This has to be seen to be believed: Representative Paul Ryan questioning Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag about the inflated war costs used by the Obama Administration. It turns out that $1.6 trillion of the “savings” Obama is anticipating are based on the surge in Iraq continuing for 10 more years — even though Obama has already announced all combat troops will be out of Iraq by 2010 and the Status of Forces Agreement is set for 2011. Orszag looks like a clown in his effort to respond.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAtpmKj3z0s[/youtube]

This is, even by Washington standards, unusually dishonest. And coming from the administration of Barack Obama, who promised us “honest” accounting and made a big show of how much integrity and candor he would bring to his governing, this is astonishing. And it should be seen in the context of a man who made a huge deal about his so-called stimulus package being free of earmarks — even though he knew he was going to get, and would soon sign into law, a $400-plus billion appropriations bill, which includes around 9,000 earmarks.

This is not the kind of “new” politics most people had in mind. Obama is turning out to be not only quite a liberal figure, but quite a cynical one as well.