Liberals CONTINUE To Document That They Despise Housewives And Mothers

Hillary Clinton stepped in it and left the stinky tracks on the American consciousness in the 1992:

“I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession which I entered before my husband was in public life. “

Teresa Heinz-Kerry stepped in it and proved that the Democrat war on housewives and stay-at-home moms was hardly a “Fluke” (pardon the pun):

Q: You’d be different from Laura Bush?

A: Well, you know, I don’t know Laura Bush. But she seems to be calm, and she has a sparkle in her eye, which is good. But I don’t know that she’s ever had a real job — I mean, since she’s been grown up.

Laura Bush was a public school teacher and a librarian as a “grown-up,” but that’s only a “real” job if you walk out on your classroom to strike for more union garbage, apparently.

And of course Hillary Rosen stomped in it and pretty much rubbed it all over the place:

“Guess what?” Rosen said. “His wife has actually never worked a day in her life. She’s never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing.”

“Guess what?”  Conservatives said.  “Hillary Rosen visited the Obama White House 35 times – literally six times more often than walking embarrassment Vice President Joe Biden and more than twice as much as Obama’s CIA director. ”

And guess what?  This Hillary Rosen step-in-it moment also follows the fact that the Obama White House is only paying women 4/5ths what it is paying men.

And guess what?  It follows a VERY disturbing liberal trend that’s going on worldwide revealing a pathological hostility to families and stay-at-home moms and anything that gets in the way of government indoctrination of children.  And it follows a downright CREEPY trend that Barack Obama and Democrats have established in wanting our kids.

And Bill Maher – the guy who gave Obama a million dollars AFTER saying the following things about women –

• BILL MAHER: Bristol claims that the night she lost her virginity, she had accidentally gotten drunk on wine coolers that she didn’t know contained alcohol and then — and then blacked out and didn’t remember a thing. Oh, the Palins. I’ll tell you the s–t doesn’t fall far from the bat. Bristol, just admit it, you were horny, and while we’re at it, stop claiming that you were on birth control pills that didn’t work when you got pregnant. Here’s a tip, hon – they’re not birth control pills if they’re shaped like Fred Flintstone.
• BILL MAHER: “Did you hear this – Sarah Palin finally heard what happened in Japan and she’s demanding that we invade ‘Tsunami,’” Maher said. “I mean she said, ‘These ‘Tsunamians’ will not get away with this.’ Oh speaking of dumb twats, did you…”
• BILL MAHER: But I’ve often said that if I had — I have two dogs — if I had two retarded children, I’d be a hero. And yet the dogs, which are pretty much the same thing. What? They’re sweet. They’re loving. They’re kind, but they don’t mentally advance at all. … Dogs are like retarded children.” — Bill Maher
• BILL MAHER: “And finally, new rule – and I never thought I’d be the one to say this – but DON’T show me your tits! (laughter) Last week the world’s first nurse-in was held to protest the case of a woman who was breastfeeding in public and asked by an Applebee’s manager not to leave but just to cover up a little bit. Because the wait staff got tired of hearing, ‘I’ll have what that kid’s having!’ (laughter) I’m not trying to be insensitive, here. I know your baby needs to eat, but so do I and this is Applebee’s, so I’m already nautious [sic]. (laughter) Breastfeeding a baby is an intimate act, and I don’t want to watch strangers performing intimate acts. At least not for free. (laughter) It cheapens it. But breastfeeding activists – yes, breastfeeding activists, called Lactivists (laughter) – say this is a human right and appropriate everywhere, because it’s natural. Well, so is masturbating, but I generally don’t do that at Applebee’s

I could actually just go on and on, but you get the point.  The guy who gave Obama a MILLION DOLLARS – or to put it another way the guy whose MILLION DOLLARS Obama is keeping – has a visceral hatred of women and he’s a big part of the Democrat Party fundraising operation.  Just to show which side is truly “anti-woman.”  And which side is abject hypocrites on a daily basis (see also here).

Well, all that aside, the man who is so honored by Barack Obama that Obama has steadfastly refused to return Maher’s gift now has this to say about the Hillary Rosen-Ann Romney controversy:

“The language here was, perhaps, inartful, or perhaps America is a society that lives to fight stupid, non-consequential, meaningless controversies and this is the new one,” Bill Maher said during the panel portion of his HBO show “Real Time” last night.

