How Can You Tell When A Politician Is Lying?

Power Line - Barack Obama, a synthesizer no more: "Obama even claimed that the show of respect towards Islam implicit in the building of a mosque at Ground Zero is one reason why we will win the fight against al Qaeda.

Obama has since 'clarified' his remarks, as he did in the case of Professor Gates. But this time the clarification is not a synthesis. Obama still endorses the thesis that the iman has the right to build the mosque at Ground Zero. And he still declines to endorse the thesis of the mosque's opponents - that putting it there is a very bad idea. On this, he professes agnosticism. Nor does Obama seem to have any intention of mediating, as he eventually did in the Gates case.

Obama, it is clear, masqueraded as a synthesizer in order to gain power. He took advantage of America's yearning for a president who will bridge our divisions. He never intended to be such a president. Rather, he intended to be the agent for one side of the debate -- a side I think is properly viewed as the antithesis to the traditional American narrative that we are good country with a good economic system.

It will be quite difficult, I suspect, for the American electorate to forgive Obama for his deception."

By the fact that their lips are moving of course. This is the first rule of politics, only perhaps challenged by the following (also see the right sidebar):

"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators." - P. J. O'Rourke

But both of these are apparently insufficiently obvious to penetrate the mass brainwashing that our fellow innocents citizens have endured. Postman -- and by implication Huxley -- didn't know how right he was...