The Year in Obama Scandals — and Scandal Deniers
Photoshop source: Ed Driscoll
The Year in Obama Scandals — and Scandal Deniers
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011
With 2011 drawing to a close, it is time to account. As an early-and-often chronicler of Chicago-on-the-Potomac, I am amazed at the stubborn and clingy persistence of President Barack Obama’s snowblowers in the media. See no scandal, hear no scandal, speak no scandal.
Dartmouth College professor Brendan Nyhan asserted in May — while Operation Fast and Furious subpoenas were flying on Capitol Hill — that “one of the least remarked upon aspects of the Obama presidency has been the lack of scandals.” Conveniently, he defines scandal as a “widespread elite perception of wrongdoing.”
So as long as left-wing Ivy League scribes refuse to perceive something to be a scandal — never mind the actual suffering endured by the family of murdered Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, whose death came at the hands of a Mexican cartel thug wielding a Fast and Furious gun walked across the southern border under Attorney General Eric Holder’s watch — there is no scandal!
Self-serving much?
Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum likewise proclaimed: “Obama’s presidency has so far been almost completely free of scandal.”
This after the year kicked off in January with the departure of lying eco-radical czar Carol Browner. In backroom negotiations, she infamously bullied auto execs to “put nothing in writing, ever.” The previous fall, the White House’s own oil spill panel had singled out Browner for misleading the public about the scientific evidence for the administration’s Draconian drilling moratorium and “contributing to the perception that the government’s findings were more exact than they actually were.”
The Interior Department inspector general and federal judges likewise blasted drilling ban book-cooking by Browner and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who falsely rewrote the White House drilling ban report to doctor the Obama-appointed panel’s own overwhelming scientific objections to the job-killing edict.
In February, federal judge Martin Feldman in Louisiana excoriated the Obama Interior Department for defying his May 2010 order to lift its fraudulent ban on offshore oil and gas drilling in the Gulf. He called out the administration’s culture of contempt and “determined disregard” for the law.
This spring saw rising public anger over the preferential Obamacare waiver process (which I first reported on in September 2010). Some 2,000 lucky golden ticket winners were freed from the costly federal mandates — including a handful of fancy restaurants in Aloha Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco district, the entire state of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s Nevada, and scores of local, state and national Big Labor organizations, from the Service Employees International Union and Teamsters on down. Meanwhile, as The Hill newspaper reported last month, other not-so-lucky Republican-led states seeking waivers, such as Indiana and Louisiana, were rejected.
But it wasn’t just Republicans objecting to the president’s arbitrary Obamacare fiats. In July, congressional Democrats turned on the monstrous federal health bureaucracy known as the Independent Payment Advisory Board. The constitutionally suspect panel — freed from normal public notice, public comment and public review rules — would have unprecedented authority over health care spending and an expanding jurisdiction of private health care payment rates.
Obama’s health and human services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, faced separate legal questions over her overseer role in a hair-raising document-shredding case when she served as governor of Kansas. In October, a district judge in the Sunflower State suspended court proceedings in a high-profile criminal case against the abortion racketeers of Planned Parenthood. Bombshell court filings showed that Kansas health officials “shredded documents related to felony charges the abortion giant faces” and failed to disclose it for six years.
That same month, Bloomberg News columnist Jonathan Alter gushed: “There is zero evidence … of corruption. Where is it?”
Alter’s declaration of the “Obama Miracle” came just weeks after the politically driven half-billion-dollar Solyndra stimulus “investment” went bankrupt, prompting an FBI raid and ongoing criminal and congressional probes of the solar company funded by top White House bundler and visitor George Kaiser.
As Solyndra and an avalanche of other ongoing green subsidy scams erupted, so did the LightSquared debacle — a federal broadband boondoggle involving billionaire hedge fund managers and Obama donors Philip Falcone and George Soros. In September, two high-ranking witnesses — William Shelton, the four-star general who heads the Air Force Space Command, and National Coordination Office for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing Director Anthony Russo — exposed how the White House had pressured them to alter their congressional testimony and play down concerns about LightSquared’s interference threat to military communications.
The White House continues to block efforts to gain information about the Federal Communications Commission’s approval of a special waiver for the company, even as new government tests this month showed that the company’s “signals caused harmful interference to the majority of … general purpose GPS receivers.”
The Obama White House closed out the year with Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri demanding a probe of the smelly $443 million no-bid smallpox antiviral pill contract with Siga Technologies — controlled by big lefty donor Ron Perelman. Then there was the small matter of massive voter fraud in Indiana, where a Democratic official resigned amid allegations that “dozens, if not hundreds,” of signatures were faked to get Obama on the state primary ballot in 2008. And while Americans busied themselves with the holidays, White House and Democratic campaign officials were dumping more than $70,000 in contributions from another deep-pocketed contributor — scandal-plagued pal and former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, who oversaw the collapse of MF Global.