“But what she meant to say, I think, was that Ann Romney has never gotten her ass out of the house to work. No one is denying that being a mother is a tough job, I remember that I was a handful. Okay, but there is a big difference in being a mother, and that tough job, and getting your ass out of the door at 7am when it’s cold, having to deal with the boss, being in a workplace, and even if you’re unhappy you can’t show it for 8 hours, that is a different kind of tough thing,” Maher observed last night.

Being a liberal means being stupid times arrogant times evil squared.

I liked the retort to Bill Maher and the Democrat Party and the Barack Obama who gladly accepts Bill Maher’s million dollars that I came across:

You know what else is different? Putting on a strong front and managing not to lose one’s cool when the kids are misbehaving and trying to kill each other. The same goes for crawling out of bed at 3:30 a.m. when your colicky baby needs to be held more than you need sleep. Or prying open a stubborn toddler’s mouth so he/she won’t starve to death due to his/her weird hunger strike. Let’s not forget figuring out a way to get the children off the playground when they refuse to leave. These are all challenges I’ve faced as an aunt, and I can’t even begin to imagine how much of a struggle it is to be a parent and encounter these things every day. The day-to-day annoyances and occasional meltdowns are trivial, but raising happy, healthy children is not an easy, comparable task.

And yet it makes sense that Maher, who isn’t a parent himself, wouldn’t understand that striving to be the best dad/mom possible is just as hard — perhaps even more difficult — than working with a prickly manager and going to the office in frigid temperatures.

The funniest thing of all is how you’ve got Democrats publicly whining about how the “war on women” they started has backfired on them and how unfair it is.

Vile Leftwing Professor Pours Hypocritical Hate On Congressman Paul Ryan For Drinking Glass Of Wine

It was just last week that I was able to look at Democrats’ personal behavior toward others and show that they as a species were really quite indistinguishable from cockroaches.

And here we are again, with cockroaches I mean Democrats being cockroaches I mean Democrats.

Rep. Ryan was at a restaurant with a dinner party when out of the blue this vile professor comes over and goes ballistic at his table, creating a giant scene until she was thrown out on her ear for being so rude and hateful.

It would probably be better if the management simply asked people at the door what party they belonged to and blocked Democrats as haters BEFORE they barged in and started scenes, in my view.

The following article asks some pretty wonderful questions of this leftwing self-righteous hypocrite.  I then have more piling on to do when Byron York gets done with this liberal turd:

Paul Ryan accuser won’t talk
By:Byron York | Chief Political Correspondent Follow Him @ByronYork | 07/11/11 8:47 AM.

Susan Feinberg, an associate professor of management and global business at  Rutgers University, caused a stir in the left-wing blogosphere over the weekend  with her account of witnessing House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan  drinking a glass of $350-a-bottle wine at an upscale restaurant near the  Capitol.  (Feinberg, who was at the restaurant, Bistro Bis, with her  husband to celebrate her birthday, knew the wine was pricey because she could  make out the name on the label and checked it on the wine list.)  Feinberg  confronted Ryan, accusing him of hypocrisy for drinking an expensive wine while  advocating reduced spending for Medicare and Medicaid.  But she didn’t stop  there.  Feinberg also suggested Ryan might be guilty of ethics violations,  secretly snapped a photo of him and two dinner companions, and then took the  “story” to Talking Points Memo, the lefty site which ran a high-profile  piece suggesting Ryan might be guilty of some sort of wrongdoing.

Ryan told TPM that his two dinner-mates had ordered the wine, and that he,  Ryan, didn’t know what it cost and drank only one glass.  Ryan’s  explanation was supported by TPM’s account, presumably based on Feinberg’s  recollection, which said that when Feinberg confronted Ryan about the cost of  his wine, “Ryan said only: ‘Is that how much it was?'”

Nevertheless, Feinberg and TPM hinted that Ryan might have violated House  ethics rules by accepting an expensive meal from lobbyists.  But it turned  out that the two men with whom Ryan was dining were, as he said, economists and  not lobbyists.  Feinberg and TPM also suggested that Ryan might have  violated House rules against accepting gifts in general.  But it turned out  that Ryan had paid for his meal and wine — Ryan even showed TPM his copy of the  receipt, which TPM then posted on the web.

