Category Archives: President Obama

Vast Right Wing Conspiracy Revisited.

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During President Clinton’s two terms as president, a right wing witch hunt led by Ken Starr and financed by libertarian billionaires spent years trying to uncover dirt on the president and his wife. They claimed that Clinton’s investment in a development named Whitewater was fraudulent. They claimed that Hillary hid legal records from her time as an attorney at the Rose Law Firm. They claimed that Hillary was at the heart of a “Travelgate” conspiracy that resulted in the death of Vince Foster. Some even accused her of murder.

So after eight years and $70 million, what dastardly deed did special prosecutor Ken Starr uncover? An Oval Office blowjob by White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Oh my! Although not the scandal Starr and his minions wanted, it was enough to embarrass the president and initiate impeachment proceedings after he claimed it didn’t happen.

Unfortunately for Starr and right wingers, it was not enough to have the president removed from office.

Fast forward 15 years and you see the same strategy; the same witch hunt; the same torches and pitchforks…just a different Democratic president.

Since Teapublicans took control of the House in 2011, we have seen Solyndra-gate, Fast & Furious-gate, and Benghazi-gate. Now there is IRS-gate and AP-gate. These are merely second-rate attempts to fire up the right wing echo chamber and energize the conservative base. None of them rises to the status of a real scandal.

But the right wing will keep digging.

After all, that appears to be the only thing they’re really good at…using a combination of money and lies to smear the reputations of their political opponents and to distract the media and voters from the real issues at hand. While voters have been focused on the scandals, few have noticed that Teapublicans have not put forward a single jobs bill; or that they have made no attempt to resolve the nation’s budget impasse; or that they have watered down consumer protections against another financial crash; or that they have secretly passed a bill to protect Monsanto from lawsuits; or that they have cut funding for necessary regulation designed to catch tax cheats, catch Medicare fraud, and keep our food safe; or that they are gearing up for another disastrous fight over the debt ceiling.

It seems that the right wing political strategy is nothing more than a high stakes version of three card Monte.

Worse Than Watergate?

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Every time there’s even a hint of a scandal in a Democratic administration, conservatives are quick to call it “worse than Watergate.” It’s obvious that they need a history lesson. Because, nothing…I mean nothing…has approached the abuse of power that is now known as Watergate.

For conservatives and those too young to remember the Nixon administration, Watergate was more than just a single break-in at the Democratic headquarters in the office complex known as Watergate. It was a wide-ranging criminal enterprise directed by the President of the United States and the aptly-named Creep (Committee for the Re-election of the President).

Operatives known as the plumbers committed break-ins at the homes of reporters and political enemies. They set up illegal wiretaps. Nixon ordered the IRS to audit political enemies. He ordered the plumbers to spy on Democratic candidates, to use a variety of dirty tricks to disrupt their campaigns, and to leak embarrassing information. In short, he intended to use the full power of his office to short-circuit democracy and our electoral process so that he would be re-elected in 1972.

After a Watergate security guard interrupted the plumbers break-in at the Democratic headquarters, the repercussions resonated throughout the administration and the White House. Not only did Nixon resign under threat of impeachment, more than 40 operatives spent time in prison.

No president has so abused the power of the office and, had it not been for Watergate, Nixon would more likely be remembered for committing war crimes in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Chile. The only administration that has remotely approached the corruption of Nixon’s was the George W. Bush administration.

Corruption is corruption no matter who commits it, and it should be punished whether it was committed by a liberal or a conservative.

But let’s keep things in perspective: nothing in the Obama administration has risen to the level of Watergate. Not the imagined “scandals” of Solyndra and Fast & Furious. Not Benghazi. And unless it can be determined that the IRS was acting at the direction of the White House in scrutinizing Tea Party organizations, or that anyone above the level of the Assistant Attorney General ordered the phone records of AP reporters in order to track down a serious security leak, the Obama administration should not be compared to Nixon’s…except in contrast.

The Benghazi “Smoking Gun” Goes Up In Smoke.

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Just when Darrell Issa and his melodramatic, partisan witch hunters thought they found the “smoking gun” showing malfeasance by the Obama administration with regard to Benghazi, they found that the “gun” was aimed at them.

On Tuesday, ABC News reported to have found an email showing that the State Department crafted the talking points for Ambassador Susan Rice’s appearance on Sunday morning news shows in order to cover up its incompetence. Issa’s committee immediately jumped on it as if it was catnip and they were a herd of crazed cats.

Then other news organizations examined copies of the original email and found that it had been misquoted by ABC. It seems ABC had been given an altered version of the email by an undisclosed “source” – most likely Issa.

Oops!

A day later, CBS reported that Republicans had altered several White House emails regarding Benghazi in order to make the emails appear damaging to the White House and the State Department.

Double oops!!

