This may be the last article I write in support of Mitt Romney. Not because I will vote for Barack Obama. But because there is no doubt but that the incumbent has the upper hand in any election, and when the vast majority of the media is "in the tank" for Obama and sufficiently concentrated in very few hands, the false belief that a single endorsement of one paper or media entity does not represent the views of its ownership, and that every paper represents a separate endorsement, was proven incorrect in 2008 and is if anything even less accurate today.

Numerous papers, including even the Salt Lake Tribune, the Detroit News, the Denver Post, the Charleston (West Virginia) Daily Mail and five newspapers in Pennsylvania have endorsed Barack Obama today, well before the foreign policy debate.

They are all owned by the MediaNews Group, which owns more than 100 daily and non-daily newspapers around the United States. We will also see Gannett, which owns USA Today, and The McClatchy Company, owner of over a hundred newspapers including its own and the Knight-Ridder newspapers it retained with "30 daily newspapers in 29 U.S. markets, which are growing much faster than the U.S. average.

Digital control is another element of these papers. As McClatchy states, "In each of its daily newspaper markets, McClatchy operates the leading local media company, offering a wide array of print and digital products."

Concentrated digital and print media ownership is something Obama has welcomed. When disappearing newspapers and media concentration makes it seem like many endorsements are occurring when it takes only four or so to endorse a candidate coast-to-coast, the ruling party can find it easy to maintain control of information. Especially in this digital age. 

The breadth and depth of Democratic Party support today is astounding despite its history. For years, very few supported conservative causes. But there were exceptions, including the Tribune Company (Chicago) and various Pennsylvania and other interests stemming from very wealthy ownership. Today, some conservative media remains, but it is much smaller and has a very difficult time providing any meaningful opposition.

There is one part of the Obama endorsement by MediaNews Group worth noting. And it has nothing to do with it being left-leaning.

Republicans, Libertarians, and Right Wing crazies, through their relentless Right Wing rhetoric and out-of-this-world singular beliefs, killed any chance they had during their bruising effort to gain control of the presidency. Perhaps Republicans are finished for good. That would not be all bad by any means, as long as some better alternative like Romney does not have to move so far to the Right they become pariahs to the majority in this country.  

These Right Wingers forced Romney, a clear moderate, into positions he would never have taken, positions he does not agree with as far as I know, which are too extreme for mainstream America which includes a more left-leaning populace than in the past. 

Republicans also failed to admit that Obama was really Bush III. They could have run an intelligent campaign showing how similar Obama is to George W. Bush. Instead, they incorrectly labelled Obama as a Far Left liberal.

Obama is nothing of the sort, any more than that Chairman Mao ornament that adorned his first Christmas tree. He, like Mao, is a revolutionary seeking to impose an ideology on the United States. 

Revolutionaries have no compromise in them. Neither does Obama. I fault him most for trying to do what is politically expedient, failing to help the poor, and moving this country to the brink of disaster.

I leave my own campaign against Obama with the following reminder.

If, by some miracle, Mitt Romney wins, I will breath a sigh of relief for the reasons below and many others. Foremost among those I truly believe is that with Obama we will have another four years of gridlock, another four years of failure, and another four years of disaster on both foreign and domestic fronts.

Under Obama, open and honest government, the most fundamental requirement of a democracy, is a thing of the past. He started another war in 2007. A war against information and truth. One that endangers us all and continues unabated through the current campaign against Mitt Romney. As Commentary noted, even The New York Times has recognized that much more of Barack Obama's own autobiography is fabricated.

Never let it be said the New York Times is afraid to tackle an unflattering story about President Obama, even if it’s often a delayed reaction. The paper’s political blog The Caucus deigned to notice today that the new biography of the president by David Maraniss uncovered the fact that much of Dreams From My Father, the highly praised Barack Obama autobiography, is either fabricated or exaggerated. The Times’s Michael Shear opines that having its author now sitting in the White House has brought Dreams more scrutiny than its author could have envisioned when he wrote it in 1995. But the problem with contemporary analyses of the questionable personal history in the book is not so much the peril associated with being a famous political author but whether the book provides proof of a pattern of falsehoods and distortions about his past that has been one of the hallmarks of the president’s public career.

