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Have you seen the insurance commercial on television where the actor says “Did you know that words can really hurt you?” Then a western “loner” rides off into the sunset leaving his lady at the ranch when suddenly the words “The End” appear on the screen and the “loner” rides into the words which apparently knock him off his horse to the ground.
I have collected politicians’ words and phrases for years now. Marie Harf, spokeswoman for the State Department, who is always good for a few laughs, outdid herself this week. When asked how many ISIS terrorists we were killing, she admitted we were killing some but went on to say we can’t “kill ourselves out of this war”. Her solution was to provide jobs for them. She said any 17 year old ISIS warrior would probably be much more interested in starting a business than in firing an AK-47, and that we should be empowering them economically instead of continuing to kill them.
She was reading from White House talking points so we know this came from the top, meaning our president, who has never met a poverty program he didn’t like because they always lead to more welfare, food stamps, Obamacare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits for people who have never worked a day in their lives and that means a never-ending source of votes for Democratic candidates.
But wait, there’s more Harf-felt stuff. After taking fire from social media, Harf came back on the next day to clarify her remarks, stating they were apparently too “nuanced” for some people, meaning the general public who doesn’t quite meet the intellectual standards set by elitists like her. So once again, we citizens who vote and work and support these supercilious government snobs with our taxes, have been “Gruberized”.
Just a few weeks ago Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz, when asked by an ABC news correspondent about the swap of five Taliban prisoners from Gitmo for the deserter Bowe Bergdahl, replied that the White House doesn’t consider the Taliban to be terrorists. “The Taliban is an armed insurgency”, he said. “ ISIS are terrorists”.
Of course we remember back when ISIS were not terrorists, they were the junior varsity team.
Do you recall the famous words of Eleanor Clift who writes for The Daily Beast? While sitting on the panel of the McLaughlin Group back in May, she insisted that U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, was not “murdered” by terrorists, but merely “died of smoke inhalation”.
And who doesn’t feel sorry for Hillary Clinton who said she and Bill left the White House in 2001 dead broke. If words mean something, and they do, then receiving a book advance that same year in the amount of $2.4 million in royalties alone is not the same as being broke.
And if you go out and buy two houses, one for $1.7 million and another for $2.7 million, that’s not the same as being broke. And if you go on to earn up to $250,000 per speech so that by the time you are in your first term as a U.S. Senator you are worth between $10 and $50 million, are you really “dead broke”?
And then there is Jan Psaki, the State Department girl with the golden tongue. We just learned this week that Jan Psaki has been promoted to the position of White House Communications Director. That’s all we need, more double-speak coming out of the White House
We got a good dose of her communication ability last week when she stood at her podium and looked right into the camera and said that the evacuation of our embassy in Yemen was orderly and well-planned. Sure.
Our marines told how they had to dismantle their weapons, walk away from their cars with the keys in the ignition and the motor running, and board a commercial airliner (not a military transport) to return home. Psaki would not say who gave the order for our Marines to hand over their service guns as well as personal weapons, nor who now has custody of such weapons.
But Psaki said they had been planning a range of evacuation contingencies for several weeks, and everybody knew the protocol, and it went just as planned, smooth as silk..
Oh, but that was so last week. Then those pesky emails began to show up. It appears that no sooner had Psaki stepped back from the podium, and pulled her bright red hair back behind her ears for the twentieth time, that complete panic and chaos broke out in the State Department.
The emails now reflect that the evacuation was so hasty that they left sensitive documents open on their electronic equipment. In addition to leaving documents behind, Under Secretary of State Patrick Kennedy had ordered embassy staff to intentionally leave in place a main communication link with Washington in case they could not get out of the country. Does that seem well-planned to you?
It could almost be considered a Three Stooges movie plot, except that the involuntary disarming of our Marines at such a time and in that environment put them all at risk. The possible consequences are too horrifying to even think about.
But of course the words that are not said are the worst. The prime example these days is the inability of the president or any member of his administration to say the words “Islamic Terrorism”. It is clear that his failure to utter the phrase is due to his adamant determination not to offend the Muslim community. But why won’t he acknowledge that we are in a war against Islamic terrorism? Or does he think saying those words will knock us off our horse? Oh, I forgot. He doesn’t think we should be on a high horse anyway.
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