Garden-Gate: A metaphor
My column today uses the little Iron Chef-fuffle episode to examine the White House’s much larger phony fruit basket. The seeds of Candidate Barack Obama’s transparency pledges have instead yielded bottomless backroom deals.
Here’s the big lie about the Cadillac tax exemption for Big Labor. The Dems say the tax will take effect in 2018. Bullcrap. Andy Stern and every other union boss will spend the next eight years ensuring that the excise tax never touches their empire. There’s no such thing as a temporary entitlement — or a temporary buy-off.
Phony fruits in the Obama White House garden
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010
Hold on to your hoe. It turns out that the fruits and veggies used in a special edition of the popular Food Network TV show “Iron Chef America” featuring the First Lady did not, in fact, come from the White House garden. Could there be a more deliciously fitting symbol of Obama White House fakery than Garden-Gate?
Some may shrug at this tempest in a colander. But as we approach the one-year anniversary of the Hope and Change inauguration, the First Lady’s little horticultural hoax serves as a handy metaphor for a cornucopia of Obama fraud. They’ve stocked health care town halls with partisan goons and benefactors. They’ve provided lab coat to doctor donors to make their health care lobbying look more authentic. And they’ve treated soldiers, in President Obama’s own words, as “pretty good photo ops.”
Ringers are what’s for breakfast, lunch, and dinner at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
East Wing apologists are whirling like KitchenAid salad spinners over the Iron Chef-fuffle: “Due to the production delay between the shoot at the White House and the shoot at Food Network, the produce used in Kitchen Stadium during the ‘Super Chef Battle’ was not actually from the White House garden,” admitted a Food Network spokeswoman. But, they stress, the replacement produce consisted of the exact same types of sweet potatoes, tomatillos, broccoli, and fennel purportedly picked from the White House garden.
It’s the haute cuisine version of disgraced CBS News fabricator Dan Rather’s fake-but-accurate card. But this is just the latest Potemkin produce from a Potemkin presidency.
To wit: White House number-crunchers and Democrat fuzzy mathematicians have been cooking the books on stimulus jobs numbers and government health care takeover costs. They desperately ditched the “jobs saved or created” recipe for a jobs-funded concoction to salvage the illusion of economic recovery. They’ve inflated deficit reduction estimates and downplayed doctor reimbursement cuts. And they’ve done so behind a locked kitchen door.
Candidate Barack Obama whipped up a nutritious package of transparency pledges that has fallen flatter than a one-egg soufflé. Open government, he told us, was good for Washington and good for America – and the president promised to give us heaping doses of it on C-SPAN. But not a camera was in sight for the past week’s backroom health care among the White House, Democrat leaders, and left-wing special interests.
Now, President Obama is poised to deliver juicy tax exemptions for unions while squeezing middle-class taxpayers, employers, investors, and drugmakers to subsidize expanded government health care.
The liberal press became unhinged when former President George W. Bush posed with an artificial turkey on a surprise Thanksgiving trip to Baghdad in 2003. But on Thursday, when President Obama served up a fake populist turkey of a $90 billion bank tax – dubbed the “Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee” – much of the press corps dutifully chewed and swallowed. Feigning outrage at the very financial sector that loaded his campaign coffers and provided him with crony Treasury appointees, Obama demanded “our money” back.
But the tax will not apply to the Enron-rivaling financial black holes of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (it would “not be productive,” says a White House filled with Fannie & Freddie-enriched advisors). Or to the bailed-out auto companies. Or to the bevy of non-banks that have soaked up taxpayer bailout money. Gobble, gobble, gobble.
Nor will any of the incompetent or complicit financial regulators who practiced self-admittedly “inadequate” oversight before the meltdown and during the government bailout structuring be fined or penalized (we’re looking at you, Tim Geithner).
With Year Two of the Obama administration barely under way, even its most loyal subjects are beginning to realize that Hope and Change were phony fruits. He promised new politics. We got the same old crony capitalism. He promised public accountability. We got the back of the hand. How ya like them rotten apples now?
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I hope the Obama’s enjoy the fruits of their labor. Maybe when this is all done, they can run a fruit and vegetable stand in Lafayette Square in DC. It would be good practical business experience for both of them…
Oh no, Michelle–you’ll get the trolls all in a tizz again!
that’s what we all tried to point out in the past couple of days, in our own sarcastic way. I fear it is lost on them (trolls) though.
Excellent column.
I was always under the impression that the turkey wasn’t fake.
“You know, this conversation doesn’t help my kids.” ~ Michelle Obama
Juicy column, Michelle.
Yep, It Takes A Potemkin Village to keep the Dems in power.
***
During WW2–when I was 4 years old–my Mom planted a “victory” garden, and had a few hens and a rooster in our back yard so we could get more food. I helped in this effort.
***
A few years later I planted a lot of Lima bean seeds in our back yard. All grew quite well and we ate them all.
***
Now we all live in a time of plenty for most people–a richness that didn’t exist 60+ years ago. And FLOTUS Michelle Obama puts in a fake garden for show only! What phony clowns!
***
However, if Comrade Obama (PBUH) and his ilk keep destroying our country we may all be doing “depression” gardens to stay alive. Read SCOTUS Clarence Thomas’s MY GRANDFATHER’S SON about how his brave grandad grew most of their food to keep his family alive.
***
John Bibb
***
fraud, lies, incompetency, and laughable very low standards is what defines this joke of an administration. with zero and the beast leading the way.