Whenever useful, he claims to be above the law and not subject to federal court scrutiny. His appeal opposing the House of Representatives' subpoena for Fast and Furious documents seeks secrecy and complete power and control over what he does and says.

The picture is not pretty. It is far from what we expect from a president. By itself, this grand view of an imperial presidency must not continue. Surely, by itself, this goal presents sufficient reason in and of itself to require us to end Obama's presidency. Nothing else is needed.

Most of those charged with ensuring open and honest government, including almost every major television station and newspaper in the country and most Democrats, have failed to protect us from Obama's false statements and closed government. Indeed, they have participated in disseminating the misinformation, misdirections and outright lies disseminated by Obama and his administration for more than a year.

Obama and his Attorney General have been allowed to avoid producing government records and explaining why the DOJ's false statement about Fast and Furious was allowed to remain its only comment on Fast and Furious  for nine months or more without even being withdrawn. Democrats argue that this effort to discover government records is nothing but a "witch hunt." Instead, we should take an "honest" man's word for "it," whatever "it" is and whatever has been said. Sure, we need see no government records. After all, Obama and his attorney general cannot be questioned because they always tell the truth.

But what about that letter's false statements?

His claims that al-Qaida and the Taliban are in retreat since bin Laden's death are a lie promoted and supported by his faithful Democrats. 

We could go to many other statements during this campaign. But the one remains absolutely unassailable by anyone, as far as I know.

Open and honest government is the most critical element in a free society. And there is proof that not even Obama's attorney general has been open or even, perhaps, honest.

After the disclosures and campaign comments yesterday, we have a more complete picture of Barack Obama's multi-pronged war against truth in government, and in favor of one of the most secret, isolated, truth-distorting US governments in history. Control of the press is but one aspect of Obama's distorted message. Control of the government is much more important. So are the many civil rights violations made by this lawyer to prevail in so many Bush III acts.

I am not a purist. There is no such thing as a perfect political party, or a president who governs in accordance with one's every ethical judgment. But some actions are so ruinous to human rights, so destructive of the Constitution, and so contrary to basic morals that they are disqualifying. Most of you will go that far with me. If two candidates favored a return to slavery, or wanted to stone adulterers, you wouldn't cast your ballot for the one with the better position on health care. I am not equating President Obama with a slavery apologist or an Islamic fundamentalist. On one issue, torture, he issued an executive order against an immoral policy undertaken by his predecessor, and while torture opponents hoped for more, that is no small thing.      

What I am saying is that Obama has done things that, while not comparable to a historic evil like chattel slavery, go far beyond my moral comfort zone. Everyone must define their own deal-breakers. Doing so is no easy task in this broken world. But this year isn't a close call for me. 

Few Democrats worry about the problems we have had with Obama's secrecy and other wrongful acts. His many actions that go against liberal principles, advanced in the name of protecting us against "terrorism" and the inherent power of the president, include mass wiretaps against law-abiding citizens, kill lists that make Obama judge and executioner of American citizens without trial or judicial intervention, deaths of women and children who Obama defines as "collateral damage" to minimize their numbers, indefinite detentions, and false stories about the Middle East and what is happening there, as if few Muslims hate the United States and seek its destruction.

From the illegal and dangerous acts surrounding his secret service escort use of prostitutes, to his intentional misdirections regarding a video released in July 2012 that he falsely claimed resulted in the first death of a US ambassador in decades, to government documents withheld from the public view because he can allegedly protect even criminal conduct from our courts, we can see before our eyes today what we will have for the next four years if Obama remains in power. 

Unrestrained power to control information and continuing refusal to compromise or move the country "forward." In fact, the biggest joke of this campaign is Obama's "Forward." Forward to where and what?

The truth normally prevails over lies only after sufficient time has expired so truth is forced out in some way, or by the acts of one person having sufficient courage to disclose the truth no matter the dangers of doing so. Obama and his administration, including the two who head up his campaign, realize that truth may not emerge for many years and can be delayed for a long time after this presidential election through court appeals and other actions. 

This does not depend on proper legal principles. And it runs the danger of further entrenching into the fabric of the United States greater power than any executive has ever exercised. This is plainly not what any American should want from a president or administration.