All this — and so much more — yet erstwhile “conservative” journalist Andrew Sullivan of Newsweek/The Daily Beast scoffed, “Where are all the scandals promised by Michelle Malkin?”
There’s none so blind as those who will not see.
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That’s just a myth, there are no actual bones in a.. er.. um.. nevermind.
Obama has Boehner wrapped around his finger. He uses class warfare and the spineless RINOS cave every time. That means he knows he has them snookered. If it works once, do it again and again and again, and again.
The latest is the request for an additional debt limit increase, after all that hoopla surrounding the last one.
I think it was Paul Ryan that griped me when he said they cut spending in that last debacle and went on to explain how baseline budgeting works and that by increasing the debt and spending, they actually decreased it because the increase from the baseline was less than before. Horse Hockey.
Spending and debt should be tied to something like GDP, not what we spent last year. Where are the counterarguments? Where are the RINOS setting up websites to get Americans to tell their horror stories of no Friday night family pizza nights because of Obamas policies? Where the outrage? The misery index should be put in everyones mind daily.
They want to be nice and not be seen as too critical. Obama doesn’t have that limitation. He and his henchmen bash Republicans on a daily basis.
This article says bho and holder are amoung the ‘most corrupt politicians’ in dc! I agree with this 1000%!
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=381969
L
So exactly how do the DC elites think that wealth is created? If they got their wealth by stealing and therefor think the rest of wealthy got wealthy by stealing, where is that stash ripe for stealing? If we are all just passing around stolen wealth, who is creating NEW wealth? How do the DC elites think they can grow the economy if all wealth is stolen? Their stupidity has resulted in an economy which is not creating anything. This bunch is way to stupid to have any power.
Or even power tools.
I don’t have anything witty to say here. Just – we must defeat Obama by any legal means necessary. We must rally around the GOP candidate, whoever that is. No third parties, please.
May not be witty but it sure does sound intelligent, smart, insightful, and accurate.
gmatt2003 @106. Ditto.
Why would any logical individual vote for someone who instituted Obamacare in MA, still defends it to this day, and said proudly in 2002 that he was a Progressive?
Does it not register what it means for someone to proclaim they are Progressive. The most liberal Democrat 30 years ago would never consider themselves to be that far to the left.
You would vote for such a person? If Romney is elected the path we are traveling to tyranny will not change, merely the pace will change slightly.
So what are you gonna do Fly, jump on this week’s GOP conservative bandwagon? There are posters here who have followed, so far, the perry/cain/gingrich parade and are now taking a Santorum turn. But all those candidates have plenty of goofy baggage. I love the tea party but they back too many goof balls.
As opposed to the mighty bastions of damp Kleenex the Republican establishment expects us to rally behind.
True enough, and now Santorum is surging. I cringe at the thought of the coming media stories about some of the Santorum abortion statements. I’m pro-life too, but some of the stuff he ‘s said and done is just too strange. Many tea party favorites seem to be like that.
Staying on the Media’s good side is the best way to not be portrayed in a negative light. The only way to do that is to be either a progressive or a harmless appeasing opponent like Romney or McCain.
Hillary Clinton has been caught in several goofy lies, my favorite being her sniper fire story. Bill himself never inhaled, and got a free pass on his “bimbo eruptions”. A rational person’s belief in Obama’s love of country depends on him listening to his headphones during 20 years of America-hating sermons from Reverend Wright (even that is disproved by the titles of Obama’s books which were titles of Wright’s sermons).
We aren’t going to get someone who has never made a mistake or expressed an unpopular view. We have got to do everything we can to marginalize and discredit the Media.
I know we want smart and articulate
Oops:
I know we want smart and articulate candidates. We can’t tear our people down completely for a gaffe or overstatement made sometime in their past.
That said, these candidates haven’t exactly had me crowing with glee, myself.
The week of the Iowa straw poll this August I stated on this site, I was supporting Bachman. Nothing has changed. She represents my views.
Or hand tools.
I’ll be voting for crazy uncle Ron Paul in March it looks like. Only not-Romney vote I have available.
Unfortunately, Newt looks to have the best chance of anyone of stopping a Romney nomination.
This couldn’t have worked out worse.
The worst president in my lifetime and the GOP wants to replace him with the guy who invented Obamacare.
Stock Market return for 2011 = -0.04%. Thanks, President ZERO.
Rick Perry is on C-Span now appearing in Iowa. Hell, even though I dismissed him initially as a GWB redux, I’d hold my nose if he gets the nod.
Those are all big stories, but you missed a really big one: Michelle Malkin is a Fabulous 50 Blog Award Winner!
Congratulations!
M
http://tinyurl.com/Fab50-2011
A man named Courtney?