As the scandals engulfing the Obama Administration have proliferated and “gotten legs” this week, many of the conservatives I know or whom I hear on the radio have started drawing comparisons with what happened under Nixon, bringing up the word “impeachment,” and hoping that as  it becomes evident that these activities were not accidents but part of a coordinated strategy, Obama will eventually resign, or at least some of those who hold key posts of power in this administration–such as Eric Holder–will resign and that the Administration will be hopelessly tainted as the truth becomes known.

I hear that talk, and I think, it would be nice, but I can’t see it happening.  Maybe Holder will resign.  Maybe.

I can imagine the press starting to subject the Obama Administration to a little more scrutiny in the future, but “a little more” than none is still only a little bit of scrutiny, hardly enough to make a significant difference in public opinion.  While the outrage surrounding all of this may be enough for the Republicans to hold the House and to gain control in the Senate in 2014, there will still be formidable problems, and we’ll still have a very divided country.  The low-information voters in the electorate will still be willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt because most of them are either unwilling to see him for the cynical, partisan character he is, or they are unable to do so.

It is possible that after a year or two of scandals and after the outrage that is sure to follow the full implementation of Obamacare, Obama will end his second term with even lower approval ratings than George W. Bush ended his, but at this point, I think that’s about the most we can hope for, that, and maybe Holder’s resignation.  I’m not even sure any of this will derail the immigration bill, which is looking more and more like the next legislative disaster coming down the pike.

I’m not trying to be pessimistic, merely practical.  In the lead-up to the election in November, I knew that what happened  with the administration’s lies about Benghazi was an outrage, but after the election, it seemed evident to me that Obama, Hillary, and the entire administration were going to get away without any consequences.  The American voters had failed to demand answers and accountability and had just re-elected Obama.

Now that the scandals are starting to illustrate the kinds of things conservatives have been saying about Obama for years and years now, some liberals are upset with Obama, but others are busy trying to find more ways to blame conservatives for making an issue of the problems.   In one of the most ironic defenses of Obama I have encountered so far, David Axelrod offered the “incompetence” excuse, namely, that the government is just too big for Obama to really know what’s going on, an excuse we are sure to hear echoed in the days ahead.  Forgive me if I can’t forget that in November the American electorate rejected a man who was renowned for his management skills and his ability to lead large organizations successfully, all so they could re-elect the “community organizer.”

So what do our readers think?  Am I just being pessimistic about all this?  Is the investigation of these scandals likely to have real and significant consequences for our government, or are they a lot of talk that will amount to nothing, or at least nothing much?

1. It’s a presidential election. It’s not close; the Democrat has way more popular support. A few of his dumb zealots break into Republican headquarters to spy needlessly. No person is injured, but it’s still unacceptable. The more so, because the president and his crew then lie to obstruct official investigations.
2. A Republican president was recently re-elected. A philanderer and “family values” hypocrite, he has an affair with his White House intern. It would have no public significance, except that it becomes a subject of testimony in lawsuits over his other affairs. And he lies about it, under oath. He, the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, has now lied to a court.
3. A Democrat president must deal with a certain Third World dictator who has attacked four neighboring countries over a period of two decades, costing hundreds of thousands of lives. World intelligence agencies, and Republican leaders in Congress, are nearly unanimous that the dictator would be happy to launch yet another war, has been developing nuclear weapons, and may have nukes already. Acting on that consensus, the Democrat president gets legal approvals from Congress and the U.N. to invade (along with 40 other nations) and remove the dictator. The invasion works, but at a cost of several thousand American lives (including the occupation, afterward). It turns out that the dictator only had chemical weapons, plus some nuclear weapons research (no nuclear bombs, yet). That’s embarrassing, but multiple official investigations clear the President of any intentional wrongdoing.
4. A Republican administration pushes thousands of guns into Mexico, causing the deaths of hundreds of Mexicans. Republicans claim the administration only did what the previous Democrat administration did. But that is not true: the previous operations had controls to minimize deaths and maximize the intelligence-gathering on Mexican drug cartels, controls that the Republican effort abandoned (for reasons unknown). The GOP Attorney General does everything he can to obstruct Congress’ investigation, and eventually is found to be in contempt of Congress. He does not resign.
5. It’s a presidential election. It is going to be close; the Republican incumbent, plagued by four years of economic failure, is not way ahead. But he has been successful, he claims, in fighting terrorism. A month before the election, Islamist terrorists attack a U.S. consulate and kill an American ambassador, plus three others. The Republican administration had warnings and permitted the attack to succeed (through negligence or perhaps for reasons unknown). They lie to the American people about it, implying that it was not a terrorist attack, that they could not have stopped the attack, that the attack was somehow really a protest caused by a YouTube video that nobody ever heard of, etc. The lies work: the Republican wins re-election.

