed on primary ballot with the Georgia Secretary of State Mr. Brian P. Kemp in accordance with Georgia election law. Obama had been given an Order to appear along with the production of documents by the presiding Administrative Law Judge assigned to hear the matter, the Honorable Michael Malihi. Obama and his Attorney chose not to comply with the Court’s Order, provide the documents, present a defense or attend the hearing. Obama’s attorney Mr. Jablonski chose instead to send a letter to Mr. Kemp requesting that the hearing be dismissed, as they claimed the Court did not have jurisdiction to hear the matter and that they would not attend if it was held as scheduled. Mr. Kemp responded with his regrets that they decided to forgo the Hearing and warned them “they did so at their own peril” if they failed to offer evidence disputing the allegation of the Citizens complaints.

The election of a President is done through the compilation and aggregation of the individual State Election returns which have the responsibility under the Constitution to conduct Elections. It most assuredly is a Citizen’s Right to inquire into the Constitutional qualification of any Candidate to hold any elected office in Georgia whether it is a State or Federal Office which includes the office of President. This is also the case with the other forty nine States as well which have similar Statutes.

The evidence that was presented was varied and ran the gamut of the factual legal arguments to evidence of a personal nature attributed personally to Obama. Mr. Van Irion of Liberty Legal Foundation presented the facts of Minor V. Happersett and portrayed it front and center as to the definition of a “Natural Born Citizen” and as definitive from a unanimous ruling by SCOTUS in 1875 — the legal heart of the matter. An Amicus Brief was filed in the case by Leo Donofrio Esq. and would be considered an authoritative discussion of the natural born citizen issue and its common law lineage. Each attorney (three in all) in due course presented their cases then rested as the next one presented the case; it appeared well coordinated among all attorneys.

Most all of the testimony was given by expert witnesses, except for the foundation testimony of the citizens that brought the actions; document experts on the authenticity of Obama’s Birth Certificate, the Social Security number he uses (used on tax returns) and his and his mother’s passport records. A private investigator testified that his Social Security Number (SSN) was originally issued to a deceased individual born in 1890, and was issued from Connecticut a State he is never been known to inhabit.

Orly Taitz, the last attorney to present her case, has been the subject of considerable criticism of her character by various persons during her four year ordeal stretching back to 2008 when she started down this road with Obama. She drew considerable ire and vitriol from Mr. Jablonski, in his letter to Mr. Kemp requesting the dismissal of the hearing. Her case was developed with credible skill however lacked the polish of an experienced litigator. Though appeared solid in evidentiary value and her presentation of the facts were damning. It was probably for the personal nature of her inquiry of Obama and his credentials which drew such criticism from others along the way and Obama’s attorney in particular.

She presented through direct testimony the opinions of several document experts that declared the Birth Certificate presented by Obama last April as having the hallmarks of an assembled or false document, as it was layered similar to what would be produced with modern computer software, and not a simple copy of an official record from 1961. He also discussed anomalies of certain character spacing which would not have been present or possible with the typewriters of the 1960′s. This layering issue was further verified by another expert witness for document scanning technology and his conclusion was that his long form birth certificate appeared to be falsified as well by certain abnormal patterns appearing in his Birth Certificate.

The compilation of this information was then verified by another expert witness, a retired Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) investigator. He testified that the anomalies seen on Obama’s records, Social Security Number and birth certificate which had different Registrars for similar certificates that were issued within days of one another was difficult to explain. The out of Sequence birth certificate issuance numbers which were lower than Obama’s, though issued several days after his birth, was difficult to explain as these numbers are issued sequentially. There were issues with the official embossed seal that were not accurate for similar records issued during this time period in Hawaii, his birthplace. He testified that these anomalies rose to the level that would require further investigation, possible arrest and prosecution for documents that had the cumulative defects that Obama’s exhibited in similar investigation of false documents.

However, what I find most baffling was the decision of Obama and his Attorney choosing to be absent from the proceedings. However, Judge Malihi conducted the hearing in a manner of decorum and was an honest presentation of the facts. Though was hard to guard against the bias of the parties without Obama and his Council being present.

Many people who are unfamiliar with the Legal System do not know that the hearing or trial level is known as the “trier of the facts”. Only matters of Law can be appealed, not the facts that are developed, presented or testified to in any hearing or trial. Only when there is overwhelming evidence of malfeasance, gross perjury or the denial of the admissibility of probative evidence is a new trial or hearing ordered when a mistake of law has been found on appeal. As a practical matter appellate courts rarely order such remedy, when ordered it is believed that the defendant did not have his constitutional right to face his accusers at the trier of the facts level!

Since Obama and his attorney chose not to be present a defense and dispute the evidence that was presented, this can be taken as an admission that all of the evidence admitted were indeed facts and may not be disputed at a later time on appeal! The irony of this course is that Obama is declaring that the court has no Jurisdiction in this matter and will appeal as a matter of law though these damning facts may very well stand! It also gives the impression that he considers himself above the law — Georgia’s. We have a plethora of data points on the sequestering of all of Obama’s records and bona fides which he has spent millions of dollars to keep out the public’s hands for the last four years. After this hearing we may eventually know why.

________________________________________________________________________

Below is a summary list of the physical evidence introduced in yesterday’s hearing in GA.

P2. Affidavit of Senior Deportation Officer with the Department of Homeland Security John Sampson, showing that Obama is using Connecticut SSN 042-68-4425

p3. Affidavit of Adobe Illustrator expert Felicito Papa, showing Obama’s alleged true and correct copy of his birth certificate to be a computer generated forgery

P4. Affidavit of witness Linda Jordan, attesting to the fact, that SSN 042-68-4425, used by Obama, does not pass E-Verify

p6. Selective service certificate showing Obama using SSN 042-68-4425 and official printout from Social Security Number Verification Services, showing that 042-68-4425 was never issued to Barack Obama, attached e-mail from Colonel Gregory Hollister

p7. Affidavit of Adobe Illustrator expert Felicito Papa, showing that Obama is using CT SSN 042-68-4425 on his 2009 tax returns

p9. Hawaiian birth certificate 61-00637 of Susan Nordyke, born a few hours after Obama in Kapiolani Hospital, looks completely different from alleged copy of birth certificate of Obama

p10. Passport records of Stanley Ann Dunham Obama, mother of Barack Obama, showing Obama listed in her passport under the name Barack Obama Soebarkah, attached affidavit by Chris Strunk, recipient of Obama’s passport records under FOIA

p11. Barack Obama’s Indonesian school registration card #203, date accepted January 1, 1968, released by the Associated Press in Indonesia, showing him using last name Soetoro and listing citizenship -Indonesia….

Amicus Brief. Mr. Leo Donofrio, Esq.

This is an important story, if for no other reason than that we should finally be able to know for certain the issue of Obama’s elegibility to be president.

Liberals want to depict these questions as racist; very well, then: it was racist LIBERALS who demanded to see John McCain’s birth certificate.  So we’re all of us racist alike.

“When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” — Benjamin Franklin

Who also said:

“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.” — Benjamin Franklin

Pretty much at every opportunity, liberals continue to live down to my low opinion of them.  This from the other day in California:

Poll: Governor Brown’s tax initiative gaining support
Wednesday, January 25, 2012

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed ballot initiative to raise taxes has wide support among California voters, but his path to victory in November remains far from certain, according to the results of a poll released Tuesday.

More than two-thirds of California’s likely voters say they favor the Democratic governor’s proposal to raise taxes as a way to stabilize state finances. Yet roughly the same proportion say they strongly disagree with a key element of that plan, raising the statewide sales tax, according to the Public Policy Institute of California survey.

 The poll, conducted in mid-January, illustrates the difficulty the governor faces in navigating the state’s political cross-currents as he pushes his top priority for 2012.

Likely voters overwhelmingly say they favor raising taxes to pay for K-12 education and support raising income taxes on the wealthy, the cornerstones of the initiative Brown hopes to place on the November ballot. But they also do not want to raise the sales tax, believe the state could spend less money while maintaining the same level of services and are pessimistic about the direction of the economy.

 ”Therein lies the challenge for the governor,” said Mark Baldassare, president and chief executive of the Public Policy Institute. “He has some things he has attached to his tax initiative which do resonate with voters … but there are lots of other elements to question.”

 Brown and his supporters have been cleared to gather petition signatures for his initiative, which the governor refers to as “The Schools and Local Public Safety Protection Act of 2012.” His title does not refer to the temporary tax increases, which would raise between $4.8 billion and $7 billion a year.

 The initiative would boost the statewide sales tax by half a cent for four years starting in January 2013. It also would raise the income tax rate on those making $250,000 a year, increasing it from 9.3 percent to a maximum of 11.3 percent, depending on the amount of income. The income tax increase would start in January 2013 and last for five years.

 Most of the additional revenue would be dedicated to K-12 education, with much of the rest funding the governor’s plan to have counties house lower-level convicts who otherwise would have been sentenced to state prison.

Would I be in favor of seizing money from other people to force them to pay for the stuff I want?  SURE! says the left.

Would I be in favor of actually giving up some of my own money for the stuff I want?  HOW DARE YOU ASK ME TO SACRIFICE!!!

We live in a country in which the top five percent pay FIFTY PERCENT of the federal taxes, while the “bottom” fifty percent pay ZERO PERCENT of the federal taxes, and we’re told the rich don’t pay their “fair share.”  Because liberalism and honesty are like slimy toxic oil and clean water and these simply do not mix.

When it is somebody’s ELSE’S money, there’s no problems and no questioning.  Raise other peoples’ taxes!  Yeah!  When it is even a tiny percent of their own money, suddenly they’re saying, “The government wastes an awful lot of money and they could make do with a whole lot less, so….”

Benjamin Franklin had it right: he saw the day when America would vote for its own collapse as fifty percent plus one decided to vote itself the possessions of the few.

The “good news” – unless you’re a Californian, anyway – is that these nasty people will suffer for their own greed as the wealthy simply increasingly leave the state:

Several studies, including the American Legislative Exchange Council’s “Rich States, Poor States,” and past reports by the Americans for Tax Reform Foundation have documented the movement of taxpayers from high tax to low tax states in recent years.

These studies present compelling evidence that taxes are the single largest factor in interstate migration, compared to factors such as climate, employment, family relocation, etc.

 

Our analysis takes this methodology one step further. Using data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), we calculated both the number of taxpayers migrating, and also calculated the adjusted gross income (AGI) that left the state as well. That is, we have calculated how much money—in terms of personal income—states lose or gain due to migration. Our findings confirm that taxpayers are leaving states with higher taxes and unfunded pension and healthcare liabilities.

 

Due to the ease of interstate movement, taxpayers can easily avoid higher taxes by moving to another state. As such, there is a significant Laffer effect wherein a rise in tax rates can lead to lower government revenues as individuals flee the state. There are nine states with no income tax – Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming. In 2008 alone these states gained a net total of over 80,000 new residents from the other 41 states. These migrants brought with them over $900 million of net adjusted income according to IRS data.

 

In contrast, the ten states with the highest tax burden, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Vermont, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania lost around 129,455 residents and $10.2 billion of net-adjusted income in 2008 alone.

 

From 1998 through 2008, the ten states with the highest tax burden lost over 3 million residents. These residents took with them a staggering $92 billion in income.

 

[...]

 

It is also clear that individuals are aware that unfunded liabilities will eventually become taxes; states with large unfunded liabilities for public employee pensions and health care are seeing workers flee, particularly workers between ages 30 and 40, who are most likely to see future tax hikes.

 

In addition to higher levels of emigration, higher tax states also maintain higher unemployment rates, placing an expanding tax burden on a shrinking tax base. It is unsurprising, then, that the top five highest-tax states consistently have about a 0.5 percent higher unemployment rate than the five states with the lowest tax burden.

 

States that attempt to raise taxes to balance their budgets encourage their most productive citizens to find more welcoming homes. They also discourage productivity, as taxpayers get to keep less of what they earn in high-tax states. Worst of all, increased taxes provide government with the permission it needs to grow by sustaining the bloated spending of irresponsible state governments. Absent significant changes in their tax-and-spend schemes, these high tax states will soon find themselves without a populace to support the extravagant costs of living in those states.

That begs a good question: just what IS California’s liberal-created pension time bomb?  I’m glad you asked:

California’s $500-billion pension time bomb
April 06, 2010|By David Crane

The staggering amount of unfunded debt stands to crowd out funding for many popular programs. Reform will take something sadly lacking in the Legislature: political courage.

The state of California’s real unfunded pension debt clocks in at more than $500 billion, nearly eight times greater than officially reported.

