View Full Version : This is No Ordinary Scandal
First Matthews, now even Noonan turns on Obama! :eek:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323582904578487460479247792.html
We are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate. The reputation of the Obama White House has, among conservatives, gone from sketchy to sinister, and, among liberals, from unsatisfying to dangerous. No one likes what they're seeing. The Justice Department assault on the Associated Press and the ugly politicization of the Internal Revenue Service have left the administration's credibility deeply, probably irretrievably damaged. They don't look jerky now, they look dirty. The patina of high-mindedness the president enjoyed is gone.
Something big has shifted. The standing of the administration has changed.
As always it comes down to trust. Do you trust the president's answers when he's pressed on an uncomfortable story? Do you trust his people to be sober and fair-minded as they go about their work? Do you trust the IRS and the Justice Department? You do not.
The president, as usual, acts as if all of this is totally unconnected to him. He's shocked, it's unacceptable, he'll get to the bottom of it. He read about it in the papers, just like you.
But he is not unconnected, he is not a bystander. This is his administration. Those are his executive agencies. He runs the IRS and the Justice Department.
A president sets a mood, a tone. He establishes an atmosphere. If he is arrogant, arrogance spreads. If he is to too partisan, too disrespecting of political adversaries, that spreads too. Presidents always undo themselves and then blame it on the third guy in the last row in the sleepy agency across town.
The IRS scandal has two parts. The first is the obviously deliberate and targeted abuse, harassment and attempted suppression of conservative groups. The second is the auditing of the taxes of political activists.
In order to suppress conservative groups—at first those with words like "Tea Party" and "Patriot" in their names, then including those that opposed ObamaCare or advanced the second amendment—the IRS demanded donor rolls, membership lists, data on all contributions, names of volunteers, the contents of all speeches made by members, Facebook FB -1.77%posts, minutes of all meetings, and copies of all materials handed out at gatherings. Among its questions: What are you thinking about? Did you ever think of running for office? Do you ever contact political figures? What are you reading? One group sent what it was reading: the U.S. Constitution.
The second part of the scandal is the auditing of political activists who have opposed the administration. The Journal's Kim Strassel reported an Idaho businessman named Frank VanderSloot, who'd donated more than a million dollars to groups supporting Mitt Romney. He found himself last June, for the first time in 30 years, the target of IRS auditors. His wife and his business were also soon audited. Hal Scherz, a Georgia physician, also came to the government's attention. He told ABC News: "It is odd that nothing changed on my tax return and I was never audited until I publicly criticized ObamaCare." Franklin Graham, son of Billy, told Politico he believes his father was targeted. A conservative Catholic academic who has written for these pages faced questions about her meager freelance writing income. Many of these stories will come out, but not as many as there are. People are not only afraid of being audited, they're afraid of saying they were audited.
All of these IRS actions took place in the years leading up to the 2012 election. They constitute the use of governmental power to intrude on the privacy and shackle the political freedom of American citizens. The purpose, obviously, was to overwhelm and intimidate—to kill the opposition, question by question and audit by audit.
It is not even remotely possible that all this was an accident, a mistake. Again, only conservative groups were targeted, not liberal. It is not even remotely possible that only one IRS office was involved. Lois Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the IRS, was the person who finally acknowledged, under pressure of a looming investigative report, some of what the IRS was doing. She told reporters the actions were the work of "frontline people" in Cincinnati. But other offices were involved, including Washington. It is not even remotely possible the actions were the work of just a few agents. This was more systemic. It was an operation. The word was out: Get the Democratic Party's foes. It is not remotely possible nobody in the IRS knew what was going on until very recently. The Washington Post reported efforts to target the conservative groups reached the highest levels of the agency by May 2012—far earlier than the agency had acknowledged. Reuters reported high-level IRS officials, including its chief counsel, knew in August 2011 about the targeting.
The White House is reported to be shellshocked at public reaction to the scandal. But why? Were they so high-handed, so essentially ignorant, that they didn't understand what it would mean to the American people when their IRS—the revenue-collecting arm of the U.S. government—is revealed as a low, ugly and bullying tool of the reigning powers? If they didn't know how Americans would react to that, what did they know? I mean beyond Harvey Weinstein's cellphone number.