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From Bloomberg[1]: Gore Is Romney-Rich With $200 Million After Bush Defeat

In 1999, Al Gore…had a net worth of about $1.7 million…In January, the Current TV network, which he helped to start in 2004, was sold to Qatari-owned Al Jazeera Satellite Network for about $500 million [of which Gore] grossed an estimated $70 million…

Two weeks later, Gore exercised options, at $7.48 a share, on 59,000 shares of Apple Inc. stock…about a $30 million payday…

How Gore achieved this is as much about timing and luck as it is about business skills. His Apple board tenure has coincided with a 5,900 percent increase in its stock price. Current TV was a moribund “fixer-upper” when Al Jazeera stepped in to buy it at “a huge valuation,”…

Gore also had his share of flubs, most of them in his efforts at green-tech investing…

The article goes on to report praise of Gore – from people who likely got money or power by being connected with him. And to give numerous examples of Gore making money from, in essence, being well-connected. Here is one pair:

After losing to Bush [in 2000], he had enough wealth by March 2008 to put $35 million into hedge funds and private partnerships through Capricorn Investment Group…founded by his buddy, Canadian billionaire Jeffrey Skoll…

By the time of the Capricorn investment, he was already starting to rake in cash from Generation Investment Management – - a fund that incorporates “sustainability” into its investment approach. [ed: I read that as government "green" subsidies] Gore co-founded GIM in 2004 with former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Managing Director David W. Blood. [ed: Goldman-Sachs are top Obama donors]

Public filings show that in 2008 through 2011 London-based GIM racked up almost 140 million pounds ($218 million) in profits to be split among its 26 partners.

There are more examples; you can read the whole thing. What I find interesting is:

• The latest confirmation that, actually, Democrats are the party of the super-rich.
• The Gore-Romney contrast; how each man got rich. Romney did it by adding to the economy’s productive power[2]. Gore did it by exploiting his connections to the American government’s power and largesse, and also by pandering to the prejudices of various anti-Americans.[3]

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Remember three years ago when the unhappy Barney Frank, then a Member of Congress said “his GOP colleagues need[ed] to do more to ‘differentiate themselves’ from the hateful speech spewed in the healthcare debate’s final hours.”

Looks like Barney needs now to differentiate himself from himself.  And, by his own standards, House Democrats should be doing the same.  The mean-spirited Massachusetts Democrat is now comparing Al-Qaeda to the Tea Party:

Former Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., responding to al-Qaeda’s criticism of his sexual orientation in the latest issue of their magazine, compared the terrorist organization to the Tea Party and cracked that the two groups are “aligned” with each other against gay marriage.

“I wonder how the right wing in America feels about being aligned with al-Qaeda?” Frank said to Buzzfeed, adding that “there is an irony that the most active anti-gay [groups] are al-Qaeda and the American right-wing.”

The Democrat contended that Al Qaeda “sounded like what the Tea party said when I got married”.  Do wonder if Mr. Frank can source his slur — and if the Democrat is aware that the Tea Party as a whole is uninterested in gay marriage.

But, when slurring the Tea Party, Democrats don’t really see the need to check their facts.

Don’t be expecting Mr. Frank to apologize or even to acknowledge his error.

Jennifer Rubin how the media would cover the story had a right-wing group surreptitiously recorded a meeting of a Democratic Senator’s reelection team as the left-wing “Kentucky Progress” did of Senator McConnell’s staff:

If this were a right-wing plot against a top Democrat there would be wall-to-wall coverage on the cable networks and front-page coverage with the magazine involved taking a beating, but don’t expect too much coverage from the MSM or commentary or much of anything from the lefty pundits, who were only interested in the tape’s contents. Like Benghazi, Libya, in their minds’ if they don’t cover it, it’s not news. Gee, you’d think the “media critics” would notice that egregious bias.

It seems Todd Akin’s 6-second crazy gaffe about rape get more coverage than this left-wing dirty trick against the Senate Republican leader.

I’m wondering how the media would be covering the economy if we saw a surging stock market and sluggish job growth during a Republican administration, particularly as gas prices were climbing and incomes stagnant. In the Obama economy, it seems big corporations and the wealthiest Americans are doing quite well as the New York Times reported last September:

The income gap between the wealthiest 20 percent of American households and the rest of the country grew sharply in 2011, the Census Bureau reported, as an overwhelming majority of Americans saw no gains from a weak economic recovery in its second full year.

Shouldn’t there be some stories about how Obama’s policies favor the wealthy?