Having failed to catch Ryan in an act of wrongdoing, Feinberg and TPM accused  him of hypocrisy. Ryan’s dining companions, one of whom was a wealthy hedge-fund  manager, ordered two bottles of the $350 wine.  Ryan, by his own account,  drank one glass but nevertheless paid for one of the bottles.  But the $700  wine bill outraged Feinberg and her husband, who were at the restaurant to  celebrate her birthday.  “We were just stunned,” she told TPM. “I was an  economist so I started doing the envelope calculations and quickly figured out  that those two bottles of wine was more [sic] than two-income working family  making minimum wage earned in a week.” When she had finished her own meal,  Feinberg confronted Ryan and angrily asked him “how he could live with himself”  for drinking expensive wine while advocating cuts in Medicare and  Medicaid.  Feinberg left the restaurant after management intervened.

In one brief and unpleasant moment, Ryan got a taste of 2012-style political  combat in which everyone, everywhere is a potential opposition campaign tracker  and there are plenty of press outlets ready to publish a tracker’s  accusations.

On Saturday, I sent Feinberg an email asking a few questions about the  incident and about her unhappiness with Ryan.  First, the photo she snapped  of Ryan and two men sitting a few tables away appeared to be taken from her own  table, and on that table was a bottle of wine.  (Feinberg told TPM that she  and her husband had shared a “bottle of great wine.”)  A check of the  Bistro Bis wine list — in much the way that Feinberg did at the restaurant —  shows that the wine was a Thierry et Pascale Matrot 2005 Meursault, which is $80  per bottle at Bistro Bis. Was that, in fact, Feinberg’s bottle of wine?

I asked Feinberg, an economist, what price constituted outrageous in her  mind.  Would she have been as upset if Ryan’s wine were $150 a  bottle?  Or $100 a bottle?  Or perhaps $80 a bottle, like her own —  which is, after all, more than a day’s labor for a worker making the minimum  wage.

If the problem was not just the wine’s cost, then what other factors were  involved in Feinberg’s anger? Was it because she thought Rep. Ryan was a  hypocrite for drinking expensive wine while recommending reduced spending on  Medicare and Medicaid?  Was it because she believed Rep. Ryan was corrupt  for drinking with two men she suspected were lobbyists?  And finally, did  Feinberg believe she behaved appropriately in the matter?  Would it be  appropriate for a conservative who felt strongly about, say, Rep. Nancy Pelosi,  or Rep. Barney Frank, to do something similar to them under similar  circumstances?

Feinberg’s response was brief: “I’m sorry.  I have no comment on  this.”

After the TPM story was published, a number of left-leaning websites picked  up the tale.  New York magazine wrote that Ryan has “$350, fiscally  imprudent, fancypants” taste in wine.  The Atlantic wrote that Ryan “is in  the habit of drinking $350-a-bottle wine,” although the publication presented no  evidence to support that contention. The Atlantic also expressed hope that the  wine story would become as much of a political burden on Ryan as the $400  haircut was on former presidential candidate John Edwards.

Ryan himself is downplaying, but not avoiding, the matter.  He answered  questions from TPM, producing the receipt, but has said little else.  When  asked whether incidents like this might happen again in the future, with  Democrats and Republicans engaged in mortal combat over federal spending, a  person close to Ryan said only: “I would hope that it was just one woman who had  a little too much to drink and had a little too much fire in her belly and just  decided to cross a line.  Paul is more than happy to have a debate and  understands that people disagree with him, but there’s a right way and a wrong  way to do that.”

It turns out that this Professor Susan Feinberg worked on John Kerry’s campaign.  The relevant facts about Senator John Kerry and his rich liberal activist wife occur near the end of this very recently written piece (again, Democrats are just hypocrites ALL the time; there’s literally ALWAYS something to prove it constantly going on):

 Did you know, for instance, this about Barack Obama?

Prior to his run for President, Barack and Michelle Obama were in the top 2% of income earners, but actually gave less than the average American in charitable giving.

Obama gave .4% of his income.  In spite of being rich, and being in the top richest 2% of Americans, Obama gave only $1,050 to charity.  When the average American household (that’s mostly us in the bottom 98%) gave $1,872, which was 2.2% of their incomes.

