Senate The 2nd Term of the Obama Administration: Facts, Opinions, and Discussions

Hahahahahaha Smuggler do you actually read Glenn Beck? Hahahahahahahahahahahaha

 

He had the reporting on the IRS scandal 15 months before it broke into the mainstream. He was right about that.

You know what... I'll just put you on ignore. Easier for my blood pressure. If you don't want to face the truth about Obama, then I have no time to listen to your low-information rants.

 

Even if he is right about it, I believe that puts him at a net deficit of a couple thousand inaccurate stories. Did he cry during the reporting though, I wonder.

 

Obama Scandals:
Fast and Furious, Benghazi response (Obama goes to bed after he hears that the embassy is under attack, rescue teams are told to stand down, and the talking points are changed in an effort to stay consistent with the President's message that Al Qaeda is defeated thanks to him--he lies to the American people), IRS scandal, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius' possibly illegal fundraising efforts for Obamacare

In other news, there is a possible American Oil boom coming (people have been predicting this for several years at least). Natural gas has already been growing, and now shale oil/slant drilling will allow America to become extremely energy independent. Of course, most all of this is taking place on private lands, and President Obama has actually limited access to public lands....but when this possible boom comes, I fully expect the President to take full credit for it.

 

It shouldn't be about the specific President though, but about the executive branch in general. The one area where Beck has a point is imagine if after 9/11, Bush simply intercepted blanket phone records of all journalists from the press pool who were covering the opening months of the invasion of Iraq, and the only justification given was "national security leak." Justified or not, that would not have gotten a pass. What is certain is that at no time would any critic of that administration simply dismissed any controversy by sitting back and saying- " Oh well, this is just the reality after 9/11." There should be scrutiny given to such actions, especially if they are so broad, if for no other reason that to keep the executive in check. My problem with the AP scandal is not with Obama, but with Holder, who even though the US AG is supposed to approve every such subpoena, apparently Holder excused himself. Either someone is lying, or Holder ceded carte blanche to his subordinates to issue out subpoenas. I don't think either is particularly above board.

And I still think people are glossing over the IRS controversy here. The scandal isn't that "conservative" based groups were singled out. That would have been bad enough mixing policy with petty politics. It's that such groups had to supply web links, lists of potential donors, and justify their focus. Again, the ACLU has a network of non-profits all linked under the national umbrella-organization. Imagine the backlash if the IRS forced the ACLU to justify each of its non-profits by requiring that it supply names of donors and the content of the legal advice its offices had issue out in order to justify keeping its non-profit status. There probably would have been 50 different lawsuits filed by the organization, and they probably would have won them all, at the very least won an injunction.

Benghazi is more about Clinton, as she was SecState, but still acting under the executive branch umbrella. Again, my problem right now with the President is that suddenly he doesn't know what anyone else is doing within the executive branch. It's just an obvious ploy to insulate the President. I don't think any of these will stick to Obama personally. But what does it matter with Obama anyway? He has his second term. What will be interesting to see is what blow-back occurs across different elections, and certainly it's banked for Hillary in case she runs.

 

President Obama loves to pretend he doesn't know what's going on when something bad happens--which either means he's incredibly incompetent or just a cheap liar. However, when something good happens, he jumps at the opportunity to make it about him regardless of his involvement and to give himself credit. He does this all the time. A nice example is his repeated use of the word "I" when he took personal credit for getting Osama bin Laden.

With Benghazi it was especially infuriating because when asked about the response to the attack over and over again, he responded by saying there would be a full investigation...except you shouldn't need an investigation to have the President just tell you what HE knew and what HE did. It's convenient for him to pretend he's above it all--he's outside the politics and Washington in general...but he's not--he's the freaking President.

 

Briefly... I said the IRS thing is a scandal, but it doesn't seem that connected to President Obama. The IRS and DoJ are set up to function independently.

On Benghazi: there were a lot of facts being tossed around in the first few days, people being briefed on many things, there was a lot of confusion. It makes sense to think there might have been a connection to the video since there were anti-American demonstrations at our embassies around the world at that time. And this is how the "talking points" morphed:
http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/15/white-house-releases-100-pages-of-benghazi-e-mails/

 

Maybe I'm missing something, but there seems to be a difference between this example and the AP story. In the AP story, they reported on a botched Al Qaeda bomb plot by a CIA double agent since it was classified, etc. and they seized the phone records of the journalists and editors involved in the story for the <2 month period around the original report. A comparative analogy is not "blanket phone records" of "all journalists in the press pool" during an unspecific amount of time and justified by a vague "leak."