Just wondering.

Most of you will get the likely reason in one guess:

Yes, it’s “Jon Corzine” (don’t say Democrat! don’t say Democrat!!! it won’t matter, if nobody ever points it out!!!1!), formerly of Goldman-Sachs and MF Global.

At this time, the 767-word news article that I’ve linked to never gets around to mentioning that “Jon Corzine” is a top Democrat. It lists his political involvement simply as “former New Jersey governor”, omitting not only his party, but also his powerful roles as a Democrat Senator and as one of Obama’s very top fund-raisers and (formerly) advisors.

At this time, the article’s photo caption has even (wrongly) put an “(R)” after Corzine’s name. The caption reads:

Reuters/Reuters – Former MF Global CEO Jon Corzine (R) receives help with his notes from his legal counsel as he testifies before a House Financial Services Committee Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee…

Bias, anyone?

From The Comments: John points out that the (R) would of course be defended as the photographic “right”. But even allowing that, Corzine is not the guy on the right; he’s the guy in the center (of three people in a rapidly-receding perspective). The point is that somebody at Reuters is fine with allowing people to think that Corzine is something other than a top Democrat.

In Ace’s “Headlines” sidebar, I just noticed this post at FreedomWorks: 15 Year Old Wisconsin Conservative Meets Bullying From Teachers.

Worth a skim. To be clear: By “bullying”, he does not mean physical assault, but rather a series of moral-emotional assaults from teachers who single him out for questioning (sometimes invasive) and ridicule. From Mr. Backer’s conclusion:

If teachers want bullying to end with homosexuals, other races or religious beliefs, they should want it to end with every type of bullying possible, including political views.

I haven’t done any research that would let me vouch for Mr. Backer’s story, but if it’s true, it’s chilling. Or, to say something more positive: that kid has guts!

Some signs of the times:

35 public educators indicted in a massive cheating scandal. Are they unionized, by any chance? Why, yes they are.

Obama pushes banks to make subprime loans. It was a big part of the earlier housing bubble, folks, that government wanted the banks to abandon prudent lending practices. But lefties don’t need to learn from the past. When our new housing bubble bursts, they’ll just blame the banks’ alleged “greed” again.[1]

Stockton, CA bankruptcy moves forward. Old news, but worth noting. Why Stockton? Picture the busted housing bubble, combined with California-style public employee unions / pensions, mismanagement and unemployment.

Government-funded researchers wanted to prove that whites do more mass shootings – and they fluffed it. As Bob Owens notes, Asians (both Far Eastern and Middle Eastern), Hispanics and blacks are all over-represented in mass shootings, meaning that whites are kind of under-represented. But the white ones get more media coverage, for some reason.

Gun control news:

• Obama will sign a U.N. small-arms treaty, even though the Democrat Senate rejects it. “Constitution, shmonstitution” as the saying goes.
• Biden admits to wanting the whole enchilada.
• Holding Hollywood to account for gun violence still seems like a weird thing to do. In other words, lefties haven’t been doing it.
• Democrats try for indirect gun bans, that is, burdening gun ownership to the point where it will become impractical for many. The proposed mandatory gun insurance would be anti-poor (i.e., regressive).

UPDATE: A guy got a sub-prime auto loan, by giving up his gun. Sub-prime lending as gun control, a leftie wet dream!

([1] Actual greed would be if the bank wanted to be paid back, when it made a loan. Also known as stringent lending. It’s a good thing.)

Perhaps like me, you’re enjoying this great new TV show I just found on C-SPAN2 called Mr. Paul Goes to Washington where my favorite Senator is currently filibustering President Obama’s nominee to head the CIA, John Brennan. As I write this, he’s currently about to ring in his sixth hour. The goal of Senator Paul’s soliloquy is, as he has stated several times since I’ve been watching, simply to elicit one thing: A straight-forward answer to the question, (to paraphrase) ‘Does the president believe he has the legal authority to execute through drone strike non-combatant citizens on American soil?’

Brings up a very interesting point: For eight solid years, we heard screeching and gnashing of teeth from the Left about how George W. Bush wants to kill us all and eat our babies and of course shred the Constitution through wars based on lies and the horrible PATRIOT Act. But in the end, who is it who’s actually standing up for these ideals? Well, so far I’ve seen Senator Paul in exchanges with Senators Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Pat Toomey. Odd, don’t you think, that it’d be these ‘Tea Party right-winger knuckle-draggers’ who are actually doing the work that the Bush-haters allegedly wanted done while the leaders of their nominative party are lining up with their president in his expansion of Bush’s ‘unitary executive’ policies?

