WorldNetDaily Reads Obama's Mind

WND touts self-proclaimed forensic profiler Andrew Hodges, whose pseudo-scientific method purports to uncover "secret" confessions in the president's words -- but merely reveals himself to be just another conspiratorial Obama-hater.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 12/5/2012

Hodges' gimmick is something he calls "ThoughtPrint decoding," which is essentially reading between the lines to arrive at conclusions. WND picked up Hodges' book "The Obama Confession: Secret Fear, Secret Fury," for sale in its online store -- surprisingly, WND did not publish this -- where Hodges' purported credentials are listed:

He has identified killers by studying ransom notes, emails, letters and police interviews to spot secret confessions. He decoded O.J.'s "suicide note" to confirm he had committed a double murder. He deciphered the JonBenet ransom note to identify the child's killer. He decrypted letters from BTK to predict that he was about to kill again – the only profiler to do so. He studied statements by Joran van der Sloot and Deepak Kalpoe to tie them to the slaying of Natalee Holloway. He showed how Casey Anthony secretly confessed to killing her daughter in 200 letters written to a jail mate. He even decoded Bill Clinton's Lewinsky confession/apology on TV, revealing the awful pain which led to Clinton's self-sabotaging behavior.

Andrew G. Hodges

And thus, it appears that Hodges has glommed in a similar manner onto Obama. How does Hodges' book apply his gimmicky technique to Obama?

By analyzing two of Obama's most important speeches and two heartfelt letters to his daughters, he delves into the president's unconscious and decodes his deeper messages. These communications originate from a part of the subconscious Hodges calls the "super intelligence" – the amazing intuitive power hinted at in Malcolm Gladwell's book "Blink." It's a brilliant see-all, tell-all part of our minds. Here is Obama's whole story – his deeper narrative.

This is the kind of pseudo-science WND can get behind, especially when the predetermined conclusion is to bash Obama. And indeed, WND regularly promotes said conclusions. From a Sept. 15 article promoting Hodges' book:

“Obama reveals the completely secret trauma that controls his life, resulting in his deep misguided fury expressed toward America,” writes Hodges.

To understand Obama, says Hodges, one must see him as “the sandman” – the way he views himself because of the trauma in his life.

It was author and commentator Thomas Sowell who first drew the allusion to Obama as “the sandman.”

“The track record of Obama’s pronouncements on a wide range of issues suggests that anything he says is a message written in sand, and easily blown away by the next political winds.”

In other words: Hodge is hanging a bit of dubious science on the usual right-wing anti-Obama arguments, all while pretending that he himself is not pushing these fringe political views.

Hodges wrote in an Oct. 1 WND column of Obama's purported "unconscious fury" as allegedly revealed in his inaugural address:

Obama’s second father story was about how his foreign-born father in the past could not be served in a Washington, D.C., restaurant, suggesting Obama cannot serve or be seated as an illegal president. Once again, he links this story to a powerful constitutional reference: how all races should unite around our creed – “the price of citizenship.” His super intelligence confesses he lacks citizenship requirements – his illegal presidency is not about race.

[...]

Consistent with an ongoing Alinsky-style secret attack from within, Obama unconsciously further predicts in his speech that he will attack America’s economic foundation. His criticism of the previous administration matched precisely his devastating economic policies – only worse.

He also secretly confessed that in his unconscious fury he would attack our national security. Obama predicts the ways he will use his energy will “strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.”

[...]

Could Obama be this angry, this dangerous to America? The answer remains. He was that wounded, a “slaughtered innocent” from the get-go now filled with unimaginable rage.

His super intelligence at his inauguration informs us in story form what must be America’s response: “Our challenges may be new (an illegal angry president),” but we meet them with “courage and patriotism.” His destructiveness will require the recognition “on the part of every American” that we have a “new era of responsibility” to our nation. We must all do our duty to the Constitution – “this is the price of citizenship.”

It appears that Hodges is unfamiliar with the concept of psychological projection, since that's exactly what he appears to be doing here by dressing up his own Obama-hate as pseudo-psychology.

Hodges wrote in an Oct. 22 WND column cites Obama-haters Dick Morris and Joseph Farah as sources, which is further evidence of where he's coming from. He also purports to analyze Obama's behavior in the first presidential debate:

Once more Obama confesses unconsciously that all along, even as a private citizen (and college student), he planned on playing by a different set of rules, which he has carried out as president. We could have predicted that he would get in yet another striking unconscious confession that he had violated the rule of law and by extension the Constitution as an illegal foreign-born president. In both his inauguration speech and his recent U.N. speech he repeatedly insisted how we must live by the Constitution as his deeper moral compass pointed to his guilt.

So basically, Hodges is a birther, made clear in an Oct. 26 WND article by Bob Unruh, who touted Hodges' claim that Obama's performance in the third debate made him made him secretly confess to being a "secret foreigner who has passed himself off as American" in a reference to how China was dumping goods into the U.S. market:

“The cheating foreigner first appears to have cheap American goods but (clarifying his slip) really the foreigner has cheap foreign goods. Read Obama doesn’t really have American goods, he has foreign goods – cheap goods. A huge confession he has cheapened the presidency – the secret foreigner who passed himself off as American. With his creative slip he tells us that he was a cheap foreign-born imitation of an American president—confessing to how he had specifically terrorized America,” he said.

