Oh, they SPIED on CONGRESS, too, huh?
That's a real surprise, isn't it?
"Charges of a Benghazi coverup don’t pass the evidence test. Comparisons to Nixon are idiotic. And it’s the height of partisan absurdity to suggest that anything we’ve seen in these so-called scandals could justify impeachment."
Related: Globe Minimizing Obama Scandals
I really hate being right all the time.
UPDATE: Woodward Compares Benghazi To Watergate
I guess he would know more than that Globe puke Lehigh.
Obama’s 2,880 Minute Gap
UPDATE: Woodward Compares Benghazi To Watergate
I guess he would know more than that Globe puke Lehigh.
Obama’s 2,880 Minute Gap
Yeah, he's WORSE than Nixon.
"Obama dodges question on Nixon comparisons; Charges of secrecy, heavy-handedness dog the president" by Matt Viser | Globe Staff, May 17, 2013
"Obama dodges question on Nixon comparisons; Charges of secrecy, heavy-handedness dog the president" by Matt Viser | Globe Staff, May 17, 2013
WASHINGTON – It would have been the unlikeliest of inquiries just days ago. As President Obama stood Thursday amid the splendor of the Rose Garden, he was asked about comparisons between himself and one of the most notorious prior occupants of the Oval Office, Richard Nixon.
“I’ll let you guys engage in those comparisons,” Obama said in reference to the president who resigned in disgrace in 1974. “You can go ahead and read the history, I think, and draw your own conclusions.”
I already have.
*************************
On one hand, the comparison between Nixon and Obama is unfair, some say. As startling as the reports have been in recent days — from the IRS targeting of conservative groups to the Justice Department seizing phone records of the Associated Press — one Nixonian element so far is missing: There has been no evidence that Obama himself ordered or knew about the actions.
No evidence of Nixon doing the same at the beginning, either.
--source--
Of course, I'm sure the Obama administration will play it smarter and destroy records if they haven't already.
“I find the comparison — that whoever is making the analysis is challenged in their understanding of history,” John Dean, who was White House counsel during the Nixon administration, said in an interview. “There are no comparisons. They’re not comparable with any of the burgeoning scandals.”
And Dean is in a position to know. Nearly 41 years ago, Dean was with Nixon in the Oval Office on a Friday afternoon when the president wondered aloud about utilizing the powers of the IRS to target his political opponents....
Then he didn't actually do it? That means Obama is WORSE!
At the same time, however, analysts said the Obama White House failed to grasp one of the central lessons of the Nixon era: when it comes to presidential crisis management, the rule has been to get out damaging information immediately, and stay ahead of the story. Instead, this White House was reluctant to release more information about its immediate response to the crisis in Benghazi, where a US consulate was attacked last September, killing four Americans including an ambassador.
The White House insists it did nothing wrong, yet waited until the matter had become a full-blown crisis and did not publicly release relevant e-mails until Wednesday. The administration said the e-mails showed the White House did not interfere with talking points about the matter. Republicans interpreted the e-mails more harshly.
In any case, the delay in releasing the e-mails seemed to only stoke the crisis atmosphere.
In any case, yeah. AmeriKan media basically saying facts don't matter. In any case....
“They’ve mishandled everything all the time. Everything. Without exception,” said Lanny Davis, a former special counsel for President Clinton and author of the book “Crisis Tales.” “They’ve made all of the mistakes that should have been learned from the Nixon administration. They don’t proactively put facts out, they wait much too long, and then their message is legalistic or unclear.”
To be sure, no one knew about the depth of Nixon’s misdeeds until the secret White House tapes were released.
They just discredited this whole piece.
The current controversies are still in their infancy, and it is unclear how high in the White House they will go once more information is known and once committees start holding hearings. But that has not stopped some of Obama’s critics to find parallels with Nixon, who resigned 39 years ago.
And John Dean has already rendered judgement.
“This is an agency with an enemies list,” commentator Lou Dobbs said on Fox News of the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting conservative groups for extra scrutiny. “This is Nixonian. This is a president whose inner Nixon is being revealed.”
Yeap. And Obama is also obsessed with leaks.