And why—in the matters of the Associated Press and Benghazi too—does no one in this administration ever take responsibility? Attorney General Eric Holder doesn't know what happened, exactly who did what. The president speaks in the passive voice. He attempts to act out indignation, but he always seems indignant at only one thing: that he's being questioned at all. That he has to address this. That fate put it on his plate.
We all have our biases. Mine is for a federal government that, for all the partisan shootouts on the streets of Washington, is allowed to go about its work. That it not be distracted by scandal, that political disagreement be, in the end, subsumed to the common good. It is a dangerous world: Calculating people wish to do us harm. In this world no draining, unproductive scandals should dominate the government's life. Independent counsels should not often come in and distract the U.S. government from its essential business.
But that bias does not fit these circumstances.
What happened at the IRS is the government's essential business. The IRS case deserves and calls out for an independent counsel, fully armed with all that position's powers. Only then will stables that badly need to be cleaned, be cleaned. Everyone involved in this abuse of power should pay a price, because if they don't, the politicization of the IRS will continue—forever. If it is not stopped now, it will never stop. And if it isn't stopped, no one will ever respect or have even minimal faith in the revenue-gathering arm of the U.S. government again.
And it would be shameful and shallow for any Republican operative or operator to make this scandal into a commercial and turn it into a mere partisan arguing point and part of the game. It's not part of the game. This is not about the usual partisan slugfest. This is about the integrity of our system of government and our ability to trust, which is to say our ability to function.
Snip
The Reaper
05-16-2013, 17:51
I wonder if they will ever find out about the massive voter fraud as well?:rolleyes:
TR
Trapper John
05-16-2013, 18:02
This is about the integrity of our system of government and our ability to trust, which is to say our ability to function.
And that about sums it up! Amen
Team Sergeant
05-16-2013, 18:09
I wonder if they will ever find out about the massive voter fraud as well?:rolleyes:
TR
I'm sure Holder is looking into that also........
We're wanderng into 'Nixonian' levels of behavior now.
In my mind, the $64k question remains - Is BHOs 'political teflon' as 'protective' as that of RWR, WJC, and GWB or will we soon be playing "Hail to the Chief" every time JRB enters the room? :confused:
Richard
Peregrino
05-16-2013, 18:54
Oh - I think we're well past "Nixonian" levels, and have been for years.
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2011/06/president-barack-obamas-complete-list.html
We're wanderng into 'Nixonian' levels of behavior now.
In my mind, the $64k question remains - Is BHOs 'political teflon' as 'protective' as that of RWR, WJC, and GWB or will we soon be playing "Hail to the Chief" every time JRB enters the room? :confused:
Richard
We can only hope it's not as protective as RWR's or GWB's and less protective than WJC's. (BJ Clinton had nearly as many scandals running simultaneously as BHO, come to think of it.)
I just had a thought; what's more illegal- ordering the iRS to hound your competition or adultery in the Oval Office? Wiretapping a news agency or breaking into a hotel? Ignoring an Ambassador's plea for help or attacking an enemy based on faulty intel? :munchin
Go Devil
05-16-2013, 19:00
What about Fast & Furious?
Remember that "Iron River of Guns" flowing from the US in to Mexico's drug cartels possession.
Or the fact that they have yet to settle Holder being in contempt of Congress over the above mentioned issue.
What about Fast & Furious?
Remember that "Iron River of Guns" flowing from the US in to Mexico's drug cartels possession.
Or the fact that they have yet to settle Holder being in contempt of Congress over the above mentioned issue.
What difference, at this point, does it make? It happened a long time ago. Obama didn't know about it until he read it in the papers, just like you.
Badger52
05-16-2013, 19:08
I'm sure Holder is looking into that also........Yep, he'll get right on that. (http://www.suntimes.com/news/sneed/20134635-452/obama-eyes-gov-deval-patrick-to-replace-eric-holder-at-justice.html)
NurseTim
05-16-2013, 19:09
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=3s3vHFyybxk
Oldrotorhead
05-16-2013, 19:17
My opinion for what it is worth.
