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Time for a government house cleaning
raisindot
Posts: 1,294 ✭✭✭
All, right, as one of the few liberals around here (at least in this particular here form) and a staunch Obama supporter, I wanted to be the first to say that I am totally disgusted with this Nixonian/JE Hoover-like enemies targeting and cover-ups going on in the executive branch.
I don't care if Obama didn't know about the IRS going after right-wing groups (in fairness, they also went after several left-wing groups as well) or the AP tapping reporters' phone lines or that embassy security in Libya was a trainwreck. The point is is that he should have known about these things as soon as they happened and put a stop to them immediately, or, at the very least, stop trying to deflect the blame to lower-level bureaucrats. It's time for him to step forward and clean house.
First, get rid of Eric Holder. I admire the man and what he's done, but between the AP stuff and mess-up on intelligence on the Boston Marathon bomber, he's no longer in control. He may not have known, and may not have been involved directly, but the buck stops with him. Get rid of him and all the wirerappers.
Next, get rid of every one of the IRS flunkies who targeted right wing groups, including the district manager. While they're at it, fire the commissioner who lied to Congress (I believe he was a Bush II appointee). If it turns out the Secretary Treasury knew about this, he should go, too.
Next, Obama needs to get rid of people on his staff who tried to cover up the Benghazi stuff.
Then Obama needs to open the floodgates to Congressional reviews, giving them everything they want, and putting every one of the people connected with these things on front of hostile GOP congressmen, who can have their day rightfully lambasting them. No fifth amendment, no "I can't recall" answers. These people need to take the hit.
And if it turns out that Obama did know about the IRS or AP stuff, he should come clean and admit it and apologize to the American people. These are not impeachable offenses; many other presidents, including Bush, Nixon and FDR did far worse. But they are damaging, to the presidency, to the government, and to the American people, and it's time for him to stop trying to shift the blame and take full responsibility for this, and then clean house publicly and institute tough new rules across the government to keep these kinds of things from happening.
Liberals rightly complained when Bush fabricated reasons for starting the Iraq War and for suspending habeus corpus and curtailing individual rights and for the endless dirty tricks played by Cheney and Carl Rove. Now that this stuff is being done by the president we supported, we (and everyone else) need to be just as vocal in our criticism.
I don't care if Obama didn't know about the IRS going after right-wing groups (in fairness, they also went after several left-wing groups as well) or the AP tapping reporters' phone lines or that embassy security in Libya was a trainwreck. The point is is that he should have known about these things as soon as they happened and put a stop to them immediately, or, at the very least, stop trying to deflect the blame to lower-level bureaucrats. It's time for him to step forward and clean house.
First, get rid of Eric Holder. I admire the man and what he's done, but between the AP stuff and mess-up on intelligence on the Boston Marathon bomber, he's no longer in control. He may not have known, and may not have been involved directly, but the buck stops with him. Get rid of him and all the wirerappers.
Next, get rid of every one of the IRS flunkies who targeted right wing groups, including the district manager. While they're at it, fire the commissioner who lied to Congress (I believe he was a Bush II appointee). If it turns out the Secretary Treasury knew about this, he should go, too.
Next, Obama needs to get rid of people on his staff who tried to cover up the Benghazi stuff.
Then Obama needs to open the floodgates to Congressional reviews, giving them everything they want, and putting every one of the people connected with these things on front of hostile GOP congressmen, who can have their day rightfully lambasting them. No fifth amendment, no "I can't recall" answers. These people need to take the hit.
And if it turns out that Obama did know about the IRS or AP stuff, he should come clean and admit it and apologize to the American people. These are not impeachable offenses; many other presidents, including Bush, Nixon and FDR did far worse. But they are damaging, to the presidency, to the government, and to the American people, and it's time for him to stop trying to shift the blame and take full responsibility for this, and then clean house publicly and institute tough new rules across the government to keep these kinds of things from happening.
