Obama administration caught in lie about Kerry--and they lied so smoothly!

It's bad enough that the members of Obama's administration lie to the American people so often.  But what's really disturbing is that a) they do it about such trivial things; b) things that are so easily revealed as lies; and c) that they do it with such total ease.

These three observations should tell you something huge about them.  But those of you who are smart enough to make that connection are too busy raising your kids, trying to make ends meet, trying to pay your outrageously high taxes and trying to avoid breaking some absurd hidden law that will ruin you--selling cheese without a government permit, for example.

Latest example:  On July 3rd (Wednesday) Obama called a meeting at the White House to discuss the crisis in Egypt.  A photo of the meeting was released by the White House, no doubt designed to show the allegedly-brilliant president in cool command.  Yeah.  But sharp analysts noted that one person you'd think would be included in that meeting wasn't there:  the Secretary of State, John "I served in Vietnam" Kerry.

By complete coincidence, earlier that day a colleague of CBS news producer Mosheh Oinounou saw Kerry boarding his multi-million-dollar yacht at the Nantucket Boat Basin.  The CBS guy--having no idea there was a vital meeting at the WH on an overseas crisis--naively tweeted this to the world.

Now, this should have been of no consequence whatsoever.  If a guy would rather take the day before the 4th of July off and spend it on his yacht rather than listening to Obama drone on about stuff he hasn't a clue about, who would blame him?

But apparently someone high up in the WH chain thought Kerry's absense might be interpreted as a slight to Duh Won, so the State Department trotted out cheery Jen Psaki to say this was absolutely untrue. 

"Since his plane touched down in Washington at 4 a.m. [Wednesday], Secretary Kerry was working all day and on the phone dealing with the crisis in Egypt," said cheery Jen. "He participated in the White House meeting with the president by secure phone and was and is in non-stop contact with foreign leaders, and his senior team in Washington and Cairo. Any report or tweet that he was on a boat is completely inaccurate."

Let's parse that.  Jen said Kerry "participated in the White House meeting with the president by secure phone...."  But if Kerry was in Washington, why would he need to use the phone to "participate" in the WH meeting?  Why not just attend the critical, super-important strategy meeting in person?

Ruh-roh.

Apparently other, presumably smarter, gummint heads started reviewing this obviously bullshit story and realized something that the first team of creative liars missed:  With almost no exceptions, when you go to board a docked yacht you have to walk down a long walkway where all the other yachts are moored.  Often you have to walk past a small building manned by the harbormaster and his employees.  It's usally pretty hard to do this without being seen.

Someone apparently realized that the CBS guy's allegation could be backed up by *lots* of other folks.

Ooopsie, time to--as they say in government--"walk it back."

Or to use a term much more familiar to us peasants, " 'fess up."

Now: Most people couldn't care less if Kerry spent the day before the 4th on his yacht.  What concerns me is that someone ordered Cheery Jen to make a statement to reporters affirming something that person knew was false.  And easily shown to be false.

And that person had to be a lot farther up the food chain than the 4th assistant deputy secretary.

The scary thing is that this high-ranking person not only made a quick decision to have Cheery Jen lie about something so utterly, utterly trivial, but did it seemingly with a total disregard of any sense of proportion or risk.

In an ethical administration, whoever made this decision would be fired.

For the record:  No one was fired.  But then you already knew that, eh?

If they'll lie so effortlessly about something so trivial, does anyone think they'd be any more truthful about something important?