That’s the finding from a study released Monday by Stanford University’s public policy program, confirming a recent report with similar, stunning findings from Northwestern University and the University of Chicago.

And since Art Laffer’s name was mentioned, one ought to cite him to point out that the so-called “Buffett Rule” Obama is demagoguing and pimping wouldn’t make Warren Buffett pay more in taxes where it would touch Warren Buffett:

Waving Mr. Buffett’s op-ed for all to see, Mr. Obama wasted no time in proposing a surtax on millionaires called the “Buffett Rule.” Putting aside all the oohing and ahhing over Mr. Buffett’s selflessness, his effective tax rate on his true income would hardly budge if this “Buffett Rule” were applied. What’s worse, raising the highest tax rates would most likely worsen the budget deficit and lead to a further weakening of the economy. Everyone would suffer.

The piece goes on to point out that Warren Buffett disingenuously understates his income by 250-fold.  And Buffett’s “rule” wouldn’t touch 249/250ths of Buffett’s real income.

What we are being force fed by the Democrat Party and by the mainstream media who serve as their propagandaists is pure Marxist class warfare.  And Marxism is a failed economic system for good reason.

Even the POOR are leaving high-taxed states for lower-taxed states.  Why?  Because many of them want a job, not a handout, and states like California kill the golden goose to rip out a few eggs rather than create opportunity:

California’s rich are leaving for lower-tax states. The state (slogan: “We’ll Owe You”) has among the highest tax regimes in the country, with a top marginal tax rate of 9.3% and an additional 1% tax on those earning $1 million or more a year.

Three states with no personal income taxes—Nevada, Texas, and Washington—are among the top five destinations for the highest-income fifth of California households, according to the Institutes own data.

Those states also are among the top destinations for California’s poor.

The real lesson here, in my view, is that high taxes and broken government chase away rich and poor alike.

But as long as there are Marxist liberals (and ALL liberals are Marxist liberals, because ALL liberals agree with the Marxist statement, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need“), screw the rich.  And screw the poor who actually want a job and opportunity to improve their own lives too.

I wrote an article titled, “Who Spent More? Average Bush Vs. Average Obama Spending Per Day Proves Obama Most Reckless And Irresponsible EVER.”  It certainly isn’t my biggest article ever (as an example, I once had someone who called herself “Ann” come across one of my articles titled, “Tax Cuts Increase Revenues; They Have ALWAYS Increased Revenues,” and it turned out to have been Ann COULTER.  She linked to it on her site and it just went ballistic), but this more recent article is definitely in the top ten in terms of views in a single week:

Now, I’m sure that some bloggers who might come across this might think, “9k views in a week for one article?  Big Deal.  I get that all the time.”  But as I said, this is definitely one of my top ten most viewed in such a short time period.

I obviously love it very much when an article I write takes off, because I’m writing to try to make a difference.  But the problem is that somebody must have re-posted my “Who Spent More” article under a rock or something.  Because a bunch of liberals suddenly started coming to visit me.

Now here’s the thing that annoys me.  I’ve got a very clear premise that clearly matches my title: Democrats demonized George Bush for spending, but lo and behold Obama’s spending makes Bush’s spending look Lilliputian in just three years in office.  But do liberals want to talk about Obama’s spending?  Nope.  That is pretty much the last thing they want to talk about when they comment to me.

What is the real important subject as far as they’re concerned?  In a word, it’s that I’m “mean.”

And, you see, if I’m mean it means that facts don’t matter, so nyah, nyah, nyah.  Or something to that effect.

I tried to respond to somebody the other day that if Aristotle had a scowl, he’d be just as good of a philosopher as if he wore a smile.  But that didn’t seem to wash.  The “You’re a mean meany so I get to disregard all of your facts” meme continued to play and play like puppies who afterward can’t control their little bladders.

If you were racing down the road at 120 mph and I had a scowl on my face when I shouted that the bridge had washed out, would it really matter whether I had that scowl and shouted?  I mean, if you’re genuinely sane?

The bottom line, for the record, is that liberals are giving me a play from the Saul Alinksy playbook.  He said on page 75 of his Rules for Radicals (which was dedicated to Lucifer as “the first radical known to man”):

“Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more live up to their own rules than the Christian Church can live up to Christianity.”

And, to an extent, this is true.  For one thing liberals don’t have any rules or code of honor that binds them; they can be as vile as they wish: Lucifer sure won’t care.  And the Kingdom Jesus established is a spiritual one.  And you must therefore either recognize that strife and violence is a part of this world while you strive for the better one to come, or you simply bow your head to the next dictator that comes along.  But it is very difficult to fight for a very political world in the here-and-now against a side that has no rules beyond “Rules for Radicals.”  It’s a genuine dilemma for Christians.

This dilemma has increasingly overtaken us during the course of the last century.  It was there when the Germans used first poison gas and then total war and then the intentional bombing of civilian populations.  Should we have used these vile tactics against an enemy that had no moral restraint, or should we have encouraged more and more of the same by displaying that we wouldn’t fight in such a way that the enemy knew there would be consequences for such terrible actions?  By using poison gas ourselves we forced the Germans to quit using it; wouldn’t not using poison gas have amounted to an immoral sacrifice of our own troops?

I’ve come to realize that I can turn the other cheek to the guy I’m trying to bring into the kingdom of heaven and I can shoot the home invasion psychos who are breaking in my house to murder my family.  And I believe that any morally intelligent individual can understand that difference.

I also believe that most of the reason that culture has degenerated to the shocking extent that it has (I mean Lady Gaga?  Seriously?) is related to the fact that too few Christians were willing to stand up and fight – even wrestle in the mud as necessary – for their culture.  It was far easier for too many to create their own little sub-culture, much as the monks did in walling themselves up in monasteries lest they have to face a nasty world.

So I’m fighting as best I know how.  And I often must fight against a pseudo-righteousness from a side that calls me all kinds of terrible names and labels even as it hypocritically demands I refrain from doing the same thing they’re doing to me.

In any event, I’ve recently gotten a larger dose in a shorter period of time crap from liberals that I’ve basically been experiencing since the day I got my “very first comment” and it turned out to be from a liberal hater.  I’m getting my fill of liberal avoidance and victimism and projection and other disorders.

“Victimism” in this context is when a liberal practices a particularly bizarre form of psychological jujitsu in order to make themselves the victim in an argument or debate.  You see, in their warped little minds, if they can manage to make themselves the victim, they win.  It doesn’t matter how strong your case is or how weak theirs is otherwise; in liberalism the victim always wins.  Period.  And look; they’re the victim!

So, of course, if I say something mean – (regardless of anything vile they previously said to me) – they become the victim and therefore they win the debate.  Because that’s the way their world works.

You can, of course, translate this into the larger socio-economic-and-political issues: victimhood means everything to the left.  It is a cherished status to be sought above everything else – especially above facts.

I would rather have someone sitting right next to me raking her fingernails over a chalkboard than be involved in such a “debate.”  But as a conservative blogger I am nevertheless forced to endure it most every day.

There’s a flip side to the victimism, and that is avoidance.

Liberals do not like things called “facts” or “arguments.”  They are too constraining and isn’t “liberalism” all about feeling free from such constraints?

So I write an article on the issue of abortion and as a result I get called a “KKK racist.”  I get a very similar accusation of being a racist if I talk about government spending.  Because, as we all know, being pro-life or anti-reckless government spending is very clearly “racist.”  I mean, what liberal doesn’t know that?

Why talk about the facts when you can talk about something else instead?

So all the time I respond to liberals, carefully try to interact with and refute their arguments, and it’s like I haven’t said anything, or maybe like I’m writing in a different, incomprehensible language.

I get very bored very quickly arguing with somebody who doesn’t bother to even acknowledge anything I say.  I start thinking about all the things I could be doing that would be far more productive usages of my time.

Again, that’s pretty much just par for the course of being a conservative blogger.

There’s another psychological malady that’s pretty typical of the liberals who comment on my site: a bizarre identity disorder which results in liberals being unable to simply admit what they are.  All the time I get people who are very clearly committed leftists/Democrats trying to pass themselves off as “moderates” or “independents.”  Because, you see, if they’re “moderate,” then they represent the giant voice of the middle.  And how on earth can I debate someone who is the living embodiment of The Middle.

So I get liberals all the time who will post comment after comment – with every single ONE of those comments arguing for liberal/Democrat positions – and then they’ll tell me that they’re most certainly NOT liberals or Democrats.

Often I catch them red-handed being deceitful, such as a guy who started calling himself “Moderate Conservative” to try to fool me shortly after introducing himself as “Moderate Liberal.”  He lacked any shame for his deceit in attempting to pass himself off as something he was not, but at least I got him to acknowledge what he was doing.  And this same guy was posting to the “Who Spent More” article, fwiw.  He was lecturing me on being more civil while dissociating himself from the vileness of his own side.  Because the Democrat Party – at the highest national levels – call conservatives “terrorists” and “racists” and “anti-immigrant” and every hateful pejorative they can think up.  We want dirtier air and dirtier water and we want children to suffer from Down Syndrome and autism – and those last according to the guy who is calling himself “the President of the United States” as though he represented the entire country rather than just the radical left.

Notice everything I’m linking to is recent.  I don’t have to dredge stuff up from 16 months ago; I get this crap ALL THE TIME from liberals.

It’s not enough for me to say that I would never go to a liberal’s blog and try to pass myself off as a liberal in order to achieve some perverted goal; I have never even HEARD of a conservative talking about trying to pull that kind of stunt.  It is a peculiar disorder that only liberals suffer.

But, again, the left does it all the time.  It’s simply a documented fact that they have done this and continue to do it.  They pretend to be conservatives and do something vile to make people believe the lie that conservatives are vile rather than the TRUTH that liberals are vile.

And you might notice that liberals have to manufacture crap by deceit against conservatives.  Liberals just crap all over the place all by themselves:

Personally, I believe that liberals, at least at some subconscious level, intuitively understand that they are cockroaches and really ought to feel ashamed of themselves if they could only possess the virtue of shame.  But that’s just a pet theory of mine.

This reminds me of another personality disorder that defines the left: projection.  In psychology, you’ve got the pathologically angry person who immediately assumes that everyone around him is angry – which of course justifies his constant angry outbursts.

Well, we don’t have to stretch very hard to think about all the labels and demonization the left handed out to the Tea Party.  And then the Occupy (OWS) movement came along and showed us what all the ugliness the left was falsely accusing the Tea Party of REALLY looks like:

Call The Occupy Protest Movement And The Left That It Comes From What It Truly Is: Fascist

Occupy Movement Costs America UNTOLD MILLIONS ($2.3 Milion In L.A. ALONE) Versus Tea Party Movement Which MADE Cities Money

Liberalism = Marxism. See The Occupy Movement Shutting Down Ports, Capitalism, Jobs To Get Their Way (Communist Russian Revolution Part Deux)

After Obama Deceitfully Demonized GOP For ‘Dirtier Air And Dirtier Water,’ His Occupy Movement Leaves Behind 30 TONS Of Diseased Filfth At Just ONE Site

Vile Liberal Occupy Movement Killed The Grass At L.A. City Hall – What Should Be Done Now?

Occupy Movement Officially A Terrorist Group Now

The American Left Personified By Occupy Movement: Vile, Violent Fascist Thugs

Vile Occupy Protests In Videos

Occupy Movement Is Destroying Jobs And Hurting Little People

Tea Party Vs. Occupy Protests: The Winners Of The Out-Of-Control Violence Trophy – For The Millionth Consecutive Time – Is The LEFT

Nazis, Socialists, Communists, Liberals, Democrats, Obama, Media Propaganda ALL Support Occupy Wall Street

So, yes, liberalism IS a mental disorder.

But rather than simply walking around muttering to themselves like they ought to, liberals find a way to make their unfortunate mental condition as annoying and harmful as possible.

I just wish they wouldn’t do it so much around me.  But as a conservative blogger, I am a light.  And they are a bunch of moths.

