Michael Ramirez on IRS Scandal Hearings

This was the 'toon I was originally searching for. Classic Ramirez! Note the "news" coverage in the lower right corner.

Obama Will "Never Hesitate" to Use Force to Protect the American People

First of all, I'd like to thank President Obama for reminding us of the awful incident at Benghazi, even though he did not refer to it by name, and in the most oblique manner possible:

As Commander-in-Chief, I have used force when needed to protect the American people, and I will never hesitate to do so as long as I hold this office.

"I will never hesitate" to use force to protect the American people. If that is the case, Mr. President, exactly what happened in Benghazi?

Friends of the blog may remember that I have gone into detail of the tripartite nature of the Benghazi scandal, or three separate scandals, if you will. The first part was the administration ignoring requests for more security, ignoring the deteriorating security situation in Benghazi (unlike virtually every other Western mission or NGO), and ignoring the warnings and the obvious significance of the anniversary of 9/11. This represents at the very least a serious lack of judgment, which should not be rewarded with further employment or, dare we suggest, promotions?

No one has truly been held accountable for the lack of security at Benghazi, and these persons are, for the most part, still in a position to muck up any number of other things vital to our nation's interest.*

And before we deal with the second, which will be the thrust of this piece, let us consider the third part of the scandal, which is to say the cover up. There is no nice way to put this, but there must have been a conspiracy of sorts, within either the White House or the State Department, or both, to put forth the fairy tale (read: lie) about a video which incited the attack, when the administration knew full well from the very beginning, within minutes, that this was an organized terrorist attack, likely al Qaeda, not some spontaneous protest of an angry mob.

The fact that for weeks, spokespersons for the President, the Secretary of State and the President himself all repeated this lie, has never been fully investigated, nor has the responsible party or parties been held accountable for lying to the American public.

Which brings us to the second part, that of the Commander-in-Chief. One month after the attack at Benghazi, Obama made a rare statement on Benghazi, when pressed by a reporter:

“Well, we are finding out exactly what happened. I can tell you, as I’ve said over the last couple of months since this happened, the minute I found out what was happening, I gave three very clear directives. Number one, make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to. Number two, we’re going to investigate exactly what happened so that it doesn’t happen again. Number three, find out who did this so we can bring them to justice. And I guarantee you that everyone in the state department, our military, the CIA, you name it, had number one priority making sure that people were safe. These were our folks and we’re going to find out exactly what happened, but what we’re also going to do it make sure that we are identifying those who carried out these terrible attacks.”

-Barack Obama, Oct. 26, 2012

"The minute I found out what was happening... I gave three very clear directives..." Well, that would certainly fit with a "never hesitate" scenario. But, Leon Panetta tells us that the President was notified within minutes of the start of the attack. So, if President Obama "did not hesitate" and "gave very clear directives" to those around him, why was no one sent to Benghazi to rescue or come to the aid of those dying in a terrorist attack? Obama was praised to the heavens for making a "gutsy call" on killing bin Laden. How do we know it was a "gutsy call"? That's what the sycophants in the media and his administration were repeating over and over. Aside from the fact that he was persuaded by Valerie Jarratt on three separate occasions NOT to make the 'gutsy call' to kill bin Laden, where is the evidence of a similar "gutsy call" on Benghazi? It was a "gutsy call" to stand up against the wishes of a female adviser, but not to save the lives of an untold number of American citizens?

I say "untold number", because too many people try to diminish the importance of what happened at Benghazi, because "only" four people died. But there were more than thirty people who came under attack at the embassy that night. Two men, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, who did perish in the attack, rushed to the aid of the diplomatic mission, though they were not State Department security, and aided in the rescue of some 33 souls.

So, from his overstuffed chair in the Oval Office, when news of the attack first came to him, Obama didn't know that two former Navy Seals would rush to their defense. When news of the attack first came, no one knew how long the battle would last. But we have armed forces stationed around the world, trained for just an eventuality like this. Why were they not sent? And if some reports can be believed, some forces were sent and they were recalled and told to stand down. Was this your "gutsy call", Mr. President? To call off any attempt at aid or rescue, because it might be embarrassing to the political narrative you were selling with your re-election campaign?