In addition, former Ambassador Thomas Pickering refuted claims by Issa’s committee that he had refused to testify, publicly stating that he had offered to testify before the committee but was turned down.

Triple oops!!!

Then McClatchy newspapers reported that the late Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens had, on at least two occasions before the Benghazi attack, refused offers from military personnel for additional security for the consulate.

Quadruple oops!!!!

So after months of sensational reports and accusations that the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton were negligent in protecting the consulate in Libya and conspired to cover up their incompetence, the only ones who appear to be involved in a conspiracy and cover-up are Rep. Issa and his torch and pitchfork crowd.

The Real IRS Scandal.

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The IRS should be embarrassed by revelations that it singled out Tea Party Patriot groups for extra scrutiny after they applied for 501(c)4 status. Not because scrutinizing these groups was wrong. But because the IRS did not deny them such status.

That’s right. None of these groups deserve to be considered 501(c)4 organizations. Neither do liberal groups. As Lawrence O’Donnell has pointed out on his show, The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, that designation is supposed to be reserved for groups that promote the social welfare. In fact, the tax code describes qualifying organizations as “civic leagues or organizations not organized for profit but operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare.”

What in that code describes the Tea Party?

Tea Party groups that have received the designation have almost entirely devoted their money and time to attack President Obama, Democratic candidates, progressive issues and the federal government. How does that meet the criteria of promoting social welfare?

Amazingly, despite the increased scrutiny, not a single Tea Party organization was denied 501(c)4 status. The same cannot be said for progressive groups. During the same period, numerous progressive groups were also asked to submit more information (I was involved with one), and, unlike the Tea Party, some progressive groups were denied non-profit status!

Congress and the IRS need to revisit the tax codes governing political groups. They should also take a serious look at the tax-free status of churches.

The Constitution states “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.” The tax-free status of churches flies in the face of this clause by forcing those who do not choose to belong to a church to indirectly subsidize religion through taxes. Indeed, it was because some states forced residents to subsidize churches that James Madison included the establishment clause in his Bill of Rights.

By declaring all church property (including church-owned hospitals and other income-producing businesses) tax-exempt, the rest of us have to make up for the lost revenue through increased taxes. And this amount is not insubstantial. Some reports claim that as much as 25 percent of all US property is tax-exempt for religious purposes.

If this public subsidy of churches is not bad enough, many churches intentionally involve themselves in politics contrary to IRS codes governing their tax-free status. In fact, hundreds of churches have not only campaigned from the pulpit. They have recorded their political rants and sent the videos to the IRS to show their contempt for the codes. During the last election, many churches (the Catholic Church primary among them) even told their members that they would “go to hell if they voted for President Obama.” Yet the IRS refused to enforce its own codes.

Now that’s a real IRS scandal!

Repealing Obamacare…Again.

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In case you haven’t heard by now, Teapublicans don’t like the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Since taking control of the House in 2011, Teapublicans have voted to repeal Obamacare 37 times.

The latest vote came yesterday.

Of course, there is absolutely no chance that the law will actually be repealed. Not only do Democrats control the Senate, President Obama would be certain to veto any bill calling for the law’s repeal. The Teapublicans know this. So why do they continue to vote for repeal?

According to Speaker Boehner, it’s because the freshmen congressmen have not yet had a chance to vote for repeal. Without such a vote, how would they ever be able to face their conservative supporters back home? Failing to vote for repeal might result in them being labeled RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) and being “primaried” by some nitwits who are even more hateful toward Obama and his landmark legislation.

Meanwhile, the other issues these Teapublicans claimed to support during their campaigns for election have languished. There have been no bills to create jobs, to reform taxes, to rebuild infrastructure, or to replace sequestration with a real budget designed to cut the federal debt without forcing departments to make mindless across-the-board cuts. And they most certainly have not reached across the aisle!

But they have held more kangaroo court-style hearings on Benghazi and they’ve threatened to start a couple more wars.

31 To 5.

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Teapublicans continue to demand accountability for the deaths of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three others in Benghazi. They might begin with some simple addition and subtraction.

For example, under President George W. Bush, the US State Department suffered the following attacks:

  • 2002 Karachi, Pakistan Embassy – 10 dead
  • 2004 Tashkent, Uzbekistan Embassy – 2 dead
  • 2004 Jidda, Saudi Arabia Consulate – 8 dead
  • 2006 Damascus, Syria Embassy – 1 dead
  • 2007 Athens, Greece
  • 2008 Belgrade, Serbia Embassy
  • 2008 Sana, Yemen Embassy – 10 dead

That adds up to a total of 31 who died at embassies on Bush’s watch.

During the Obama administration, the US State Department has thus far suffered the following attacks:

  • 2012 Benghazi, Libya Embassy – 4 dead
  • 2013 Ankra, Turkey Embassy – 1 dead

That adds up to a total of 5 who have died on Obama’s watch.