Nixon put into motion a clandestine and illegal operation that began to be exposed with a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate building in Washington.
“It certainly seems overblown at this point,” Robert Dallek, a historian who has written about Nixon, said of the comparison to Obama. “It’s too facile. It’s glib.”
Far from having an “enemies list” like Nixon, Obama seems to be confronting a lack of a “friend’s list.” Democrats in Congress are rushing to distance themselves from the scandals, joining with Republicans in planning congressional investigations.
Because they are smart. Who hooks their boat to a sinking presidency?
The controversy that could most closely approximate anything that Nixon did it is the one involving the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups for extra scrutiny. Nixon had the IRS investigate his political opponents, harassing them with audits.
But there has been no evidence linking Obama to the decision by the IRS to target conservative groups.
In fact, many observers say, if Obama is at fault, it is for the most un-Nixonian of reasons: not being in control.
Then THIS GOVERNMENT really is OUT of CONTROL!
The White House has said that in most of the cases, the president did not learn of the scandals until after news reports had broken.
Uh-huh.
“If anything, he could be accused of not knowing enough about this,” said David B. Cohen, a political science professor at the University of Akron. “To compare him to Nixon, who was pulling the strings, it’s not a fair comparison at all.”
No, it isn't. Nixon was a far better president than this piece of shit. Both are war criminals though. Remember, Nixon dropped tons of bombs and chemical weapons on South Asia, just as Obama has done in Central Asia and Northern Africa.
Dean has recently been reviewing White House tapes, including some that have not been transcribed, in preparation for a book he is releasing next year on the 40th anniversary of Nixon’s resignation. He said the use of the IRS for political purposes was more aggressive than most realize.
“It’s way beyond anything I thought was going on,” Dean said of Nixon’s use of the IRS. “He used the IRS just as a tool to attack his enemies. He minces no words. It’s repetitive. It is a tool that he thinks is there for him to use if he wants to politically.”
Of the current IRS matter, Dean said: “This is not even close to Nixon’s uses and abuses of IRS.”
Yeah, okay, John. Auditing Romney's donors was no big deal, huh?
We are a WEEK INTO this thing. Was Watergate blown open after a week?
--more--"
Related: If he's lost Walter Cronkite, I mean, if he's lost Chris Matthews he's done.
"Budget official picked to lead IRS" by Stephen Ohlemacher | Associated Press, May 17, 2013
WASHINGTON — Longtime civil servant Daniel Werfel replaces Steven Miller as acting IRS commissioner. Miller was forced to resign Wednesday amid the growing scandal, though he is still scheduled to testify Friday at a congressional hearing.
Forced to resign, but he was leaving in June anyway.
But hey, what is one more omission and distortion in a newspaper full of them every day?
Also Thursday, Joseph Grant, one of Miller’s top deputies, announced plans to retire June 3. Grant is commissioner of the agency’s tax exempt and government entities division, which includes the agents that targeted tea party groups for additional scrutiny.
Grant joined the IRS in 2005. Before that he was a top official at the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.
Werfel agreed to head the IRS through the end of September, the White House said.
Presumably, Obama will nominate a new commissioner by then.
If he is sill in office.
--more--"
"IRS official won’t be graduation speaker; Scandal prompts her cancellation" by Todd Feathers | Globe Correspondent, May 16, 2013
A high-ranking IRS official embroiled in a burgeoning scandal surrounding the agency’s targeting of conservative organizations has canceled her appearance as the keynote speaker at the Western New England University School of Law’s commencement ceremony, school officials said.
Lois Lerner, the director of the IRS’s tax-exempt organizations division, notified the school of her decision Wednesday, five days after she publicly acknowledged that her agency had wrongly singled out groups with “tea party” or “patriot” in their name for additional scrutiny.
Lerner also apologized, saying it was “absolutely incorrect, it was insensitive, and it was in appropriate.”
“As this event was unfolding, I think she was concerned for the amount of publicity and energy around it,” Barbara A. Moffat, a spokeswoman for the Springfield university, said. “She did not want — she was very concerned and sensitive — she did not want the attention drawn away from the graduates.”
Lerner graduated from the law school in 1978. She did not immediately respond to a message left at her office.
