Phony Scandals for a Phony President
Here we go again. Those big old meanies on the right just won’t let it go! You know, those “phony” scandals. Like a dog with too many bones. Except they aren’t phony. People died and freedoms are at stake.
In an address two weeks ago at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, Obama stated: “With an endless parade of distractions, political posturing and phony scandals, Washington has taken its eye off the ball,” and then said that the GOP “needs to stop.” Yesterday, he parroted it again saying that the nation is being distracted by “phony” scandals and isn’t keeping focus on middle class economic issues. Let’s not forget that the White House has, in the past, at least acknowledged, and in some cases feigned, outrage at these scandals.
Merriam Webster online dictionary defines “phony” as: not genuine or real: as a (1) intended to deceive or mislead; (2) intended to defraud or counterfeit, arousing suspicion, probably dishonest, having no basis in fact, fictitious, false, a sham, hypocritical or specious.
The scandals, as we all know, are 1) Benghazi; 2) IRS targeting of conservatives; 3) NSA spying on Americans; and 4) DOJ surveillance of US reporters.
Benghazi is a “phony” scandal that didn’t have to be, and four Americans died on September 11, 2012. They didn’t have to die. First, aid could have been given to those at the Embassy before and during the attack. Instead Hillary Clinton ignored warnings, took away security measures that could have protected them or brought everyone there home During the attacks aid could have gotten there, instead a “stand down” order was issued and the President went to bed. But Obama had an election to win, so he tried to turn it to his advantage by blaming it on an anti-Muslim video instead of calling it the terrorist attack it was. Then he sent Susan Rice to lie for him. Now there are reports of the CIA intimidating and threatening witnesses who were going to testify. Hey, he used the IRS, why not the CIA?
About the IRS … Here’s Obama’s statement from May 15, 2013: “I’ve reviewed the Treasury Department watchdog’s report, and the misconduct that it uncovered is inexcusable. It’s inexcusable, and Americans are right to be angry about it, and I am angry about it. I will not tolerate this kind of behavior in any agency, but especially in the IRS, given the power that it has and the reach that it has into all of our lives.”
Sound like someone who thinks it’s a “phony” scandal? Representative Darrell Issa has been a truth seeker on this issue. He has been holding hearings, one of which has borne out the closest ties to the White House yet. William Wilkins, Chief Counsel for the IRS and appointed by Obama, helped develop the agency’s guidelines for reviewing “tea party” cases. Now that it’s becoming clearer that the orders have come from, most likely, Obama himself, it’s “phony.”
NSA is conducting widespread, untargeted, domestic surveillance on millions of Americans; collecting and keeping records and now working in tandem with the DOJ to do even more record keeping on all of us. When this first broke it was just “collecting phone numbers, nothing more, on people suspected of terrorist ties calling overseas only”, except it wasn’t. Orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (or FISC) direct carriers to provide “on an ongoing daily basis” all call records for any call “wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls” and any call made “between the United States and abroad.” What does this actually mean? Carriers must send the NSA a record of every Verizon customer’s call history, including every call made, the time of the call, the duration of the call, and other “identifying information” for the phone and call.
