No ordinary scandal
Peggy Noonan‘s latest WSJ blog post is a blistering attack on the Obama administration’s use of the IRS as a bludgeon to intimidate, censor, and silence political opponents. It is an essential read for anyone interested in policy and politics.
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. …
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.
Axelrod has (accidentally) sided with the Tea Party
This video is classic Chicago-style politics. Pass the buck, blame someone else, don’t look behind the curtain, just focus on the spin and everything will be fine.
Sad thing for David Axelrod is that he apparently doesn’t even realize he has just given the Libertarians and the Tea Party their winning 2014 election soundbite. Watch the video; you’ll see.
Yes, you did just hear Axelrod argue that that President Obama can’t possibly be to blame for the IRS scandal (and by logical extension – Benghazi, Fast & Furious, the Justice Department seizing two months of AP phone records, the brewing EPA scandal, etc., etc., etc.) because the government is “so vast” that it is impossible to track what happens in these diverse and sundry bureaucracies.
“So vast” were his words – e’nuf said.
But for those who might have missed the obvious … THAT”S THE WHOLE POINT!!! That’s exactly why supporters of limited government are pushing to have all of this addressed, taxes cut, the bureaucracy limited. Government has passed the point of accountability and effective, efficient, Constitutional service to “we the people.” By Axelrod’s own admission government has become a massive, gaping hole, where responsibility and accountability go to die – along with multiple trillions of our tax dollars.
When pro-big government socialists like Axelrod are openly admitting government is “so vast” that no one can know what it is doing, it really is time to cut budgets on a massive scale.
A seismic shift in the burden of proof from “tinfoil behatted” to the government
I posted yesterday about the gross miscarriages of justice by the “Justice” Department, the IRS, and the State Department. (Of course, I forgot to include the even more overt criminal acts carried out by the Justice Department as part of their Fast and Furious scandal where the federal government effectively supplied thousands of firearms to drug cartels. Those firearms were then directly involved in the death of US Border Guard, Brian Terry and hundreds of Mexican citizens.)
Today we are learning that the EPA routinely played politics in their handling of fee waivers for environmental groups and politically conservative groups. The Competitive Enterprise Institute noted today that,
It’s not just the IRS that treats groups on the right differently from the rest. According to documents obtained by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Environmental Protection Agency is in on it too.
Public records produced by EPA in response to a lawsuit filed by CEI under the Freedom of Information Act illustrate a pattern of making it far more difficult for limited-government groups – in particular those who argue for more freedom and less EPA – to access public records. …
EPA routinely grants … fee waivers to its favored left-wing groups who demand a more intrusive and powerful EPA, but systematically denies waivers for groups on the right, according to research compiled by CEI Senior Fellow Christopher Horner, author of “The Liberal War on Transparency.”
In a review of letters granting or denying fee waivers granted at the “initial determination” stage from January 2012 to this Spring, Horner found green groups, such as the National Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and EarthJustice, had their fees waived in 75 out of 82 cases. Meanwhile, EPA effectively or expressly denied Horner’s request for fee waivers in 14 of 15 FOIA requests over this same time.
It seems that many of the federal government bureaucracies are now infested with career employees who feel quite comfortable playing political games with citizens and taxpayers. The actions of these government employees necessarily lead reasonable people to believe that government is working hand in glove with left-wing political and environmental groups to further so-called progressive world views.
When even John Stewart is saying that the partisan, corrupt, and possibly even criminal behavior of these government employees is encouraging the very anti-government mindset that so many progressives have derided as lunatic fringe, you know that it is well past time for Congress to step in and clear up this mess.
| The Daily Show with Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Barack Trek: Into Darkness | ||||
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Investigations, firings, fines/loss of pensions, and jail time need to become real possibilities for government employees and managers that refuse to follow the Constitution, legislation, and regulations.
Justice Department seizes AP phone records
I don’t care who you are, who you voted for, what you believe … etc. When you start adding these reports together, it’s time for reasonable people to start asking some serious questions about what is going on in our federal government.
The IRS has admitted to targeting conservative non-profits, and now this article indicates that the IRS may have released the unapproved applications from conservative groups to Propublica, a generally left-leaning news organization. Propublica admits to having published redacted examples of those applications.
Furthermore, the Obama administration abandoned consulate staff in Benghazi and then repeatedly edited their reports and talking points about the Benghazi attack for several weeks, prompting House investigations into their actions. Those investigations are ongoing, while the Obama administration claims they are politically motivated “circus.”
To top off the questionable performance of this current administration, we learned today that the Justice Department secretly collected two months of phone records for more than 20 separate Associated Press telephone lines last year.
The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.
The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP. It was not clear if the records also included incoming calls or the duration of the calls.
In all, the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown, but more than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.