Obama will conceal facts from the public, distort the truth, and promote false impressions in order to get elected through whatever distortions and misstatements that are required.

The errant Obama biography in the Acton & Dystel booklet does not contradict the authenticity of Obama's birth certificate. Moreover, several contemporaneous accounts of Obama’s background describe Obama as having been born in Hawaii. The biography does, however, fit a pattern in which Obama--or the people representing and supporting him--manipulate his public persona. David Maraniss's forthcoming biography of Obama has reportedly confirmed, for example, that a girlfriend Obama described in Dreams from My Father was, in fact, an amalgam of several separate individuals. In addition, Obama and his handlers have a history of redefining his identity when expedient. In March 2008, for example, he famously declared: "I can no more disown [Jeremiah Wright] than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother." Several weeks later, Obama left Wright's church--and, according to Edward Klein's new biography, The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House, allegedly attempted to persuade Wright not to "do any more public speaking until after the November [2008] election" (51). Obama has been known frequently to fictionalize aspects of his own life. During his 2008 campaign, for instance, Obama claimed that his dying mother had fought with insurance companies over coverage for her cancer treatments. That turned out to be untrue, but Obama has repeated the story--which even the Washington Post called "misleading"--in a campaign video for the 2012 election.

Obama will do his best to deny the public a full understanding of his foreign policy failings. He will hide his foreign policy errors by lying about the Libya attack. He will argue that his false claims were nothing of the sort. He will contend in many areas essential to public safety and proper government, he does not need to disclose what is happening or be accurate without long delay and investigation. He will use his control over the media to preclude the truth, and make up facts. He is the master of all time in misinformation and flat out lies.

Perhaps the most famous American in history besides Patrick Henry ("Give me liberty or give me death")  who helped us to ensure openness in the face of almost certain prosecution, warned us about lies coming from the Afghan War over a year ago, after Obama's "big lie" that his Afghan War and the death of bin Laden had resulted in a severely weakened al-Qaida. They make a powerful argument that Obama does not deserve to continue to be our president. 

We can abide by mistakes. We cannot countenance lies and abuses of power.

Daniel Ellsberg's Call for the Same Type of Information about US Actions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Libya 

On June 13, 2011, after a forty year wait, portions of the Pentagon Papers that had still not been seen by the public were finally released by the US government. Together with other papers disclosed forty years ago, the public record concerning the deceptions undertaken by President Lyndon Johnson and his administration to support the Vietnam War was finally fully disclosed.

An article published that very same day by Daniel Ellsberg, the man who disclosed the Pentagon Papers, sounded the first alarm that we need to know "how we got here and where it is likely to go." The article in the Guardian was entitled "Why the Pentagon Papers matter now." Coming from the man who took the risks inherent in disclosing the Pentagon Papers because of their importance to the truth rather than keeping the Johnson Administration's lies secret, Ellsberg's advice means a very good deal.

In other words, today's declassification of the whole study comes 36 to 40 years overdue. Yet, unfortunately, it happens to be peculiarly timely that this study gets attention and goes online just now. That's because we're mired again in wars – especially in Afghanistan – remarkably similar to the 30-year conflict in Vietnam, and we don't have comparable documentation and insider analysis to enlighten us on how we got here and where it's likely to go.

What we need released this month are the Pentagon Papers of Iraq and Afghanistan (and Pakistan, Yemen and Libya). We're not likely to get them; they probably don't yet exist, at least in the useful form of the earlier ones. But the original studies on Vietnam are a surprisingly not-bad substitute, definitely worth learning from.

It has become even more important that we receive documents relating to these wars after the events of the past month.

We need to determine how much we need to change the way in which Obama and George W. Bush prosecuted these wars and the war on terror itself. We need to determine if a totally different approach to dealing with terror is appropriate.

Obama clearly cannot do this.

Obama was wed to expanding the war in Afghanistan long before he became president. He has now doubled-down on the Afghan War. He will constantly insist that his way was and is the right way to go.

Yet, as we leave Afghanistan, the best evidence available to us is that Obama's war has not worked at all, and that Obama has done all he could to cover-up this fact.

Only Mitt Romney can begin a new direction for the war on terror and the situation in Afghanistan. Hopefully, after examining the evidence, he will find that the best way to combat terror will not be boots on the ground but instead involve other assets to prevent war, and largely covert actions designed to maximize results and minimize other costs. 

