GUTLESS WONDERS: Our Checks And Balances Go MIA… While Obama and Hillary Laugh
Courage is not the absence of fear. Rather, it is acknowledging your fear, but acting with faith.
Not long after Obamacare was ushered through the House and Senate in the dark of night, Republicans claimed to have begun the battle to defund it. Paul Ryan, then chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, the big “numbers guy” as we are still lead to believe, said the budget process allows legislators to stop 85% of Obamacare and could do so without a presidential veto. I first likened this to my accountant saying I don’t have to pay any taxes and can do so without going to jail but I thought, “Let’s give it a try.” So we waited, and waited.
We all got fed up, of course. Many of us attended townhall meetings to ask our representatives why they hadn’t either repealed or defunded Obamacare. My congressman at the time, Mike Coffman (R-CO), stood before the neighborhood crowd of about 50, and blathered on about how we need to stop China’s worldwide quest for precious metals (not an unimportant issue, but not a priority). His response to my direct question of why he didn’t vote to repeal or defund Obamacare: “I wanted to continue the debate.”
How often have we witnessed Trey Gowdy (R-SC) wield his wicked southern accent against hack-tastic witnesses before his Oversight Committee (Gowdy is Chair), and make them all squirm under his examinations? And then how often have we witnessed exactly nothing happen to anyone who is found to have broken the law? We have to ask, “What is the point of all the investigations and congressional panels if, when we find actual wrongdoing, no one is held accountable?”
More bad – or non-news – came out today regarding Hillary Clinton and her endless emails:
Hillary Clinton’s legal team took such painstaking efforts to delete the former secretary of state’s emails that “even God can’t read them,” according to Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi.
Gowdy argued the use of BleachBit, a software whose website says it can “prevent recovery” of files, further bolsters accusations that Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president, had something to hide in deleting all the personal files from her time at the State Department.
Fine. Hillary Clinton’s Level 99 server wiping skills are impressive. So what? Do we need to introduce to a former prosecutor and current legislator the legal term called “obstruction”? We’ve known she has obstructed justice throughout this investigation. Why, Representative Gowdy, et. al, are you not slapping grandma with multiple counts? Why would FBI Director James Comey give tremendous detail to Clinton’s litany of offenses, but conclude his speech with no charges?
Here’s why: Cowardice.
Gowdy, Comey, and their merry band of say-everything-but-do-nothings are like Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro. Great rants, no action. When failed MSNBC flack Keith Olberman would press his lips against his teeth, and sneer while decrying the great crimes “Mr. Bush” had committed — as if it’s an insult to call a president by his last name – at least we knew Olbermann was only a news reader. Nothing would happen.
But as with virtually all things Republican, they have the tools and talent they need for real action and real results – enough, smart Republican lawmakers and a majority of the American populace behind them — and only fear keeps them from doing what it is right.
Image: By C-SPAN – http://www.c-span.org/video/?328699-1/hillary-clinton-testimony-house-select-committee-benghazi-part-1, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44457377