Liberals rightly complained when Bush fabricated reasons for starting the Iraq War and for suspending habeus corpus and curtailing individual rights and for the endless dirty tricks played by Cheney and Carl Rove. Now that this stuff is being done by the president we supported, we (and everyone else) need to be just as vocal in our criticism.
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Comments
Hope and change, not hype and chains
Unfortunately, I think that the left hand knew exactly what the right hand was doing with to regard to the IRS scandal.
However, each of the posters saying that the admin should have come clean the minute the behavior was known are absolutely correct. It astounds me how little people learn from past mistakes. The American public is pretty forgiving when you own up to a mistake and take measures to try and prevent a future re-occurance; but when you deny and lie? Not forgiving and we should not be (though when dimwits like Sanford get reelected I have a hard time making that argument!). Speaking of repeating past mistakes, I'm hoping Obama doesn't go down the same road as GWB whose greatest mistake was trusting the wrong people and leaving them in place far too long.
This is something I've tried to pound into so many people's heads.Blindly following a party doesn't make you loyal it makes you ignorant.
Has their thinking changed, now that it's their privacy that's being threatened?
Perhaps a weak analogy, but how is it that cheating on your taxes is ok, and the other's not?
"If you do not read the newspapers you're uninformed. If you do read the newspapers, you're misinformed." -- Mark Twain
As for the tax cheating thing, the IRS witch-hunt wasn't about finding tax cheaters; it was about targeting certain kinds of nonprofit groups to see if their mission and financial practices (including fundraising and administrative expenses) were being conducted "for the public good" (which is essentially the high-level description of a public charity, widely open to interpretation). There's nothing wrong with the IRS scrutinizing nonprofits; there have been thousands of cases of charities set up solely as tax shelters, money laundering pits and employment centers for otherwise unemployable children. What's wrong in this case is that the IRS targeted certain groups based solely on their political affiliation.
The GOP has one thing they are good at, that is divert attention and attack. They can't govern. Now imagine if Obama had done all these things (and it's a short list)? I mean they want to impeach him over he wasn't born here (was does that tell you?). Now the Benghazi thing and this irs thing and now it's a nixon-esque thing. WTF?!
Sure it looks bad but hardly as bad as we have seen before. And it is so hard to believe that POTUS would not know everything about little things? I mean that is why you have heads of an agency. I don't think IRS mandates are on the top of Obama's list. And if it does turn out that he ordered it, well why? And to what level. The GOP are just trying to divert, just like they always do. And the media here is crappy, I mean hell they don't cover real stories instead they just fish for crap. Sure I have many issues with the dems and obama and holder blows ass.
scary times brothers......
"If you do not read the newspapers you're uninformed. If you do read the newspapers, you're misinformed." -- Mark Twain
Likewise, the Right plays with those who think abortion akin to infanticide. If liberals were only as protective of unborn babies as they are of perverts, they'd be welcome to anti-abortion PAC money. Likewise, if they were as protective of "the people's right to bear arms shall not be infringed", which IS in the Constitution as they are of "separation of church and state" which is NOT then the NRA would be in their pocket in a twinkle. There are tons of PACs whose only concern is one particular issue. It's about the issue; not about right or left.
Tons of other PACs are industries trying to ameliorate the myriad of regulations strangling free commerce in our fascist economy. An apt example would be the Cigar Association of America.
Tons of other PACs are pro-actively shaping the fascist landscape. Health insurance and big pharma distributed hundreds of millions to anyone who would take it, on both sides, in return for writing a health bill so massive and convoluted that "we have to pass this bill to find out what's in it."
The corrosive influence of political action committees is a miserable result of over-reaching government. In this sense, it is the direct result of liberal policies over the years which have relentlessly expanded the role of government over every conceivable facet of our lives. If the Left didn't keep entrusting government with more and more responsibilities, there would be no need for PACs. The PAC is legalized bribery. No wonder. Influence peddling, extortion, cronyism, nepotism, patronage, graft, and embezzlement inevitably result when government is entrusted to do far too much. Power corrupts. Less power corrupts less; more power more. The leopard does not change his spots. It's not all going to be different in the modern era any more than it was different when the past was the modern era. Leaders with charisma only make it worse.