At a news conference Friday where she discussed the scandal, Lerner said the incorrect targeting was initiated by several low-level workers in Cleveland who demanded conservative groups supply the IRS with donor and other material in violation of agency poicy.
Then why were the letters sent from the D.C. and California offices, and does the LYING FROM GOVERNMENT and MA$$ MEDIA OBFUSCATION EVER STOP?
Steven Miller, the acting commissioner of the IRS, was forced to resign Wednesday after a Treasury Department inspector general’s report revealed that high-ranking officials were aware of the wrongdoing as early as 2011.
He was leaving in June anyway, but that makes Obama look tougher and all.
On Tuesday, Attorney General Eric Holder said the Department of Justice is conducting a criminal investigation into the matter.
Western New England University was relieved that Lerner chose to back out of Saturday’s graduation in Springfield, Moffat said.
“It would have been a terribly awkward situation to have to disinvite someone,” she said. “We were very grateful she came forward and said it was her choice.”
UPDATE: Lerner’s admission of IRS’s inappropriate behavior was pre-planned public disclosure
Talk about awkward.
Is there anything in the AmeriKan ma$$ media that is NOT a STAGED and SCRIPTED PRODUCTION or HOAX?!!!!!!!!
UPDATE: Lerner’s admission of IRS’s inappropriate behavior was pre-planned public disclosure
Talk about awkward.
Is there anything in the AmeriKan ma$$ media that is NOT a STAGED and SCRIPTED PRODUCTION or HOAX?!!!!!!!!
--more--"
And ONCE AGAIN, NOTHING about Benghazi, confirming that the cover-up of the staged and scripted psy-op is the real goal here.
This apparent abduction by terrorists of our ambassador and then
negotiated trade for the Blind Sheikh would have been the “October
Surprise” that would have elevated President Obama’s flagging popularity
and boosted his approval ratings for a re-election. A dramatic prisoner
exchange that saved our ambassador’s life. However, something went
horribly wrong. A cunning and illegal bit of treachery by the Obama
White House turned into something entirely different. Obama’s October
surprise turned into a carnage orchestrated by the White House itself as
the President, Leon Panetta, and CIA Director, David Petraeus watched
via a UAV real-time feed as a 7 hour attack on the Benghazi Embassy
raged. Reportedly, stand down orders were given several times to
different units within striking distance.
"Update: The original article at the Washington Times has been "Orwellized" and many of the Admiral's quotes removed." -- WhatReallyHappened
That's why the spying on AP and IRS scandals were leaked and why the pre$$ took 'em up.
See: IRS Scandal Is Well On its Way To Becoming One Of The Biggest Scandals In The U.S. History
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"GOP seeks to ensnare health law in IRS scandal; Lawmakers allege pattern of threats, coverups" by Jonathan Weisman and Jeremy W. Peters | New York Times, May 18, 2013
WASHINGTON — Congressional Republicans — not resting with the Internal Revenue Service scandal — are moving to broaden the matter to an array of tax malfeasances and ‘‘intimidation tactics’’ they hope will ensnare the White House.
Republican charges range from the clearly questionable to the seemingly specious, and they grow by the day.
Hey, when the boat is taking on water....
On Friday, lawmakers sought to tie the IRS matter to the implementation of President Obama’s health care law, which will rely heavily on the agency. Whether they succeed holds significant ramifications for Obama, who will soon know if he is dealing with a late spring thunderstorm that may soon blow over or a consuming squall that will leave lasting damage.
Okay, let's get beyond Obama and his political prospects for a moment here. The fact is the entire $y$tem is rotten to the core, up-and-down, in-and-out of the bureaucracy. If Obama resigns, so what? Then it's Biden, right? That could be even worse, in fact, each time the American people make a change (allegedly, anyway; I think all the votes are rigged, but....) that seems to happen.
Don't get me wrong, he should still be impeached, but I still think George Bush should be impeached. If anything it would save the taxpayers some dough.
Representative Dave Camp, Republican of Michigan, the usually mild-mannered chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, set the tone Friday at Congress’s first hearing on the targeting of conservative groups by the IRS, laying out details, from the alleged threatening of donors to conservative nonprofit groups to the leaking of confidential IRS documents.