Meh, this comes off to me as a gut reaction and simplistic view of labeling someone a partisan. I tend to disagree with the power of the government to seize personal information in the name of national security (although I think it's justified in some cases). I did under Bush and I do under Obama via the AP story. But that doesn't change the fact that it's legal and common behavior at this point. In other words, my opinion of the AP scandal is that it's shady but not a 'scandal.'

Shady, yes, and a mess, yes, and wrong, yes. But the GOP is acting as if it's an illegal act with direct White House involvement … that the Inspector General's report says there's no evidence of and no link to doing it to benefit the reelection campaign. If his report is to be believed, a group of employees gave extra scrutiny to 'Tea Party' groups, were told to knock it off, and then started again. This scrutiny was also given to several liberal groups in Texas (although only a fraction of it). The scrutiny is entirely legal (the only wrongdoing is the disproportion of conservative groups) as 501(c)(4) groups tend to circumvent the law as an open secret.

 

What the hell are you talking about?

Obama clearly took responsibility for the Benghazi incident.(AKA the second debate) and there was an investigation about the missteps by the State Department(The Pickering report). They took the recommendations and implemented them, they handled the aftermath exactly how it was suppose to be handled.

 

Everyone knows there wasn't enough security in Benghazi, and there's plenty of blame to go around for that. What most people don't care about is whether the Obama administration used the words "planned terrorist attack" soon enough to satisfy the National Review. The majority of Americans don't care. Not because they're communists, but because they know it's not very important.

The IRS thing is a ****storm though. Once the president has to get up and say "I didn't know about this," then you know it's a category 5 ****storm.

 

The IRS scandal will lose steam quickly if the IG report holds up and there was no involvement by the White House, the GOP is already starting to overplay the "victimhood" card and that may backfire and instead of 2006, we will end up with a redux of 1998 in the 2014 mid-terms.

 

True. If there is no evidence of White House involvement, that will be a good thing for the Obama administration.

However, I'm not sure the IRS will get off lightly. If conservatives are forced to shift gears away from the Obama administration, then they will go all out trying to bulldoze the IRS and the tax code along with it.

 

Yeah, that is a major problem.

The IRS mess(like Benghazi could have done with Embassy Security) could have gave an opening to starting a discussion about the tax code and the Citizen United ruling which has made the IRS job very difficult. But nope, Dems will want to turn the page, while the GOP will raise money on demonizing the IRS.

 

It doesn't matter if it got seventeen Gepettos, five Smurfs, or thirty Honey Boo Boos. He called it an act of terror on Sept.12. This was on national television and was recorded for posterity. It's not a case of "he said, she said". Anyone can watch the video and see for themselves. Republicans just think they can go back to lying about this since Candy Crowley isn't fact-checking them this time. For those who seem to have forgotten the presidential campaign, Romney got busted lying about this in the debate, lost the debate, went on to lose the election. The GOP seems to think the coast is clear to have this argument all over again, but the facts haven't changed, and they screwed Romney the last time.

 

Just to clarify, when I used the term "blanket search," I meant in relation to what is established policy. See, up until this, it was standard practice to inform the main company/entity about what is being subpoena'd. For example, if AT&T phone records were being sought, then the DOJ would notify AT&T headquarters that X block of info was being sought. The majority of the time, the company might even voluntarily turn over the info without the need to issue a subpoena. I mean, it's not like most companies are interested in impeding a terrorist investigation.

I think all the AP journalists are upset/bothered/worried is that the DOJ simply subpoena'd the info without telling anyone what was being sought, who the target was, and the entire scope. In addition, it's DOJ policy that the US AG (in this case Eric Holder) normally authorizes such subpoenas. So, at the basic level, there is the appearance that the DOJ was fishing for which journalists weren't playing ball with the White House instead of actual national security concerns. But on top of that, Holder is either lying, or he ceded oversight over the entire subpoena process, neither of which is all that great. Again, I'm not saying this reaches all the way to the President, but it smacks of pure arrogance, and I think the relationship with the press is going to be damaged for quite a while.