Now for the subtraction. Since 2010, the Teapublican-controlled House cut the State Department’s budget for embassy security by $296 million. Okay, Rep. Issa, investigate that!

You simply can’t be “outraged” by the events in Benghazi, if you weren’t equally outraged by the many events that preceded it. And you can’t blame the State Department for failed security if you don’t fully fund its requests.

The Austerity Fraud.

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For more than 30 years, conservatives have pushed for smaller government. Their battle cry is to “Starve the Beast,” the beast being our federal government. They have demanded more and more tax cuts, especially for the wealthy, and they finally got them under President George W. Bush. Yet, when the tax cuts led to large deficits, Richard “The Dick” Cheney and other conservatives famously stated that “deficits don’t matter.”

Of course, when President Obama took office, their attitude suddenly changed.

Despite having driven our economy off a cliff, conservatives demanded that the new administration cut spending in order to bring the deficit and debt under control. To prove their point that these were the biggest challenges facing our nation (bigger than rampant unemployment, the housing crisis, losses by pension funds and the depressed stock markets), conservatives cited a Harvard University study by Reinhart and Rogoff which stated that economies suffer whenever a nation’s debt surpasses 90 percent of GDP.

This study was cited over and over by conservative politicians and conservative media.

Unfortunately for conservatives, it was recently debunked by a graduate student who found numerous statistical and computational inaccuracies which completely altered the study’s conclusions. Turns out, there were numerous exceptions to the Reinhart-Rogoff rule.

As for the effects of austerity measures, one need only look to Europe to see what happens when concern over deficits and debt trump job creation. Following strict austerity measures in both Greece and Spain, unemployment among young people now exceeds 60 and 50 percent, respectively. Both countries are facing major upheaval as the unemployed have taken to the streets to riot. In England, France and Italy, the effects of austerity have been less dramatic. Nevertheless, austerity has pushed their economies back into recession.

Had President Obama followed the advice of conservatives, we, too, could be struggling through another deep recession. Despite conservative claims to the contrary, the economic stimulus worked. For the past 3 years, we have not only recovered the jobs lost as the result of the Bush recession. We have added 1.5 additional jobs, and we would have added many more if not for layoffs in the public sector forced by Republican-controlled state houses.

We might well be back on the road to full recovery had the Teapublicans not taken  control of the House in 2011.

Virtually every economist has stated that the budget restraints imposed by our Teapublican Congress have hampered our economic recovery. Indeed, a recent article in The New York Times states that deficit reduction has already cost our economy at least 2 percent growth and 1 percent employment. And the budget cuts forced by sequestration have yet to fully take hold!

But don’t look for conservatives to give up on austerity any time soon. Despite our fragile recovery, they’re still demanding severe cuts to federal programs. They have proposed cuts to “entitlements” such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. They want to eliminate or severely reduce unemployment insurance, SNAP (food stamps), Pell grants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They even want to cut or eliminate the United States Postal Service!

During the last election, Teapublican candidates said they would target entire departments for elimination, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Education Department, the Commerce Department and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives. Some want to get rid of the Federal Reserve and return to the gold standard.

Given a limited (and false) understanding of history and our Constitution, today’s conservatives believe that the only constitutionally-allowed functions of the federal government are defense, homeland security, border security and highway construction. For everything else, you’re on your own.

It’s easy to see what these policies would do to our nation. Just look at Somalia.

All The Way To Crazytown, AKA Benghazi.

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According to Teapublicans, it’s the “scandal” that’s “worse than Watergate.” Except for voting to repeal Obamacare 37 times, nothing has taken up more of their time since they took back the House in 2010. Not job creation. Not national security. Not terrorism. Not even tax reform.

For Teapublicans, this is the event that keeps on giving. At least, that’s their hope.

As mentioned before, they’re determined to find something that will expose both President Obama and former Secretary of State in a cover-up. They won’t. But that doesn’t matter to Rep. Issa and his pals. After all, they’ve already had numerous hearings, including testimony from Clinton. They also have a report from an independent investigation. None of those have shown any indications of malfeasance or a cover-up.

Now we have testimony from some long-time State Dept. staffers who are visibly upset by the events that led to the deaths of their colleagues. These people question decisions made by superiors and military commanders. That’s their right, and we should be concerned if they weren’t upset by the loss of their colleagues.

But, while they may question the decisions, they don’t have any more evidence of a scandal than Issa. Yes, a regional commander ordered a special forces response team to stand down. But he explains that he made the decision because he thought the response would be inadequate and too late. He also explained that sending fighter jets would require a tanker for in-air refueling, and no tanker was available.