Mr. President, as I have said before, it does not take a Congressional investigation for you to tell the American people what you yourself know to be fact. It only takes a spine. You said you gave "very clear directives"? To who? What precisely were those directives? And if they were not carried out, what punishment or discipline was ordered to those who either refused or failed?

Did you indeed not hesitate and give clear instructions, or did you dither as brave Americans lost their lives defending an outpost that you and the state Department couldn't be bothered with?

You owe an explanation to the families of those slain and to the American people why you apparently hesitated and made ready to attend a Vegas fundraiser rather than attend to the very serious business of protecting the American people that you were elected to do.

Be a man, for a change, Mr. President, and tell us what you did or didn't do that night. Or are you saving that for your next autobiography?




Cross posted at LCR, Political Clown Parade








*A side note, since periodically some mindless, liberal drone (but I repeat myself) will try to put forth the argument that the reason there was inadequate security was because of those wascally Wepublicans, who constantly cut the budget. A few will go so far as to blame the "Republican" sequester that was proposed by Barack H. Obama.

This argument is patently false. The State Department has not argued a lack of funding for the lack of security, and a simple perusal of the State Department budget for that year will show millions of dollars spent on art in various embassies around the world. It wasn't that there wasn't any money, there just wasn't any competent, adult leadership in the organization

Chris Christie: "If you Like Your Traffic Gridlock, You Can Keep Your Traffic Gridlock"

There are some incriminating emails floating about, according to the NYT: Top Christie Staff Sought to Disrupt Traffic as Revenge.

The mystery of who closed two lanes onto the George Washington Bridge — turning the borough of Fort Lee, N.J., into a parking lot for four days in September — exploded into a full-bore political scandal for Gov. Chris Christie on Wednesday, when emails and texts revealed that a top aide had ordered the closings to punish the town’s mayor after he did not endorse the governor for re-election.

“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” Bridget Anne Kelly, a deputy chief of staff to Mr. Christie, emailed David Wildstein, a high school friend of the governor who worked at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the bridge.


...Mr. Christie denied knowledge of the emails and said his staff was to blame.

Chris Christie is shocked, SHOCKED to hear that his staff misled him and committed petty acts of political revenge against a mayor whose only crime was not endorsing Christie. Fortunately, the Christie campaign bus was nearby with plenty of room under it!

My first impression when I heard this story, was that it was left over from Obama's government shutdown- just a petty tyrannical bureaucratic thing designed to make people miserable for no apparent reason other than political payback. The kind of thing they do because they could. If it turns out that Christie's deputy chief of staff was working at his behest, and, really, what motivation would there be for her to pull such a petty and otherwise pointless prank unless she were, then it appears that Christie is cut from the same cloth as the current occupant of the Oval Office...just ever so much more of it!





Original art by John Cox. More at John Cox Art
Cross posted at LCR, Political Clown Parade

Peters and Weiners and Bare, Oh, My!

From the "You can't make this stuff up" department, an Australian politician named "Peter" has had to resign after sexting a picture of his "down under" in a glass of red wine.

We may have found the Australian version of Anthony Weiner. Peter Dowling, a member of the Queensland parliament in Australia, ended up resigning in disgrace this week after he got caught in a sexting scandal of his own. But it wasn’t just that detail that got him in trouble, it was also his misuse of government travel funds with the woman he was having the affair with, and the fact that in one of the sexts he had his penis in a glass of red wine.

Dowling, who, by the way, used to chair the Ethics committee, was caught after his mistress, Fiona Simpson, sent a letter to the parliament detailing exactly what kind of scandalous activity he was up to.

(Emphasis mine)

Perhaps, he should have gone with a nice Chardonnay???

Cross posted at LCR.

Proglodyte Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: Republicans Are To Blame For IRS Tea Party Scandal

I'd heard this meme several times, that the Cincinnati office was soooooooooo overwhelmed, that "mistakes were made"! And I'm picking on RFK Jr. not because he may be the dimmest bulb on the Kennedy family tree, but because, thanks to the journalistic efforts of the Puffington Host, we have both video and a transcript of him saying stupid things.