I just had a thought; what's more illegal- ordering the iRS to hound your competition or adultery in the Oval Office?
Adultry is a personal failure that damages the President at the time.
Having the IRS take part in illegal actions is a system failure.
Wiretapping a news agency or breaking into a hotel? Ignoring an Ambassador's plea for help or attacking an enemy based on faulty intel?
B&E at a Hotel is the action of a common criminal.
Ignoreing American's while representing the US and allowing them to die is dispicable beyond words.
Clinton was not impeached for having sex in the Oval Office - he was impeached for lying about it under oath.
When Drudge broke the news of the Blue Dress Clinton could have just said "We did, so what?" and it would have been over - well, except for the Republicans ranting for a bit and looking like spoil sports - which they did anyway by the end of it.
ddoering
05-17-2013, 06:03
Oh - I think we're well past "Nixonian" levels, and have been for years.
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2011/06/president-barack-obamas-complete-list.html
I'm sorta hoping this will be his legacy.:boohoo
Clinton was not impeached for having sex in the Oval Office - he was impeached for lying about it under oath.
When Drudge broke the news of the Blue Dress Clinton could have just said "We did, so what?" and it would have been over - well, except for the Republicans ranting for a bit and looking like spoil sports - which they did anyway by the end of it.
Correct, and if anybody gets in hot water, it will be over lying about his involvement in the AP, IRS and Benghazi scandals and not the actions themselves.
Correct, and if anybody gets in hot water, it will be over lying about his involvement in the AP, IRS and Benghazi scandals and not the actions themselves.
Scooter Libby can go into business offering advice on how not to handle that one.
Richard
Scooter Libby can go into business offering advice on how not to handle that one.
Richard
lol Among a few others. ;)
Probably the Chicoms...
Sharyl Attkisson's computers compromised
Politico
By DYLAN BYERS | 5/21/13 11:18 AM EDT
Sharyl Attkisson, the Emmy-award winning CBS News investigative reporter, says that her personal and work computers have been compromised and are under investigation.
"I can confirm that an intrusion of my computers has been under some investigation on my end for some months but I'm not prepared to make an allegation against a specific entity today as I've been patient and methodical about this matter," Attkisson told POLITICO on Tuesday. "I need to check with my attorney and CBS to get their recommendations on info we make public."
In an earlier interview with WPHT Philadelphia, Attkisson said that though she did not know the full details of the intrustion, "there could be some relationship between these things and what's happened to James [Rosen]," the Fox News reporter who became the subject of a Justice Dept. investigation after reporting on CIA intelligence about North Korea in 2009.
On Sunday, The Washington Post reported that the Justice Dept. had searched Rosen's personal e-mails and tracked his visits to the State Dept. The court affadavit described Rosen as “at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator" of his government source, presumably because he had solicited classified information from that source -- an argument that has been heavily criticized by other journalists.
Attkisson told WPHT that irregular activity on her computer was first identified in Feb. 2011, when she was reporting on the Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal and on the Obama administration's green energy spending, which she said "the administration was very sensitive about." Attkisson has also been a persistent investigator of the events surrounding last year's attack in Benghazi, and its aftermath.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/05/sharyl-attkissons-computers-compromised-164456.html
First Matthews, now even Noonan turns on Obama! :eek:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323582904578487460479247792.html
We are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate. The reputation of the Obama White House has, among conservatives, gone from sketchy to sinister, and, among liberals, from unsatisfying to dangerous. No one likes what they're seeing. The Justice Department assault on the Associated Press and the ugly politicization of the Internal Revenue Service have left the administration's credibility deeply, probably irretrievably damaged. They don't look jerky now, they look dirty. The patina of high-mindedness the president enjoyed is gone.
Something big has shifted. The standing of the administration has changed.
As always it comes down to trust. Do you trust the president's answers when he's pressed on an uncomfortable story? Do you trust his people to be sober and fair-minded as they go about their work? Do you trust the IRS and the Justice Department? You do not.
The president, as usual, acts as if all of this is totally unconnected to him. He's shocked, it's unacceptable, he'll get to the bottom of it. He read about it in the papers, just like you.