You cannot have good government; you can only have less government.
There's more, but this one-handed typing sucks! Getting a little shaky, we'll talk more later.
"If you do not read the newspapers you're uninformed. If you do read the newspapers, you're misinformed." -- Mark Twain
I dunno. You have to be a full time unemployed tinfoil hat blogger to keep up with half of it. This much for certain: It's the Left always wants to enhance the power of government; and it is power which corrupts. PACs are just legalized bribery.
Love the tin-foil hat image, I've actually met a few. Really, in th ears, belt, it's something to think they might be out there on a keyboard
"If you do not read the newspapers you're uninformed. If you do read the newspapers, you're misinformed." -- Mark Twain
Oh, and that idiot Woodrow Wilson! What was he and those leftists on Congress who authorized him to arrest and hold suspected communists without due process of law thinking when they passed the 19th amendement, which took away the rights of states and local governments to keep women from voting? A pure overreach of federal power!
And, man, that Lyndon Johnson! Who would have thought a man who was a bigot and in the pocket of the oil industry and one of the most adamant opposers or civil rights for most of this political career would extend the overreach of the federal government to prevent states from discriminating, lynching, and denying voting rights to black? What terrible overreaching of federal power! Why, I bet if you ask any black man in the south he'd just love to live under Jim Crow again.
And let's look at that loony liberal Bill Clinton. What was he thinking when he totally gutted the laws governing brokers and banks, allowing them to turn the U.S. economy into their own Ponzi schemes? Boy, look at all the good that total laissez-faire did for this country. So good that even Obama didn't enact any kind of meaningful controls to prevent this kind of chicanry in the Dodd-Franklin Act, as we've seen over and over with the big banks losing billions of dollars in hedging plays.
Oh, and wait, what about that looney liberal Bill Clinton also signing the Defense of Marriage Act, an obvious overreach of federal power designed to prevent gay marriage, which was totally opposed by all conservatives who didn't want the government meddling in the ability for committed couples to marry--oh, wait, there was no protest, was there.
But wait--what about that notorious left wing liberal, George W. Bush, who, after sleepwalking through events leading to 9/11 created the largest and ominous non-military bureacracy in history, the Dept. of Homeland Security, and gave it unprecedented powers to monitor your phone calls, internet usage, library books, purchases and arrest anyone they think is a terrorist and keep them locked up indefinitely with no habeus corpus or due process? Yes, there was SUCH complaining from conservatives during that timeframe, wasn't there? Oh wait--there was barely a peep from conservatives at all.
Oh, wait, what about all those looney leftist right-to-lifers who want the government to outlaw a woman's right to choose? Wow, what a huge overreach of government power!
I just love sparring witcha, Davis, even if all of it leads absolutely nowhere!
"If you do not read the newspapers you're uninformed. If you do read the newspapers, you're misinformed." -- Mark Twain
Bernie Madoff was one but he pissed off a lot of other rich people so he made that mistake, thus pissing off the inner circle. Now chances are if he was doing it to little folk like me maybe a wrist slapping. The abu grave things come to mind. I mean why was the pfc and privates sent to jail? Shouldn't it have been say their commanders or maybe even bush/other officials? I mean sure the little guys were doing bad things but they were allowed too and torture was being done cuz of the top allowing it. Just as an example.
I personally think that anyone who orders or does things illegal should be brought to justice. Many people in the Bush admin comes to mind but also in the Obama admin as well. Even before them. Just because you are the POTUS or VPOTUS or secretary of state or what have you, you are not above the law. And thus is our problem. Drone attacks, gitmo, patriot act, all these things are in violation of our constitution and they should be taken care of (drones maybe not in violation, but they are wrong - the attacks anyway). I just find it funny how the right, more than the left make a circus out of silly things that as of right now has no evidence, just speculation.