Obama: My approval rating tanked because of the ‘fictional character’ Fox, Limbaugh created

by Tré Goins-Phillips 

If you have a negative view of President Barack Obama, it’s because of the “fictional character” Fox News and conservative talkers like Rush Limbaugh created over the years. That is, according to the outgoing commander in chief.

Obama recently sat down for a discussion with The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates for a series titled “My President Was Black.” In the first two segments, which were published Tuesday and Wednesday, the president makes it clear he’s no fan of Fox or his conservative detractors in the media.

In the first interview, Obama claimed to be a victim of “concentrated vilification of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, the whole conservative-media ecosystem” during his 2008 bid for the presidency. And after he won the White House, he said the anti-Obama sentiment went into “full force,” permanently tainting the way a “large portion of white voters” saw him:

[T]hey weren’t seeing some image of me as trying to take away their stuff and give it to black people, and coddle criminals, and all the stereotypes of not just African-American politicians but liberal politicians. You started to see that kind of prism being established towards the end of the 2008 race, particularly once Sarah Palin was the [vice presidential] nominee. And obviously almost immediately after I was elected, it was deployed in full force. And it had an impact in terms of how a large portion of white voters would see me.

And what that speaks to — and this is something I still strongly believe — is that the suspicion between races, the way it can manifest itself in politics, in part comes out of people’s daily interactions and the fact that we’re segregated by communities, and by schools, and our churches, and people’s memories passed down through generations.

Then in the second segment, Obama told Coates that he suffered from diminished support due to the  “fictional” persona many conservatives, like Limbaugh, promoted because, apparently, it’s unbelievable someone just wouldn’t approve of him.

“There’s Barack Obama the person and there’s Barack Obama the symbol, or the office holder, or what people are seeing on television, or just a representative of power,” Obama said.

The outgoing president suggested that people use him as a scapegoat when they’re “angry that somehow the government is failing”:

So when people criticize or respond negatively to me, usually they’re responding to this character that they’re seeing on TV called Barack Obama, or to the office of the presidency and the White House and what that represents. And so you don’t take it personally. You understand that if people are angry that somehow the government is failing, then they are going to look to the guy who represents government. And that applies, by the way, even to some of the folks who are now Trump supporters. They’re responding to a fictional character named Barack Obama who they see on Fox News or who they hear about through Rush Limbaugh.

Obama’s comments followed his determination last month that the reason Democrats struggled to reach voters in the presidential election is, at least in part, because “Fox News is in every bar and restaurant in big chunks of the country.”

Report: Obama Admin Fires Scientist for Being Too Forthright With Congress

by Leah Barkoukis

A top scientist at the Department of Energy was fired for not toeing the Obama administration’s line regarding climate science, a new congressional investigation found.  

The report released by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, alleges that DOE officials withheld information from Congress and fired a top scientist at the agency all to advance the Obama administration’s climate agenda.  

In mid-2014, lawmakers introduced legislation, the Low Dose Radiation Act of 2014, to help regulate the program and minimize harmful side effects.

During an October 2014 briefing with senior DoE staff on the matter, lawmakers heard testimony from Dr. Noelle Metting, the radiation research program’s manager.

Less than a month later, lawmakers discovered that Obama administration officials had “removed Dr. Metting from federal service for allegedly providing too much information in response to questions posed by” Congress during the briefing, the report states.

Congressional investigators later determined that the administration’s “actions to remove Dr. Metting were, in part, retaliation against Dr. Metting because she refused to conform to the predetermined remarks and talking points designed by Management to undermine the advancement of” the 2014 radiation act.

Emails unearthed during the investigation “show a sequence of events leading to a premeditated scheme by senior DoE employees ‘to squash the prospects of Senate support'” for the radiation act, a move that lawmakers claim was meant to help advance President Obama’s own climate change goals.

One of the reasons DOE gave for removing Metting from federal service was “her failure to confine the discussion at the briefing to pre-approved talking points,” the report stated.

The report concluded that the agency put the president’s climate agenda ahead of its “constitutional obligations” to be truthful with Congress.  

 “Instead of providing the type of scientific information needed by Congress to legislate effectively, senior departmental officials sought to hide information, lobbied against legislation, and retaliated against a scientist for being forthcoming,” Smith said in a statement. “In this staff report based on lengthy record before the committee, much has been revealed about how senior level agency officials under the Obama administration retaliated against a scientist who did not follow the party line.”

He continued: “Moving forward, the department needs to overhaul its management practices to ensure that Congress is provided the information it requires to legislate and that federal employees and scientists who provide that information do so without fear of retribution.”

Blue states that voted for Hillary Clinton share something in common: they’re dying

by Sarah Lee

Apparently the top 10 states that voted for Hillary Clinton over President-elect Donald Trump during the 2016 election have a very disturbing commonality: they’re dying.

According to the Independent Journal Review, citing work by noted Washington Times columnist and economist Stephen Moore, those states are performing so poorly economically “people are clamoring to move out of them.”

The states include Massachusetts, California, Maryland, New York, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Connecticut, Vermont, Illinois and Hawaii. From IJR:

According to economic expert Stephen Moore, writing in the Washington Times, the reasons Americans are fleeing these states are all driven by economics — namely, that they share the progressive values of “high taxes rates; high welfare benefits; heavy regulation; environmental extremism; high minimum wages.”

IJR breaks down in short, handy paragraphs a supporting statistic for each state. Take California for example:

Despite one of the highest minimum wages in the U.S., tech and Hollywood moguls enjoy a very different life compared to everyday Californians — which could explain why the state’s seen a net loss of nearly 1.3 million residents over the past decade.

Or New York:

It should come as no surprise that the state’s residency has taken a nearly 1.5 million hit from 2005 to 2014, more than any other state.