But he is not unconnected, he is not a bystander. This is his administration. Those are his executive agencies. He runs the IRS and the Justice Department.
A president sets a mood, a tone. He establishes an atmosphere. If he is arrogant, arrogance spreads. If he is to too partisan, too disrespecting of political adversaries, that spreads too. Presidents always undo themselves and then blame it on the third guy in the last row in the sleepy agency across town.
The IRS scandal has two parts. The first is the obviously deliberate and targeted abuse, harassment and attempted suppression of conservative groups. The second is the auditing of the taxes of political activists.
In order to suppress conservative groups—at first those with words like "Tea Party" and "Patriot" in their names, then including those that opposed ObamaCare or advanced the second amendment—the IRS demanded donor rolls, membership lists, data on all contributions, names of volunteers, the contents of all speeches made by members, Facebook FB -1.77%posts, minutes of all meetings, and copies of all materials handed out at gatherings. Among its questions: What are you thinking about? Did you ever think of running for office? Do you ever contact political figures? What are you reading? One group sent what it was reading: the U.S. Constitution.
The second part of the scandal is the auditing of political activists who have opposed the administration. The Journal's Kim Strassel reported an Idaho businessman named Frank VanderSloot, who'd donated more than a million dollars to groups supporting Mitt Romney. He found himself last June, for the first time in 30 years, the target of IRS auditors. His wife and his business were also soon audited. Hal Scherz, a Georgia physician, also came to the government's attention. He told ABC News: "It is odd that nothing changed on my tax return and I was never audited until I publicly criticized ObamaCare." Franklin Graham, son of Billy, told Politico he believes his father was targeted. A conservative Catholic academic who has written for these pages faced questions about her meager freelance writing income. Many of these stories will come out, but not as many as there are. People are not only afraid of being audited, they're afraid of saying they were audited.
All of these IRS actions took place in the years leading up to the 2012 election. They constitute the use of governmental power to intrude on the privacy and shackle the political freedom of American citizens. The purpose, obviously, was to overwhelm and intimidate—to kill the opposition, question by question and audit by audit.
It is not even remotely possible that all this was an accident, a mistake. Again, only conservative groups were targeted, not liberal. It is not even remotely possible that only one IRS office was involved. Lois Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the IRS, was the person who finally acknowledged, under pressure of a looming investigative report, some of what the IRS was doing. She told reporters the actions were the work of "frontline people" in Cincinnati. But other offices were involved, including Washington. It is not even remotely possible the actions were the work of just a few agents. This was more systemic. It was an operation. The word was out: Get the Democratic Party's foes. It is not remotely possible nobody in the IRS knew what was going on until very recently. The Washington Post reported efforts to target the conservative groups reached the highest levels of the agency by May 2012—far earlier than the agency had acknowledged. Reuters reported high-level IRS officials, including its chief counsel, knew in August 2011 about the targeting.
The White House is reported to be shellshocked at public reaction to the scandal. But why? Were they so high-handed, so essentially ignorant, that they didn't understand what it would mean to the American people when their IRS—the revenue-collecting arm of the U.S. government—is revealed as a low, ugly and bullying tool of the reigning powers? If they didn't know how Americans would react to that, what did they know? I mean beyond Harvey Weinstein's cellphone number.
And why—in the matters of the Associated Press and Benghazi too—does no one in this administration ever take responsibility? Attorney General Eric Holder doesn't know what happened, exactly who did what. The president speaks in the passive voice. He attempts to act out indignation, but he always seems indignant at only one thing: that he's being questioned at all. That he has to address this. That fate put it on his plate.
We all have our biases. Mine is for a federal government that, for all the partisan shootouts on the streets of Washington, is allowed to go about its work. That it not be distracted by scandal, that political disagreement be, in the end, subsumed to the common good. It is a dangerous world: Calculating people wish to do us harm. In this world no draining, unproductive scandals should dominate the government's life. Independent counsels should not often come in and distract the U.S. government from its essential business.
But that bias does not fit these circumstances.