In that context, he said, the screening of Tea Party groups for special scrutiny was not the scandal itself but ‘‘just the latest example of a culture of coverups — and political intimidation — in this administration.’’ “It seems like the truth is hidden from the American people just long enough to make it through an election,’’ Camp said.
Couldn't have said it better myself; however, it encompasses both political parties and their partner-in-obfuscation mouthpiece media.
Taken aback, the ranking Democrat on the committee, Representative Sander M. Levin of Michigan, modified his prepared remarks to warn, ‘‘If this hearing becomes essentially a bootstrap to continue the campaign of 2012 and to prepare for 2014, we will be making a very, very serious mistake.’’
Has nothing to do with it for me. It's about rule of law and separation of powers
Republicans raised a long list of issues. Camp contended, for instance, that a White House official’s divulging of a private company’s tax status constituted ‘‘a clear intimidation tactic.’’ The 2010 incident involved an offhand comment by the White House economist Austan Goolsbee that Koch Industries had not paid corporate income taxes because it pays taxes through the personal income tax code. As it turned out, that was not true, but the assertion was made in a discussion of tax reform ideas, not politics.
And all we got was a tax increase that was a tax cut for the wealthy.
Related: The Mendacious Obama Administration
Seems to be a pattern.
Besides that, the Koch brothers are beyond AmeriKan ju$tice for the mo$t obviou$ of rea$ons.
The Republicans also criticized the publication of donors to the National Organization for Marriage, a group opposed to same-sex marriage. That donors list surfaced mysteriously in March 2012 from a whistle-blower whose identity is still unknown. The whistle-blower apparently obtained it by simply requesting it from the IRS.
Linkage to the health care law came through Sarah Hall Ingram, a longtime IRS official who has headed the agency’s Affordable Care Act implementation program since December 2010. Before that, she led the IRS’s tax-exempt and government-entities division, which contained the political targeting effort.
‘‘This is an audit, and it’s helpful,’’ Representative Tim Griffin, Republican of Arkansas, said of the investigation of IRS targeting by the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, ‘‘but it’s the tip of the iceberg.’’
But the inspector general made clear that the effort did not reach the attention of high-level IRS officials until 2011 at the earliest.
The inspector general gave Republicans some fodder Friday when he divulged that he informed the Treasury’s general counsel he was auditing the IRS’s screening of politically active groups seeking tax exemptions on June 4, 2012. He told Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin ‘‘shortly after,’’ he said. That meant Obama administration officials were aware of the matter during the presidential campaign year.
They were aware way before, way back in March of 2010 when all this started, just after Repuglicans took back the House and as 2012 was looming. But hey, what's one more distortion?
And either way, it puts the lie to Obama saying he just heard about it last week. Or is he a Reagan where no one is telling him anything? What SSRIs is he zonked out on?
The disclosure last summer came as part of a routine briefing of the investigations that the inspector general would be conducting in the coming year, and he did not tell the officials of his conclusions that the targeting had been improper, he said.
Treasury officials stressed they did not know the results until March 2013, when the inspector presented a draft.
That defense never worked when I was a kid, and it doesn't work in court.
“Treasury strongly supports the independent oversight of its three inspectors general, and it does not interfere in ongoing IG audits,’’ the department said in a statement Friday evening.
Still, Inspector General J. Russell George’s testimony fueled efforts by congressional Republicans to ensnare Obama in the swirl of scandals suddenly besetting the White House. Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the GOP vice presidential candidate last year, said of the revelation, ‘‘That raises a big question.’’
It's OF THEIR OWN MAKING and blaming Republicans just further advances the politicized polemic of diversion.
One release that turned out to be advertent was last Friday’s disclosure of the agency’s targeting of conservative groups. Steven Miller, the ousted IRS commissioner, confessed that the agency’s apology was prompted by a question planted by the agency at an American Bar Association meeting.
I thought that was kind of important. That has been GOING ON FOR A LONG, LONG TIME at pre$$ conferences. Happened during the Bush regime. And it shows you whole s***-show swirly-fooley of this.
