Of the sons of Issachar, men who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do, their chiefs were two hundred; and all their kinsmen were at their command — 1 Chronicles 12:32
The State Department has bought more than $70,000 worth of books authored by President Obama, sending out copies as Christmas gratuities and stocking “key libraries” around the world with “Dreams From My Father” more than a decade after its release.
The U.S. Embassy in Egypt, for instance, spent $28,636 in August 2009 for copies of Mr. Obama’s best-selling 1995 memoir. Six weeks earlier, the embassy had placed another order for the same book for more than $9,000, federal purchasing records show.
About the same time, halfway around the world, the U.S. Embassy in South Korea had the same idea and spent more than $6,000 for copies of “Dreams From My Father.”
One month later, the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, spent more than $3,800 for hardcover copies of the Indonesian version of Mr. Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope,” records show.
A review of the expenditures in a federal database did not reveal any examples of State Department purchases of books by former Presidents George W. Bush or Bill Clinton. The purchases of Mr. Obama’s literary work mostly, but not always, took place in the months after Mr. Obama captured the White House.
Leslie Paige, a spokeswoman for Citizens Against Government Waste, a watchdog group, said if the federal government is looking to cut costs, eliminating purchases of Mr. Obama’s books is a good place to start.
“It’s inappropriate for U.S. taxpayer dollars to be spent on this,” she said. “This sounds like propaganda.”
But State Department spokesman Noel Clay said the book purchases followed regular government procurement rules. He said diplomats have long used books as a way to help broker talks on important foreign-policy matters.
“The structure and the presidency of the United States is an integral component of representing the United States overseas,” Mr. Clay said. “We often use books to engage key audiences in discussions of foreign policy.”
He also said books are purchased to stock the State Department’s “information resource centers,” which he said are located around the world and provide books about U.S. coverage of issues such as culture, history and values.
“We also provide key library collections with books about the United States,” he said.
Pete Sepp, vice president of the National Taxpayers Union, said there could be value in distributing books about American politics and the people who make up political institutions.
“Compared to big-ticket items like embassy construction, buying books may not show up as a huge warning on taxpayers’ radar screens, but there is always room for improvement and making sure programs like this are serving a good, intended purpose,” he said.
There’s no indication the White House knew about the purchases, which overall represent just a fraction of the nearly quarter-million dollars Mr. Obama donated to charities last year and his more than $1.7 million in overall income. Mr. Clay said book orders are normally made directly by embassies based on “their experience and knowledge on the ground of the intended audience.”
A White House spokesman did not respond to email messages.
The records show a mix of English and foreign language purchases of Mr. Obama’s books.
The U.S. Embassy in Indonesia spent more than $4,800 in September 2009 for copies of “Dreams From My Father” and “The Audacity of Hope,” though the title of the latter book is spelled “Authority of Hope” in the federal spending database. The embassy spent $3,885 for additional Indonesian copies of “The Audacity of Hope,” records show.
The U.S. Embassy in Turkey spent more than $3,700 in December 2009 for what purchasing records describe as “Copies of Barack Obama’s book in Turkish.”
In March, the U.S. Embassy in Paris spent more than $8,300 for French language copies of “Dreams From My Father.” The embassy also spent more than $11,600 for French language copies of Mr. Obama’s children’s book, “Of Thee I Sing,” though any royalties he receives for purchases of that children’s book will be donated to charity, according to Mr. Obama’s financial disclosure forms.
Mr. Obama has earned far more writing books than he has earned holding government office. He reported from $1 million to $5 million in royalties in 2010 for “Dreams From My Father,” and between $100,001 and $1 million in royalties for “The Audacity of Hope.”
If he earned 10 percent royalties on roughly $60,000 in purchases of his books by the State Department, excluding the children’s book, he could expect to pocket $6,000. It’s a tiny slice of Mr. Obama’s overall earnings, though still a sizable chunk to most Americans, whose median household income in 2009 was just over $50,000.
According to financial-disclosure forms, Mr. Obama earns royalties of 15 percent of the U.S. price for hardcover sales for “The Audacity of Hope” and 7.5 percent for trade paperback book sales. He reported between $100,001 and $1 million in royalties for “The Audacity of Hope.”
Mr. Obama’s and first lady Michelle Obama’s joint 2010 tax return showed overall income of just under $1.8 million, with more than $240,000 donated to charity. The Obamas reported about $1.5 million from book-related income. Overall, they donated about 14 percent of their income to charity.
Royalties for Mr. Obama’s children’s book, “Of Thee I Sing” are being donated to the Fisher House Foundation for a scholarship fund for children of fallen and disabled soldiers, disclosure forms show.
Mr. Obama also has a deal to write another book after his presidency.
The worst thing about these books is that Obama hadn’t accomplished a dang-blasted thing when he wrote them. If he wasn’t a dishonest slimeball, the least he could have done was wait until his presidency was over – and people NOT beholden to him could select his book – and he could embellish upon all the things he really didn’t do after the fact.
As it is, this is just one more example of a dishonest crony capitalist mutual back-scratching session, with the people who personally benefitted from Obama returning the favor.