Of course no one should miss the sick irony of this all coming to light a short time after the President told Ohio State students that they should “reject the voices” that warn of government tyranny.
Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices.
Rep. Andy Harris questions head of CDC over vaccination cuts
This testimony from the head of the CDC demonstrates clearly how brazenly this White House and senior administration officials will use the health and welfare of children to advance their political goals.
In his questions to the head of the CDC, Rep. Andy Harris demonstrates that President Obama’s suggested budget projected spending cuts in the CDC’s 317 program of over $58 million. The CDC believed that, despite those cuts, they would be able to maintain current levels of vaccination. However, cuts of $30 million, brought on by sequestration-based spending limitations, caused CDC officials to state that they would have to cease providing vaccinations to over 2,000 children in the state of Maryland.
I’ll restate in simpler language so the math-deficient among us can understand. The CDC says it could weather a $58 million cut, if President Obama was the one making the cut. However, since the Obama administration wants to reinforce the idea that sequestration cuts are the Republican’s fault and that they are going make the sequestration as painful as possible for the average person on the street, Obama administration employees in the CDC were willing to let $30 million in sequestration cuts decimate Maryland’s vaccination program.
So, which side is playing politics with the health of children?
Mercatus looks at mandatory spending levels
This graphic should give even the most ardent supporter of expanded government spending pause.
Mandatory spending is set to eat up 82% of the federal budget in the next few decades. Discretionary spending will (of course) then shrink to only 18%.
If we don’t get this under control immediately, we’re in for a massive, system-wide collapse.
Click here to read the full Mercatus Center article.
Obama’s new campaign slogans
Conan O’Brien recently tried to help the Obama campaign by trying out a few new campaign slogans.
Via IMAO
Milton Friedman: the Pencil
Milton Friedman provides a market-based clarification of the muddle that Barack Obama’s “If you’ve got a business. you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen” comment has caused.
While Obama clearly sees the “someone” in his comment as people operating under the dictates and guidance of government overseers, Friedman makes it clear that it is really rational self-interest and market forces that motivate people to create, produce, and market products like the pencil.
Obama’s take on business
“If you’ve got a business. you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
— President Obama in a Roanoke, VA campaign speech 7/13/12
Nothing more needs be said about President Obama’s views on business and success in America. Coming from an individual who had everything handed to him in life, I’m honestly not surprised to hear it. However, hard-working business people across the nation need to wake up and smell the coffee.
If you haven’t figured it out already, President Obama believes that you owe your success in everything to someone else. He believes that without government, you would not – COULD NOT – be successful.
All those late nights, cramming for tests in university. Those early mornings doing payroll and HR. Those long days, dealing with impatient or angry customers. None of those were because of your drive and motivation. None of the dollars you earned were because of your investment of time and money. In Obama’s mind, everything that you have achieved is because of government.
Don’t forget that fact when you vote this November. You can choose to re-install a man who believes you are just a cog in a big machine, or you can (this time) vote for real change and remove this grotesque, divisive, and destructive attitude from power.
Obama on immigration-related executive orders
In March 2011, Obama clearly stated that he could not just go around Congress on the issue of immigration-related executive orders. He took great pains to explain the roles and responsibilities of each branch of government to the people listening to this speech. But last week, he just ignored those sentiments and did the very thing he said was illegal, just 15 months ago.
So … I’m left wondering what changed over the past year?
Of course it appears that the electoral ‘love’ he might have gained from ignoring his own words with his Dream Act-related executive order, has been effectively quashed with this little number.
¡Cuidado! No Forks Allowed at Obama’s Latino Luncheon
Judging from Obama’s actions at this years National Association of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO) luncheon, Obama’s newest fear is Latinos with forks. Obama had the Secret Service confiscate all the dinner forks from the participants at the June 22 event held in Orlando, Florida.
Several participants Tweeted that butter knives were banned outright and forks were confiscated as soon as the diners finished eating and before the President entered the room to speak.
The attendees were elected officials and their staffs, not just the average Jose off the street. Nevertheless, Obama took away their forks as if they were inmates at a prison. Many of these elected officials are probably wondering why the president was concerned for his safety.
An Imperial Presidency
Obama continues to ignore our Constitution and his own words as it suits him to do so. This Heritage Foundation article describes his most apparent and egregious actions to install himself as the modern day version of King George III.
By repeatedly enacting laws that have been rejected by a duly elected Congress and the voters, he is willfully damaging the office he currently holds and placing himself above the rule of law. Through executive and regulatory fiat he has unilaterally imposed his version of Cap-and-Trade, the Employee Free Choice Act, Internet regulation, and waivers to federal education laws. He has simply ignored immigration law (and actively attacked those who attempt to enforce it). He has thumbed his nose at existing narcotics laws, the DOMA, and other legislation as it suited him to do so. Most recently, his Attorney General has carried out a two year long campaign of stonewalling Congressional investigations, which Obama himself has now topped off by claiming executive privilege. He has effectively argued that his Department of Justice is exempt from responding to Congressional investigations.