Wisconsin Govenor Scott Walker’s policy has already proven he was right and the über fascist left that viciously attacked him was über wrong.  Take a look at some of these articles I’ve done to refresh yourself on Wisconsin (fr0m oldest to most recent):

While Unions Have Manufactured Hissy Fit In Wisconsin, Scott Walker Doing EXACTLY What He Promised Voters

As Democrats Play Games With The Democratic Process, It Turns Out Republicans Can Play Games, Too

Wisconsin Cut-and-Run Democrats Are FleeBaggers

14 Wisconsin Democrat Deserters: ‘Jobs? We Don’t Need No Stinking Jobs!’

Vile Unions Threaten To Molest Governor Scott Walker’s Children As Vile Propaganda Media Looks Other Way

Liberals Lie On Public Sector Compensation And The Terrifying Crisis America Faces

Union Liberal Fascists Find Latest Crisis To Exploit In Wisconsin

Wisconsin Marxist Collectivist Bargaining With The Devil Game Over: Decent Americans 1, Liberal Unions 0

Need Proof Democrats Are Un-American? Just Look At Wisconsin And Count The Ways

Liberal Fascists In Wisconsin: Show Me Crap Like THIS Coming From Tea Party Protests

Wisconsin Democrats Show America What Naked Chutzpah Looks Like

Here is the latest on this story:

Christian Schneider
It’s Working in Walker’s Wisconsin
The governor’s controversial labor reforms are already saving taxpayers millions.

One morning last February, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker called his staff into his office. “Guys,” he warned, “it’s going to be a tough week.” Walker had recently sent a letter to state employees proposing steps—ranging from restricting collective bargaining to requiring workers to start contributing to their own pension accounts—to eliminate the state’s $3.6 billion deficit. That day in February was when Walker would announce his plan publicly.

It turned out to be a tough year. The state immediately erupted into a national spectacle, with tens of thousands of citizens, led by Wisconsin’s public-employee unions, seizing control of the capitol for weeks to protest the reforms. By early March, the crowds grew as big as 100,000, police estimated. Protesters set up encampments in the statehouse, openly drinking and engaging in drug use beneath the marble dome. Democratic state senators fled Wisconsin to prevent a vote on Walker’s plan. Eventually, the Senate did manage to pass the reforms, which survived a legal challenge and became law in July.

The unions aren’t done yet: they’re now trying to recall Walker from office. To do so, they will try to convince Wisconsin voters that Walker’s reforms have rendered the state ungovernable. But the evidence, so far, contradicts that claim—and Wisconsinites seem to realize it.

Back in 1959, Wisconsin became the first state to let public employees unionize. The unions spent the next half-century productively, generating lavish benefits for their members. By the time Walker took office in 2011, the overwhelming majority of state and local government workers paid nothing toward the annual contributions to their pension accounts, which equaled roughly 10 percent of their salaries per year. The average employee also used just 6.2 percent of his salary on his health-insurance premium. Among Walker’s reforms, therefore, was requiring employees to start paying 5.8 percent of their salaries, on average, toward their pensions and to double their health-insurance payments to 12.4 percent of their salaries. These two changes, Walker estimated, would save local governments $724 million annually, letting him cut state aid to localities and reduce Wisconsin’s $3.6 billion biennial deficit.

These measures angered unions, but Walker’s other moves were even more controversial. One was to allow government employees to bargain collectively only when negotiating wages; in other areas, collective bargaining would no longer be part of the contract-making process. The unions screamed bloody murder, decrying the loss of what they called their “right” to collective bargaining. “We are prepared to implement the financial concessions proposed to help bring our state’s budget into balance, but we will not be denied our God-given right to join a real union,” said Marty Beil, head of the Wisconsin State Employees Union, back in February. “We will not—I repeat we will not—be denied our rights to collectively bargain.”

What had the unions most up in arms, however, was a reform that ended mandatory dues for members. Wisconsin unions were collecting up to $1,100 per member per year in these obligatory payments, which they then spent on getting sympathetic politicians elected. In the last two elections, for instance, the state’s largest teachers’ union spent $3.6 million supporting candidates. Walker’s reform meant that government workers could now opt out of paying these dues—savings that could help offset those workers’ newly increased health and pension payments, the governor said. The unions knew that, given the option, many of their members would indeed choose not to write a check—and that this would strangle union election spending.

The unions’ battle against Walker’s reforms has rested on the argument that the changes would damage public services beyond repair. The truth, however, is that the reforms not only are saving money already; they’re doing so with little disruption to services. In early August, noticing the trend, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that Milwaukee would save more in health-care and pension costs than it would lose in state aid, leaving the city $11 million ahead in 2012—despite Mayor Tom Barrett’s prediction in March that Walker’s budget “makes our structural deficit explode.”

The collective-bargaining component of Walker’s plan has yielded especially large financial dividends for school districts. Before the reform, many districts’ annual union contracts required them to buy health insurance from WEA Trust, a nonprofit affiliated with the state’s largest teachers’ union. Once the reform limited collective bargaining to wage negotiations, districts could eliminate that requirement from their contracts and start bidding for health care on the open market. When the Appleton School District put its health-insurance contract up for bid, for instance, WEA Trust suddenly lowered its rates and promised to match any competitor’s price. Appleton will save $3 million during the current school year.

Appleton isn’t alone. According to a report by the MacIver Institute, as of September 1, “at least 25 school districts in the Badger State had reported switching health care providers/plans or opening insurance bidding to outside companies.” The institute calculates that these steps will save the districts $211.45 per student. If the state’s other 250 districts currently served by WEA Trust follow suit, the savings statewide could reach hundreds of millions of dollars.

At the outset of the public-union standoff, educators had made dire predictions that Walker’s reforms would force schools to fire teachers. In February, to take one example, Madison School District Superintendent Dan Nerad predicted that 289 teachers in his district would be laid off. Walker insisted that his reforms were actually a job-retention program: by accepting small concessions in health and pension benefits, he argued, school districts would be able to spare hundreds of teachers’ jobs. The argument proved sound. So far, Nerad’s district has laid off no teachers at all, a pattern that has held in many of the state’s other large school districts. No teachers were laid off in Beloit and LaCrosse; Eau Claire saw a reduction of two teachers, while Racine and Wausau each laid off one. The Wauwatosa School District, which faced a $6.5 million shortfall, anticipated slashing 100 jobs—yet the new pension and health contributions saved them all.

The benefits to school districts aren’t just fiscal, moreover. Thanks to Walker’s collective-bargaining reforms, the Brown Deer school district in suburban Milwaukee can implement a performance-pay system for its best teachers—a step that could improve educational outcomes.

Over the summer, a sign surfaced that the public wasn’t as alarmed by the Walker agenda as the unions would have liked. In August, six Republican state senators who had supported the reforms were forced to defend their seats in recall elections. Democrats, in the minority by a 19–14 margin, needed to pick up three seats to take back the Senate. In the days before the election, Wisconsin Democratic Party chairman Mike Tate touted poll numbers showing Democrats leading in three races and in a dead heat in the rest. “Independents are moving towards the Democratic candidates in strong numbers,” he told a group of national reporters. Every race, he claimed, was “eminently winnable.”

The manner in which the public unions ran the campaigns was telling. Because they realized that public-sector collective bargaining wasn’t the wedge issue that they’d expected, not a single union-backed ad mentioned it— even though it was the reason that the unions had mobilized for the recall elections in the first place. Instead, the union ads cried that Scott Walker had “cut $800 million from the state’s schools.” This was true, but the ads neglected to mention that the governor’s increased health-care and pension-contribution requirements made up for those funds, just as Walker had planned. That the unions poured nearly $20 million into the races, by the way, validated another argument of Walker’s: that mandatory dues are a conduit through which taxpayer money gets transferred to public-sector unions, which use it to elect Democrats, who then negotiate favorable contracts with the unions. In this case, the newly strapped Wisconsin unions had to rely heavily on contributions from unions in other states.

In the end, Republicans held four of the six seats and retained control of the Senate. Democrats nevertheless bragged about defeating two incumbents, but that achievement was more modest than it appeared. One of the Republican incumbents was in a district that Barack Obama had won by 18 points in 2008. The other losing Republican had been plagued by personal problems relating to his 25-year-old mistress. Meanwhile, two of the challenged Republicans, Alberta Darling and Sheila Harsdorf, won more decisively than they had in 2008, suggesting that the reforms might be strengthening some Republican incumbents. (The other two senators who kept their seats, Luther Olsen and Rob Cowles, ran unopposed three years ago, so it’s harder to tell whether their popularity has grown.)

The unions’ cause has been hurt by some widely reported stories of public-sector mischief. The most outrageous was the saga of Warren Eschenbach, an 86-year-old former school crossing guard from Wausau. After he retired, Eschenbach, who lives two doors down from Riverview Elementary, kept helping kids cross the road every morning; it gave him a reason to get up each day, he told a local TV station. But the Wausau teachers’ union didn’t see it that way: it filed a grievance with the city to stop him, since he was no longer a unionized employee.

Such stories of union malfeasance may not be enough to save Walker. If the governor’s opponents succeed in mounting a recall election, it would take place at some point between April and June. A poll conducted in October for the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, where I work, found that Walker had a fairly low personal approval rating of 42 percent. Further, the public opposed recalling the governor from office by a troublingly slim 49 percent to 47 percent margin.

But if Walker’s task is to convince the public that the state hasn’t devolved into unfunded anarchy, he may have an easier case to make than you’d think. According to the same poll, 71 percent of Wisconsinites believe that the state’s public schools have either stayed the same or improved over the previous half-year. More than three-quarters of Wisconsinites expect the state’s economy either to get better or to stay the same in the next year, up from 60 percent during the height of the union tumult in March. And while just 23 percent of Wisconsinites think that “things in the country are generally going in the right direction,” 38 percent of them believe that that’s the case in Wisconsin, up from 27 percent in November 2010.

At his inauguration in 1959—and shortly before he created public-sector collective bargaining—Wisconsin’s newly elected Democratic governor, Gaylord Nelson, quoted Abraham Lincoln: “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. . . . We must think anew and act anew.” It’s a good thing Scott Walker took his advice. It’s imperative for Wisconsin’s fiscal future that voters take it, too.

Christian Schneider is a senior fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.

If Wisconsin actually votes Scott Walker out of office after he proved that his policies would save the state and create jobs, it will be a poster child for an America that deserves to collapse and fail and die.

Read before you judge. The parallels Ali Sina draws between Obama and Hitler (among other infamous figures with similar personality traits) are compelling to say the least.

Understanding Obama: The Making of a Fuehrer

By Ali Sina

2008/09/22

I must confess I did not like Senator Barack Hussein Obama from the first time I saw him. At first I was excited to see a black candidate. He looked youthful, spoke well, appeared to be confident – a wholesome presidential package. It is so instinctive for most people to want to see blacks succeed. It is as if all humanity is carrying a collective guilt for what the ancestors of blacks endured. However, despite my initial interest in him, I was put off soon, not just because of his shallowness but also because there was an air of haughtiness in his demeanor that was unsettling. His posture and his body language were louder than his empty words.

It is surreal to see the level of hysteria in his admirers. This phenomenon is unprecedented in American politics. Women scream and swoon during his speeches. They yell and shout to Obama, “I love you.” Never George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt. Martin Luther King Jr. or Ronald Reagan arouse so much raw emotions. Despite their achievements, none of them was raised to the rank of Messiah. The Illinois senator has no history of service to the country. He has done nothing outstanding except giving promises of change and hyping his audience with hope. It’s only his words, not his achievements that is causing this much uproar.

When cheering for someone turns into adulation, something is wrong. Excessive adulation is indicative of a personality cult. The cult of personality is often created when the general population is discontent. A charismatic leader can seize the opportunity and project himself as an agent of change and a revolutionary leader. Often, people, tired of the status quo, do not have the patience to examine the nature of the proposed change. All they want is change. During 1979, when the Iranians were tired of the dictatorial regime of the late Shah, they embraced Khomeini, not because they wanted Islam, but because he promised them change. The word in the street was, “anything is better than the Shah.” They found their error when it was too late.

Khomeini promised there would be separation between religion and state. He lied and they did not care to look into his past to see whether he actually meant what he said. Had they done that they would have seen that he always believed in caliphate and the rule of Islam. People gobbled everything he told them uncritically. They wanted to believe and therefore closed their eyes so they didn’t see what they did not want to see. Eyes welled when he spoke. Masses poured into the streets by the millions, screamed and shouted to greet him. People kissed his pictures. Some saw his portrait reflected on the Moon.

Listening to Obama … it harkens back to when I was younger and I used to watch Khomeini, how he would excite the crowd and they’d come to their feet and scream and yell.

I was amused to hear a listener calling Fox News Radio’s Tom Sullivan Show, (Feb 11) and saying: “Listening to Obama … it harkens back to when I was younger and I used to watch those deals with Hitler, how he would excite the crowd and they’d come to their feet and scream and yell.” ( Videos of Hitler’s speeches are available on Youtube. They are worth a look.)

Equating anyone to Hitler by highlighting the similarities between the two is a logical fallacy. This fallacy, known as reductio ad Hitlerum is a variety of both questionable cause and association fallacy. I believe it is wrong to trivialize the holocaust and the horrors of Nazism by comparing our opponents to Hitler.