Clearly it’d be expecting waaay too much for the addlepated adherents to the Bush-is-Satan school of political thought to recognize the irony of the situation, let alone find that realization a great opportunity for self-reflection. Sad, that.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HHQ)

NB: I had originally written the paraphrase of Sen Paul’s question as “power” to execute. Clearly that’s within the president’s power, but I’ve clarified (I hope) by changing my original post to read “legal authority”, which I think is likely more to his point.

From my other editorial venture, WatchDogWire.com…

The latest actor in the drama known as sequestration is none other than Charlie Brown.  Actually, it’s Charles Brown, an official with the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) office in Raleigh, N.C.

Mr. Brown sent an email to his superiors at the US Agriculture Department in Washington, DC, asking “if there was any latitude” in how he should spread the sequester cuts across his region to lessen the impacts on fish inspections.  Mr. Brown’s response from DC is now making national headlines.

Read the whole thing!

-Bruce (@GayPatriot)

Via HotAir and others, we had the news last week that:

The Justice Department sued Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services late Monday, alleging the firm ignored its own standards to rate mortgage bonds that imploded in the financial crisis and cost investors billions. The government was seeking penalties of more than $1 billion…which would be the biggest sanction imposed on a firm related for its actions in the crisis.

This is market manipulation at its dirtiest. I’ll explain.

During the housing bubble, the government’s mortgage finance agencies, FNMA (Fannie Mae) and FHLMC (Freddie Mac), securitized scads of mortgages (re-packaged them as securities, in this case bonds, that could be traded on Wall Street), including sub-prime mortgages. That was an important enabler of the bubble.

All three of the major U.S. bond ratings agencies – S&P, Moody’s and Fitch – gave those ‘securitized mortgage’ bonds the safest rating, AAA, which helped keep the housing bubble going. And that was what almost everyone wanted at the time, including the government. Later, when the housing bubble burst, it was clear that these bonds did not deserve an AAA rating, and probably never had. The ratings agencies had been wrong, along with everyone.

One question to ask is: why is S&P the first ratings agency, and so far the only one, to be punished after all this time? What distinguishes S&P? The answer seems fairly obvious: In August 2011, S&P downgraded the U.S. government’s own bonds, which remains a huge blow to Obama’s reputation.

Reports indicate that the government may also sue Moody’s. But they haven’t yet; any efforts there “are in the early stages, largely because state and federal authorities have dedicated more resources to the S&P lawsuit.” Golly, ya think?

So far, then, the moral of the story is: Don’t criticize Obama. Nice business you got there; would be a shame if anything happened to it.

But there is a deeper story: how market manipulation by the government causes bad outcomes; for which politicians (and other supporters of Big Government) always blame the market’s players, rather than themselves.

It was government which created Fannie and Freddie and had them massively support the sub-prime mortgage market. (For which GayPatriot has criticized Barney Frank’s involvement; see here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.)

Moreover, as Peter Schiff reminds us, it was government which established the Big 3 ratings agencies in positions free from ‘consumer’ pressure, where they would descend into a culture of complacent groupthink that favored, not the small investor, but the big players: (more…)

Lots of talk lately about the Obama administration’s policy of drone strikes on terrorists.

“Bush did it too”, but Obama has escalated the number of these strikes, and also conducted the first strike ever against an American citizen (Anwar al-Awlaki).

I’m not sure yet if these strikes are right (i.e., legitimate combat / battlefield strikes), or wrong (i.e., more like extrajudicial killings; possibly war crimes, when they hit civilians on non-battlefields). But I do know that they provide a fascinating window into left-wing hypocrisy. I’ll tally some examples.

• When Bush was President, these strikes were, to lefties, a sign of American darkness. But now that Obama is President, … ?

(more…)

HotAir kindly posts this picture of the good Senator:

As Ed Morrissey puts it:

…did no one ever tell Feinstein to keep her finger off the trigger of a firearm unless ready to shoot? Shouldn’t a politician attempting to lecture us on gun safety know something about it herself?

For the record, here are FrontSight’s Four Universal Firearms Safety Rules:

1. Treat every weapon as if it were loaded.
2. Never let the muzzle (the front of the weapon) cover (point at) anything you are not willing to destroy.
3. Keep your finger OFF the trigger and, in fact, outside the trigger guard.
4. Be sure of your target and what’s in line with your target.

Feinstein appears to be violating (possibly) all four rules. She appears to be in a crowded room, on an elevated platform, with people spread out before her (such as the photographer who took the picture from one side), and small awareness of her gun possibly pointing down into some of the people (on the other side). And, her finger on the trigger. None of which is careful handling of the weapon, like it could always be loaded.