Or even Hawaii:

The Aloha State has one of the highest top marginal personal income tax rates and the highest sales tax burden, according to the ALEC study.

The sunshine is also not enough to keep people from migrating away from the state, which experienced a net loss of 36,000 residents from 2005 to 2014.

The article also notes, citing Moore, that the states with the highest percentage of Trump voters have seen net gains in population.

All of which makes the progressive-leaning articles that were written back during the start of the primary season seem a bit like wishful thinking rather than sound economic trend analysis. This one from The Atlantic titled, “Why America is Moving Left,”  is a long, expository, academic look at why America is becoming more liberal. And it missed the mark almost completely:

That doesn’t mean the Republicans won’t retain strength in the nation’s statehouses and in Congress. It doesn’t mean a Republican won’t sooner or later claim the White House. It means that on domestic policy—foreign policy is following a different trajectory, as it often does—the terms of the national debate will continue tilting to the left. The next Democratic president will be more liberal than Barack Obama. The next Republican president will be more liberal than George W. Bush.

Turns out rather than moving to the left, America is literally moving to the right.

Michelle Obama Confesses To Oprah: 8 Years Of Hope And Change Left People Without Hope

In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, First Lady Michelle Obama admitted that after eight years of hope and change, many Americans still feel like they have no hope.

DECEMBER 16, 2016 By The Federalist Staff

In a stunning interview with Oprah Winfrey, First Lady Michelle Obama admitted that her husband’s presidency, which began with a promise to usher in hope and change, failed to leave Americans with a lasting sense of hope for the future. Clips of the interview, which is scheduled to air on CBS next week, were released by the broadcast network on Friday morning.

“Your husband’s administration, everything, the election, was all about hope,” Winfrey asked the soon-to-be-former First Lady. “Do you think that this administration achieved that?”

“Yes,” Obama tentatively answered. After a long a pause, she elaborated, “I do, because we feel the difference now.”

She then contradicted her strained answer and noted that despite everything the president accomplished in the White House over the last eight years, many Americans nonetheless still have no hope.

“See, now we’re feeling like what not having hope feels like,” Obama said in an apparent reference to the 2016 election results.

During the interview, Obama bounced back and forth between saying her husband’s administration had indeed achieved the hope and change he had promised during the 2008 campaign, that this sense of hope created by the 44th president was no longer present due to the election results, and that hope was necessary to survive.

At one point, the First Lady seemed to intimate that hope is derived not necessarily from faith, peace and prosperity, constitutionally protected freedoms, or even government programs, but from whatever particular individual happens to inhabit the White House at any given time. She said people react to their leaders the same way children’s react to their parents: if a parent overreacts, the child will learn to overreact. If a parent is hopeful, the children will be hopeful, she said.

“What do you give your kids if you can’t give them hope?” she asked.

“I feel like Barack has been [the calm parent who doesn’t overreact to small things] for the nation in ways that people will come to appreciate,” Obama told Winfrey. “Having a grown-up in the White House who can say to you in times of crisis and turmoil, ‘Hey, it’s going to be okay.'”

“What do we do if we don’t have hope, Oprah?” Obama asked again at the conclusion of the clip.

You can view the full clip released by CBS on Friday here.

Nancy Pelosi slams Ben Carson. What is she so afraid of?

By Wayne Root

Did you hear what the Democrat Party’s leader in Congress just said about Dr. Ben Carson? 

I’m proud to call Dr. Ben a personal friend. He is the very definition of a good man, a gentleman, and a great human being. He defines “accomplished.” 

Ben is the living definition of “the American Dream” that people the world over believe in. 

President Obama talks about giving "hope" to people of color. But anyone can talk. Dr. Ben doesn’t talk, he walks the walk. He leads by example.

Ben may be America’s single greatest living African-America super-achiever. He rose from poverty, in a single parent household in the ghettos of Baltimore, to the world’s greatest brain surgeon, multiple-times national bestselling author, and then GOP Presidential candidate. Today he is President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Yet liberal Democrat leaders like Nancy Pelosi see all of those amazing accomplishments and call him “disconcertedly and disturbingly unqualified.” She actually says Dr. Ben doesn’t have “the credentials” for the job.

Really? If a white Republican political leader called a black super-achiever “disturbingly unqualified” wouldn’t liberals and the media immediately label him or her as a "racist?" Of course they would. And they’d be right.

What is Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party afraid of? That a talented, brilliant black man who has lived in public housing, who overcame poverty in the same inner city projects he will now be in charge of, might actually make a difference? 

Are they afraid Dr. Ben might actually give hope to black youth, instead of just talking about it?

Are they afraid Dr. Ben might break the vicious cycle of poverty in inner cities?

Are they afraid Dr. Ben might be able to teach and inspire black youth to achieve success, instead of playing “the blame game?”

Are they afraid Dr. Ben might counsel black America on the importance of having a father in every home?

Are they afraid Dr. Ben might actually work with President Donald Trump to provide a generation of black youth with jobs instead of a welfare check?

Are they afraid of Dr. Ben working hand-in-hand with President Donald Trump might create so much success that a new generation of black youth might actually wind up thinking positively about the Republican Party?

Because if that’s Nancy Pelosi’s thought process, I feel pity for the Democratic Party. That means they only care about black vote, not the quality of black lives. And that's a sin. 

If that’s the case, Nancy Pelosi and the leaders of the Democratic Party actually define “racist.”

This Republican-conservative patriot says...

Welcome and congratulations to Dr. Ben Carson.

Thank you for your discipline and sacrifice.

Thank you for your amazing accomplishments and credentials.

Thank you for being a role model for every youth living in poverty in America.

Thank you for being a great American. 

See more at http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/12/06/nancy-pelosi-slams-ben-carson-what-is-so-afraid.html