For the record, Barack Obama was 450% more selfish, more stingy, more greedy and more self-centered than the average American.  Even though the average American had nowhere NEAR Obama’s wealth.  And that is a documented fact.  And let’s also consider how much Michelle Obama earned by receiving lavish political patronage because of her husband’s career.

And then you find that as cheap and chintzy and stingy and selfish as the redistribution of wealth president (a.k.a. Barry Hussein) was before he decided to run for president, his vice president was even STINGIER.  Because Joe Biden gave less than one-eighth of one percent of his wealth to charity.

And, of course, Democrats who lecture us on “paying our fair share” while they either welch on their debts, refuse to contribute to charity, cheat on their taxes, or all damn three are a dime a dozen.  Let’s have a few prominent examples: Bill and Hillary Clinton, who have largely welched on Hillary’s campaign debts.  There’s Charlie Rangel, the man who chaired the committee that wrote the tax laws while not bothering to pay his own damn taxes.  There’s “Turbo Tax” Timothy Geithner, the man in charge of the Treasury and I.R.S. who didn’t bother to pay his own taxes.  There’s former Democrat candidate for president John Kerry, a millionaire, who tried to wriggle away like the worm he is from paying the taxes he should have paid on his yacht.  There’s Kerry’s wife and fellow Democrat Teresa Heinz-Kerry, who in spite of inheriting the Heinz fortune actually pays less in taxes than the median American family.  And then there’s a bunch of more garden variety cockroach Democrats such as Eric Holder, Tom Daschle, Bill Richardson, and Claire McCaskill.  And the vile putrid bunch of Democrats running Bell, California.

And let me throw in “San Fran Nan” Nancy Pelosi into the mix.  Here’s an already filthy rich woman who increased her wealth by 62% last year while millions of Americans are suffering.  She’d certainly be one who would say, “Screw America, screw the American people and screw the unemployment rate; I’m getting MINE.

These are the hypocrite vermin who constantly lecture us about how “the rich should pay their fair share.”  And these slime certainly should.  But of course, while they screech the Marxist screed of class warfare, they know that they’ve written the tax laws to benefit themselves and their supporters – to the extent they even bother to follow those tax laws that they demand everybody else follow to begin with.

“The audacity of indifference.”

You think these people don’t know their way around $350 bottles of wine the way you know the way to the bathroom in your own home?

Let’s get back to Susan Feinberg and the guy she thought deserved to be president.  John Kerry’s wife is a filthy rich heiress who inhereited the Heinz fortune.  But guess how much taxes she pays?  She’s structured it so she actually pays less than the median American family.  Did she HAVE to do that?  Oh, no.  She just wanted to screw you, the typical taxpayer, by using every possible gimmick to lessen her tax burden even while she self-righteously lectures everybody else about their “duty to pay more.”  SHE could pay more, but she is a liberal, and ergo sum a hypocrite.

How about John Kerry himself?  Well, John Kerry splurged on himself to buy a $7 million yacht.  Not feeling any need to give American workers jobs, Kerry opted to buy his yacht in New Zealand.  And then, not feeling any need to pay taxes, Kerry opted to moor his yacht in Rhode Island rather than in his own state of Massachusetts, so he could save $1/2 a million in tax.  But that doesn’t stop him from lecturing everybody else.

And, according to garden variety self-righteous liberal hypocrite Susan Feinberg, THIS behavior is just fine.  It’s that Ryan guy who was actually himself rather surprised at how much it costs to have dinner with rich friends (I’ve experienced that myself when I looked at a tab from a restaurant a date or a friend have suggested in the past) who is evil.

A small government free market guy who believes people should be free to keep and spend their own money having a $350 bottle of wine is not hypocritical; a liberal who says the rich should pay more in taxes while welching on his or her own taxes is, by contrast, a quintessential hypocrite.

I’d say I was amazed at the chutzpah of a liberal who goes to dine at a high-end restaurant and then is appalled that a Republican would actually go to the same restautant.  But I have long come to understand that the essential ingredient to liberalism is blatant abject hypocrisy.  To put it in the context of her own story, “When she had finished her own pricey meal, she got up and rudely gave Paul Ryan a facefull of the hell her husband tragically has to live with every night of his life for daring to have a pricey meal.”

