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Ben Rhodes has offered us four lessons

1. the press really is both lazy and stupid

2. the press acts as obama’s useful idiots

3. all of obama’s policies are likely based on deceit

4. Ben Rhodes is an a**hole and a liar

Ben Rhodes is the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications for Barack Obama and seems to have an extraordinary amount of influence in the current administration. Rhodes was the architect of the phony scheme to blame a video for the Benghazi attacks. He is also the guy who last April promised the Iran deal would contain “anywhere, anytime” inspections and then in July said “We never sought in this negotiation the capacity for so-called anytime, anywhere” inspections.

Former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates gave us a look into obama’s maniacal ego when he quoted obama as saying to his staff “I can do every one of your jobs better than you can.” He’s got competition from Ben Rhodes, who also thinks he’s obama’s brain:

“I don’t know anymore where I begin and Obama ends.”

Impressive stuff for an aspiring novelist without any real world experience.

“His lack of conventional real-world experience of the kind that normally precedes responsibility for the fate of nations — like military or diplomatic service, or even a master’s degree in international relations, rather than creative writing — is still startling.”

He shares much with his boss:

“He truly gives zero [expletive] about what most people in Washington think.”

As you read about Rhodes you realize that all people around obama in official positions are figureheads and puppets. They have no real power or influence. Rhodes was hired to “help the president of the United States communicate with the public” but that has evolved into “help the President deceive the public by manipulating the idiot press.” Megalomaniacs have a difficult time refraining from talking about themselves and Rhodes finally had to spurt out the truth. Rhodes made clear his contempt for the press, depicting them as dummies:

Watching Rhodes work, I remember that he is still, chiefly, a writer, who is using a new set of tools — along with the traditional arts of narrative and spin — to create stories of great consequence on the biggest page imaginable. The narratives he frames, the voices of senior officials, the columnists and reporters whose work he skillfully shapes and ventriloquizes, and even the president’s own speeches and talking points, are the only dots of color in a much larger vision about who Americans are and where we are going that Rhodes and the president have been formulating together over the past seven years.

Yes, the press is populated by idiots who swallow whatever obama sticks in their mouths. Rhodes bragged how he and obama were able to push the Iran deal through based on lies:

In the spring of last year, legions of arms-control experts began popping up at think tanks and on social media, and then became key sources for hundreds of often-clueless reporters. “We created an echo chamber,” he admitted, when I asked him to explain the onslaught of freshly minted experts cheerleading for the deal. “They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.”

Rhodes refers to the those in the press and those with experience as “The Blob”:

The Blob includes “editors and reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker,” etc. It also encompasses, according to Rhodes, Obama’s former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, and the administration’s first defense secretary Robert Gates. Presumably Leon Panetta, former Pentagon chief and CIA director, who goes on the record to criticize Rhodes and the president, is also part of the Blob, alongside “other Iraq-war promoters from both parties who now whine incessantly about the collapse of the American security order in Europe and the Middle East.” In other words, the emotion driving the administration’s foreign policy is contempt—contempt for allies, colleagues, and the generations of American policymakers who built the post-WWII international order, ensuring relative global stability, and peace and prosperity at home.

The obama White House was already thick with the press:

If you want to understand why the mainstream media is so in love with the Obama administration, this can in part be explained by the fact that a number of big shots who control levers of media power actually do love high-placed officials within the Obama administration. By blood and through marriage, there is more than just a shared belief in left-wing politics that ensured the American media became a mouthpiece for the Obama administration. David Rhodes, the current president of CBS News, is the brother of Ben Rhodes, a White House national security advisor. If Ben’s name sounds familiar, that is likely due to his reported role in the editing of the now infamous Benghazi talking points. Claire Shipman, a senior national correspondent at ABC News, is married to no other than Jay Carney, the White House Press Secretary. If those ties between the Obama White House and ABC News aren’t disturbing enough, the president of ABC News, Ben Sherwood, is brother to Dr. Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, a special advisor to Barack Obama. Virginia Moseley is a CNN Vice President and Washington Bureau Chief married to Tom Nides, a Deputy Secretary of State under Barack Obama.

It is not difficult to see how easily the media can be manipulated. The term “useful idiots” comes to mind.

It is not surprising to some of us that obama was lying about the Iran deal. It is not the first time obama has lied about policies he wants to shove down our throats. Remember “You can keep your doctor”? Remember “You’ll save $2500 per year”? All lies.The more naive among us might want to believe that obama didn’t know the truth. I think he did. I think without a doubt that he lied intentionally to further the agenda he intended to foist upon this country and I am convinced that he lies about all of his intentions.

Jim Geraghty once said that all of obama’s statements come with an expiration date. It’s worse than that. They were never true to begin with.

Dr. John’s Law: Whatever Obama says is a lie. The opposite is the truth.

Ben Rhodes has confirmed it. Over at Foreign Policy Thomas Ricks wrote the most best description of Ben Rhodes I have yet seen, calling Rhodes “The Asshole Who Is The President’s Foreign Policy Guru.”

Rhodes comes off like a real asshole. This is not a matter of politics — I have voted for Obama twice. Nor do I mind Rhodes’s contempt for many political reporters: “Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.” But, as that quote indicates, he comes off like an overweening little schmuck. This quotation seems to capture his worldview: “He referred to the American foreign policy establishment as the Blob. According to Rhodes, the Blob includes Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, and other Iraq-war promoters from both parties who now whine incessantly about the collapse of the American security order in Europe and the Middle East.” Blowing off Robert Gates takes nerve.

Ricks is a former Washington Post reporter who voted twice for obama. Perhaps intentionally, Ricks opens the door but refuses to go through it. He nails Rhodes but he leaves Rhodes’ “mind-meld” partner – obama- alone. Rhodes’ lies and deceit do not originate in a vacuum. The men are said to communicate several times a day. Rhodes’ actions and words are not independent from obama’s. As Rhodes said, it’s hard to know where one ends and the other begins. Ricks seems unable or unwilling to come to grips with that. Ben Rhodes is an a**hole and a liar, but so is his boss.