At that meeting, Lois Lerner, the head of the IRS’s division overseeing tax-exempt organizations, was asked about an inquiry into the targeting issue, eliciting an apology that quickly leaked out of the closed-door session. The IRS then scrambled to issue a formal release on the issue.
Pfft! They didn't have one ready to go?
Miller divulged that the exchange was not an impromptu apology but a planned exchange between Lerner and Celia Roady, a tax lawyer at the Washington office of the Morgan Lewis law firm. That revelation only underscored the ham-handed way the scandal has burst into view.
Under fire, Miller called the agency’s targeting of conservative groups ‘‘obnoxious,’’ but he told the House Ways and Means Committee it was not motivated by partisanship.
What else could it have been other than a president's singular obsession with himself (Bill Clinton's 1996 triangulation when he left other Democrats behind to save his own skin)?
And in testy exchanges, he said he had not misled Congress, even though he did not divulge the targeting efforts of a Cincinnati unit examining 70,000 applications for tax exemption.
Sorry, omissions are themselves a form of lying.
He called the group’s centralization of applications simply ‘‘foolish mistakes.’’
Should be a crime.
It's too late, but wait until the American people get a load of that monstrosity. They will want to impeach him.
And THAT IS IT! Nothing on Benghazi or the AP spying scandal today. Back to bu$ine$$ as usual in my paper.
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"GOP seeks to ensnare health law in IRS scandal; Lawmakers allege pattern of threats, coverups" by Jonathan Weisman and Jeremy W. Peters | New York Times, May 18, 2013
WASHINGTON — Congressional Republicans — not resting with the Internal Revenue Service scandal — are moving to broaden the matter to an array of tax malfeasances and ‘‘intimidation tactics’’ they hope will ensnare the White House.
Republican charges range from the clearly questionable to the seemingly specious, and they grow by the day.
Hey, when the boat is taking on water....
On Friday, lawmakers sought to tie the IRS matter to the implementation of President Obama’s health care law, which will rely heavily on the agency. Whether they succeed holds significant ramifications for Obama, who will soon know if he is dealing with a late spring thunderstorm that may soon blow over or a consuming squall that will leave lasting damage.
Okay, let's get beyond Obama and his political prospects for a moment here. The fact is the entire $y$tem is rotten to the core, up-and-down, in-and-out of the bureaucracy. If Obama resigns, so what? Then it's Biden, right? That could be even worse, in fact, each time the American people make a change (allegedly, anyway; I think all the votes are rigged, but....) that seems to happen.
Don't get me wrong, he should still be impeached, but I still think George Bush should be impeached. If anything it would save the taxpayers some dough.
Representative Dave Camp, Republican of Michigan, the usually mild-mannered chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, set the tone Friday at Congress’s first hearing on the targeting of conservative groups by the IRS, laying out details, from the alleged threatening of donors to conservative nonprofit groups to the leaking of confidential IRS documents.
In that context, he said, the screening of Tea Party groups for special scrutiny was not the scandal itself but ‘‘just the latest example of a culture of coverups — and political intimidation — in this administration.’’ “It seems like the truth is hidden from the American people just long enough to make it through an election,’’ Camp said.
Couldn't have said it better myself; however, it encompasses both political parties and their partner-in-obfuscation mouthpiece media.
Taken aback, the ranking Democrat on the committee, Representative Sander M. Levin of Michigan, modified his prepared remarks to warn, ‘‘If this hearing becomes essentially a bootstrap to continue the campaign of 2012 and to prepare for 2014, we will be making a very, very serious mistake.’’
Has nothing to do with it for me. It's about rule of law and separation of powers
Republicans raised a long list of issues. Camp contended, for instance, that a White House official’s divulging of a private company’s tax status constituted ‘‘a clear intimidation tactic.’’ The 2010 incident involved an offhand comment by the White House economist Austan Goolsbee that Koch Industries had not paid corporate income taxes because it pays taxes through the personal income tax code. As it turned out, that was not true, but the assertion was made in a discussion of tax reform ideas, not politics.
And all we got was a tax increase that was a tax cut for the wealthy.
Related: The Mendacious Obama Administration
Seems to be a pattern.