False Claims that "Spontaneous Demonstrations" Due to a Video and Republican Budget Cuts Caused Ambassador Stevens' Death 

Obama's latest lie centers around his false claims that a video caused "spontaneous demonstrations" throughout the Middle East including in Libya.

Obama completely ignored the fact that these "spontaneous demonstrations" occurred on 9/11. In fact, the Obama Administration found that 9/11 had nothing to do with the acts of radical Muslims, who they characterized as angry because of a video published two months previously not due to their desire to defeat the United States and create a worldwide Caliphate.

Those who are supposed to report the news, including newspapers, television networks, and every cable station but those owned by Fox News, dutifully parroted Obama's false claims. They dutifully reported that Ambassador Stevens and the other Americans died because of spontaneous demonstrations caused by a bad video which the United States immediately renounced as something the United States categorically rejected.

They dutifully repeated the same claims made by UN Ambassador Rice during her five Sunday talk show interviews after Ambassador Stevens' death. According to Rice, the deaths of our Americans in Libya, including our ambassador, were because of a video that should never have been published and a spontaneous demonstration that had occurred outside our consulate in Benghazi caused by this video.

When questions concerning the lack of protection arose, Obama developed a new narrative that there would have been more protection in Libya if not for Republican budget cuts. Again, a complete lie that these same newspapers and television networks parroted on every show and in every paper in the following days despite direct testimony by the lady in charge of protecting ambassadors specifically stated that the budget cuts had nothing to do with the Obama Administration's refusal to provide more protection. 

Doing so maintained the myth of Obama's "Arab Spring." The truth did not.

Doing so maintained the image that "bad" Americans were at fault for the attacks and demonstrations against the United States. Americans who were merely exercising their First Amendment rights were the cause, not militant anti-American Muslims. Providing this message avoided the admission that those participating in the demonstrations in Egypt, Libya, Indonesia and many other countries are radically anti-American, seeking the end of the United States and victory of Islam over all those who are really evil no matter what the means. And it perpetrated the "Arab Spring" concept, for which Obama takes all the credit even though it is most properly a Bush II phenomenon, good or bad.

More lies. Propagated by Obama and his devoted media.

Obama's Major Lie About the Taliban and al-Qaida in Retreat

The New York Times release of the Pentagon Papers disabused the world of the false claims made by the Johnson Administration concerning how the Vietnam War was going, the reasons behind that war, and its great politicization.

Lara Logan is a CBS reporter who has worked in Afghanistan and the Middle East for years. She has provided us with on-the-ground reporting concerning the Afghanistan War for years, putting herself constantly in danger in order to determine the truth about how the War on Terror is going, whether Afghanistan is improving and al-Qaida is "on the run," and report her findings to the public.

So far, she has provided the harshest critique of the Obama Administration's claims about the Afghanistan War and the status of al-Qaida and the Taliban there and elsewhere in the Middle East.

The Chicago Sun-Times article and other articles reporting on Logan's speech and her criticism of the Obama Administration have repeatedly reported her comments using the following ellipsis: "I chose this subject because, one, I can’t stand, that there is a major lie being propagated . . ."

The Sun-Times article has been modified by the Sun-Times over the space of two days, with the last on October 9. The attached video provides the reader with exactly what was said, which is also included on the Real Clear Politics website. The video is different from the article in several respects.

First, the article states: "Eleven years later, 'they' still hate us, now more than ever, Logan told the crowd. The Taliban and al-Qaida have not been vanquished, she added. They’re coming back." The original article had only mentioned the Taliban as the problem, to the best of my recollection. A proper reading of her statements is that they never left and have never been stronger, not that they are coming back.

Second, the article states that "The lie is that America’s military might has tamed the Taliban." That is by no means "the lie" discussed by Logan. In fact, even the above point from article shows that it was not. The discussion dealt with both al-Qaida and the Taliban. 

Third, the article now states that "As a journalist, I was queasy. Reporters should tell the story, not be the story." This is actually quoted from Logan's talk, although the quotation marks do not appear. In fact, as she pointed out in great detail, she had worked very hard to determine the real situation on the ground and that her veracity had been under careful editorial control and extreme care from the outset of her work through its publication.