Issa and his committee should accept that explanation and move on. According to testimony, the night of the attack was chaotic and confusing. There were demonstrations at US embassies throughout the region. No one knew for sure where the terrorists would attack, or even if they would. It would be far more productive for Teapublicans to restore the funding they cut from the State Dept. to better protect our diplomats. It would be more productive to streamline the chain of command.

But that wouldn’t achieve the Teapublicans ultimate goal…to gin up a scandal that doesn’t appear to exist.

Tea Party Conspiracy Theories: Tinfoil Hats Recommended.

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Apparently, one of the criteria for becoming a Tea Party “Patriot” is to believe that our federal government is out to get you. These people actually believe that the Freemasons, beginning with our Founding Fathers, are intent on creating a New World Order in which our nation will become subservient to a New World government. Under this scenario, black-shirted thugs will arrive in black helicopters to take away our guns and our freedom.

But Tea Party paranoia doesn’t end there. These people also believe that the moon landings were staged by NASA, that the government blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City, that the government intentionally set fire to the religious compound in Waco, that 9/11 was an inside job, that Obama is a foreign-born Muslim who is the leader of al Qaeda, that the mass murders in the Aurora movie theater and the Sandy Hook Elementary School were staged by the government in order to take away our guns, and that the Boston bombings were staged by Obama in order to create more surveillance so he can take away our sovereignty and our guns.

The latest conspiracy theory being pushed by the Tea Party, Fox News Channel and right wing radio is that Homeland Security is buying up ammo to keep it out of the hands of individuals.

All of these theories have been embraced by the most paranoid Tea Party Patriots. But, seemingly, the most widely accepted conspiracy theories involve the United Nations. Paramount among them is the UN treaty on small arms sales, intended to keep weapons out of the hands of terrorists. This treaty does not regulate or interfere with gun sales within the borders of any nation, yet the wing nuts are convinced it will make the US subservient to the UN.

Perhaps, the most bat crap crazy theory of all involves Agenda 21. Evangelists for the politically insane, such as Glenn Beck, Alex Jones and Michael Levin, have worked the nitwits into a frenzy over this non-binding plan which resulted from the UN Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992.

Agenda 21 sets goals for (gasp) combating poverty, promoting human health, promoting sustainable development, protecting the atmosphere, combating deforestation, managing fragile ecosystems, conserving biological diversity and much more. In other words, Agenda 21 hopes to preserve our environment so that our species, along with most others, will not become extinct.

Who wouldn’t oppose such a devious plan as that?

Aside from the Tea Party, the groups most opposed to the goals of Agenda 21 are those whose profits depend on extracting resources from the environment without regard to the long-term consequences. The major opponents are big oil, mining companies, lumber companies, corporate farming, commercial fishing, and real estate developers.

Even so, Agenda 21 includes no regulatory mechanisms. There are no punitive measures and no policing. The only consequences for nations and industries failing to follow the proposed guidelines are paid by the individuals who will suffer as the result of the water and air being polluted, forests being clear-cut, fisheries being depleted, and agricultural land being depleted or forced out of production by runaway development.

Nevertheless, the conspiracy nuts want you to be afraid…very afraid…of Agenda 21. Because, in their feeble minds, sustainability is just another word for tyranny.

A Teapublican Twofer.

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This Wednesday, Teapublicans in Congress will, once again, hold hearings on the murders of Ambassador Stevens and three other US government personnel at the consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Unwilling to accept the State Department’s account of the incident, the Secretary of State’s account, testimony in previous Congressional hearings, or even a report by a special Accountability Review Board chaired by Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Admiral Michael Mullen, the Congressional witch hunters are determined to expose evidence of egregious failure by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a cover-up by the Obama administration.

For Teapublicans, that would be akin to finding the Holy Grail and El Dorado, the lost city of gold, in one search.

It would not only cripple President Obama for the remainder of his term. It would seriously damage the prospects of a presidential run by Clinton. According to polls, Hillary would easily defeat any potential Teapublican candidate in 2016. So, of course, Teapublicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are going to keep hunting for the Benghazi smoking gun. They’re going to keep claiming a conspiracy. They’re going to keep accusing the administration of a cover-up. They’re going to keep calling it “Benghazi-gate.”

Having failed to uncover any evidence of a scandal thus far, this time Teapublicans claim they have the goods. They have promoted the upcoming hearings by calling the new witnesses “whistleblowers.” They say they want to “find the truth” so that our nation “can better protect our diplomats in the future.”

If that were the real motivation, wouldn’t they also look into the attacks on US Embassies under President Bush resulting in the murders of 31 people? Where was the Teapublican outrage then?

Make no mistake. This hearing, like all the Benghazi hearings, the Fast and Furious hearings and the Solyndra hearings that came before are not motivated by a search for truth and justice. They’re motivated by politics, pure and simple.