However, Hitler, prior to coming to power had not killed anyone. He was insane, but few could see that. Far from it, he was seen as a gifted man and hailed as the savior of Germany. He was admired throughout the world. He appealed to the masses of people – the working class and particularly to women, and did not just inspire them, he “elevated” them. Thousands rallied to listen to his passionate speeches. They shed tears when he spoke. Women fainted during his speeches. To Germans, he was not a politician, but a demigod, a messiah. They envisioned him as truly a magical figure of majestic wisdom and glory. They worshiped him. They surrendered their wills to him. He restored their national pride. He projected himself as their savior. He ran on the platform of change and hope. Change he delivered all right, but hopes he shattered.

I think it is fair to say that the Illinois senator puts the same passion in his speeches that Hitler used to put in his, and he evokes similar raw emotions in his audience. This much we can agree. Okay, we can also agree that both Hitler and Charlie Chaplin wore square mustaches. So what?

The Cult of Personality

There are other disturbing similarities. Like Hitler and Khomeini, Obama also likes to create a cult of personality around himself. As stated above, when a large number of a population is discontent, a charismatic leader can seize the opportunity and present himself as the agent of change. He can create a cult of Personality by associating himself with the idea of change. He convinces everyone that things are terrible and a drastic change is needed. He then casts himself as the only person who can deliver this revolutionary transformation that everyone is waiting for. He portrays himself as a benevolent guide, the only one who cares about people and their needs and can pull them out of their alleged misery. In reality, they have no clue about how to address the problem – have no experience, no track record. But they are convincing because they are self assured.

These revolutionary leaders need foes. They exaggerate the problems. They make everything look gloomy. They lie, cheat and slander their opponents while casting themselves as the saviors of the nation. Hitler chose the Jews to blame for everything that was wrong in Germany. Khomeini made the Shah and his westernization plans his scapegoats. Obama has chosen President George W. Bush to smear. He can rally people around himself, as long as he can instill in them the dislike of Bush and equate his rival, McCain to him. Sigmund Freud wrote, “It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggressiveness” (Civilization and Its Discontents).

A cult of personality is excessive adulation, admiration and exaltation of a charismatic leader, often with unproven merits or achievements. It is similar to hero worship except that it is created specifically for political leaders.

Let us read a few of the comments Obama’s fans have made about him. Their unbounded adulation of this totally unknown figure is proof of my claim.

Jon Robin Baitz is the creator of the ABC series “Brothers & Sisters.” He writes:

Today we saw and heard a preview of our brightest possible American future in Senator Barack Obama’s glorious speech. This, then, is what it means to be presidential. To be moral. To have a real center. To speak honestly, from the heart, for the benefit of all. If there was any doubt about what we have missed in the anti-intellectual, ruthlessly incurious Bush years, and even the slippery Clinton ones, those doubts were laid to rest by Barack Obama’s magisterial speech today. A speech in which he distanced himself from a flawed father figure, Reverend Wright, and did so with almost Shakespearean dignity and honor.

For twenty years Obama was part of Jeremiah Wright’s racist church and listened to all the hate which that man spewed against the Jews and the “rich White America.” Obama did not object to any of those hateful comments and even donated $20,000 dollars to his Trinity United Church of Christ. Baitz is willing to overlook all that and, mesmerized by Obama’s speeches, she embraces a man who up until yesterday supported the racist views of his spiritual mentor. She calls Obama’s speech “glorious,” and concludes he is honest and moral. How did she come to that hasty conclusion? There is no evidence of that except her “gut feeling.” That observation is subjective. We have not seen any evidence of Obama’s honesty yet. On the contrary, he has been caught with a litany lies.

Clearly Sen. Obama has a charming effect on his audience, who after listening to him are so moved that they willingly give up their reason and follow their hearts. Let’s see how Baitz adulates Obama to the point of worship.

Barack Obama’s speech, perhaps one of the most important in modern political history pushed us as a people to move beyond race and gender, beyond Democrat and Republican, beyond politics and into reviving the spirit of the nation itself. To talk, to talk at home, at work, at the dinner table. To really finally talk. What a great day, and where else in the world but in the United States? Today I am very proud to be an American.

Remembering the reaction of Iranians to Khomeini’s speeches, this is all deja vu for me.

There is an old adage that says, “Tell me who your friends are and I will tell who you are.” Don’t the quality of Obama’s friends and associates tell us about the man? Shouldn’t we look at the history of this man to ascertain his truthfulness? One characteristic of cult of personality is that people become ready to close their eyes. They find excuses and rationalize the sins of their leader.

Another Obama worshiper is Ezra Klein. He is an associate editor at The American Prospect. Klein wrote:

Obama’s finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don’t even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair. The other great leaders I’ve heard guide us towards a better politics, but Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence.

Obama is not seen by his admirers as a politician but as something holy. Klein says “He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh.” The truth is that Obama is nothing but words! What is scary is that so many smart people are willing to fall for his empty words. Interestingly the same Ezra Klein had earlier said:

Obama is a cipher, an easy repository for the hopes and dreams of liberals everywhere…But if Obama avoided being battle-tested in 2004 by the grace of God, it’s his own timidity that has kept his name clean since. Given his national profile and formidable political talents, he could have been a potent spokesman for Democratic causes in the Senate. Instead, he has refused to expend his political or personal capital on a single controversial issue, preferring to offer anodyne pieces of legislation and sign on to the popular efforts of others…Indeed, Obama is that oddest of all creatures: a leader who’s never led. There are no courageous, lonely crusades to his name, or supremely unlikely electoral battles beneath his belt. He won election running basically unopposed, and then refused to open himself to attack by making a controversial but correct issue his own.”

Quite a shift I would say. What did exactly Obama do, for Klein to change his views so drastically? Nothing! Obama has won this man’s heart only by the power of his mesmerizing words. he is making his conquests, through the sheer power of his oratory. That is how Hitler won the hearts of the Germans. As Obama’s life story shows, his words don’t have any bearing on reality. Words are powerful, but when they are not backed by any substance they are empty rhetoric.

Todd Gitlin, is professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University. He is another worshiper of Obama. This is what he says about his leader.

This speech was a triumph on so many levels, does one dare hope it will turn the trick for hordes of parsing skeptics and listeners whose eyes did not water? First, Obama took the high road, which is also the long and demanding road. He refused to “move on” with a cursory acknowledgment that “mistakes were made.” He did not acknowledge. He preached and he reasoned.”

Let us pause here and examine what this professor of journalism and sociology says. Obama was a close friend of Rev. Jeremiah Wright and listened to his racist sermons for twenty years. Wright is a man who has intense hatred for the Jews, for whites and for America. This clip shows some of his remarks made from the pulpit. Here is a gleaning from his sermons:

• We [The White controlled America] have supported state terrorism against Palestinians and Black South Africans … Because of the stuff we have done overseas is now brought back to our own home front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.
• No, no, no! Not God bless America. God damn America. That is in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God damn America.
• Government lied about Pearl Harbor. They knew that Japanese are going to attack.
• They [Government] purposely infected African-American men with syphilis!
• What is going on in White America, U.S. of KKK?
• Black men turning on Black men? That is fighting the wrong enemy. You both are primary targets in an oppressive society that sees both of you as a dangerous threat.
• What we [America] is doing is the same thing Al Qaida is doing, under a different flag.
• Oh I am so glad, that I got a God who knows what it is to be a poor Black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by and run by rich White people.
• Yes, 911 happened to us, and so did slavery happen to us. Yes the World Trade Center happened to us, and so did White supremacy happen to us.
• “Barack knows what it means to be a Black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich White people.”

When all these came to light, at first the Illinois senator denied having heard them. That excuse was not believable. Wright was Obama’s spiritual mentor and the most influential man in his life. And yet he expects us to believe he listened to his sermons for 20 years but did not pay attention to what he was saying? So he changed his position and admitted to having heard them, but he categorically condemned them. Obama went one step further. He did not just condemn the racist remarks of his Pastor, but he preached and he sermonized how bad are they are. Now, this requires some audacity that only a narcissist can muster. Instead of apologizing and recognizing his error, Obama turned the table and preached to others.

How can we understand this? The man himself is the sinner but instead of acknowledging his sins, he preaches to others about the vices of those sins. The answer can be found in the description of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). Narcissists will never admit being wrong. They are always one step ahead of you.

Those who remember Rev. Jimmy Swaggart know that he was one of the most popular and successful televangelists of all times. During the 1980s, he had millions of fans all over the world. He mesmerized his audience. He was more than a rock star, he was a phenomenon. Swaggart was a preacher of “morality.” He was so against promiscuity and unlawful sex that he went after two other televangelist magnates, Marvin Gorman and Jimmy Baker, exposed their adultery and brought their empires down.

However, what narcissists preach and what they do are two different things. Soon after exposing Gorman’s adultery, Swaggart himself was pictured with a prostitute in a motel room. He was banned from giving sermons for three months. But he could not stay away from the church that provided him with adulation and the people who fed his narcissistic need. He said, “If I do not return to the pulpit this weekend, millions of people will go to hell.” So he returned to the pulpit and after shedding a few crocodile tears of repentance, he went right on preaching morality, chastising adultery and sermoning to others, how THEY should live a chaste life.

This requires audacity. How one who has been caught with a prostitute, literally with his pants down, could have the cheek to preach to others about the very thing he is guilty of? NPD provides the answer to both Swaggart and Obama’s responses, when caught red handed. The narcissist will not apologize for his own sins; he will go on preaching to you about the evilness of those sins. If Professor Gitlin had read a book or two on narcissism, he would have not been hoodwinked by Obama’s preaching about racial harmony after being caught with his proverbial pants down in his racist church. Giltin is not alone; millions of Americans have fallen for this narcissist’s mind games.

Prof. Gitlin continues:
“The Reverend Jeremiah Wright,” he [Obama]said, “had spoken in an ‘incendiary’ manner,” but Obama offered himself as the man who rises from flames and invites you to rise from your own. He took a grievous embarrassment and moved his lesson to the plane of prophecy. Talk about hope; talk about audacity. Tears came to my eyes. I don’t think I’m especially hardhearted, but I cannot think of another time when the speech of a presidential candidate watered me up.

It is amazing to see to what extent people are willing to go to eulogize another human being. It is this excess that constitutes the cult of personality. The difference between admiration and cult of personality is in the degree of adulation. Is it not fair to say that Obama has the same effect on his fans that Hitler, Khomeini or other famous demagogues such as Joseph Stalin or Mao Ze Dong had? I am not equating Obama to those mass murderers. Obama has not killed anyone (at least not yet). I am only comparing their effects on their audience, particularly prior to their rise to power.

Obama’s speeches are unlike any political speech we have heard in American history. Never a politician in this land had such a quasi “religious” impact on so many people. The fact that Obama is a total incognito with zero accomplishment, makes this inexplicable infatuation alarming.

Obama’s speeches are grandiose. They are other worldly. He may talk about the war in Iraq, taxes or social security. It does not matter how mundane is the subject, he makes them sound transcendental and his audience is moved to tears. His worshipers do not go to listen to his plans. He has yet to offer any that is workable and different. They go to bask in his glory, to get high. Obama presents himself as someone with a unique vision and grasp of the entire problems affecting, not just the nation but the world, a pretense that is incommensurate with his track record. When in a meeting with House Democrats waxing lyrical about his trip to Europe, he concluded, “this is the moment, as Nancy [Pelosi] noted, that the world is waiting for.” The world is waiting for Obama, according to Obama. In one of his rallies he reiterated this delusion of grandiosity and said, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” This sentence is logically absurd. What actually Obama wanted to say, which he masked with fake modesty is “I am the one the world has been waiting for.”

When you fall for someone to this extent that Obama’s followers have fallen for him, you surrender your reason and individuality to him willingly. When millions of people surrender their hearts and their minds to one person the result can be catastrophic. This is what happened in Germany with Hitler, in China with Mao, in the Soviet Union with Stalin, in Cuba with Castro, in Iran with Khomeini, and so on and so forth. Today, we think these men were monsters, but that was not what millions of their worshipers thought. Those people loved them. Dictators can’t dictate, unless peole are willing to be dictated.

Here is what Wikipedia says about Cult of Personality:
“A cult of personality or personality cult arises when a country’s leader uses mass media to create a heroic public image through unquestioning flattery and praise. Cults of personality are often found in dictatorships but can be found in some democracies.

“A cult of personality is similar to general hero worship except that it is created specifically for political leaders. However, the term may be applied by analogy to refer to adulation of non-political leaders.”