It seems that Hodges is projecting again.

Unruh gave Hodges an opportunity at a last-minute pre-election hit at Obama with a Nov. 5 article:

Barack Obama is driven in his political life by the idea of getting “revenge” against the United States for the slights and hurts he has felt, according to a forensic profiler who also has worked on the Natalie Holloway and O.J. Simpson cases.

“When Obama supporters booed the mention of [Mitt] Romney at a Springfield, Ohio, political rally on November 2, 2012, Obama commented ‘No, no, no. Don’t boo. Vote.’ He added, ‘Voting is the best revenge.’ Think if Obama had just stopped at ‘don’t boo – vote.’ That would have been a presidential response. Instead, once more he had to introduce extreme bitterness,” Andrew G. Hodges, M.D., told WND.

[...]

“He had to take us back to roots of his rage – the revenge anger – that secretly drives him,” Hodges explained to WND in an analysis of Obama’s comments. “His powerful unconscious message was, ‘In case you missed it I am one angry person and have repeatedly directed it at America.’ It showed up in his debate comments (his angry facial expression/body language, his disrespectful overly aggressive attacks on Romney). It showed up in his recent U.N. speech (September 25, 2012) where he reminded us of how he secretly hated America and again unconsciously confessed to attacking our core foundations – particularly our Constitution – as an illegal president.”

Of course, all of Hodges' pseudo-science didn't keep Obama from getting re-elected. But the pseudo-science didn't stop -- Unruh gives Hodges yet again free rein in a Nov. 24 article to claim that Obama was secretly "confessing to stealing the 2012 president election." How? Well, first, we have to sit through some right-wing boilerplate about purported voter fraud:

In Hodges’ assessment: “Following Obama’s presidential reelection impressive findings have emerged pointing to a fraudulent election. A brief summary reveals precincts in Ohio and Pennsylvania reported greater than 100 percent of registered voters turned out to vote. In 100 precincts in Ohio Obama got 99 percent of the votes. Pennsylvania illegally removed GOP poll inspectors from voting locations. Computer irregularities in Pennsylvania (and elsewhere) reverted to a default Obama vote no matter who the voter selected.”

He continued, “Florida prevented absentee ballots from being observed by neutral observers. Military ballots were systematically denied active-duty servicemen and women around the world.”

So he said all he had to do was sit back and wait for the confession.

And since claiming to be able to delve into Obama's subconscious by reading between the lines of Obama's words is Hodges' stock in trade, you can be sure that he will twist anything Obama says into his preconceived conclusion that he made a "confession." And that's exactly what Hodges does:

“On election night after initial voting reports declared him the winner, Obama once more unconsciously pointed to a confession. Before his anxious and relieved supporters, Obama spoke of his pride in his daughters but commented, ‘But I will say this for now, one dog’s probably enough’ – on the surface referring back to promising his daughters a puppy after his 2008 victory,” Hodges said.

“But stay with his spontaneous right-brain image. Understand he could have chosen any matter on which to comment and any description but his brilliant unconscious mind which always speaks in a symbolic right-brain language – and carefully chooses its images – selected ‘one dog is enough.’

“Read his confession that America has just elected a dog of a president – and once was enough,” Hodges said.

“He suggests that he’s dogging it as president, faking it as an illegal president in a second way now with a stolen election. That he’s a real ‘dog’ for such deception. The image of a dog further suggests: a pet favored by the media and blind supporters who would not dare to explore his illegality by birth or unfair election; that he will dog or haunt America for another four years because a dog also bites especially a wounded one. (And Obama is deeply wounded beyond belief.) Once again Obama unconsciously points to his deceptive anger and indeed he has bitten/assaulted America in multiple ways, both covert and overt, and plans on more of the same.”

[...]

Further, during a Nov. 9 press conference, “Obama snapped at two senators who had criticized U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice for her erroneous declarations regarding the Benghazi attack. He challenged the senators to ‘come after me,’ not Rice,” Hodges said.

“This matches his hidden instructions in the U.N. speech that American citizens be prepared to protest unfair elections. In both his 2008 Fathers’ Day speech as a candidate and in his inaugural address he unconsciously instructed citizens to confront him as an illegal foreign-born candidate/ president,” Hodges said.

“Obama’s ideas continually reflect a preoccupation with unconscious guilt and a need to be caught and stopped. His behavior and decision-making around the Benghazi tragedy with obvious cover-up suggest more guilt – a need to be questioned, a secret confession of being a weak leader and a president who puts a U.S. ambassador’s life at risk,” said Hodges.

Meanwhile, one doesn't need "ThoughtPrint decoding" to read between the lines of Hodges' attacks on Obama. The hatred is palpable -- regurgitation of discredited birther and other anti-Obama theories that appears to be the result of Hodges projecting his personal disdain for the president rather than any mysterious reading between the lines.

In contrast to the title of his book, Hodges' own anti-Obama fury isn't secret at all. And that makes him nothing more than just another unhinged Obama-hater who has found a home at WorldNetDaily.