What happened at the IRS is the government's essential business. The IRS case deserves and calls out for an independent counsel, fully armed with all that position's powers. Only then will stables that badly need to be cleaned, be cleaned. Everyone involved in this abuse of power should pay a price, because if they don't, the politicization of the IRS will continue—forever. If it is not stopped now, it will never stop. And if it isn't stopped, no one will ever respect or have even minimal faith in the revenue-gathering arm of the U.S. government again.
And it would be shameful and shallow for any Republican operative or operator to make this scandal into a commercial and turn it into a mere partisan arguing point and part of the game. It's not part of the game. This is not about the usual partisan slugfest. This is about the integrity of our system of government and our ability to trust, which is to say our ability to function.
Snip
I find it interesting that many commentators, even conservatives, attribute blame to Obama in his capacity as POTUS. Inferring that even if Obama did not have specific knowledge of these events, he is still responsible. It's not that I disagree with this premise, I find it absurd that anyone can believe that he was not intimately involved. In Michele Maclin's book, Culture of Corruption, she paints the picture of Obama as a control freak. He has to put his personal stamp on any significant actions by the federal government. To think he had no knowledge of these scandals is to deny his character.
That he wasn't briefed by the attorney general's office is absurd.
On a related note, it is very difficult for some people to lie. Can you imagine the lack of moral character it requires to go to the U.N. and lie about the causes of the Benghazi attack. Or how about Hillary telling the parents of the fallen ex seal that the we would make sure the creator of the video would go to jail. Can you imagine a less honorable thing?
These folks do not feel shame, and therefor I can only surmise they no zero moral fiber.
That he wasn't briefed by the attorney general's office is absurd.
That people would believe he wasn't briefed is disgusting.
And so it goes... ;)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsL6mKxtOlQ&feature=youtu.be
RIP, George. We miss ya.
Richard
Trapper John
05-22-2013, 06:10
Thanks for the reminder George, RIP, and thank you Richard for the post. Fortunately, there are a few of us left that aren't sleep walking and, ya know what,
we can wake up a few more, and they will wake up a few more, and so on and so on. As you say, Richard, "and so it goes" To me that is not a passive statement. ;)
Nous Defions
Thanks for the reminder George, RIP, and thank you Richard for the post. Fortunately, there are a few of us left that aren't sleep walking and, ya know what,
we can wake up a few more, and they will wake up a few more, and so on and so on. As you say, Richard, "and so it goes" To me that is not a passive statement. ;)
Nous Defions
Here's another li'l eyeopener (caveat-alex jones):
http://www.infowars.com/armed-dhs-guards-protect-irs-from-tea-party-protesters/
The DHS appears to have finally found a use for all those bullets it’s been buying. At a Tea Party protest outside an IRS building in St. Louis yesterday there were no regular police – only armed Homeland Security guards.
Video footage from the demonstration at which protesters, including Infowars,com readers, chanted “no more harassment,” shows numerous DHS Federal Protective Service vehicles along with several armed DHS guards. There is not a regular police officer in sight.
The St. Louis demonstration was just one of numerous similar protests against the IRS’s punitive targeting of conservative groups that took place across the country yesterday. Homeland Security agents also kept a watchful eye on a Tea Party rally in Florida.
The DHS was supposedly founded to protect against and respond to terrorist attacks, man-made accidents, and natural disasters. It was not created to protect the IRS from peaceful protesters, but in the decade since its inception, Big Sis has morphed into an entity that polices and monitors political free speech as one of its primary functions.
Homeland Security has routinely been caught spying on protesters from both ends of the political spectrum via its nationwide network of “threat fusion centers”.
Government documents unearthed in April revealed that the DHS, “conducts daily monitoring of peaceful, lawful protests as a matter of policy” and functions as a “secret political police force against people participating in lawful, peaceful free speech activity,” such as ‘Occupy’ demonstrations.
In 2011, the DHS asserted that it had every right to spy on peaceful protest groups and had been using Federal Protective Service (FPS) agents to do so since at least 2006.