Why would a reputable publication like the Sun-Times change its article one or more times over the space of many days? Why would it criticize whether the report should have been made at all. And why would it allege that the reporting was biased and involved Logan's own biased views under these circumstances. And why did the Sun-Times and all the other papers use the ellipsis?

As is clear from the video and from the RCP and other articles like the one quoted below, Logan pointed the finger directly at the Obama Administration for propagating the lie.

As the keynote speaker at the annual Better Government Association luncheon in Chicago, Logan gave an ominous message saying, “I chose this subject because, one, I can’t stand that there is a major lie being propagated.” Speaking to about 1,100 business, government, media, political and legal leaders, Logan told her audience that the narrative out of Washington for the past two years that the defeat of al-Qaeda and the Taliban is a lie. Rather, they are resurging. On the heels of the violence in Libya in September, it is difficult to dispute Logan’s argument despite statements to the contrary by the Obama administration. Logan, who has been covering the Middle East for many years, wrote a report on September 30 titled “The Longest War” focusing on the conflict in Afghanistan. While Barack Obama no longer sugar coats his rhetoric on the campaign trail by having his surrogates boldly claim that Mitt Romney is a liar, Logan refutes the president’s own honesty in his Middle East policies.

If this were the only discussion during the upcoming foreign affairs debate this coming Monday, the public would be able fully to understand how serious these points are to the future of the United States and the importance of voting out President Obama. And how the roots in the past, also involving how a Democrat president misled the public, form the base of the current situation. But we have still more.

Released Department of State Communications Show How Reports of the Deteriorating Situation in Libya Were Ignored  

So now we have, collected in one spot, documents available from the outset of the Libya disaster that include pleas for help from Ambassador Stevens and others in Libya because of the deteriorating situation there. These documents include a message from Stevens the very day he was killed.

Across 166 pages of internal State Department documents -- released Friday by a pair of Republican congressmen pressing the Obama administration for more answers on the Benghazi terrorist attack -- slain U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and the security officers assigned to protect him repeatedly sounded alarms to their superiors in Washington about the intensifying lawlessness and violence in Eastern Libya, where Stevens ultimately died.

On Sept. 11 -- the day Stevens and three other Americans were killed -- the ambassador signed a three-page cable, labeled "sensitive," in which he noted "growing problems with security" in Benghazi and "growing frustration" on the part of local residents with Libyan police and security forces.  These forces the ambassador characterized as "too weak to keep the country secure."  

Fabricated Half-Truth Intelligence Official Claims Stir the Pot?

Finally, we have the last release of the day. Statements by one or more intelligence officials that claim supports Obama's claim that the attack against Ambassador Stevens was "spontaneous." The contention is pulled from talking points provided to Ambassador Rice by someone who remains unidentified. As CNN notes:

An Obama administration official whose now controversial comment that the attack on the U.S. mission in Libya was "spontaneous" relied on talking points provided by the CIA based on its assessment that an intelligence official said on Friday was updated days later with new information. The disclosure to CNN appears to offer some clarity around the Obama administration's early stage explanation of the September 11 attack by armed militants that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. But CNN National Security Contributor Fran Townsend injected a new element into the crucial time line on Friday night, reporting on Anderson Cooper 360 that senior intelligence officials had multiple conversations with senior White House officials in the first 24 hours after the attack. Townsend, a former homeland security and counterterrorism adviser to President George W. Bush, added that "we don't know" what was said. "But I can tell you from having lived through these crises, you're getting a constant feed of what the intelligence community understands about what is currently going on and what has happened on the ground," Townsend said. She added that "they will caveat the information" because in the first hours there "will be all sorts of information, some of it which will turn out not to have been true." Additionally, a senior Republican lawmaker said members of Congress had information from intelligence officials within a day of the incident that it was a military style attack.

So far, enough is not known to prove that these reports are fabricated or untrue. In fact, it is possible that some intelligence source did call the demonstrations spontaneous. So far, there is nothing in the intelligence quoted or referred to that states the demonstrations were due to the video that Obama has so often attacked.

Indeed, as has been frequently said, the greatest promoters of the video have been Obama and Hillary Clinton.