I remember exactly what I was doing the morning of September 11, 2001. I was a grad student at the time, getting ready for my first class with the television running in the background. Just before the first large passenger plane crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center something caught my attention just in time to see it happen live. [Note: please see the update at the conclusion for a correction].
And the day froze into shock, numbness, dismay, terror, and a rising anger.
The broadcasters were talking to themselves about whether this was an accident, or an intentional attack. I didn’t need them to tell me what it was: like many other Americans, I knew exactly what had just happened.
And then the second plane struck the second tower. And shortly afterward the cameras began to catch specks falling out of the towers that turned out to be Americans throwing themselves out of top story windows to their deaths in order to avoid the even more agonizing death by burning.
President George Bush had been President for just over six months. But I would have felt EXACTLY the same sense of horror and outrage whether Bill Clinton, or Al Gore, or George Bush was President.
It wasn’t about being a member of a political party, or who was President or what party he was from; it was about being an American whose country had just been attacked.
That’s just no longer the case, though. I no longer feel that way.
Barack Obama’s constant unrelenting blaming of the Bush administration for virtually every problem under the sun was bad enough; Obama’s description of Bush “torture” and his releasing of CIA memos intended to politically hurt the Bush administration at the expense of informing our enemies exactly how we would and would not interrogate them was bad enough; House Speaker Nancy Peolosi’s demagoguery of the Bush administration over its “torture” and her subsequent lies that she herself had been informed about such “torture” and done nothing was bad enough; but it just never seems to end.
But the following example of Bush Derangement Syndrome finally sent me over the top:
The delusional claims he has made this day could be proved by documentation and firsthand testimony to be the literal and absolute truth, and he still, himself, would be wrong because the America he sought to impose upon the world and upon its own citizens, the dark, hateful place of Dick Cheney`s own soul, the place he to this hour defends, and to this day prefers, is a repudiation of all that our ancestors, all that for which our brave troops of two years ago and two minutes ago, have sacrificed and fought.
Olbermann acknowledges that EVEN if Dick Cheney is telling the truth and his own liberal allies are lying, it doesn’t matter. Because he thinks Cheney and his vision for America are evil. So truth be damned. That is the warped mind of the true ideologue.
And he then uses a rhetorical flourish to indicate that our troops have suffered for Cheney’s hateful vision.
What Olbermann, evil liar that he truly is, fails to mention is that our “brave troops” who “have sacrificed and fought” actually think JUST LIKE Cheney and DON’T THINK like Olbermann.
If Keith Olbermann had even a shred of personal honesty, integrity, character, or virtue, he would not have dragged American soldiers into his hateful polemic given that they themselves are on the very side that Olbermann so utterly despises. But Olbermann doesn’t have any honesty, integrity, character, or virtue.
So he warps the men and women who supported George Bush and Dick Cheney so overwhelmingly into victims.
Olbermann says:
Gee, thanks for being motivated by the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans to go so far as to take a serious second look. And thank you, sir, for admitting, obviously inadvertently, that you did not take a serious first look in the seven months and 23 days between your inauguration and 9/11. For that attack, sir, you are culpable, morally, ethically. At best, you are guilty of malfeasance and eternally lasting stupidity. At worst, sir,in the deaths of 9/11, you are negligent.
Again, if Keith Olbermann had so much as a shred of personal or professional honesty, he wouldn’t say something like this.
Let’s review the list: 1) In 1993 Bill Clinton ran from Somalia after a battle with Islamic insurgents that left 18 American servicemen dead; 2) Also in 1993 the US suffered a terrorist attack in the form of the first World Trade Center bombing that killed 6 and wounded more than 1000 Americans; 3) In 1995 the US suffered its first domestic terrorist attack at the Oklahoma Federal Building that left 168 Americans dead; 4) In 1996 19 American servicemen were killed in a Saudi Arabian terrorist bombing of the US military Khobar Towers barracks; 5) In 1998 there was a simultaneous terrorist bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 200 people; 6) In 2000 the USS Cole was attacked by terrorists, leaving 17 American servicemen dead.
There may well have been more, but that is all I can remember.
How can Keith Olberman in good conscience so blame Bush and Cheney for 9/11 when the Clinton administration had never taken terrorism seriously themselves? But Olbermann doesn’t have a good conscience. He is a truly depraved human being.
Bill Clinton failed to take 9/11 seriously for the same reason George Bush failed to take it seriously in the six months of his administration preceding the 9/11 attack: because we hadn’t been hit hard enough yet. Clinton should have learned from the attacks America suffered throughout his entire presidency; and Bush should have paid attention to Clinton’s disastrous track record.
Olbermann said:
You saved no one, sir. If the classified documents you seek released really did detail plots other than those manufactured by drowning men in order to get it to stop, or if they truly did know plans beyond the laughable ones you and President Bush have already revealed, hijackers without passports, targeting a building whose name Mr. Bush could not remember, clowns who thought they could destroy airports by dropping matches in fuel pipelines 30 miles away, men who planned to attack a military base dressed as pizza delivery boys, forgetting that every man there was armed, and today, the four would-be synagogue bombers, one of whom turns out to keep bottles of urine in his apartment, and is on schizophrenia medicine.
