PrintOctober 5, 2010
Obama's Pumpkin
As pumpkins line the front of my local market and appear on neighbors' porches, I am reminded of the famous pumpkin described in Whittaker Chambers' autobiography, Witness. A moving and beautifully written book containing much more than a tale of espionage and intrigue, Witness has had a profound impact on many conservatives, containing priceless words of wisdom while documenting a massive, tangled web of Communist infiltration into the U.S. government and mainstream media during the Cold War.
The key evidence proving Chambers' allegations against Soviet spy Alger Hiss, an important member of the U.S. State Department, became notoriously known as the "Pumpkin Papers," for they were secretly placed by Chambers in a hollowed-out pumpkin in the patch on his family farm.
Rather than hiding his indictment in a farmer's field, author David Limbaugh recently published a New York Times Bestseller, Crimes Against Liberty, containing a hefty five hundred pages of devastating allegations against President Obama that would have required a pumpkin of jumbo proportions. Columnist Ben Shapiro's book review carved Limbaugh's Obama-pumpkin with a menacing bête noir face.
The mainstream media has been reluctant to even nick Obama's pumpkin with a carving knife, instead painting the pumpkin shell with tingly images of hope and change while diligently fighting to protect the decorations from smears.
It was in high school that Obama apparently placed the first document, his birth certificate, inside the enigma of his own pumpkin, mentioning the certificate's discovery in his autobiography, Dreams From My Father. (Some experts contend that a ghostly assistant guided Obama's pen.) In later years, the Obama-pumpkin was stuffed and sealed with more personal records, associations, campaign financing details, appointments, etc., supplanted with a script that arrives in costume best befitting the audience.
Curious Americans -- even those not vexatiously ringing doorbells in Hawaii looking for Obama's birth certificate, but rather questioning whether the Constitution allows presidents to have dual citizenship and non-U.S.-domiciled British citizen fathers -- are treated to taunting name-calling and hats made of tinfoil.
Nancy Pelosi tangled the eligibility web with a few papers of her own -- versions of her 2008 DNC nomination certification for most states, except Hawaii, with the phrase "legally qualified to serve under the provisions of the United States Constitution," apparently written in disappearing ink. The Hawaii Democratic Party threw a revised nomination letter for 2008 into the brew as well, omitting the constitutional eligibility language contained in prior elections' formats.
These shenanigans most likely did not go unnoticed by election law expert Robert Bauer, the chief attorney for the whole shebang: the Obama campaign, the DNC, Organizing for America, personally for then-Senator Obama, and also a partner of Perkins Coie, the firm defending Obama in the multiple eligibility lawsuits. Bauer was named White House counsel last November (in time to deal with ACORN's fall) and more recently Ethics Czar. He is now close at hand and ready to answer, "You rang?" to all of Obama's legal needs and transparency issues.
A no-longer-secret association, JournoList, appears to have undertaken the task of preserving the Obama-pumpkin early in the 2008 campaign. Although all of the names of all of the four hundred or so mainstream media members in this underground cabal have yet to be uncovered, Sarah Palin recently observed that we learned more about Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell's bewitching past in a few short days than has ever been reported on Obama's.
The mystery of Obama's past has been the subject of various theories explaining his motives and mindset, from a childhood grudge to the anti-colonial influence of the ghost of his father to the telltale home of his heart. Writers seek a glimpse behind Obama's mask (not one constructed of a birth certificate worn "plastered" to his forehead) as he frequently lifts his chin and tilts back his head while reading to his audience. Others contend that Obama's gestures reveal narcissism or elitist condescension.
The first gesture of the Democrat-controlled Congress, in the spirit of Linus's "Great Pumpkin," was a rush to hand out as many goodies as possible under the cloak of stimulating the faltering economy. Doctor Pelosi hastily stitched the package together behind closed doors and birthed a monster that has wrought havoc on the deficit and has yet to bring more jobs to life.
Flying on a broomstick with an "I won" license, Congress swept through more bills, written by mystery writers, unread by the majority: thousands of pages rammed into pumpkins that would dwarf the one magically turned into a carriage by Cinderella's fairy godmother. Thewe were pumpkins that had to be passed before we could find out what was in them, and as analysts slice through their contents, they found them full of rotten "little-noticed provisions." Routine spending bills were hideously deformed with grafts of unrelated appendages, while one of the most important duties of Congress, the budget, was neglected and instead rolled through via the deem 'n' pass.
Town hall participants, Constitutions in hand, knocked on doors of Democrat politicians and were treated to responses like "Are you serious?" The administration, hell-bent on handing out pitchforks, demonizes bankers, insurers, and wealthy business owners. And ObamaCare death panels appear to be more than a figment of Republican imaginations.
Ugly skeletons have been discovered in the closets of the administration, its czars, members of Congress, and even the Justice Department, while a huge pumpkin patch grows in the capital, tended by an ideological, unmoving scarecrow-in-chief.
In his weekly address to the "fulsome pulsing beast" of Organizing for America, Obama warns his "million-mouthed dog" of campaign ads produced by "shadowy" groups from "the other side" and targets Fox News as the bogeyman, while he reassures folks to pay no attention to the endorsements going on behind his side of the curtain.
On the lookout for October surprises, it is frightfully amusing to watch incumbent Congressmen headlessly galloping along without the very pumpkins they voted for, shying away when Obama visits their hometowns. And as November nears, nightmares are filled with visions of lame ducks being thrown into the cauldron after the elections.
Rep. Darrell Issa, poised to become chairman of the House Oversight Committee, is not afraid of the monstrous task of cleaning skeletons from the closets and carving the pumpkins to reveal their slimy, seedy contents to the American public. And conservative candidates, if elected, pledge to begin the messy process of repealing the rotten stench of unconstitutional legislation.
A great pumpkin paper harvest begins this November 2. I have eerie premonitions of a monstrous mash of pumpkin available for an enormous American pie, baked by a new Congress with a real conservative recipe.
