Tag Archives: Darrell Issa

Impeach Obama?

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In the fantasy world of right wing crazies, the impeachment of President Obama is becoming a greater possibility. For example, Michele “Batsh*t Crazy” Bachmann recently told viewers of Fox News Channel that President Obama has “rewritten the Constitution to serve his own purposes.” First, I doubt that Bachmann has ever actually read the Constitution. Second, the “evidence” she used to support her claim is the Affordable Care Act (ACA)…a bill passed by Congress, signed by the president and upheld as constitutional by the conservative-dominated Supreme Court.

Some evidence.

Bachmann isn’t the only mental hospital escapee making such claims. At Tea Party rallies throughout the US, it’s common to see people holding “Impeach Obama” signs or verbally calling for the president’s impeachment. Even worse, numerous Teapublican congressmen have suggested that impeachment may soon be “necessary.” To justify their calls for impeachment, they point to manufactured “scandals” such as Benghazi.  But, unlike his predecessor who ignored numerous warnings prior to 9/11 and led our nation into war under false pretenses, President Obama has done absolutely nothing to warrant impeachment. And, just one year ago, voters had the ultimate opportunity to remove him from office.

It’s called an election.

Unfortunately for Teapublicans, they lost…badly. Nevertheless, Teapublicans continue to blame the president for their own failings. They ran up the debt with their wars and tax cuts and blamed it on Obama. They collapsed the economy and blamed Obama for unemployment. They created the debt crisis in 2011 and blamed Obama for the damage done. They have used the filibuster to nullify many of the president’s initiatives and to block many of his appointments and nominations.

They cry that Obama “refuses to defend our border” despite the fact that the Obama administration has doubled the size of the Border Patrol and invested billions in a border fence. They forced our government into sequestration then howled when the cuts resulted in long lines at airport screening. Most recently, they shut down our government then blamed Obama for parks and monuments being closed.

They continue to complain that Obama was foreign born (he was not) though their most vociferous whiner and presidential wannabe, Ted Cruz, was born in Canada. They attacked Obama for attending a “radical” black Christian church yet claim he’s a Muslim (as if that’s something bad). They howl about the start-up issues with the ACA website despite the fact that they have done everything in their power to sabotage it. They not only withheld much of the funding needed for its creation, Teapublican-controlled states refused to implement their own health insurance exchanges, forcing millions more Americans to log onto www.HealthCare.gov to find health care coverage.

Now Teapublicans are back home holding town halls and giving speeches about the evils of Obamacare. They are also inviting people to bring their “horror stories” about Obamacare. One can only imagine that they will spend their last 8 working days of 2013 reading these anecdotal, and likely false, stories into the congressional record and voting to repeal the law for the 48th time. And don’t be surprised if, next year, Rep. Darrell Issa, Rep. Paul Gosar and others use these stories as the basis for impeachment.

Knowing that impeachment is doomed to fail unless they gain control of the Senate, Teapublican congressmen are also continuing their attempts to destroy the Obama presidency by refusing to negotiate a budget and refusing to raise the debt ceiling which would force the US treasury into default. Never mind that such a move would have severe and long-lasting consequences for the world economy and our nation’s ability to borrow. It might even cause the world to replace the dollar as the world’s prime currency. But in the minds of many Teapublicans, such realities are dwarfed by their dislike for President Obama.

Teapublican hatred has no bounds.

Only Crimes Issa Has Exposed Are His Own.

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For more than two years, Congressman Issa has been digging under rocks to find dirt on President Obama and his administration. He has claimed that his investigations would prove that the federal loan to Solyndra would expose a “sweetheart” deal for one of Obama’s political contributors. Instead, he proved that the loan process was well underway during the Bush administration.

Issa claimed that his investigation into Fast & Furious would show the president or, at least his Attorney General, ordered ATFE agents to allow gun trafficking to Mexican drug cartels. What he proved was that, out of frustration, a single unit of the ATFE allowed guns to “walk” in hopes of them leading to cartel leadership.

Most recently, Issa claimed that an investigation would show that President Obama, or his campaign, ordered extra scrutiny for Tea Party groups seeking non-profit status for their political operations. What Issa proved is that a self-professed conservative Republican agent in Cincinnati used search terms to learn more about the groups, and that those search terms included Tea Party, Patriots, and 9/12. They also included words like Democrat, Blue, Progressives, and Liberals. (I can attest to this because I’m a member of a Democratic group targeted, and I filled out the paperwork myself.)

Instead of proving that these “scandals” led to the White House, Issa proved that there were no scandals at all! Indeed, all he has accomplished is to prove otherwise. He has also caused writers like me to look into his sordid past. On doing so, I learned that Issa was twice indicted for Grand Theft Auto. I also learned that he quite likely torched his own business shortly after increasing the insurance by more than 400 percent!

It appears the only reason Issa is so determined to prove crime by others is to damage a presidency, ingratiate himself to other members of his own party and to rationalize his own past.

It’s Difficult To Disprove A Negative.

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Whenever someone accuses the government of a scandal, it’s almost impossible to disprove it. That’s because the accusation makes headlines. The truth doesn’t.