Audacity Of Indifference: Obama Believes American People Too Ignorant, Selfish To Understand Truth About His Path To Economic Disaster

“The average American does not view the economy through the prism of GDP or unemployment rates or even monthly jobs numbers,” Obama top political advisor David Plouffe said.

That’s good for Obama, given that Obama promised the American people that if his $3.27 TRILLION stimulus porker was passed, unemployment would go down to 7.1% by now, and instead it just rose to 9.2%.

Plouffe’s comment was brought up to White House press secretary Jay Carney, who had even more to say about just how profoundly stupid Obama believes the American people are:

Earlier this week David Plouffe, one of Obama’s senior advisers and an architect of his 2008 campaign, was panned for saying “the average American does not view the economy through the prism of GDP or unemployment rates or even monthly jobs numbers.”

In a condescending way, White House press secretary Jay Carney basically told the press corps  the same thing. Carney told ABC News’ Jake Tapper that Americans talk to each other about their feelings of the economic situation rather than “analyze the numbers.”

“I don’t know where, you know, the voters that some other folks might be talking to — but — or — but most people do not sit around their kitchen table and analyze GDP and unemployment numbers,” Carney said. “They do not sit around analyzing The Wall Street Journal or other — or Bloomberg to look at the — you know, analyze the numbers.”

It’s too darn bad we don’t know how to read, analyze or think, or we’d know what a total abject failure Jay Carney’s boss truly is.  If we could just learn to read or count, we’d fix Barry Hussein good in 2012.

Carney began this dissertation on the ignorance of the American people by first saying,

“Well, I understand that we’re engaged in the – or rather, the Republicans are engaged in a primary campaign, trying to get some media attention.”

As though that should somehow insulate Obama to whatever they say (we know that Obama has NEVER campaigned, and transcends politics the way the gods transcend humanity, after all).

I came across someone who did a good chunk of the assessment of Obama’s latest job figures and the reality of the pain that increasing numbers of Americans feel as a result of Obama’s economy for me:

You’re a just bunch of dullards who don’t care about unemployment, or the deplorable state of the U.S. economy, or the out of control spending by a socialist kleptocracy.

Here’s the numbers:

The GDP is the measure of a country’s output at any given time. The nation’s $14 trillion+ debt now equals the TOTAL  U.S. GDP, and exceeds the world’s economic output.

The official unemployment estimate is 9.2%, but when you figure in all of the people who simply stopped looking for work or have run out of unemployment benefits that percentage increases.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics: Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, now stands at 16.2%.

I analyze Obama’s abject, deliberate destruction of America’s economy, every day.    Jobs, along with businesses are leaving America thanks to the idiotic regulations, high taxes, the trade deficit, government spending, and unions that price their people and jobs right out of the country.  Tens of thousands of jobs have moved to communist China, which means we’re propping up an enemy of the United States with capitalist dollars.

But the American people are too damn stupid to understand all of that.  How can the ignorant dirty masses possibly understand?  It is better that Obama TELL THEM what to think, is it not?  And no one should listen to Republicans, after all; they’re campaigning, you know.  And Obama would never do anything so crass as that.

Still, Carney’s hand-waving dismissal of the Republicans’ points make it somewhat interesting to find out what those points actually ARE:

Tim Pawlenty pointed out that Obama is “dangerously detached.”  That whole “I feel your pain” thing is simply absent from Obama.  He stands far too far above us to feel or understand our mortal pain.  Our duty is to worship our messiah and have faith in him and in his Marxist ideology come what may.

But Mitt Romney probably most hit the nail on the head:

“Today’s abysmal jobs report confirms what we all know – that President Obama has failed to get this economy moving again. Just this week, President Obama’s closest White House adviser said that ‘unemployment rates or even monthly jobs numbers’ do not matter to the average American.

“If David Plouffe were working for me, I would fire him and then he could experience firsthand the pain of unemployment. His comments are an insult to the more than 20 million people who are out of work, underemployed or who have simply stopped looking for jobs. With their cavalier attitude about the economy, the White House has turned the audacity of hope into the audacity of indifference.”

That opens the door to another thing Obama assumes you are: too selfish to care about other people.

