Even the Libs are pointing out Obama's Lies

US News is hardly a conservative news organization. Indeed, US News is a reliable member of the left-wing mainstream media. So US News is not a place where one expects to see a detailed discussion of the "exaggerations" by president Obama in his State of the Union address. Sure, US News cannot bring itself to call Obama's statements what they actually are: lies. Still, when the even the left feels compelled to point this stuff out, you know just how egregious the lies are.

Yesterday, US News published a column by Daniel Kish entitled "Obama Exaggerates Role of Federal Government in Natural Gas Boom". Of course, this comes after Obama said in the State of the Union that the government was responsible for the technology that is used to take natural gas out of shale. Here are Obama's exact words about the development of that technology, called hydraulic fracturing or hydrofracking. "It was public research dollars, over the course of thirty years, that helped develop the technologies to extract all this natural gas out of shale rock—reminding us that Government support is critical in helping businesses get new energy ideas off the ground."

US News calls this claim "specious at best". After all, hydrofracking has been used for more than 60 years. Indeed, the article points out that fracturing as part of well completion was first used in Pennsylvania in the early 1860's and a patent application was filed for the procedure in 1864. I doubt that Obama was claiming that the Lincoln administration was funding research into fracking during the Civil War.

Well, maybe Obama was not talking about fracking; maybe he meant the use of horizontal drilling which is also very important to the shale gas boom. The article points out that this technique was first used by the oil industry in the 1920's. Is Obama now claiming that it was the Harding and Coolidge administrations that were funding research into these techniques?

US News is kind to only call Obama's claim specious, a word defined as "superficially plausible, but actually wrong". Indeed, US News does not point out that Obama obviously knows the untruthfulness of his statement. Anyone who has the least knowledge about hydrofracking is aware that this process has nothing to do with the federal government. Indeed, at the moment, the biggest threat to the natural gas boom in the USA is the constant rumbling from the governement that it may shut down fracking for phony environmental reasons. Remember, Obama just stopped the Keystone XL pipeline purportedly for environmental reasons; the fear is that were the pipeline to rupture it would harm the acquifer in parts of Nebraska. Of course, after the route of the pipeline was modified, oil would have to flow uphill to reach that acquifer, but Obama still stopped the pipeline. Oh, and there are at least eleven other pipelines that traverse the acquifer and over two million miles of pipelines in the USA with no serious leaks in recent memory, but Obama had to stop this one. In short, lying about energy policy is nothing new for Obama.

It is sad that we have a president who still thinks that the most important thing in the world is what he says. Obama's motto seems to be "If I say it, it must be correct!" But the truth is unchanging and, as the saying goes, "facts are stubborn things." I honestly do not know if Obama simply deludes himself into believing what he says or if he realizes that he is telling whoppers. That leaves us with a president who is delusional or completely dishonest. Let's thank the Lord that we have an election this year.