Nobody understands this principle better than Teapublicans.

When Bill Clinton was elected to the White House, he was forced to disprove a constant wave of scandals created by the GOP. Now it’s President Obama’s turn. That’s why we’ve seen a flurry of scandalous accusations about Fast & Furious, drones, Benghazi, the IRS, and NSA.

The headlines have been damning – based on outrageous claims by Rep. Darrell Issa, Sen. Lindsey Graham, Speaker John Boehner, Sen. Mitch McConnell and others. The truth has been less interesting.

For example, Issa made claims that Fast & Furious was a large scale gun-running operation overseen by Attorney General Eric Holder. The reality is that it was a small localized operation by a unit of the ATFE frustrated by Arizona’s lax gun laws and the inability to prosecute straw buyers.

Issa and others made the sensational claim that the president and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ignored the danger to diplomats in Libya then covered up their failures. The reality is that Ambassador Stevens twice rejected increased security and the talking points released by Susan Rice were crafted by the CIA and mid-level State Dept. officials.

Teapublicans claim that IRS scrutiny of Tea Party organizations seeking nonprofit status was orchestrated by the White House and President Obama. The truth is, the IRS director was a Bush appointee and, according to testimony by an IRS supervisor in charge (who is, incidentally, a self-described conservative Republican), the scrutiny of Tea Party groups was not ordered by the administration and was not politically motivated.

Teapublicans and many Democrats claim that NSA collection of data demonstrates that President Obama is an authoritarian fascist operating in defiance of the 4th amendment of the Constitution. The truth is, the NSA program began immediately following 9/11 and the Obama administration reigned it in, eliminating warrantless wiretaps and clearing the collection of data through the FISA court and Congress. Interestingly, the people of Europe were aware of our program long before Snowden’s revelations and the overwhelming majority approve of it.

All of this proves that, now that our press is driven by ratings and sensationalism rather than a desire to inform, unscrupulous politicians can take advantage of it. And no politicians are more unscrupulous than today’s Republican Party.

Scandalrama!

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As the Teapublican House, led by witch-hunter-in-chief, Darrell Issa, looks under every rug and in every nook and cranny for dirt on Fast & Furious, Benghazi, Tea Party applications for non-profit status, the NSA, and anything else that can be used as a hammer against the Obama administration, the real work of Congress languishes.

The House still has not resolved the federal budget and the debt ceiling. It has not yet brought sanity to the nonsensical sequester cuts. It has not proposed a single bill to create jobs and lower unemployment. It has not proposed a bill to rebuild and modernize our infrastructure. It has not yet passed a bill to reduce or eliminate the waiting time for veterans’ benefits. It has not yet passed an immigration bill.

The House has not considered tax reform to eliminate loopholes that would prevent multinational corporations to stash cash in offshore tax havens. It has not passed a bill to end the senseless gun violence. It has not passed a bill to close loopholes in background checks or to control the straw buyers who provide guns to gangs and drug cartels. It hasn’t even proposed a solution for climate change caused by increasing CO2 emissions.

Teapublican congressional representatives have largely ignored all substantive issues. Instead, they have focused on trumped-up “scandals,” the repeal of “Obamacare” and a myriad of restrictive social issues all revolving around women’s vaginas. As always, they seem fascinated by the “evils” of sexual orientation and the rights of the unborn.

Meanwhile, they ignore the rights and the needs of the already living.

Darrell Issa Has Long Been An Expert On Lies And Corruption.

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It seems that Rep. Darrell Issa sees lies and corruption everywhere in the Obama administration; Fast & Furious, Benghazi, IRS and AP. Yet after months of “investigations” Issa has yet to find any evidence of White House involvement in these scandals.

In fact, to use the term “scandal” is a misnomer.

So why is Issa so intent on seeking evidence of corruption when even members of his own party say there is no there there? Aside from the obvious political motivation to discredit the president, it may be because Issa has walked a rather shady path in his own life. Indeed, few are more inclined to expect to find corrupt activities than someone who has committed many of his own.

To wit, Issa lied about his military record. He was indicted by a grand jury for the alleged theft of a Maserati. After being stopped for driving the wrong way on a one-way street, he was charged with carrying a concealed weapon and pleaded guilty to a charge of possession of an unregistered firearm. He was indicted a second time for grand theft auto, but the prosecution dropped the case.

Issa’s personal fortune stems from Steal Stopper, a company he obtained through foreclosure when its founder missed a payment on a $60,000 loan. But the company’s offices and factory were destroyed by fire. A fire investigation found that the fire had started in two places aided by an accelerant such as gasoline. Interestingly, Issa was accused of increasing the fire insurance policy by 462% just a few weeks earlier and of removing computer equipment containing accounting and customer information prior to the fire.

Suspicious of an apparent arson, the insurance company paid about one-tenth the insured amount, which still was enough to provide Issa with a tidy profit. Issa later rebuilt the company and sold it to a California-based maker of car alarms making himself wealthy.

And this is the guy who, as Chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is now in charge of Congressional investigations? It would seem that if Issa is serious about finding corruption, he’d be more successful by investigating himself.