Who is Obama?

Obama is not an ordinary man. He is not a genius. In fact he is quite ignorant on most important subjects. Barack Obama is a narcissist. Dr. Sam Vaknin, the author of the Malignant Self Love, also believes, “Barack Obama appears to be a narcissist.”

Vakinin is a world authority on narcissism. He understands narcissism and describes the inner mind of a narcissist like no other person. When he talks about narcissism everyone listens. After recognizing that diagnosing someone without lengthy tests and personal interviews is not accurate, Vaknin says that Obama’s language, posture and demeanor, and the testimonies of his closest, dearest and nearest suggest that the Senator is either a narcissist or he may have narcissistic personality disorder (NPD).

Vaknin explains: “Narcissistic leaders are nefarious and their effects pernicious. They are subtle, refined, socially-adept, manipulative, possessed of thespian skills, and convincing. Both types [cerebral and somatic] equally lack empathy and are ruthless and relentless or driven.” These were the very traits that distinguished Hitler and Khomeini. Many of these traits can be seen in Obama. As for his ruthlessness, we have no idea. Narcissists need power to show their ruthlessness. However, considering the fact that he neglected his own half brother, George Obama, who lives on one dollar per month in Kenya, we can’t vouch for Obama’s empathy or say he is a caring person.
What is Narcissism?

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) describes narcissism as a personality disorder that “revolve around a pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and sense of entitlement. Often individuals feel overly important and will exaggerate achievements and will accept, and often demand, praise and admiration despite worthy achievements.”

The third and fourth editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of 1980 and 1994 and the European ICD-10 describe NPD in similar language:

An all-pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration or adulation and lack of empathy, usually beginning by early adulthood and present in various contexts. Five (or more) of the following criteria must be met:

• Feels grandiose and self-important (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents to the point of lying, demands to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
• Is obsessed with fantasies of unlimited success, fame, power or omnipotence, unequalled brilliance (the cerebral narcissist), bodily beauty or sexual performance (the somatic narcissist), or ideal, everlasting, all-conquering love or passion
• Is firmly convinced that he is unique and, being special, can only be understood by, should only be treated by, or associate with, other special, unique, or high-status people (or institutions)
• Requires excessive admiration, adulation, attention and affirmation, or failing that, wishes to be feared and notorious (narcissistic supply)
• Feels entitled. Expects unreasonable or special and favorable priority treatment. Demands automatic and full compliance with his expectations
• Is “interpersonally exploitative” i.e., uses others to achieve his or her own ends
• Is devoid of empathy. Is unable or unwilling to identify with or acknowledge the feelings and needs of others
• Is constantly envious of others or believes that they feel the same about him or her
• Is arrogant, has haughty behaviors or attitudes coupled with rage when frustrated, contradicted, or confronted

Pathological narcissism, is not akin to typical narcissism—someone with a hedonistic or self-centered sense of self —but rather someone with a very weak sense of self. Obama’s narcissism is pathological.

Narcissists seek power. That is the whole purpose of their existence. Power for them is the elixir of life. Those who know about NPD can’t help but notice it in Obama’s posture, the tone of his voice, his demeanor and particularly his grandiose claims and unscripted adlibs.

Narcissim has degrees. When it is extreme it shows in the posture and the way the narcissist walks and talks. Obama’s posture, exudes haughtiness. He is all puffery. Compare his posture to those of Hitler, Stalin and Saddam.

According to Vaknin, Obama displays the following behaviors, which are among the hallmarks of pathological narcissism:

- Subtly misrepresents facts and expediently and opportunistically shifts positions, views, opinions, and “ideals” (e.g., about campaign finance, redistricting). These flip-flops do not cause him overt distress and are ego-syntonic (he feels justified in acting this way). Alternatively, refuses to commit to a standpoint and, in the process, evidences a lack of empathy.

Ignores data that conflict with his fantasy world, or with his inflated and grandiose self-image. This has to do with magical thinking. Obama already sees himself as president because he is firmly convinced that his dreams, thoughts, and wishes affect reality. Additionally, he denies the gap between his fantasies and his modest or limited real-life achievements (for instance, in 12 years of academic career, he didn’t publish a single scholarly paper or book).

- Feels that he is above the law.

- Talks about himself in the 3rd person singular or uses the regal “we” and craves to be the exclusive center of attention, even adulation

- Has a messianic-cosmic vision of himself and his life and his “mission”.

- Sets ever more complex rules in a convoluted world of grandiose fantasies with its own language (jargon)

- Displays false modesty and unctuous “folksiness” but is unable to sustain these behaviors (the persona, or mask) for long. It slips and the true Obama is revealed: haughty, aloof, distant, and disdainful of simple folk and their lives.

- Sublimates aggression and holds grudges.

- Behaves as an eternal adolescent (e.g., his choice of language, youthful image he projects, demands indulgence and feels entitled to special treatment, even though his objective accomplishments do not justify it).

Narcissists project a grandiose but false image of themselves. Jim Jones, the charismatic leader of People’s Temple, the man who led over 900 of his followers to cheerfully commit mass suicide and even murder their own children was also a narcissist. David Koresh, Charles Manson, Joseph Koni, Shoko Asahara, Stalin, Saddam, Mao, Kim Jong Ill and Adolph Hitler are a few examples of narcissists of our time. All these men had a tremendous influence over their fanciers. They created a personality cult around themselves and with their blazing speeches elevated their admirers’ souls, filled their hearts with enthusiasm and instilled in their minds a new zest for life. They gave them hope! They promised them the moon, but alas, invariably they brought them to their doom. When you are a victim of a cult of personality, you don’t know it until it it too late.

One determining factor in the development of NPD is childhood abuse. “Obama’s early life was decidedly chaotic and replete with traumatic and mentally bruising dislocations,” says Vaknin. “Mixed-race marriages were even less common then. His parents went through a divorce when he was an infant (two years old). Obama saw his father only once again, before he died in a car accident. Then, his mother re-married and Obama had to relocate to Indonesia: a foreign land with a radically foreign culture, to be raised by a step-father. At the age of ten, he was whisked off to live with his maternal (white) grandparents. He saw his mother only intermittently in the following few years and then she vanished from his life in 1979. She died of cancer in 1995.”

In Vaknin’s words, “Pathological narcissism is a reaction to prolonged abuse and trauma in early childhood or early adolescence. The source of the abuse or trauma is immaterial: the perpetrators could be dysfunctional or absent parents, teachers, other adults, or peers.”

If we look into the childhood of all narcissists, we can see that invariably they were abused. Saddam was born to a widow who after losing her husband and her 12 year old son was so distressed that she attempted suicide. Before his birth, she would pull out clumps of her hair and pummel her pregnant abdomen with her fists. Saddam Hussein in his own official biography recounts his unhappy childhood. Hitler was the son of a very abusive man who would beat him regularly. From Saddam to Osama, to Hitler, to Stalin, to Khomeini, to Mao and to Kim Jong Ill, it is wounded childhood that causes NPD. Obama’s chaotic childhood and his continuous struggle to find his identity make him a prime candidate for NPD.

Narcissists have only one issue: They want power and will do and say anything to get it. Their words mean nothing to them. They do not intend to keep them. They look into your eyes and swear on a stack of Bibles that they are not going to do something when that is exactly what they intend to do. They break their promises when it suits them and annul their treaties when they can get away with it. They lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie.

Narcissists are pathological liars. They lie even to themselves. Ironically, they are the first to believe their own lies. When normal people lie, they show the sign of distress. Narcissists don’t. They can pass any polygraph test with flying colors. It is this conviction that fools people around them making them believe in their truthfulness and sincerity. In a twisted way they are sincere because, although they are conscience that they are not truthful, they believe in their own lies. This is difficult to understand and even more difficult to explain, but for a narcissist fantasy and reality are intertwined. The narcissist’s delusional thoughts of grandiosity are real to him.

Narcissistic Society

Germans are not particularly an evil race. They are no better or worse than any other nation. And yet, despite their advanced culture and civility they committed the most hideous crime in modern history. They murdered up to ten million people, because these unfortunate souls did not meet their standard of “ethnic purity.” Hitler did not kill anyone; the Germans did.

So the question is: What made these smart and highly civilized people commit such horrendous acts of savagery?

According to Vaknin, “The narcissistic or psychopathic leader is the culmination and reification of his period, culture, and civilization. He is likely to rise to prominence in narcissistic societies.”

Is America a narcissistic society? Vaknin believes “Pathological narcissism is a ubiquitous phenomenon because every human being – regardless of the nature of his society and culture – develops healthy self esteem early in life [which he calls healthy narcissism]. Healthy narcissism is rendered pathological by abuse – and abuse, alas, is a universal human behavior. By ‘abuse, we mean any refusal to acknowledge the emerging boundaries of the individual – smothering, doting, and excessive expectations – are as abusive as beating and incest.”

The emergence of so many cults in America is proof that America is not an exception to the norm. If demagogue narcissists, like Jim Jones, David Koresh or Jimmy Swaggart can find a fertile ground in America, why not one with a political message?

The Power of Manipulation

Narcissists are manipulative and extremely resourceful. They know how to the play their game, and how to get what they want, by using others. Obama is the least experienced senator among the Democrats. His political views are the most foolish of them all. He opposed the surge in Iraq saying it will make the situation worse and he was wrong. He thinks the solution to terrorism is to sit with terrorist states without precondition and negotiate with them. When Russia invaded Georgia, all this genius did was to urge both sides to “exert restraint”. Everything this man has said so far reveals his ignorance in economical, political and military matters. Despite that, this junior senator has managed to rally the seasoned senators of the Democratic Party around himself and, not withstanding his ineptitude, he has emerged as the leader de facto of his party and their presidential candidate.

This is a remarkable feat. One must never underestimate the manipulative genius of pathological narcissists. They project such an imposing personality that it overwhelms those around them. Charmed by the charisma of the narcissist, people become like clay in his hands. They cheerfully do his bidding and delight to be at his service. The narcissist shapes the world around himself and reduces others in his own inverted image. He creates a cult of personality. His admirers become his co-dependents.

Anyone can be fooled by narcissists. Just as experienced and smart senators of the Democratic Party have surrendered to the charisma of Obama, a man who is inferior to them all in every sense; many members of the media also have fallen for his charm hook, line and sinker. The American media is soft on Obama, but extremely harsh and deceitfully unfair on Governor Palin. The “rich White Americans,” the very people he despised for twenty years are swooning for him. The Jews whom he opposed all his life are backing him. They are opening their wallets and supporting his campaign in an unprecedented way. He has managed to charm even the Kennedys. Ted Kennedy, the lion in Winter, passed the Kennedy mantle unto Obama. That was hugely symbolic. As for the great Clinton’s, he made them submissive, and for whatever reason, incomprehensible to me, they are playing his game. Think about it. Obama is a cipher. In reality, he is nobody. And yet, thanks to his overbearing display of authority, the very mask that he is wearing to hide his devalued and injured self, he has overwhelmed all the giants of the Democratic party. Cults are full of smart people who have been hoodwinked by emotionally sick needy people.

Could all this phenomenal support and unbounded adulation erupt into violence? All the abuses and killings in Nazi Germani were done by the Germans, ordinary people who loved Hitler and believed in the glorious tomorrow that he was promising them. Hitler was insane, but those who did his bidding were not. Despite being smart, they did not hesitate to fulfill their fuehrer’s wishes and commit the most heinous crimes. The same thing happened in Iran. Ordinary people, once under the spell of Khomeini, acted like beasts. This is what happens when sane people follow insane people.

Could the same happen in America? Why not? Look how millions of people literally worship Obama. With some people I cannot even talk about Obama. They cannot tolerate any criticism of him. They get angry and, not only they want to end the conversation but threaten to end the friendship. I am familiar with this kind of religious devotion to a person. The reaction that I get from Obama worshipers is similar to that of Muslims when their prophet is criticized. They are even prone to insult you. See how they overlook Obama’s blatant lies and are willing to forgive his major sins such as racism. Note how the mainstream media bends the rules, twists the facts, exaggerates Obama’s little virtues, absolves his sins, and even lies to sell him to the public. Compare the royal treatment that the liberal press has given to Obama to how unfairly they treat Governor Palin; how they smear her character and belittle her experience and achievement. ABC’s Charlie Gibson’s interview with Governor Palin was a stain on journalistic integrity. Is it more important that Palin has not traveled the world and has not shaken hands with heads of states, or the fact that Obama has lied so many times? Under what pretext should an ordinary citizen visit heads of foreign states? The question itself is preposterous.