In March, Arkansas State Fusion Center Director Richard Davis admitted that the federal agency spies on Americans deemed to be “anti-government,” noting that the DHS concentrates on, “domestic terrorism and certain groups that are anti-government. We want to kind of take a look at that and receive that information,” so-called threats which included people, “putting political stickers in public bathrooms or participating in movements against the death penalty.”
A 2012 Senate subcommittee investigation of DHS data fusion centers found that millions of dollars had been spent not on gathering important anti-terrorism information but on collating “a bunch of crap,” which was “unrelated to terrorism” and in fact targeted Americans peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights.
In its promotional material for the ‘See Something, Say Something’ snitch program, the DHS has routinely portrayed white, middle class Americans as the most likely terrorists. Mock news reports and security drills run by the DHS have also depicted gun owners and homeschoolers as violent terrorists.
It’s no surprise that the DHS is now deploying its agents to defend the IRS against the ire of the American people given that both federal agencies have gone to extreme lengths to target law-abiding, conservative, or God forbid “anti-government” Americans as domestic extremists and even terrorists.
Snip
From The article above...YGBSM.
In March, Arkansas State Fusion Center Director Richard Davis admitted that the federal agency spies on Americans deemed to be “anti-government,” noting that the DHS concentrates on, “domestic terrorism and certain groups that are anti-government. We want to kind of take a look at that and receive that information,” so-called threats which included people, “putting political stickers in public bathrooms or participating in movements against the death penalty.”
...putting political stickers in public bathrooms sounds like a real national security threat...once, I did manage to shake a few extra drops on a sticker strategically placed at the bottom of a urinal.
And to think of the budgets some of these Fusion Center geniuses control.
Rope-a-Dope :D
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/05/22/the-houses-irs-hearing-live-updates/
What difference, at this point, does it make? It happened a long time ago. Obama didn't know about it until he read it in the papers, just like you.
To coin an old phase;
I'm from the IRS and I'm here to help!
Trapper John
05-22-2013, 11:51
https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQP228uvaknEpgW4yNRvHgZl8wov-aKZJCjJNBapsFHV1f_rzWP
Just replace the swastica and here ya go - the new DHS uniform.
Well, a special prosecution for the IRS debacle looks inevitable; potentially, this could snowball into an independent counsel situation involving the IRS suppression, the AP phone bugging, the Benghazi dereliction and maybe even Fast and Furious (because of the CBS reporter).
This may well be the most scandal-ridden Presidency in recorded history.
Although there remains a chance of impeachment, even without, the Republicans should be able to sweep both sides of Congress next year. I’m sure the grassroots movements (unimpeded now by the IRS) will spread like a prairie fire.
My question is: why are the POTUS’s approval numbers not already down in the 30’s?
Answer: because his sycophants don’t give a rat’s ass about what’s right or wrong, they only care about a check or the liberace ideology.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/may_2013/voters_think_benghazi_or_irs_most_likely_to_still_ be_major_news_a_year_from_now
Over half of voters think there’s a chance at least one of the major controversies now bedeviling the Obama administration will still be around a year from now. They see the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative political groups and the questions surrounding Benghazi as the most likely to linger.
Snip
Team Sergeant
05-22-2013, 12:21
Well, a special prosecution for the IRS debacle looks inevitable; potentially, this could snowball into an independent counsel situation involving the IRS suppression, the AP phone bugging, the Benghazi dereliction and maybe even Fast and Furious (because of the CBS reporter).
This may well be the most scandal-ridden Presidency in recorded history.
Although there remains a chance of impeachment, even without, the Republicans should be able to sweep both sides of Congress next year. I’m sure the grassroots movements (unimpeded now by the IRS) will spread like a prairie fire.
My question is: why are the POTUS’s approval numbers not already down in the 30’s?
Answer: because his sycophants don’t give a rat’s ass about what’s right or wrong, they only care about a check or the liberace ideology.
A special prosecutor assigned by who, the DoJ? Surely you jest.
We are now that third world country we once stood back and watched with amusment.
A special prosecutor assigned by who, the DoJ? Surely you jest.
We are now that third world country we once stood back and watched with amusment.
You mean where the leader of the country prosecutes himself for misdeeds?
You know that's right.