So the man popping schizophrenia medicine and washing it down with his own bottled urine is none other than Keith Olbermann and everyone at MSNBC and everyone who watches the network. It certainly isn’t Dick Cheney.
Olbermann saves his ugliest and most hateful remarks for last:
You saved no one, Mr. Cheney. All you did was help kill Americans. You were negligent before 9/11. Your response to your complicity by omission on 9/11 was panic and shame and insanity, and lying this country into a war that did nothing but kill 4,299 more of us. We will take no further instructions from you, sir. And let me again quote Oliver Cromwell to you, Mr. Cheney. “You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of god, go.”
I’ve written about other things that Keith Olbermann and his “guests” have said. Only very recently Janeane Garofalo said:
This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks. And there is no way around that. And you know, you can tell these type of right wingers anything and they’ll believe it, except the truth. You tell them the truth and they become — it’s like showing Frankenstein’s monster fire. They become confused, and angry and highly volatile. That guy, causing them feelings they don’t know, because their limbic brain, we’ve discussed this before, the limbic brain inside a right-winger or Republican or conservative or your average white power activist, the limbic brain is much larger in their head space than in a reasonable person, and it’s pushing against the frontal lobe. So their synapses are misfiring. Is Bernie Goldberg listening?
And there was Keith Olbermann and Michael Musto engaging in about as hateful of an attack as one can possibly imagine against Miss California Carrie Prejean for the simple reason that they despise her right to express her own views about an issue that most Californians and most Americans agree with her over.
Keith Olbermann is a vain, petty, vindictive, vicious, hateful, and truly ugly human being. And MSNBC would do far better broadcasting in place of pro-terrorist al Jazeera than it is doing here. Both networks run basically the same message.
But Keith Olbermann’s rant against Dick Cheney and every conservative who agrees with him rose to such a level of hatred, such a level of vicious, bitter, ugly, deceitful, and frankly evil rhetoric, that it transcends anything I have ever heard.
Right now, liberals like Keith Olbermann are teeing off on conservatives for waterboarding when we now learn that liberals like Nancy Pelosi and many other Democrats were fully briefed on “enhanced interrogation techniques that had been employed,” and neither said or did anything to prevent such techniques. And even the very liberal new CIA Director under Obam0, Leon Panetta, essentially says Pelosi is lying. How are their attacks now anything but partisan demagoguery?
And right now, liberals including Barack Obama himself are deceitfully claiming the moral high ground even as the new liberal administration takes many of the same positions that it hypocritically and demagogically found so hateful on the campaign trail. As many policies as Obama has undone that will make this country less safe, there have been almost as many that he once demonized, only to follow himself once in office.
And Obama has indicated that he likewise reserves the right to continue to hold some prisoners without trial indefinitely – a position he demonized during the campaign. How can such a man who so hypocritically employed such demagoguery only to come to the same position as the man he demagogued claim any semblance of moral high ground? Obama is lower than Bush in his character, not higher. Bush and Cheney didn’t self-righteously demagogue; only Obama did.
Obama decided against the release of the remainder of the infamous Abu Ghraib photos. But only because he had to bow to the reality of the massive resitance against his decision to release them and the consequences such a stupid and depraved act would have had both for our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan and for Democrats at home. In electing not to release them, Obama took the SAME position that Bush/Cheney had taken. Obama is not better than Bush or Cheney; he’s worse. They didn’t waiver and pander before going back on their decision out of the selfish interests of political survival. They were consistent in their determination to do the right thing.
Obama has idiotically promised he would close Gitmo, but even his own party now realizes how foolish that would be and has twice denied him funding to do so until he come up with a plan that makes some kind of sense. Obama wrapped himself up in puffed-up, posturing self-righteousness, but the reality is that Bush was forced to confront the same unsolvable dilemmas. The only difference was that Bush was wiser than Barack Obama in recognizing the problems that made a closure of Gitmo nearly impossible; and that Bush – unlike Obama – was never a pandering demagogue.
Again, Obama isn’t one iota better than Bush or Cheney. He’s worse.
Not that any of these FACTS matter to liberals. Because far too many of them are exactly like Keith Olbermann: even if the facts support conservatives, it doesn’t matter. Such liberals are completely false, vile people who routinely treat the truth with as much contempt as Olbermann does.
I said earlier that I no longer feel the same way about my country that I did following 9/11. I wish it were not true, but the constant unrelenting barrage of lies, hypocristy, demonization, and demagoguery from the left – particularly on national security issues – have left me with an increasingly bitter taste in my mouth. And following so many years of such hateful tactics, I fear that if we are attacked again, that I will react politically, rather than patriotically. I wish it weren’t true, but there it is.
Update: I have since realized that the first attack was not covered live, and film footage of the first airplane was not made available until later. What I would have seen was video footage of smoke billowing out of the World Trade Center shortly following the first attack, finally followed by live footage of the 2nd plane strike. I attempted to describe from memory what I had seen 8 years ago, and it turns out that my memory was not perfect.
Start Thinking Right 