While not shaking hands with foreign heads of states does not disqualify one to run for any office, The Logan Act (est. 1799) makes it a crime for a citizen to confer with foreign governments against the interests of the United States. Specifically, it prohibits citizens from negotiating with other nations on behalf of the United States without authorization.

That is exactly what Obama did during his trip to Iraq, a charge that Obama’s national security spokeswoman Wendy Morigi confirmed, while trying to deny it. She said, “In fact, Obama had told the Iraqis that they should not rush through a ‘Strategic Framework Agreement’ governing the future of US forces until after President George W. Bush leaves office.”

This is high treason. Ordinary citizens have no right to enter into negotiations with foreign countries and make deals against the interest of their Government. Obama tells the Iraqis not to let the American soldiers go, so he can call them in January, supposedly when he is the president and claim victory for himself. Will Mr. Gibson or anyone in the liberal media question Obama for this crime?

Gibson’s questions were tricky. He asked the Governor, “what do you think of Bush’s doctrine,” and then, instead of explaining himself, he insisted that his interviewee define what he meant. After letting the Governor look puzzled, Gibson explained what he understands by Bush Doctrine, which according to him is preemptive strike.

Assuming this is a “Bush doctrine,” is it his only doctrine? Isn’t being pro life also a Bush doctrine? Isn’t Christianity or creationism a Bush doctrine? Bush believes in a multitude of things. How can one know what Gibson has in mind? Do you see the trickery?

Many members of the media have been hoodwinked by the charm of the rising fuehrer. They have become his extensions, act deceitfully and dishonestly to make their beloved leader’s rise to power a reality.

How can smart people let themselves be manipulated by a psychopath to such an extent that they become quasi zombies? Recall what the smart Germans did under the spell of Hitler. Bear in mind what the Soviets did under the influence of Stalin. Consider what the Japanese did during WWII when they believed in the divinity of their emperor. Evoke how the Chinese Red Guard massacred millions of their own countrymen when they were blinded by their love for Mao and his faux notion of equality. Look at the Islamic terrorists. Can’t we say the same about them? Isn’t Islamic savagery the result of Muslims’ uncritical devotion to a long deceased narcissist? If you don’t know what I am talking about, I invite you to read my book, Understanding Muhammad. When sane people fall for the lies of an insane man they act insanely.

No one is born a terrorist. Terrorists are ordinary people who do the bidding of a pathological narcissist whom they love and worship as their liberator. They are so enamored with him that they stop thinking and act like automatons. To prove their love and devotion they can commit murder and even suicide. They can kill their own children, as the followers of Jim Jones did in Guyana. The narcissist encourages all of this behavior because it validates his delusion of omnipotence. It reassures him that he is loved, respected, counted, taken seriously. Did you hear the song played during the Democratic convention? It said, “This is the church.” And who do you think is the head of that church? Americans are as fallible and as gullible as everyone else. It is foolhardy to say “it won’t happen to us.” Just as today, Obama’s supporters happily engage in intellectual dishonesty, deceitful reporting, and even hooliganism, I predict they will soon, merrily commit the same crimes other nations committed under the spell of their narcissistic leaders.
The Sick Symbiosis

Narcissists need their narcissistic supply to fuel their narcissism. They get it through adulation from people around them. These people are often also needy people. They are known as co-dependants. The narcissist and his co-dependent therefore, form a sick symbiosis in which both benefit. Let me give you one example to explain this mechanism.

David Sirota is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. In December 2006, in an article entitled “The Ridiculousness & Danger That Is Obama ’08” Sirota lambasted the Democrats who wanted Obama, an incognito junior senator, to run for presidency.

Sometimes, you really just have to sit back and laugh at the ridiculousness of the celebrity-obsessed political culture we now live in.” wrote Sirota in his column. “Take this Chicago Sun-Times article by Lynn Sweet in which she predicts Illinois Sen. Barack Obama (D) will run for president. She goes through what he has to do to prepare for his run, and this is the one that just makes you chuckle: “Develop signature legislative initiatives: Once the Democrats control Congress come January, there’s a chance to pass legislation. Watch for Obama to focus on alternative energy measures, health care and ethics reform legislation that stalled earlier this year.”

Think about it. The national media is swooning over Obama, begging him to run for president. Yet, at the same time, they are implicitly acknowledging that he has actually not “developed significant legislative initiatives.” In other words, we are to simply accept that the Obama for President wave has absolutely nothing to do with anything that the man HAS DONE and further, that whenever he does decide to use his enormous political capital to do something, it is all in pursuit of the White House – not any actual sense of DOING SOMETHING for the people who elected him to the Senate.

I don’t blame Obama for not having accomplished much – he’s been in the Senate for two years. As I wrote in the Nation, the main concern about him is that he doesn’t actually seem to ASPIRE to anything outside of the Washington power structure (other than maybe running for another higher office), and doesn’t seem to be interested in challenging the status quo in any fundamental way. Using his senate career as a guide, it suggests that any presidential run by him is about him, his speaking ability and his fawned over talent for “connecting” (whatever the hell that means).” (Read the rest of Sirota’s comment in his own blog.)

I could not say it better. Sirota understood the problem with Obama. He realized that not only this man has zero experience; he is actually a power hungry charlatan that aspires to nothing other than running for another higher office. He then expressed his outrage at the fellow Democrats who tried to make a leader out of this quack.

These Democrats laid all their hopes on Obama. They were captivated by his charm. They could not see that this man is wearing a mask of authority to cover his inner feeling of insecurity; that he is a fraud, a narcissist. When approached, Obama at first confessed to his inexperience, but the sycophants in the Democratic Party, were so desperate to find a charismatic leader that they could not let go of their prize. It does not take much to persuade a narcissist that he can do anything. He is already convinced that he is smarter and better that everyone else. So, despite his own confession of lack of experience, Obama could not resist the temptation.

To nurture his narcissism, the narcissist needs narcissistic supply. It is always people around the narcissist who provide that supply and encourage him in his psychosis. If it were not for Khadijah who reassured her husband that his hallucinations were not demonic, as he had thought, but divine revelations, Muhammad may never have started his prophetic career. It was she who encouraged him to launch a new religion, instead of calling an exorcist.

This is called co-dependency. The co-dependent, who also suffers from low self esteem, seeks his or her grandeur and narcissistic supply in the greatness of a narcissist of whom she seeks to become a part.

According to Wikipedia, “a ‘codependent’ is loosely defined as someone who exhibits too much, and often inappropriate, caring for persons who depend on him or her. A ‘codependent’ is one side of a relationship between mutually needy people. The dependent, or obviously needy party(s) may have emotional, physical, financial difficulties, or addictions they seemingly are unable to surmount. The “codependent” party exhibits behavior which controls, makes excuses for, pities, and takes other actions to perpetuate the obviously needy party’s condition, because of their desire to be needed and fear of doing anything that would change the relationship.”

The Democrats were desperately in need of a charismatic leader. They saw their hope in a needy man, a narcissist who portrayed himself as self assured, eloquent and authoritative and had sex appeal. It was love at first sight and they set on to polish him as their candidate. In this relationship the Democratic Party became the co-dependent of the narcissist Obama. They needed someone to shine so they can bask in his splendor. And Obama needed them to fulfill his delusions of grandiosity. This is how codependency works. It is a sick symbiosis of two needy parties. Behind every successful narcissist, there is always a co-dependent.

When the co-dependent and the narcissist team-up the result can be catastrophic. Now we have folie à deux. The delusional belief of the narcissist about himself is transmitted and shared by another needy, but ostensibly smart person. The codependent validates and encourages the narcissist’s delusion. As the result, the narcissist becomes bolder, more assertive, more authoritative and more confident. The partnership of the narcissist and the codependent dons their delusion with the mantle of credibility. The codependent will then do everything to persuade others as well. The narcissist’s cause is himself. The codependent will champion that cause. By recruiting others, they find validation for their own belief about the narcissist. Soon the folie à deux becomes folie à trois, then folie à quatre, and when you are a presidential candidate and are followed by a hoard of journalists and cameramen, before you blink there will be folie à plusieurs (madness of many). Recent psychiatric classifications refer to the syndrome as shared psychotic disorder.

Like gasoline being poured on a fire, the sycophants around the narcissist provide him with an abundance of narcissistic fuel to feed upon. The unbounded adulation poured at his feet further reinforce and escalate the unique and divine self-image of the narcissist. The larger the narcissistic fuel supply becomes, the more inflated becomes his ego, and the more firmly set in his own mind becomes the conviction of his own invincibility and superiority over other men. The narcissist reaches a stage that he will claim to be a revolutionary leader, an agent of change, a renascence man, the hand of God, even a messenger or prophet of God. Just as a fire can grow infinitely large as long as it receives its fuel, there is no limit to the delusional belief of a narcissist. When millions of people yell and scream and shout “I love you,” an ordinary narcissist is prone to believe that he is God. If the narcissist happens to be a person with power and authority, in a position of high leadership commanding armies and weapons of mass destruction, the result too often leads to the horrific slaughter of millions of innocent souls in the gulag, gas chambers, or killing fields.

Unbounded adulation reconfirms the narcissist that he is right and that anyone who disagrees with him is evil and therefore it is just to punish him. Narcissists do not understand the concept of the Golden Rule. Right is what benefits them and wrong is what harms them. So they fight for their own interest and are convinced that this is justice. Human rights and human lives are important only to the extent that they meet their narcissistic needs. They are worthless, and can be disposed of, if they don’t.

Ayatollah Montazeri, the man who was originally chosen to succeed Khomeini, recalled when Khomeini ordered the execution of 3000 youths who were captured during a demonstration against him. Montazeri protested and Khomeini angrily told him, “I will respond for my actions in the Day of Judgment.” Khomeini was a man of God. However, as a narcissist, he was convinced that because he was a superior being and a chosen one, a delusional belief that was reconfirmed by millions of people when they cheered for him, anyone who opposed him was opposing God and therefore by killing them he was doing the maker of the universe a favor.

There is no cure for narcissism. However, deprived of adulation, the disorder will remain dormant. The narcissist, without the narcissistic supply, may become grumpy and complain that the world does not understand them or appreciate their importance. They will continue to cheat and lie when they can get away with it, but the damage that they can cause is not earth shattering. However, when a narcissist becomes the focus of unlimited narcissistic supply, where millions of people scream at his feet, he goes insane.

As narcissism maturates, the narcissist becomes more demanding for respect and compliance and more intolerant of criticism. He becomes paranoid, and divides the world into “us” vs. “them”. He casts himself and his minions as victims and instills in them the distrust of the “others”.

The narcissist’s anger and intolerance is projected on his servile followers who also become angry and intolerant of criticism of their leader. Remember the sick symbiosis between the narcissist and his codependents? The followers get their narcissistic supply by elevating the status of their leader. The greater he looks, the better they feel. They see their glory is his glory. Conversely, when the narcissist is criticized, his followers become offended. They take those criticisms personally and their instinct of self defense is triggered. They will become vigilantes and will silence their critics through intimidation, bullying, mocking, threats and violence (like calling those who disagree with Obama, racists).

Sirota was no fool. He saw what is wrong with Obama and was right on the money when he described him. But, as I have repeated many times, narcissists are gifted manipulators. Sirota is an influential man. Obama needed his support and called him.

It’s not every day that God calls your cell phone,” wrote Sirota, sarcastically speaking of Obama, ‘This is Barack Obama.’ Thinking it was a good friend playing a joke, I said I didn’t believe him. But no, the voice insisted with a laugh, it was Illinois Senator Barack Obama, otherwise known in cult-of-personality political circles as a deity, a rising Democratic star or, as George W. Bush recently called him, “the pope.”

Narcissists are relentless and very convincing. They tell you exactly what you want to hear. They are full of promises. Their talent to manipulate is phenomenal. Well, not this time! Sirota apparently was not ready to sell his conscience (at least not yet) and endorse a man who according to him did not “aspire to anything outside of the Washington power structure (other than maybe running for another higher office.)”

This is the kind of patriots America needs – men of integrity and conscience. Where does David Sirota stand today? Errr!… Amm!… Why do you want to know? Emm!… How can I put it? Mr. Sirota…, Errr!…, Ah! Yes! Mr. Sirota has had an epiphany – a Pauline sort of experience. As he neared Damas… I mean Denver, on his journey to the Democratic Convention, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice on his cell phone say to him, “David, David, why do you persecute me?” “Who are you, Lord?” David asked. “I am Barack, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.” That is how David Sirota became a believer of Obama. He stopped blaspheming his Lord by calling him inept and opportunist. Guess what? He has even defended Jeremiah Wright. Hallelujah! Surely “God” (the emerging one) can transform the hearts of his enemies.

