Cool Man

Confidence men know that their victim -- "the mark" as he has been called -- is eventually going to realize that he has been cheated. But it makes a big difference whether he realizes it immediately, and goes to the police, or realizes it after the confidence man is long gone.

So part of the confidence racket is creating a period of uncertainty, during which the victim is not yet sure of what is happening. This delaying process has been called "cooling out the mark."

The same principle applies in politics. When the accusations that led to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton first surfaced, he flatly denied them all. Then, as the months passed, the truth came out -- but slowly, bit by bit. One of Clinton's own White House aides later called it "telling the truth slowly."

By the time the whole truth came out, it was called "old news," and the clever phrase now was that we should "move on." It was a successful "cooling out" of the public, keeping them in uncertainty so long that, by the time the whole truth came out, there was no longer the same outrage as if the truth had suddenly come out all at once. Without the support of an outraged public, the impeachment of President Clinton fizzled out in the Senate.

We are currently seeing another "cooling out" process, growing out of the terrorist attack on the American consulate in Benghazi on September 11th this year. The belated release of State Department e-mails shows that the Obama administration knew, while the attack on the American consulate was still underway, that it was a coordinated, armed terrorist attack. They were getting reports from those inside the consulate who were under attack, as well as surveillance pictures from a camera on an American drone overhead. About an hour before the attack, the scene outside was calm enough for the American ambassador to accompany a Turkish official to the gates of the consulate to say goodbye. This could hardly have happened if there were protesting mobs there.

Why then did both President Obama and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice keep repeating the story that this was a spontaneous protest riot against an anti-Islamic video in America?

The White House knew the facts -- but they knew that the voting public did not. And it mattered hugely whether the facts became known to the public before or after the election. What the White House needed was a process of "cooling out" the voters, keeping them distracted or in uncertainty as long as possible.

Not only did the Obama administration keep repeating the false story about an anti-Islamic video being the cause of a riot that turned violent, the man who produced that video was tracked down and arrested, creating a media distraction. All this kept the video story front and center, with the actions and inaction's of the Obama administration kept in the background.

The White House had to know that it was only a matter of time before the truth would come out. But time was what mattered, with an election close at hand. The longer they could stretch out the period of distraction and uncertainty -- "cooling out" the voters -- the better. Once the confidence man in the White House was reelected, it would be politically irrelevant what facts came out.

An Open Letter To Obama Voters

NOTE: I didn't compose or write this letter, but it expresses my feelings exactly.

/roger

So you voted for Barrack Obama, again, to be our President and you're celebrating your victory today. You're emailing and calling all your Conservative friends and rubbing it in, as if it were a sporting event in which you each supported different teams. But it's not a sporting event, it's the fate of our country that hung in the balance of this election. You made your choice against traditional American values as outlined by the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, but in doing so you have also earned the responsibility to explain your decision to your children and grandchildren.
    
Someday you must explain to your children and grandchildren why over 70% of their earnings are being confiscated by the federal government to pay for health care and other social programs. Additionally, you will have to explain to them why their grandparents and great-grandparents are being rationed to death by a health care system that now allows bureaucrats to choose who lives and who dies. You must explain why as Americans, even if we had the money, we can no longer travel anywhere abroad for fear of being kidnapped and murdered by Islamic extremists. You must tell your children and grandchildren that the decision you made in the 2012 Presidential election has lead to the terrorist attacks they now have to endure as they live their daily lives.

Your children and grandchildren will know that it was your decision to re-elect Barack Obama that has caused a high percentage of their peers to be without work most of their adult lives, requiring them to live off a tiny pittance provided by the government. You will have to explain to your children and grand-children that in the free days of their country, people had access to as much energy as they wanted, anytime they wanted it and didn't have their energy rationed to them by the federal government. You, and you alone, will have to explain to your children and grandchildren why, when the liberty that heroes of the past spilled their blood to defend, you couldn't summon enough courage to vote in defense of that liberty. You will have to explain to your progeny why you chose the empty promises of a nanny-state over the liberty and prosperity of an opportunity society.
    
Someday, if your ignorance hasn't completely blunted your senses, you will realize that this one decision will have had dire consequences that will span generations. You will have to explain to your children and grand-children that the liberty and prosperity enjoyed by over 200 years of Americans, was voted away by you for purely short-term and selfish reasons. God help you when your children and grand-children look at you with despair in their eyes and ask why you condemned them to a dark and desperate future where their only subsistence depends, not on their own ambition and drive, but on crumbs from an ever-expanding government.

This is the country and the world you have left, not only for your own descendants, but for the descendants of all Americans. So celebrate your grand accomplishment. How does it feel?