As the Heritage article argues, although we currently have an imperial presidency, we don’t need a new Declaration of Independence from our modern day King George. We need a President that will humble himself and take up his proper role as a servant of the people. We need a President who will abide by the Constitution that he has sworn to “preserve, protect, and defend.”
Update: Reason magazine picks up on the same theme and adds to the list of Mr. Obama’s anti-Constitutional offenses. Worse, they are forced to explain to Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, why not getting his own way does not justify trashing the Constitution.
Obama’s “personal narrative” crumbling
As we learn more and more about Obama’s “composite” girlfriends, and self-stated place of birth, we begin to see that much of this life before Washington was a fabrication and marketing scheme.
Now, we’re also learning that his much shared story about the death of this mother is also false.
Throughout the 2008 campaign season, and later, in support of his massive overhaul of our medical system, Obama was widely quoted as saying his mother had been the victim of a greedy and vindictive insurance system. He claimed she spent her final days in the hospital, fighting with insurance companies over her medical coverage.
For my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they’re saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment, there’s something fundamentally wrong about that.
In reality, we are now learning that there is something fundamentally wrong with a person spreading yet another false narrative about the evils of insurance companies, as a means of obtaining the most powerful political office on the planet.
The fables Obama seems to have told about his alienation, his girlfriends and the rest of his over-intellectualized voyage of self-discovery actually pale in comparison to the whopper he told when running for election in 2008 that his mother died because she had been denied coverage and treatment of her disease. Scott revealed that in fact the expenses relating to her cancer had been paid by her insurance. Though she had a separate and totally unrelated dispute relating to disability coverage, Scott’s research proved that Obama’s statement during the 2008 presidential debate was fiction [...]
It bears repeating that the president knew this account was false because he served as his mother’s attorney in all her dealings with the insurance company.
It is time for Obama’s many, varied, and colorful personal narratives to be brought out into the sunlight. That this man is serial liar and much of his life appears to be little more than marketing spin and fable has become increasingly clear. It’s time that the media did its job and the American people saw through the hype and PR. It’s time to finally vet this man’s career and credentials.
Marketable minority profiles
Victor Davis Hansen considers the failure of the assumable minority identity in a recent post. As I noted in my previous posts on the Obama “Kenyan” bio (here and here), the fault lies wholly at the feet of the people engaging in the fraud. But few, if any, in positions of power have the courage to stand up and say that the king is strutting down the street buck naked.
Hansen quite rightly notes that many in the postmodern, politically correct, and progressive community feel no qualms engaging in fraudulent misrepresentation of their lives and history as a means of bolstering the progressive street cred. However, the problem with their situational ethics is that there is no longer a foundation upon which we can review their performance or abilities.
… we seem to forget that these are not just absent-minded slips, but deliberate frauds. These lies always result in making the author/professor/candidate more, not less, exotic and thus more marketable in today’s PC landscape. So when Obama, the former editor of the Harvard Law Review and current president of the United States, and Warren, a Harvard Law professor, fabricate their identities for career advantage, then who polices the police?
No one would ever seriously and openly advocate that our youth pattern their lives after frauds and liars. However, given the politically correct straightjackets that censor rebuttals to the ‘assumable minority identity,’ no one is free to criticize Warren because to do so would be to attack her imaginary Native-American “heritage.” One can’t criticize Obama’s own 16-year long claim to a Kenyan birth because to do so is to engage in “birtherism” and a racist assault on his – for the purposes of marketing a book – Kenyan heritage.
One dare not question the motives underlying their collective fraud because that implies a patriarchal, modernist, racist, … colonialist, … sexist – did I forget any? – attack on whatever parentage or heritage they have most recently claimed.
Their background is fraudulent and their experience is fraudulent. Therefore, their achievements are primarily based in lies and then bolstered and funded by additional lies and politically correct fear. Their lives are a fraud, but they are celebrated in the progressive world as shining examples of successes that others should mimic.
This is simply nonsensical.
The invincible meme – part deux
Continuing in the same theme as yesterday’s post – The meme that will not die, Obama’s allies and friends appear to be digging the hole even deeper.
Via Brietbart.com and IJReview.com we now learn that Dystel & Goderich* edited Obama’s bio to read that he was born in Hawaii just two months after he began his bid for the Presidency. (*Dystel is Jane Dystel – formerly of Acton & Dystel.)
Furthermore, they are now claiming that the “born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii” line, which was in their publications from 1991 to 2007, was nothing more than a 16-year long “fact checking error” in the biography of a man whose entire life has been prepared and scripted … sold and marketed … checked and rechecked.