I’ve been thinking about something… electing Obama may have been the best thing that could have happened to us at this point. In the past, we’ve known about the backroom deals the politicians make and what they do simply to get re-elected. We’ve been disgusted, but what have we done? The election of Obama has awakened a sleeping giant and we now have a voice. We will no longer be sitting quietly on the sidelines thinking nothing can be done. Story after story across the country is telling how politicians are now being closely watched and being put on notice. Sure, we still have to survive 3 more years with Obama, but we seem to be getting a hold back on the country and the government. The memory of the failure of Obama is going to last a long time and hopefully we’ll never see another “American Idol” candidate who may be shiny on the outside but so totally unqualified for the job.
I thank people like Michelle Malkin and the others who have tirelessly alerted us and helped to get our voices heard!
Thanks Michelle, nice article. In a previous thread on this topic I mentioned the turkey incident as well, only I made a TYPO on Iran instead of Iraq but the point was the same. The press had an amusing meltdown over the incident, that was my point.
behiker,
I survived Carter as a kid, and NEVER thought we’d see another one. We must never be complacent again. Once Obama is gone. We have to continue to fight and find the right candidates. When we sleep, the liberals plot. We have to forever keep up the pressure.
If God will grant us justice – actual, real, genuine justice – there are so many
individualscriminals…extending all the way to the top, that must be prosecuted and imprisoned for a long, loooonnnng time.This should enrage every American who isn’t a union worker. How long are Americans going to just sit there and take it?
When the economy takes a dive, the private sector gets whacked with massive job cuts…. the Gov’t union sector??? No impact.
Now, Obama is paying off more of his voters with more of our money.
He buys Nebraska’s Senator’s vote with our Money.
He buys Louisiana’s Senator’s vote with our money.
He buys autoworker union votes with our money via Tarp then whacks us again by redistributing some big bank’s money to cover the cost that the Auto industry won’t be paying back.
America better wake up soon.
Amen to that! And, I was a kid during the same time. I am still proud to say the first election I was able to vote in was for Ronald Reagan!
At the height of anger from the voters we must make permanent changes that solve the problems, not just vote certain people out. Fix the system not just the roster.
Where is Cheddar to wax eloquent on this quote?
breaking News on Foxnews.com Nuke Plant on Lockdown Near Amarillo, Texas
Not near TV anybody have updates…
Really now! My guess is the vegetables Michelle Obama grew were so withered and puny that even Slap Chop wouldn’t have used them in their infomercial. I honestly doubt she has a green thumb coming from the concrete jungles of Chicago and all.
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.”
Matthew 7:15-20
“Is that ‘Fraggle Rock’?–Pepperjack loves ‘Fraggle Rock’.”
–It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
amen speakeasy! the system is broken. it is one thing to have another new york jewish communist traitor like chuck schumer voted out of office, and it is a whole different thing for us to change the system where people like obama and schumer can’t bribe us with our own money and bankrupt our grandchildren’s america. i equate mr schumers actions with the couple who gave our atomic secrets to russia, in that we spent the next 50 years spending gazzillions on defense from russia and it’s proxies, and likewise we have spent gazzillions on the social war on poverty which i percieve as a huge drain leading to corruptocrats such as politicians, and the “not for profit charity organizations like acorn and the rainbow coalition.”
Obama and his wife spit on America.
And most of America shrugs.
No thanks, Obama can keep Michelle.
I am an avid backyard organic gardener, and have been for years. I look at the volume and quantity of produce that has supposedly come out of that little patch at the White House, and known it was a fraud from Day 1.
If the White House is actually trying to promote backyard gardening by this example, they are doing a terrible job. Your average Happy Homeowner is going to go out and have nowhere near the results that the professionals at the White House can achieve, which is not even close to what they have claimed to produce. I’m sure that in the next Five Year Plan, Michelle’s garden plot is scheduled to feed all of Maryland and half of Virginia. But our Happy Homeowner will be lucky if he gets a few tomatoes and some lettuce for his table that first year.
And don’t get me started on the wife… “Barack Obama has these big, beautiful sweet potatoes, like I saw on Iron Chef! What’s wrong with you, honey?” The poor dear has come down with a case of wildly unrealistic expectations…
Well, he is keeping his promise there. He, and the other marxist in congress, have been showing us all sorts of new politics; takeovers, pushing for control of the economy, controlling industries, denial of fundamental rights, and loss of freedoms.
This is all very upsetting. Suppose the Obama’s dog is really a Japanese robot?
The entire Obambi administration, persona, media, congress and “hanger-ons” are a farce and an outright con. The real problem for responsible citizens of this wonderful country are those that don’t understand the players and situation, or those that see a benefit to themselves worthy of destroying the culture and country.
My favorite quote from the previous thread:
Seems like Billary was always in front of the TV cameras, too. Will any of you be surprised to see a Senator M. Obama in a few years?
(Sorry to have disturbed your lunch.)
How far left can the political pendulum swing?
And people wonder why they squeal like pigs when they are called socialists?
It’s not just that they didn’t deliver on the “hopenchange” crap that they promised the rubes that were stupid enough to believe any of it.
It’s that they’ve not only given us the same-old, same-old donkey leftist politics, but done so with a vengeance. “Chicago on the Potomac” is more than just a cliché.
That’s what I thought Cheddar would say. Which Ho are we referring to?
I am pretty sure Sharpton and Jackson will find this offensive…
Errah, Michelle makes a mean glazed dodo with trilobite and coconut dressing all from whitehouse raised game and produce. To die for or so says David Axelrod.
I’m waiting for Occidental Gate myself…
Everything is fake but the arugula. That’s just pretentious.
Sorry , sick day today. (cough) (hack) (ptui)
I can barely read the posts, I need something holistic.
Really, MM! Never thought you’d be uttering bad words like this!…
James Greenidge
Queens NY
Sorry to hear you are sick, Cheddar! You want holistic? Chicken soup. It saved my life.
Get well soon Cheddar, we need you here to make us laugh.