 

Republicans may have put out an "altered" set of Benghazi emails to try and make the Obama administration look worse, before the White House officially released them, according to CBS:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_1...-have-different-quotes-than-earlier-reported/

 

They're already trying to tie the IRS to Obamacare, and use it as an excuse to try and gut the law once more.

Meanwhile, nothing else is getting done. A good thing, perhaps?

Peace,

V-03

 

I think Andrew Sullivan sums up my views on the Republican's reaction to the scandals pretty well.

Benghazi is beating a dead horse at this point, especially with the release of the emails and the report that Republicans actually distorted the accused distorted talking points. As the above link shows, Independents are not interested in it and it's beyond obvious that it's an attempt to bring Hillary down. Which is politics, but come on.

The IRS scandal is the only one with merit, and even then it stops if there was no wrong doing at the top (which the IG report says there was not). But when the GOP screams of impeachment and someone going to jail and Watergate/Iran-Contra analogies and using it to try and gut Obamacare for the 38th time ... it just creates cacophony.

Also, Peggy Noonan has lost her mind over it. "We are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate. The reputation of the Obama White has, among conservatives, gone from sketchy to sinister." Why, yes Peggy, some dudes in the Cincy IRS office picking on some guy with tea bags hanging from his George Washington wig across town is so much worse than Iran-Contra or Iraq.

The responsibility for the Executive Branch does fall on Obama, but to call for his impeachment and overtly politicize this is nauseating to say the least. The story changes if he authorized or knew about the IRS scrutiny, but that (as of right now) is not true. To assume he knows of and is directly involved in the micro aspects of every agency is insane.

 

shinjo, you simply fail to understand what Watergate was really about and how it brought down Nixon. With Watergate, it wasn't the break-in itself. It was the cover up and the Nixon admin's terrible reaction to the public revelations of the break in.

If the admin did nothing to try and hide and obfuscate on any of these "scandals", then I suspect they will pass. But, if they did they will learn a hard lesson of history.

 

Um, Merk, not that this matters since agin you didn't supply an actual link, transcript of the discussion, or really any information at all, but if that's what MSNBC was trying to do, then they're mixing up their facts either intentionally or accidentally, neither of which is good. The ousted acting director was appointed last year during the end of Obama's first term, years after Bush was even in office. Obviously, this would make it nearly impossible for him to "have been appointed by Bush." (That is unless Obama let Bush into the White House for one last appointment 4 years after the election for old times sake.) Now, again, since you don't provide a link, one can only guess- but either:

1)MSNBC is confused and is thinking about the replacement acting director, Daniel Werfel, who doesn't assume command until May 22, and who transitioned from OMB from Bush's time.

or

2)MSNBC is referring to the last permament IRS comissioner, Douglas Shulman, who was appointed back in 2008 by Bush and confirmed by the Senate that same year. His tour of duty crossed over to the Obama administration.

or

3)MSNBC Simply issued out such a statement to distract from what the original speaker was saying, hoping that people don't fact check what was claimed.

No matter which, I'm not sure of the value of MSNBC's "admonishment," as the targeting of selected groups isn't alleged to have started until after Obama was elected, which is the entire point of the scandal.

And V, what you're not pointing out is there isn't a general attempt to tie the IRS scandal to health care law, but that Sarah Hall Ingram, who was director of the IRS's tax-exempt organization division the entire time the scandal existed, from 2009 to 2012, was transferred from that position and now heads up the IRS's Affordable Care Act section. Realistically, she's the highest ranking official who would be tied to the entire scandal, with the obvious negatives that comes with that. In other words, the IRS official who formally "singled out" tax exempt groups based on politics, is now the same official who would be in charge of issuing out fines and penalties under Obamacare. If Obama was really serious about addressing the IRS scandal, he should also remove Ingram, and put someone fresh in that position as well.

 

What Obama said about Benghazi during the second debate was total BS.

 

I think everyone gets that, the problem with the comparison is the IRS and the White House aren't covering anything up. John Dean said it best the other day, if the White House and IRS were really in cohorts, do you think they would have allowed them(IRS) to be the first ones to acknowledge this?

So far, this "scandal" isn't even half as bad as the Bush era IRS screw ups, let alone Watergate.

 

I'm not suggesting they were in cahoots. Thus far, it appears to be within the IRS, up to the DC office. But that's it. But again, it's the handling and response of this kind of thing that can sink or swim an admin.