A few weeks ago, Bruce reported that at least one gay group was knuckling under to pressure from Washington Democrats to accept former Senator Chuck Hagel’s apology for anti-gay remarks he made in 1998.  Do wonder how readily this group would have been to accept a real Republican’s change of heart.

Today, President Obama announced that he intends to appoint Mr. Hagel as Secretary of Defense.

Despite the eagerness of gay groups to approve of Mr. Obama’s appointment, “the target of the 1998 slur, leading gay philanthropist James Hormel, told” the Washington Post‘s Greg Sargent last month that

. . . he never received an apology from Hagel himself, questioned the sincerity of the apology, and said the incident should still raise questions about whether Hagel is the right man to oversee the repeal of don’t ask don’t tell.

“I have not received an apology,” Hormel, who is a major figure in Democratic politics, told me. “I thought this so-called apology, which I haven’t received, but which was made public, had the air of being a defensive move on his part.” Hormel added that the apology appeared to have been given “only in service of his attempt to get the nomination.”

Well, while most gay groups seem more interested in pleasing Mr. Obama than in standing up for gay Americans, at least one gay organization is taking issue with the Hagel appointment.  Log Cabin

. . . called former senator Chuck Hagel’s (R) apology for his past statements on gay rights “too little, too late” in a full page ad in Monday’s Washington Post.

The ad appears the same day President Obama plans to announce Hagel as his nominee for defense secretary.

The Log Cabin Republicans announced their opposition to Hagel and ran a similar ad in the New York Times last month.

(Via Jennifer Rubin.)  Kudos, Clarke Log Cabin.

UPDATE: Just learned that Clarke Cooper is no longer head of Log Cabin, thus is not responsible for this release.

Well, that is what we would be hearing if there were a Republican President with this same war-mongering record of death.

Drone strikes dramatically increased after US President Barack Obama took office in 2009. There were only five drone strikes in 2007, but the number rose to 117 in 2010 before declining to 46 last year. Exact casualty figures are difficult to verify. Most of those killed are militants, but some civilians have also been killed.

More innocent children have been killed by the drones of Tyrant Boy-King Barack Hussein Obama than by the guns of Adam Lanza, Jared Loughner, James Holmes, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris combined. By far.

-Bruce (@GayPatriot)

Let’s file this under the category: “If This Nominee Was President Bush’s…”

OutServe-SLDN Statement on Hagel Apology

(Washington, DC) Army veteran and OutServe-SLDN Executive Director Allyson Robinson released the following statement in reaction to an aplogy issued today by former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel for remarks made in 1998. The apology was reported by Washington Post.

“We are pleased that Senator Hagel recognized the importance of retracting his previous statement about Ambassador Hormel and affirming his commitment to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal and LGBT military families. We look forward to learning more about his commitment to full LGBT military equality as this nomination and confirmation process unfolds,” she said.

The hypocrisy of gay groups and their lickspittle use of kneepads when it comes to anything-Obama is more than revolting at this point.

-Bruce (@GayPatriot)

. . .  intransigence from the White House:

*crickets*

-Bruce (@GayPatriot)

It is Sunday evening and I’ve had a very nice weekend away from the magnifying glass of politics. It has been a normal weekend: chores, laundry, dog walking & mindless television.

Sometime during the day, I started tweeting a series of ideas about where the Republican House of Representatives should go from here. My conclusion: Give Obama everything he wants.

Let’s pretend this is a parliamentary system. Let’s pretend the Democrats won and Obama was re-elected as Prime Minister. In that system, everything Obama wants would pass.

Let them have it. I’m not suggesting that Republicans of principle silence themselves and not warn about the consequences of Obama’s economic plans. Those Republicans would include Sens. Marco Rubio, Jim DeMint, Ted Cruz, Pat Toomey and Govs. Scott Walker, Susanna Martinez and Nikki Haley. Let them put their stakes of opposition forcefully and vocally in the ground.

But let the House GOP and the Senate GOP get out of the way and allow the Democrats what they want on the economy. No obstruction, perhaps a vote of “present”…. but no other sign of getting in the way.

We, as Conservatives, know that these economic policies are disaster. But Obama is right — Americans voted for higher taxes and more regulation — so let them have it.

We will win the long game. We should have allowed the economy to tank harder than it did in 2008 to begin with. And all that’s been happening since is kicking the can down the road.

So I’m in favor of a hard stop. Let the Democrats’ vision of economic “success” play itself out.

The result will be hardship the likes of which no American has faced since the 1930s. But so be it. Americans voted for it — let them have it.

Conservative policies will win in the long game.

-Bruce (@GayPatriot)