Narcissists have an almost surreal power to manipulate others. They can literally charm their adversaries and turn them into cheerful scullion, who will even thank them for giving them the privilege to slave for them.

You see! The narcissist and the codependent need each other. Many members of the Democratic Party may know what Sirota knows, but they need Obama. They have to keep up appearances (think, Hillary who once said “shame on you, Barack Obama” because of his flip flopping and lies).

Narcissists are amoral. They consider themselves to be above the law. Once in power, they will try to strengthen their h,old by surrounding themselves with equally amoral people. A good example of what we should expect in Obama’s administration is the infamous NAFTA gate scandal. This is what happened:

A senior member of the Obama campaign called the Canadian government to say that “when Sen. Obama talks about opting out of the free trade deal, the Canadian government shouldn’t be worried; that it is just campaign rhetoric and shouldn’t be taken seriously.”

Isn’t it amazing? Obama tells the Ohio voters, who are unhappy with NAFTA that he is going to kill it, when actually he does not mean to do any such thing. For a narcissist, ends justify means. He feels warranted to lie and deceive in order to accomplish what he has to accomplish.

This story was denied by Obama, but confirmed twice by sources at the highest level of the Canadian government. This is how a narcissist operates. Obama will lie to Americans and he will surround himself with equally unethical people. With a Congress and Senate controlled by Democrats, and his ability as president to replace retiring Supreme Court judges, nothing will stop him from abusing his power.
The Cause of the Narcissist

The cause of the narcissist is himself. Everything else is a tool, a stepping stone for the narcissist to ascend to power. Narcissists don’t have any ideology. They champion the cause that has a better chance of making their ascent to power easier.

Vaknin writes: “Narcissists use anything they can lay their hands on in the pursuit of narcissistic supply. If God, creed, church, faith, and institutionalized religion can provide them with narcissistic supply, they will become devout. They will abandon religion if it can’t.”

Therefore, the question whether Obama is a Muslim or a Christian, whether he is pro Palestine, as he has been all his life or whether he is pro Israel, whether he is a black supremacist or an agent of racial harmony, are moot. Obama is anything you want him to be and situation dictates. He takes the side that is more expedient to his cause. To communists he is a comrade, to Islamists he is their man, to Palestinian fighters he is their hope and to the Jews he is a staunch Zionist. The narcissist’s creed is himself. Everything else is negotiable.

Obama will do and say anything as long as it suits him. He will embrace any cause, will align himself with anyone, and will shift his position wherever the wind blows. Narcissists are chameleons.

Obama voted “present” in the Senate most of the time, (130 times to be precise) not because they were too difficult decisions, as Rudy Giuliani said at the GOP convention, but because those issues were not relevant to his cause.

Narcissists have no interest in things that do not help them to reach their personal objective. They are focused on one thing alone and that is power. All other issues are meaningless to them and they do not want to waste their precious time on trivialities. Anything that does not help them is beneath them and do not deserve their attention. If an issue raised in the Senate does not help Obama in one way or another, he has no interest in it. The “present” vote is a safe vote. No one can criticize him if things go wrong. Why should he implicate himself in issues that may become controversial when they don’t help him personally? Those issues are unworthy by their very nature because they are not about him.

Obama’s election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review led to a contract and advance to write a book about race relations. The University of Chicago Law School provided him with a fellowship and an office to work on his book. The book took him a lot longer than expected and at the end it devolved into…, guess what? His own autobiography! Instead of writing a scholarly paper focusing on race relations, for which, he had been paid, Obama could not resist writing about his most sublime self. He entitled the book Dreams from My Father .

Not surprisingly, Adolph Hitler also wrote his own autobiography when he was still nobody. So did Stalin. For a narcissist no subject is as important as his own self. Why would a he waste his precious time and his genius writing about insignificant things when he can write about such an august being as himself?

Narcissists are magical thinkers. They live in a world of fantasy; fantasies of grandiosity and unlimited power. But they are convinced that those fantasies will become reality because they are special and destined for greatness. That is why Obama already sees himself as president and acts presidential. The very fact that he traveled abroad and visited with several heads of states is another sign of this man’s delusions of grandiosity. He is not representing the government. Under what pretext he visited those heads of states and entered into negotiations with them?

Vaknin explains, “Bragging and false autobiography – The narcissist brags incessantly. His speech is peppered with ‘I’, ‘my’, ‘myself’, and ‘mine’. He describes himself as intelligent, or rich, or modest, or intuitive, or creative – but always excessively, implausibly, and extraordinarily so.”

Narcissists Are Dangerous.

Narcissists are often callous and even ruthless. As the norm, they lack conscience. This is evident from Obama’s lack of interest in his own brother who lives on only one dollar per month. A man who lives in luxury, who takes a private jet to vacation in Hawaii, and who has raised nearly half a billion dollars for his campaign (something unprecedented in history) has no interest in the plight of his own brother. Why? Because, his brother cannot be used for his ascent to power. A narcissist cares for no one but himself.

Compare this to what the McCain’s did. They brought a child from Bangladesh with facial deformities – a little girl with no chance for a normal life – and with plastic surgery restored her beauty and adopted her as their daughter. Millions of ordinary people, who are not even wealthy, have fostered children of total strangers in third world countries and give about a dollar a day for their education and upbringing.

Narcissists can be very generous, but never without an ulterior motive. They are generous when their display of generosity is noticed and elevates them in the eyes of others. Obama donated $20,000 to his racist and anti-Semitic church, but neglected his brother who could get some education and live a lot better if only he had one dollar per day.

Narcissism is all about image. Vaknin says, “The narcissist is shallow, a pond pretending to be an ocean. He likes to think of himself as a Renaissance man, a Jack of all trades. The narcissist never admits to ignorance in any field – yet, typically, he is ignorant of them all. It is surprisingly easy to penetrate the gloss and the veneer of the narcissist’s self-proclaimed omniscience.”

Obama’s gaffes on history and world affairs are proof of that. This man does not even know the number of the states in the USA, or that Canada does not have president. That is why Vaknin says, narcissist is a shallow pond that pretends to be an ocean. Obama’s ignorance about what should be common knowledge is mind boggling.

Narcissists have a profound sense of call, as they believe they have a “special purpose” or a “high calling.” In his autobiography Hitler wrote, “I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator.” Politics and religion offer irresistible lure for the narcissist.

And this is what Obama said about his “calling:” “Kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side of Chicago, I felt I heard God’s spirit beckoning me,” he said of his walk down the aisle of the Trinity United Church of Christ. “I submitted myself to his will and dedicated myself to discovering his truth.”

At least one mental health professional believes that about 6% of Americans are pathological narcissists. This percentage in countries where child abuse is more prevalent is a lot higher. Although all narcissists are cunning, and bereft of conscience, not all of them have the wits to rise to power. A narcissist with smarts can be dangerous.

Hitler was smart, and so is Obama. Hitler would not have become the monster he became had he not risen to power and had he not received so much narcissistic fodder to feed on. One man who saw Khomeini prior to rising to power recalled he would gently push flies out of his window, but would not kill them. The same man massacred tens of thousands of Iranians. It is power that brings madness out of the narcissist.

America is at a crucial moment in its history. I cannot think of any disaster greater than putting a pathological narcissist in control of the world’s most powerful military machine.

Narcissists are empty in substance but full on promises. Obama has not proposed a single concrete workable plan, but he has raised the hopes and expectations of millions of people with his promises. The glorious tomorrow that he offers is no more real than the Styrofoam Greek columns that adorned his image during his acceptance speech.

Vaknin says, “The narcissistic leader prefers the sparkle and glamor of well-orchestrated illusions to the tedium and method of real accomplishments, His reign is all smoke and mirrors, devoid of substances, consisting of mere appearances and mass delusions. In the aftermath of his regime – the narcissistic leader having died, been deposed, or voted out of office – it all unravels. The tireless and constant prestidigitation ceases and the entire edifice crumbles. What looked like an economic miracle turns out to have been a fraud-laced bubble. Loosely-held empires disintegrate. Laboriously assembled business conglomerates go to pieces. “earth shattering” and “revolutionary” scientific discoveries and theories are discredited. Social experiments end in mayhem.”

The narcissist who regards himself as the benefactor of the poor, a member of the common folk, the representative of the disenfranchised, the champion of the dispossessed against the corrupt elite – is highly unlikely to use violence at first.”

The pacific mask crumbles when the narcissist has become convinced that the very people he purported to speak for, his constituency, his grassroots fans, the prime sources of his narcissistic supply – have turned against him. At first, in a desperate effort to maintain the fiction underlying his chaotic personality, the narcissist strives to explain away the sudden reversal of sentiment. “The people are being duped by (the media, big industry, the military, the elite, etc.)”, “they don’t really know what they are doing”, “following a rude awakening, they will revert to form”, etc.

When these flimsy attempts to patch a tattered personal mythology fail – the narcissist is injured. Narcissistic injury inevitably leads to narcissistic rage and to a terrifying display of unbridled aggression. The pent-up frustration and hurt translate into devaluation. That which was previously idealized – is now discarded with contempt and hatred.

This election is like no other in the history of America. The issues are insignificant compared to what is at stake. What can be more dangerous than having a man bereft of conscience, a serial liar, and one who cannot distinguish his fantasies from reality as the leader of the free world?

I hate to sound alarmist, but one must be a fool if one is not alarmed. Many politicians are narcissists. They pose no threat to others. They are simply self serving and selfish. Obama evinces symptoms of pathological narcissism, which is different from the run-of-the-mill narcissism of a Richard Nixon or a Bill Clinton, for example. To him reality and fantasy are intertwined. This is a mental health issue, not just a character flaw. Pathological narcissists are dangerous because they look normal and even intelligent. It is this disguise that makes them treacherous.

Vaknin says, “When the narcissist reveals his true colors, it is usually far too late. His victims are unable to separate from him. They are frustrated by this acquired helplessness and angry at themselves for having failed to see through the narcissist earlier on.”

Today the Democrats have placed all their hopes in Obama. But this man could put an end to their party. The great majority of blacks have also decided to vote for Obama. Only a fool does not know that their support for him is racially driven. Brendan Farrington, reported, evidence indicates that some black Republicans are switching parties to vote for Obama. He wrote, “Florida has 81,512 more black Democrats compared to a loss of 784 black Republicans; Louisiana has 34,325 more black Democrats, while the number of black Republicans dropped by 907; North Carolina has 92,356 more black Democrats and 2,850 fewer black Republicans. The only three states that track voting registration by party and race show black Republican registration dropping slightly since the beginning of the year.”

Let us call a spade a spade. This is racism, pure and simple. The truth is that while everyone carries a misconceived collective guilt towards the blacks for wrongs done centuries ago by a bygone people to a bygone people, the blacks carry a collective rancor, enmity or vendetta towards non-blacks and to this day want to “stand up” to the whiteman. They seem to be stuck in 19th century.

The downside of this is that if Obama turns to be the disaster I predict, he will cause widespread resentment among the whites. The blacks are unlikely to give up their support of their man. Cultic mentality is pernicious and unrelenting. They will dig their heads deeper in the sand and blame Obama’s detractors of racism. This will cause a backlash among the whites. The white supremacists will take advantage of the discontent and they will receive widespread support. I predict that in less than four years, racial tensions will increase to levels never seen since the turbulent 1960s. Obama will set the clock back decades.

America is the bastion of freedom. The peace of the world depends on the strength of America, and its weakness translates into the triumph of terrorism and victory of rogue nations. It is no wonder that Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, the Castrists, the Hezbollah, the Hamas, the lawyers of the Guantanamo terrorists and virtually all sworn enemies of America are so thrilled by the prospect of their man in the White House. America is on the verge of destruction. There is no greater insanity greater than electing a pathological narcissist as predident.

Psychiatric Test

When a narcissist is running for the highest office in the world, the stakes cannot be higher. Did it matter what were Hitler’s views on abortion, economy, environment, education, old age pension, gay rights, social security, jobs or housing? With Hitler, the only thing that really mattered was his mental sanity.

I urge all Americans to make this a pivotal issue in this electoral campaign. Time is running out. Please spread the word. Talk about it with your coworkers, friends and relatives. Invite everyone in your address book to sign this petition. Publish it in your blog. Write about it. This is the most vital issue. If a presidential candidate is mentally unfit, nothing else matters. If you are an Obama fan, please sign too, so you can vote with confidence that the man you are putting in the White House is not going to be your nightmare.