You can’t make this stuff up – it’s keystone cops. And once again, it would be hilarious if it weren’t so potentially damaging to the Presidency.
IJ Review: Breitbart has now reported that Dystel & Goderich, the literary agency that published a biography of Barack Obama saying he was born in Kenya, had used the biography until April of 2007, just two months after Obama announced he would run for president.
Breitbart.com: Archive.org shows that the Dystel website used the following biography for Obama as of April 3, 2007:
BARACK OBAMA is the junior Democratic senator from Illinois and was the dynamic keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He was also the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. He was born in Kenya to an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister and was raised in Indonesia, Hawaii, and Chicago. His first book, DREAMS FROM MY FATHER: A STORY OF RACE AND INHERITANCE, has been a long time New York Times bestseller.
Obama launched his presidential campaign in February 2007.
By April 21, 2007, the Obama bio had been changed to state that Obama was born in Hawaii:
BARACK OBAMA is the junior Democratic senator from Illinois and was the dynamic keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He was also the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. He was born in Hawaii to an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister and was raised in Indonesia, Hawaii, and Chicago. His first book, DREAMS FROM MY FATHER: A STORY OF RACE AND INHERITANCE, has been a long time New York Times bestseller.
The fact that this type of information is being dug up today also demonstrates very clearly the complicity of the mainstream media in covering over Obama’s past. They happily fabricated stories about Mitt Romney’s high school experiences – over 50 years ago, and created “fake but true” documents to impugn GW Bush’s military service. However, they refused (and still refuse) to do even the slightest bit of research into Obama’s history and character.
And once again if Obama had forthrightly and openly addressed this whole birth certificate issue immediately, rather than sitting on it for over two years, there would not even be a birther issue to bring up. Sadly, his own actions and prevarication about his past encouraged, or even ensured, this distraction would happen.
Update:
I was considering these two “born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii” posts and thought that I had not been sufficiently clear in explaining my thoughts on the issue. To make it very clear, I do not believe that Obama was born in Kenya. I believe that Obama was born in Hawaii but that, as part of his ever-evolving persona, he deliberately allowed Acton, Dystel, and Goderich to present him to the world as being born in Kenya for sixteen years.
I believe that he saw the “born in Kenya” story as a better means of selling his rags-to-riches story. I believe that he felt his life story would be more interesting, that his story was more compelling if people thought he had been born into a colonialist Kenyan society and had still managed to climb to the most powerful of offices in American society. He ran into a problem with that story when he realized that running for President and having portrayed himself as having been foreign-born would necessarily collide.
This is the same sort of trouble that Obama encountered after having argued that he had a “claim” on Selma, Alabama because his mother and father had seen the bravery of the marchers in 1965 and their story had given Dunham and Obama Sr. the courage to go through with their marriage and have a child who would some day grow up to be President of the United States. Of course, Obama then had to backtrack when it was pointed out that he had been born four years before the Selma marches, in 1961.
He is clearly possessed by an overwhelming compulsion to always be the center of every story – thus his office’s downright creepy attempts to edit historical information in several Presidential biographies last week, placing information about Obama throughout the altered text.
I believe that Obama was born in Hawaii, but that he has damaged himself with his egotistical desire to be the most interesting guy in the room. It is his own narcissism and his willingness to create complex narratives about “composite” personalities that is causing this latest birther redux.
The meme that will not die
This would be funny if it weren’t so potentially disruptive. It seems that the birther meme simply will not die.
A few months ago, Sheriff Joe came right out and said Obama’s birth certificate was a “forgery.”
Today, Brietbart.com is continuing its ‘vetting’ of President Obama’s background by publishing pictures from a 1991 publication by Obama’s then literary agent. The book lists Obama as one of Acton and Dystel’s literary clients and provides a biography of Obama that reads,
Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii. The son of an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister, he attended Columbia University and worked as a financial journalist and editor for Business International Corporation. He served as project coordinator in Harlem for the New York Public Interest Research Group, and was Executive Director of the Developing Communities Project in Chicago’s South Side. His commitment to social and racial issues will be evident in his first book, Journeys in Black and White.
Text and photograph from the 15th Anniversary publication of Acton & Dystel's literary clients (1991)
This biography, along with other recently revealed stories, again bring to light the fact that there is not one Barack Obama, he is a continually “evolving” composite of people, made up to suit whatever situation he happens to encounter.
Looking back to the birther issue, the sad thing is that Obama could have easily defused this entire situation by approving the public release of his actual birth certificate when the initial furor started. He (and his handlers) have perpetuated and fostered this silliness for several years now. Apparently they believe the continued headlines are winning them supporters. However, releases like this Acton & Dystel client list are going to have the long-term impact of chipping away at his credibility.
By encouraging the game and refusing to release original documents, Obama may have actually done far more damage to his political career than any birther ever could have.