Originally, I was going to make some snide crack, bout how if it wasn't for his father's name, he'd be taking tolls in a booth alongside a turnpike somewhere along the Eastern Seaboard. We'll come back to that in a minute.

Bobby Junior blames the Republicans for the IRS scandal. It was those wascally Wepubwiccans who allowed Obama's sequester to remain in place, and that slashed funding for everybody. Well, it slashed it down to what they spent the year before and a little bit more. It is painfully obvious that you cannot expect a Democrat administration to run a department at the same funding level as the year before without draconian cuts, now, can you?

And it wasn't just the sequester! No, no! These cuts went all the way back to BUSH!!! (Anyone know if Bush Derangement Syndrome is covered under Obamacare?) And so obviously, because of cutbacks, they were understaffed and overwhelmed with 60,000 applications for tax exempt status.

And because of a lack of training, these poor rubes in Cincinnati hadn't a clue as to how to deal with these 501c4 applications (even though they apparently didn't have the same lack of training problems in processing the same sort of requests from left of center groups.) And so, we are supposed to believe, that this required that they ask many, many more questions of groups with "Tea Party" or "Patriot" in their names. Personal questions, invasive questions...hundreds more questions than asked of liberal groups, along with requests for more and more documentation. Now, if the reason for the scandal were the lack of manpower, caused by wascally Wepubwiccans, can we get someone with a higher candle power intellect than RFK II to tell us what the results would be?

Let's go back to our toll booth for a minute. Let's say that the Peter Principle advanced RFK II to the point where he is the chief toll taker in his booth. And there's a long line backing up at his booth. The toll is fifty cents. The woman in the first car with a "Don't tread on me" sticker in the window hands him two quarters. "I'm sorry, ma'am", says RFK II, "we can't accept quarters, we need five dimes". So the woman rummages around in her purse, finds five dimes and hands them to him. "I'm sorry, ma'am. That rule only applies after nine o'clock. We'll need ten nickels for the toll this morning."

Again, if we have someone smarter than RFK II around here, that is to say, someone who can tie his own shoes, would making more difficult requests on certain individuals in a toll booth or a federal government office tend to increase or decrease your workload? If the problem is too much workload for the people you have, why wouldn't you ask fewer questions, or at least the same number of questions from every individual applicant? And if you ask for additional, unnecessary documentation from any of the individual applicants, that delay means at some point you have to process the same request again (and again, and again - for months, sometimes years!), that is not the logical response of anyone who has too much work.

As a general rule, on their own, people would tend to look for shortcuts, ways to shorten the process, not lengthen it. Someone with an ideological bent was targeting these groups for political purposes. The thought of using the IRS as your own personal attack dog used to at least publicly horrify liberals like Bobby Kennedy. What the Left did at the IRS is inexcusable. That the proglodytes have to grasp at straws for any defense of it, is not surprising.

The video of RFK's mind drool is at Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: Republicans To Blame For IRS Tea Party Scandal

Cross posted at LCR.

A Tale of Three Gates

First Colombian Hooker Pics

This is Tania. Kiss Tania. Kiss. Kiss. Kiss. Now kiss your career goodbye!

Photos via NY Daily News

Mark Sanford Skirts Impeachment

Or was "skirts" why he was in trouble in the first place?

House lawmakers Wednesday rejected a measure to impeach Gov. Mark Sanford, making it unlikely the governor will be removed from office.

However, the special House impeachment panel approved an official rebuke - or censure - of Sanford for bringing "ridicule, dishonor, disgrace and shame" on the state, its citizens and the governor's office.

Sanford has been under scrutiny since June, when he returned from a clandestine five-day trip to Argentina and admitted an extramarital affair. Media, the State Ethics Commission and lawmakers have spent the past six months reviewing Sanford's use of state aircraft, business-class airfare and campaign funds.

Not that there's that much interest outside of South Carolina. I just remember the near orgasmic glee which some folk had over the prospect of Governor Sanford's impeachment. This post will constitute the "update" they'll never get around to!
It was a great headline, though, was it not?

H/T Eye of Polyphemus
Cross posted at Say Anything