If you have a job, or are getting your welfare check from the government that the government has redistributed from someone who IS lucky enough to have a job, you clearly don’t give a damn about how much millions of Americans are suffering.  That was at the heart of both David Plouffe’s and Jay Carney’s point.  Let me provide the full David Plouffe (did I mention he’s Obama’s TOP political advisor?) statement:

“The average American does not view the economy through the prism of GDP or unemployment rates or even monthly jobs numbers,” Mr. Plouffe said. “People won’t vote based on the unemployment rate; they’re going to vote based on: ‘How do I feel about my own situation? Do I believe the president makes decisions based on me and my family?’

That’s right: if I’m doing okay, or at least if my family’s getting enough of the welfare pie, screw America.  Who gives a damn if everybody’s out of work?  I’m a DEMOCRAT; I’m getting MINE.  Barry Hussein took somebody else’s money and gave it to me so I’d vote for him.  Screw America, screw the American people and screw the unemployment rate.

Amity Schlaes made a good point about the Great Depression in her book The Forgotten Man: “The Great Depression wasn’t that bad if you had a job.”  And that was true; particularly if you didn’t give a damn how much other people were suffering as a result of FDR’s terribly failed and immoral policies that kept America suffering for seven full years longer than was necessary.

Obama assumes that a majority of American voters are as selfish and self-centered as he himself has proven to be in his personal life before running for president.  Did you know, for instance, this about Barack Obama?

Prior to his run for President, Barack and Michelle Obama were in the top 2% of income earners, but actually gave less than the average American in charitable giving.

Obama gave .4% of his income.  In spite of being rich, and being in the top richest 2% of Americans, Obama gave only $1,050 to charity.  When the average American household (that’s mostly us in the bottom 98%) gave $1,872, which was 2.2% of their incomes.

For the record, Barack Obama was 450% more selfish, more stingy, more greedy and more self-centered than the average American.  Even though the average American had nowhere NEAR Obama’s wealth.  And that is a documented fact.  And let’s also consider how much Michelle Obama earned by receiving lavish political patronage because of her husband’s career.

And then you find that as cheap and chintzy and stingy and selfish as the redistribution of wealth president (a.k.a. Barry Hussein) was before he decided to run for president, his vice president was even STINGIER.  Because Joe Biden gave less than one-eighth of one percent of his wealth to charity.

And, of course, Democrats who lecture us on “paying our fair share” while they either welch on their debts, refuse to contribute to charity, cheat on their taxes, or all damn three are a dime a dozen.  Let’s have a few prominent examples: Bill and Hillary Clinton, who have largely welched on Hillary’s campaign debts.  There’s Charlie Rangel, the man who chaired the committee that wrote the tax laws while not bothering to pay his own damn taxes.  There’s “Turbo Tax” Timothy Geithner, the man in charge of the Treasury and I.R.S. who didn’t bother to pay his own taxes.  There’s former Democrat candidate for president John Kerry, a millionaire, who tried to wriggle away like the worm he is from paying the taxes he should have paid on his yacht.  There’s Kerry’s wife and fellow Democrat Teresa Heinz-Kerry, who in spite of inheriting the Heinz fortune actually pays less in taxes than the median American family.  And then there’s a bunch of more garden variety cockroach Democrats such as Eric Holder, Tom Daschle, Bill Richardson, and Claire McCaskill.  And the vile putrid bunch of Democrats running Bell, California.

And let me throw in “San Fran Nan” Nancy Pelosi into the mix.  Here’s an already filthy rich woman who increased her wealth by 62% last year while millions of Americans are suffering.  She’d certainly be one who would say, “Screw America, screw the American people and screw the unemployment rate; I’m getting MINE.

These are the hypocrite vermin who constantly lecture us about how “the rich should pay their fair share.”  And these slime certainly should.  But of course, while they screech the Marxist screed of class warfare, they know that they’ve written the tax laws to benefit themselves and their supporters – to the extent they even bother to follow those tax laws that they demand everybody else follow to begin with.

“The audacity of indifference.”

Barack Obama and the Democrat Party don’t care if millions of Americans are out of work and suffering as the result of their policies.  All they frankly cynically care about is whether they can exploit that suffering to their own political advantage.  And whether the American people are ignorant enough and selfish enough to fall for their lies.