I have started the petition, below linked to this article. I ask everyone to demand that all presidential and vice-presidential candidates in this election submit to a mental health examinations prior to Election Day. Please sign the petition and ask others to do the same.

Please Sign the Petition

______________________
Ali Sina is the author of Understanding Muhammad: A Psychobiography of Allah’s Prophet and the founder of Faith Freedom International, the movement of ex-Muslims created to warn the world of the danger of Islam and to help Muslims leave it and embrace the rest of mankind in amity.

© Copyright: Permission is granted to reprint and distribute this article in its entirety or in part.

H/T No Compromises for this gem.
Click here to listen to the interview No Compromises had with Dr. Sina regarding this article.

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Written by:

Ali Sina the founder of Faith Freedom International, the movement of ex-Muslims created to warn the world of the danger of Islam and to help Muslims leave it and embrace the rest of mankind in amity.

Glenn Beck put together this long list of broken promises that Obama made while on the campaign trail in 2008 and in the White House. Obama forgot to mention these promises in his State of the Union Address tonight.

Transcript: Daniels gives GOP response to State of the Union
updated 11:15 PM EST, Tue January 24, 2012

(CNN) — Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is to give the Republican Party response to the State of the Union speech on Tuesday night. Below is a transcript of the speech.

Daniels: Greetings from the home of Super Bowl XLVI.

The status of loyal opposition imposes on those out of power some serious responsibilities: to show respect for the presidency and its occupant, to express agreement where it exists.

Republicans tonight salute our president, for instance, for his aggressive pursuit of the murderers of 9/11 and for bravely backing long overdue changes in public education. I personally would add to that list admiration for the strong family commitment that he and the first lady have displayed to a nation sorely needing such examples.

On these evenings, presidents naturally seek to find the sunny side of our national condition. But when President Obama claims that the state of our union is anything but grave, he must know in his heart that this is not true.

The president did not cause the economic and fiscal crises that continue in America tonight, but he was elected on a promise to fix them, and he cannot claim that the last three years have made things anything but worse. The percentage of Americans with a job is at the lowest in decades. One in five men of prime working age and nearly half of all persons under 30 did not go to work today.

In three short years, an unprecedented explosion of spending, with borrowed money, has added trillions to an already unaffordable national debt. And yet the president has put us on a course to make it radically worse in the years ahead.

The federal government now spends one of every four dollars in the entire economy. It borrows one of every three dollars it spends. No nation, no entity, large or small, public or private, can thrive, or survive intact, with debts as huge as ours.

The president’s grand experiment in trickle-down government has held back rather than sped economic recovery. He seems to sincerely believe we can build a middle class out of government jobs paid for with borrowed dollars. In fact, it works the other way: A government as big and bossy as this one is maintained on the backs of the middle class and those who hope to join it.

Those punished most by the wrong turns of the last three years are those unemployed or underemployed tonight and those so discouraged they’ve abandoned the search for work altogether. And no one’s been more tragically harmed than the young people of this country, the first generation in memory to face a future less promising than their parents did.

As Republicans, our first concern is for those waiting tonight to begin or resume the climb up life’s ladder. We do not accept that ours will ever be a nation of haves and have-nots. We must always be a nation of haves and soon-to-haves.

In our economic stagnation and indebtedness, we’re only a short distance behind Greece, Spain, and other European countries now facing economic catastrophe. But ours is a fortunate land. Because the world uses our dollar for trade, we have a short grace period to deal with our dangers. But time is running out if we’re to avoid the fate of Europe and those once-great nations of history that fell from the position of world leadership.

So 2012 is a year of true opportunity, maybe our last, to restore an America of hope and upward mobility and greater equality. The challenges aren’t matters of ideology or party preference. The problems are simply mathematical, and the answers are purely practical.

An opposition that would earn its way back to leadership must offer not just criticism of failures that anyone can see, but a positive and credible plan to make life better, particularly for those aspiring to make a better life for themselves. Republicans accept this duty gratefully.

The routes back to an America of promise and to a solvent America that can pay its bills and protect its vulnerable start in the same place. The only way up for those suffering tonight, and the only way out of the dead end of debt into which we’ve driven, is a private economy that begins to grow and create jobs, real jobs, at a much faster rate than today. Contrary to the president’s constant disparagement of people in business, it’s one of the noblest of human pursuits. The late Steve Jobs — what a fitting name he had — created more of them than all those stimulus dollars the president borrowed and blew.

Out here in Indiana, when a businessperson asks me what he can do for our state, I say, “First, make money. Be successful. If you make a profit, you’ll have something left to hire someone else, and some to donate to the good causes we love.”

The extremism that stifles the development of homegrown energy, or cancels a perfectly safe pipeline that would employ tens of thousands, or jacks up consumer utility bills for no improvement in either human health or world temperature, is a pro-poverty policy. It must be replaced by a passionate pro-growth approach that breaks all ties and calls all close ones in favor of private-sector jobs that restore opportunity for all and generate the public revenues to pay our bills.

That means a dramatically simpler tax system of fewer loopholes and lower rates, a pause in the mindless piling on of expensive new regulations that devour dollars that otherwise could be used to hire somebody. It means maximizing on the new domestic energy technologies that are the best break our economy has gotten in years.

There’s a second item on our national must-do list: We must unite to save the safety net. Medicare and Social Security have served us well, and that must continue. But after half and three- quarters of a century, respectively, it’s not surprising they need some repairs. We can preserve them unchanged and untouched for those now in or near retirement, but we must fashion a new, affordable safety net so future Americans are protected, too.

Decades ago, for instance, we could afford to send millionaires pension checks and pay medical bills for even the wealthiest among us. Now, we can’t, so the dollars we have should be devoted to those who need them most.

The mortal enemies of Social Security and Medicare are those who, in contempt of the plain arithmetic, continue to mislead Americans that we should change nothing. Listening to them much longer will mean that these proud programs implode, and take the American economy with them. It’ll mean that coming generations are denied the jobs they need in their youth and the protection they deserve in their later years.

It’s absolutely so that everyone should contribute to our national recovery, including of course the most affluent among us. There are smart ways and dumb ways to do this: The dumb way is to raise rates in a broken, grossly complex tax system, choking off growth without bringing in the revenues we need to meet our debts. The better course is to stop sending the wealthy benefits they do not need, and stop providing them so many tax preferences that distort our economy and do little or nothing to foster growth.

It’s not fair and it’s not true for the president to attack Republicans in Congress as obstacles on these questions. They and they alone have passed bills to reduce borrowing, reform entitlements, and encourage new job creation, only to be shot down time and time again by the president and his Democratic Senate allies.

This year, it falls to Republicans to level with our fellow citizens about this reality: If we fail to act to grow the private sector and save the safety net, nothing else will matter much. But to make such action happen, we also must work, in ways we Republicans have not always practiced, to bring Americans together.

No feature of the Obama presidency has been sadder than its constant efforts to divide us, to curry favor with some Americans by castigating others.

As in previous moments of national danger, we Americans are all in the same boat. If we drift, quarreling and paralyzed, over a Niagara of debt, we will all suffer, regardless of income, race, gender, or other category. If we fail to shift to a pro-jobs, pro- growth economic policy, there’ll never be enough public revenue to pay for our safety net, national security, or whatever size government we decide to have.

As a loyal opposition, who put patriotism and national success ahead of party or ideology or any self-interest, we say that anyone who will join us in the cause of growth and solvency is our ally, and our friend. We will speak the language of unity. Let us rebuild our finances, and the safety net, and reopen the door to the stairway upward; any other disagreements we may have can wait.

You know, the most troubling contention in our national life these days isn’t about economics, or policy at all. It’s about us, as a free people. In two alarming ways, that contention is that we Americans just can’t cut it anymore.

In word and deed, the president and his allies tell us that we just cannot handle ourselves in this complex, perilous world without their benevolent protection. Left to ourselves, we might pick the wrong health insurance, the wrong mortgage, the wrong school for our kids; why, unless they stop us, we might pick the wrong light bulb.

A second view, which I’ll admit some Republicans also seem to hold, is that we Americans are no longer up to the job of self- government. We can’t do the simple math that proves the unaffordability of today’s safety net programs, or all the government we now have. We will fall for the con job that says we can just plow ahead and someone else will pick up the tab. We will allow ourselves to be pitted one against the other, blaming our neighbor for troubles worldwide trends or our own government has caused.

2012 must be the year we prove the doubters wrong. The year we strike out boldly not merely to avert national bankruptcy, but to say to a new generation that America is still the world’s premier land of opportunity. Republicans will speak for those who believe in the dignity and capacity of the individual citizen; who believe that government is meant to serve the people rather than supervise them; who trust Americans enough to tell them the plain truth about the fix we are in, and to lay before them a specific, credible program of change big enough to meet the emergency we are facing.

We will advance our positive suggestions with confidence, because we know that Americans are still a people born to liberty. There is nothing wrong with the state of our union that the American people, addressed as free-born, mature citizens, cannot set right. Republicans in 2012 welcome all our countrymen to a program of renewal that rebuilds the dream for all, and makes our “city on a hill” shine once again.

We either have to get rid of Obama or fly – well, fly very poorly and then fall – the way of the Dodo bird.

America cannot survive another Obama term.

Under Obama, Price of Gas Has Jumped 83 Percent, Ground Beef 24 Percent, Bacon 22 Percent
By Christopher Goins
January 20, 2012

(CNSNews.com) – So far, during the presidency of Barack Obama, the price of a gallon of gasoline has jumped 83 percent, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

(AP Photo)

During the same period, the price of ground beef has gone up 24 percent and price of bacon has gone up 22 percent.

When Obama entered the White House in January 2009, the city average price for one gallon of regular unleaded gasoline was $1.79, according to the BLS. (The figures are in nominal dollars: not adjusted for inflation.) Five months later in June, unleaded gasoline was $2.26 per gallon, an increase of 26 percent. By December 2011, the price of regular unleaded gas per gallon was $3.28, an 83 percent increase from January 2009.

The price of unleaded gasoline never reached the 10-year high of $4.09 back in July 2008 under George W. Bush’s administration, but it did get close.

By May 2011, gas prices hit a high under the Obama administration at $3.93, about four percentage points away from the July 2008 high.

Ground beef. (AP Photo)

The U.S. city average retail price for one pound of 100 percent ground beef was $2.36 in January 2009. As of December 2011, that price had risen to $2.92—a 23.7 percent increase and a new peak. (Ground beef prices have risen every month since November 2009 – 26 months of price increases.)

Whole wheat bread prices from January 2009 to December 2011 increased about five percent (5.02 percent) from $1.97 to $2.07. (The inflation rate in December 2011 was 3.0 percent.)

Among the first 36 months of Obama’s presidency, the last four (September, October, November, December) showed the average price of one pound of whole wheat bread hovering slightly above two dollars.

Other refrigerated items like ice cream and bacon have increased by substantial amounts.

Ice cream prices, for a half-gallon, were $4.44 in January 2009 and $5.25 in December 2011, an increase of 19.1 percent.

One pound of sliced bacon in January 2009 was $3.73 and in December 2011 had climbed $4.55, an increase of 22 percent. The price hit a high in September 2011 at $4.82 per pound.

Bacon. (AP Photo)

Whole milk prices averaged above three dollars 33 out of the 36 months since Obama took office. In January 2009, the price for one gallon of whole milk was $3.58; but by December 2011, milk prices had slightly declined less than one percent (0.28 percent) to $3.57 per gallon.

The average retail price of Grade A eggs per dozen from January 2009 to December 2011 increased by less than two percent (1.30 percent) from $1.85 to $1.87.

We recently celebrated Thanksgiving, and because of Obama we all felt like turkeys paying for our groceries due to the shocking inflation of food (that, along with fuel somehow isn’t factored in when “inflation” is calculated).

The above article doesn’t go anywhere NEAR far enough in condemning Obama for the rise of gasoline prices.  Yes, the price of gas spiked temporarily under Bush in 2008 (and Democrats viciously demonized him for that increase); BUT THE PRICE OF GASOLINE THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE YEAR WAS THE HIGHEST IN AMERICAN HISTORY IN 2011 UNDER OBAMA.  And 2012 is going to be even worse.

Here’s the REAL Obama economic record:

Barack Obama is destroying the middle class before our very eyes even as he incessantly claims to be the one standing up for the very middle class that he is destroying.

Under Obama, poverty has soared to its highest rate EVER in the entire 52 years that the Census Bureau has tracked it.

Under Obama, the misery index is at its highest rate EVER.

85% of the small business America depends on to create jobs and build the economy are terrified of Obama and his idiotic policies.

THAT’S the REAL “state of the union.”