Cozening America

The ten commandments, no longer a part of the curriculum for most public schools, are still visible in and around many state capitol structures. While some communities have banished the tablets from public view, the 9th commandment is still the crux of validating legal testimony, as oaths are sworn to tell the truth...nothing but the truth, despite the casual elimination of “so help me God”.

“Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor” (or shortened “Thou Shall Not Lie”)

It has been said obedience to this commandment is a path to building character. Confidence in a man, a government, a leader is only as good as their character...their word. So how does this relate to news this past week?

1. Lenore Skenazy, of Reason Foundation, wrote an expose succinctly unraveling Joey Salads’ Stranger Danger “social experiment” video which had gone viral to the tune of over one million viewers. While Joey had manipulated the public into believing children were at risk of being abducted by strangers to the tune of 800 a year. Lenore clarified the statistic as being 115, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

“The experiment consists of Salads asking parents at a playground if they’ve taught their kids not to talk to strangers—a lesson I don’t endorse, since most strangers are good and you want kids to feel confident asking them for help if need be. “You can talk to anyone, you cannot go off with anyone,” is the advice I prefer.”

While the tragic circumstances for each child in DOJ statistic is still horrific, one has to question if in fact Joey’s “social experiment” was the reaction to the video and not the content. Joey lied to create a “social experiment” which the media is all too willing to promote a conclusion: kids already have way too much unsupervised time outside.

2. Michael Reagan’s May 1, 2015 article in Newsmax challenges the basis, solution, and validity for concern during California’s three year drought. He cites Joel Kotkin, of Newgeography.com, who supports water storage.

“California has met the future, and it really doesn’t work . . . As a result, the great American land of opportunity is devolving into something that resembles feudalism, a society dominated by rich and poor, with little opportunity for upward mobility for the state’s middle- and working classes.

Reagan goes on to challenge why desalinization plants are not used in California considering the fact there is no shortage of ocean water and the technology exists “...are blocked by fanatic greens for reasons that make sense only to those blinded by zealotry. “

The son of President Reagan drives home his point of an economic impact and motivation for marketing a drought

California’s elites have blocked energy development, driven business owners to Texas and destroyed middle-class jobs. The vast majority of the state now lives in the rubble intellectuals and their Hollywood cheerleaders have created.

California formerly had a poverty rate that was below the national average as late as my father’s presidential administration. Now California has the highest poverty rate in the nation.

Once again a lie is being perpetrated in order to accomplish an agenda, much to the detriment of the public and non-elitists.

3. One Hundred and thirty thousand people, primarily Christian Armenians, took to the streets on Friday April 24, 2015 in Los Angeles. Their well-planned six mile march had very limited police presence, with only eight arrested. The march was designed to bring attention to the remembrance of the Armenian Genocide which began on April 24, 1915 and resulted in over 1.5 million Christian Armenians tortured and executed.

• Ronald Reagan, in 1991 said:

“Like the genocide of the Armenians before it, and the genocide of the Cambodians which followed it—and like too many other such persecutions of too many other peoples—the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten.”

Acknowledgement of the genocide has been politicized and ignored for decades by the US.

So who has lied?

• · Hillary Clinton, in 2008 said “alone among the presidential candidates, I have been a long-standing supporter of the Armenian Genocide Resolution.” and “I believe the horrible events perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against Armenians constitute a clear case of genocide,” and even promised a declaration of the genocide once elected.

Newsweek, in their 2015 article “Hillary’s Shifting Stance on the Armenian Genocide” described Secretary of State Clinton’s 2011 visit to Armenia:

“In July, 2010, during an official five-day trip to Ukraine, Poland, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia, Secretary Clinton paid a visit to the Armenian genocide memorial complex, located in Armenia’s capital, Yerevan. But soon after Clinton’s visit to the memorial, the U.S. Embassy in Armenia released a statement that called it “a private visit…as a sign of respect for the 1.5 million Armenians who lost their lives in 1915.” Not using the word genocide—and dubbing it a private visit, despite the fact that Clinton was in Armenia in her official role as secretary of state—struck many then and now as ducking the issue and it seemed to anger as much as allay qualms about the U.S. position.”

Clinton latter labeled it “a historical debate” and argued that using the word ‘genocide’ “opens a door that is a very dangerous one to go through.”

• Barack Obama, in 2008 as a candidate for President, promised, if elected, to refer to the Turkish mass killing of Armenians that began in 1915 as genocide.”

Obama said the Armenian genocide was not a “viewpoint” but a “widely documented fact.” However, 7 years later not only has he not made any statement anywhere similar to that of President Reagan. Nowhere to be found in his 2015 statement prior to the April 24, 2015 commemoration and memorials was the word genocide.

• Adolf Hitler, in 1939 said:

Thus, for the time being only in the east, I put ready my Death’s Head units, with the order to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of the Polish race or language. Only thus will we gain the living space that we need. Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?