Besides that, the Koch brothers are beyond AmeriKan ju$tice for the mo$t obviou$ of rea$ons.
The Republicans also criticized the publication of donors to the National Organization for Marriage, a group opposed to same-sex marriage. That donors list surfaced mysteriously in March 2012 from a whistle-blower whose identity is still unknown. The whistle-blower apparently obtained it by simply requesting it from the IRS.
Linkage to the health care law came through Sarah Hall Ingram, a longtime IRS official who has headed the agency’s Affordable Care Act implementation program since December 2010. Before that, she led the IRS’s tax-exempt and government-entities division, which contained the political targeting effort.
‘‘This is an audit, and it’s helpful,’’ Representative Tim Griffin, Republican of Arkansas, said of the investigation of IRS targeting by the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, ‘‘but it’s the tip of the iceberg.’’
But the inspector general made clear that the effort did not reach the attention of high-level IRS officials until 2011 at the earliest.
The inspector general gave Republicans some fodder Friday when he divulged that he informed the Treasury’s general counsel he was auditing the IRS’s screening of politically active groups seeking tax exemptions on June 4, 2012. He told Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin ‘‘shortly after,’’ he said. That meant Obama administration officials were aware of the matter during the presidential campaign year.
They were aware way before, way back in March of 2010 when all this started, just after Repuglicans took back the House and as 2012 was looming. But hey, what's one more distortion?
And either way, it puts the lie to Obama saying he just heard about it last week. Or is he a Reagan where no one is telling him anything? What SSRIs is he zonked out on?
The disclosure last summer came as part of a routine briefing of the investigations that the inspector general would be conducting in the coming year, and he did not tell the officials of his conclusions that the targeting had been improper, he said.
Treasury officials stressed they did not know the results until March 2013, when the inspector presented a draft.
That defense never worked when I was a kid, and it doesn't work in court.
“Treasury strongly supports the independent oversight of its three inspectors general, and it does not interfere in ongoing IG audits,’’ the department said in a statement Friday evening.
Still, Inspector General J. Russell George’s testimony fueled efforts by congressional Republicans to ensnare Obama in the swirl of scandals suddenly besetting the White House. Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the GOP vice presidential candidate last year, said of the revelation, ‘‘That raises a big question.’’
It's OF THEIR OWN MAKING and blaming Republicans just further advances the politicized polemic of diversion.
One release that turned out to be advertent was last Friday’s disclosure of the agency’s targeting of conservative groups. Steven Miller, the ousted IRS commissioner, confessed that the agency’s apology was prompted by a question planted by the agency at an American Bar Association meeting.
I thought that was kind of important. That has been GOING ON FOR A LONG, LONG TIME at pre$$ conferences. Happened during the Bush regime. And it shows you whole s***-show swirly-fooley of this.
At that meeting, Lois Lerner, the head of the IRS’s division overseeing tax-exempt organizations, was asked about an inquiry into the targeting issue, eliciting an apology that quickly leaked out of the closed-door session. The IRS then scrambled to issue a formal release on the issue.
Pfft! They didn't have one ready to go?
Miller divulged that the exchange was not an impromptu apology but a planned exchange between Lerner and Celia Roady, a tax lawyer at the Washington office of the Morgan Lewis law firm. That revelation only underscored the ham-handed way the scandal has burst into view.
Under fire, Miller called the agency’s targeting of conservative groups ‘‘obnoxious,’’ but he told the House Ways and Means Committee it was not motivated by partisanship.
What else could it have been other than a president's singular obsession with himself (Bill Clinton's 1996 triangulation when he left other Democrats behind to save his own skin)?
And in testy exchanges, he said he had not misled Congress, even though he did not divulge the targeting efforts of a Cincinnati unit examining 70,000 applications for tax exemption.
Sorry, omissions are themselves a form of lying.
He called the group’s centralization of applications simply ‘‘foolish mistakes.’’
Should be a crime.
--more--"
It's too late, but wait until the American people get a load of that monstrosity. They will want to impeach him.
And THAT IS IT! Nothing on Benghazi or the AP spying scandal today. Back to bu$ine$$ as usual in my paper.
